Mish mash

Okay, so I couldn't think of a creative way to title an entry that will likely be all over the place since I haven't written much about the happenings in the life of Nicole in a while.  Most of my recent brain power has been used gathering, sorting, revising, and composing policies and procedures for work.  Rip-roaring stuff, I know.  But the crazy part is, I actually don't mind doing that kind of stuff.  And I got to work from home for two days.  With Rob. 

Rinse and repeat one day next week as well.

What would likely make others feel as if someone was slowly pulling off their toe nails one by one actually energizes me.  But it also saps all my mental energy by the end of the day, which means I got nothin' to give here.

So, in an effort to at least be somewhat organized and coherent in this post, I will give each section a nice generic heading and attempt to hit the bullet points.

Work

As aforementioned, I've been working on a project with Rob, revising the Policy and Procedure Manual.  Perhaps that should be creating, as they have never actually had a church-wide P&P manual.  What they have had is a bunch of policies and memos in various places.  Our job has been to grab those, figure out what's missing and write those, then bring them all together in an organized fashion, create one succinct manual, and then a few "for public consumption" guides that will be accessible to the volunteers.

It is a lot of work, to be sure, but as it is work I enjoy, it made the two days spent on such fly by.  Tuesday we will have another go at it (yay to working at home again!), and hopefully at least have the employee handbook portion ready for the Lead and Executive Pastors to review.

There are also some upcoming organizational changes that I am not at liberty to discuss yet, but if things go as I hope, I am very excited.  The shifts should better utilize folks' strengths and giftedness, including yours truly.

Home

Rob finished his first grad school class last week (with an A!), and the next one doesn't start until mid-June, so the plan is to work on a few projects around the house during the lull.  We are having new windows put in on the addition, and we took the cover off the pool yesterday.  For the latter to be ready, we still need to add more water, shock, and vacuum it.  But the yay factor is that what water is still in it (had to lower it about a foot to put the cover on) is clear. 

I'd also like to get some of the painting projects done, such as finishing the study and our bedroom.  We added a pet door out to the garage a few weeks ago, which allowed us to move the cat boxes to said area (woohoo!), but we still need to finish organizing the space (we've given up on the idea of actually using it as a garage since it is quite narrow) and moving the bins from the screen porch into the garage and/or shed.  My wish at that point is a glider or chairs or a pair of rockers for the screen porch, but so far the spousal unit has simply rolled his eyes at me.

And then there is a project that is quite daunting to me because it is so not in my skill set: landscaping.

When the previous owners were getting the house ready for sale, they were also prepping it for rent - whatever came to pass first, they were going to run with.  This totally worked in our favor, allowing us to rent for a month while our house in DE sold.  The downside was that they prepped the house for long-term tenants - meaning not only did they paint every wall with semi-gloss (gross!), they also stripped the yard of anything that might be high maintenance - or any type of maintenance - save mowing, weed wacking, and edging.

We had a company come out and quote re-vamping the yard with lovely shrubs and perrenials, but I about fainted when I saw the cost. 

By the same token, Rob, nor I, have ever planted a shrub.  Nor have we ever really had an interest in doing such.

But I also hate the nakedness of our front yard.

This could provide some interesting blogging fodder in the weeks and months to come.

Kiddos

The school year is winding down to the final weeks, praise God!  I am quite frankly tired of nagging motivating the children to stay on top of their assignments.  The Daughter continues to struggle with her honors English class; however, we did see improvement last marking period and the teacher is working closely with her now, so if we can get her through it with a C, I will be quite pleased.

She took her SATs the first weekend of this month - not sure how long it takes to get those back.  She chose the four colleges to send them to - two local, one in western VA, and one in DE.  Her plan at this point is to take one of the two years of cosmetology training via the tech school (free!) next year, since she only has to take 4 academic classes to graduate.  This will also allow her to explore her interest in cosmetology at no cost - then if she does like it, she can pay for the second year of training.  Following that, she plans to use her cosmetology certification to help her through college - either business or pre-law.

The Middle has been doing quite well with his classes, so we allowed the reinstatement of xBox for one hour on school nights ("I've been getting all As and Bs for a while now, Mom!).  But alas, that was short lived, as his Science grade dropped to a C this week because he got a big fat goose egg on his homework ("I lost it...").

He continues to do quite well with his guitar playing - he picks up new songs quickly and easily.

The Youngest had his final strings concert of the year on Tuesday - I am amazed at how far these 5th graders have come this year.  He can't decide if he wants to stick with violin or switch to cello next year.  I am just happy he wants to continue with orchestra.

With some trepidation, I am not looking forward to next month when his best friend moves to TX.  These are the kinds of hurts that I wish we could shield our babies from!

The Cruise!

I am still spending an inordinant about of time reading cruise boards and reviews for our ship.  It officially moved to Baltimore a few weeks ago, and I have been eating up any and all info posted about the move and subsequent cruises.  Overall they have been positive, save some embarkation and debarkation issues, which will hopefully be resolved by the time our vacation is here (just over 100 days from now!).

I think I have decided on what excursions we will do.  I am leaning toward just going with the flow in Grand Turk, since they have a nice beach and cruise center with shops, Margaritaville, and a pool.  I know we can safely take a taxi out to the lighthouse for some photo ops as well.  And since Rob and I plan to purchase our own snorkeling equipment, the teens can give it a whirl in calmer, shallower waters within our view in prep for a snorkeling excursion later that week.

Next stop is supposed to be a private island in the Bahamas, so another beach day, which is fine by me!  The boys may do a sting ray excursion, but The Daughter and I have no interest in that, so we will stay behind and work on our tans.

In Nassau, I am hoping to book a snorkeling excursion with Stuart's Cove (if they would ever email me back!).  They have good reviews and go to 2-3 different sites.  And it's only a half day, which would allow us time to have lunch on the ship and then still go into town and shop a bit if we want.

Our final stop, Freeport, doesn't get a lot of positive reviews since you basically dock in an industrial area, so I plan to book a dolphin encounter.  We are all really excited about this excursion - I hope it lives up to our expectations.

I think that about covers it....for now.  I am going to post this before I accidentally delete it; I can always go back and fix the typos later, eh?