Miscellaneous

I (Amber) am up in GA for two weeks with my little ones. I am working my "two weeks notice" at Blue Cross so that I don't get a negative mark on my record. I thought it would be quite a fun trip up to GA with the three boys, and was a little nervous about doing it alone (although I acted like I was a pro and didn't let on), but luckily they slept most of the way. Brian stayed in FL to work on our moving into the house and because his school has started.

Anyway--because I'm in GA, I have no access to our pictures, so I still cannot post pics of Trace...and a few people have mentioned my slide show pictures and how neat it is to have them, and it's actually quite tricky to do (simple, but tricky, if that makes sense)...so I will work on that when I get home to FL. It's fun to say FL is our home now--it just feels right. And, since Brian's in school every weekday from 5:30pm-midnight, I have plenty of time to "blog" after boys go to bed.

Brian is excelling at culinary school. Several times the professors have used him as an example, and last night the teacher told the entire class to come over and watch how she makes a certain cut again because no one was doing it right, "Except Brian." I'm so proud of him. He looks fantastic in his chef uniform as well :-)

We have decided that I will be the one staying home with the boys and Brian will be working. Along with driving luxury cars, Brian needs to get a job in a kitchen for the experience so that he can get a good job in 15 months when he graduates. Therefore, I get to stay with my boys, and I'm very excited. I finally can just be a mom. It'll be another tight year financially, but we've done a great job of cutting out all un-needed expenses, and we can do it on a lot less than what we thought. And after 15 months, Brian will be a chef and be able to get a real job!! (the school has 97% placement after graduation).

Kalen is doing great--he is using his imagination like CRAZY...I'm always asking him who he is this time (always some superhero), and I often catch him running through the house saying, "You can't see me, I run so fast!"

Brady is picking up words very quickly all of a sudden--he started saying "eat", "bubba" (for brother, which he calls both Kalen and Trace), "love you," "hold baby," and lots of others this week. OH!! And he woke up three days ago and decided he wanted to use the big boy potty. I never even tried to train him, he just decided he was ready. I think it may be short-lived, but I'm loving it while it's happening. It's so cute because he looks at me and says, "pee-pee" pointing to his diaper, then when I say "Okay, go!" he pulls off the diaper and runs to the bathroom yelling "Bubba!" for Kalen to come and encourage him. Kalen is doing a great job and gets rewarded with Brady for each successful bathroom trip.

Trace is a smiling machine! He smiles anytime someone makes eye contact with him for any period of time--I love it! He has almost laughed on several occassions. Tonight Brady bit his toe, which caused him to cry ALOT, but he was okay once I started feeding him--food makes it all better.

We sold all of our German Shepherd puppies, with the exception of two--one we gave away because he was injured and one we gave to a dear friend of mine who helped me TONS when Brian was in FL and I and the boys were in GA. It was fun having those 10 little monsters, and are VERY thankful for Sarah and Brandon for letting us house them in their garage and backyard, but we won't be doing that again for a while. Living in Lee and Heather's house, it would be impossible to keep a litter of pups, so we may actually look at getting our Kaya fixed :-( It's sad to think about because she made beautiful pups, but alas, must be done. I would recommend a German Shepherd to anyone--they're just amazing dogs. Very loyal, family oriented, and protective--we think Kaya scared away a thief on Christmas eve at my mom's house. We came home from last minute shopping and a side window was open, the blinds were messed up, and a TV and DVD player were knocked to the floor--Kaya was in the house, and nothing was missing--but they could have gotten all of the presents under the tree and everything. We were grateful for having Kaya at that time.

Anyway, that's our update. Thanks for all the comments--I have to figure out how to follow you guys' blogs now :-) Love you all!