Update...
We are in Midland with the flu on our supposed way to Colorado. We had planned to leave to go as far as Santa Fe tonight, but we aren't leaving today after all. I don't know what our new travel plans will be. Odell is feeling better, but Braeden is worse. We will see what happens...

Santa found us here in Midland. The kids had a great time with their presents before Braeden just got too sick to play any more. Now he is in bed with his new things next to him. Gracyn got a phone and has begun calling all her friends. Kaegan got a cuckoo clock and a karaoke machine. Braeden got...star wars legos...naturally. Everyone was very pleased and excited! I may have been the most excited. I got a mandolin! Now, I have to figure the thing out. That will be fun.
Odell got binoculars. (The better to see you with!)

Gracyn has set up a fun blog for herself. The address is goose-like.blogspot.com. Check it out!

We leave the day after tomorrow. We will head toward Midland for Christmas, then it's to Lake City. I'm not the world's greatest packer, but I'm really good at procrastinating. So, we are trying to get things together and see all our friends at the same time. It isn't necessarily easy, but it's fun.

I turned 40 yesterday. We had a party at "pump-it-up" which is a children's party place with giant indoor inflatables. It was a great time. The perfect way to spend number 40. The kids that we all have at this stage in the game of life had a fabulous time, and it was great fun for the adults, too. pictures later after we get settled in Lake City.

So, now that I'm old, I should be getting to bed earlier.... so, I'll try that sometime.

We are getting closer to beginning to almost get around to planning to schedule a time to think about packing.

This is Gracyn in our Christmas play called, "The Magic Bakery." She is narrating about Christmas in Austria. The organ behind her isn't an organ...my friend made it with cardboard and contact paper. Doesn't it look convincing? Gracyn is wearing an authentic Austrian dress from her friends, Josha and Michaela Dodson.

Braeden is "Fernando" in the Mexican Las Posadas portion of the play. He just can't get that donkey to cooperate! He had a lot of lines and did them all spendidly. Very cool because he wasn't sure he could.

Gracyn and her friend demonstrate an Irish step dance called, "The Easy Reel," in the Irish portion of the play. I don't know why it is called EASY. It doesn't look easy to me. Gracyn has been taking Irish step classes for the past year. She really likes it and does very well at it.

Kaegan sings and acts out "The Twelve Days of Christmas." He is actually the only one doing what they are suppose to be doing.

Here he is again and you can see that they are all doing their thing. It was quite a huge victory for the K-man.

Well, we have a busy week and a half before us. The kids and I are planning fun sleep-overs with friends. I am trying to enjoy the company of good friends before we go to be with other good friends, and we have lots of packing, Christmas shopping, & paperwork-type stuff still to do. I'm not even sure we have informed everyone we need to about our move. Some people may find out after the fact. I hope not, but I'm not sure who all we still need to tell.

I'm very excited and (a little teary-eyed at the same time). I told the kids that we are just looking at it as a big adventure. Maybe we'll write a book about it one day! ;o)

I'm trying to get the kids to a certain point in math before we put them in school.... I love our math program(Math-U-See), but it goes in a unique order, so I want to make sure the kids have covered a few things that I'm sure the school has already covered. They will do well.

I'm very at peace about our plans except for the thought of how many things I might be forgetting to pack or do before we leave...I'm such a forgetful person. I hope the mountain air will clear that up! ;o) I'm also a little leary of being sick again. When we went on vacation a few weeks ago to Lake City, I was miserable for about 24 hours, then I was weak from being sick but miraculously okay. Very strange thing. Hopefully it won't happen again. I will drink WATER (and stop to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes) and take calcium, calcium, calcium which is what they say to do. I looked it up on the internet, and they make it sound much more serious than I thought it was. hmmm. I knew it was miserable, but had no idea it could be serious. I will be fine even if miserable, but now I will pay more attention to my kids' reactions to the altitude change. If we have trouble, I think we will go get some oxygen. One website mentions "home oxygen"...anyone know exactly what that means? I know there is water with oxygen added (supposedly...I don't know how that works or if it works), maybe we will try it.

Okay enough rambling about nothing.

Here are our plans as they stand now...
We will plan to leave for Midland to visit my family for the holidays on Friday, the 23rd. We will leave Midland the day after Christmas to head toward Lake City (too bad we can't be there Christmas morning for a white Christmas). We will arrive in Lake City on the 27th (sometime!) and stay temporarily at a cabin very generously offered to us by the school secretary. Odell says that we will have to get settled before the weekend which he has decided to reserve for snow-mobiling. Now, who do we know with snow-mobiles??

We will plan to move into a cute little cabin just down from the McClungs (who have snow-mobiles) mid-January and stay there until we find something else better, but we really like the little cabin so it may be "better."

We figure we will test the waters (or snow), so to speak, discover whether or not Lake City will fit our family and then make a decision about a permanent move sometime within the school semester. Gracyn wants to attend Lake City school full-time. Braeden will attend part time. Kaegan will homeschool full-time. We will get to know the community and hopefully intrigue the school personnel with Kaegan's progress so that they want to know more. Maybe we can work together as time goes on.

I'm about to order the kids' snowboots...If we can make it through the winter, the rest should be easy, right?

Here is a URL to view a slide show of our dress rehearsal. I hope it works...

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2o3i4jrb.cmaivujb&x=0&h=1&y=kp6l9q

Just trying out the picture thing. This is the only picture I have on my computer...they are all on another, so I will post them later. This is a few years ago on a camping trip. Kaegan had asked for an eskimo kiss.

The play was great! If I could just figure out how to post pictures, that'd be fun! All 3 of my children did a wonderful job, and everyone else did too, of course. I warned KK about the fact that people would clap at the end of the song he was in, etc, but I forgot to warn him that people would be taking pictures and there would be lots of flashes. He stood in camera shock for about the first couple of verses, then participated in the rest. He handled it well and seemed very proud of himself. Braeden was cute as could be and Gracyn looked beautiful doing her Irish dancing. They all sang "Silent Night" in Spanish and it was very pretty.

Tomorrow, we are having a Polar Express Pajama Party in the playroom. So, today I will practice that with him and explain to him what will be happening. It's so fun that he "gets it."

Well, today at play practice, Kaegan did spendidly. You just never can predict....

Maybe he will do it; maybe he won't.

Okay...
I'm finished being negative now. I guess I just had to get that out of my system. I was really aggrevated with the special ed. director, and disappointed that it seems so political. I had hoped that they would be a little more flexible and had expected to bend a little myself, but it was obvious that an agenda had to be met from their perspective and it didn't match even my most flexible agenda from my perspective. Why can't they just do things MY way??? ;)

So, we are getting ready for Christmas and the kids are all excited about their play which is Tuesday night. It is a play about Christmas around the world called, "The Magic Bakery." Another mom and I wrote it, and our homeschool group will perform it. Gracyn knows all of her lines (as well as everyone else's) and Braeden knows his for the most part. His cutest part in the play is when he is Fernando in the Mexico scene and he is trying to pull a burro onto the stage. He is so expressive, that it is really cute. He has been practicing rolling his RRRR's and calls the donkey, Pedrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrro.

Kaegan is helping to sing and act out The 12 Days of Christmas. He isn't too hip on it today, so he may not actually do it, but when we practiced it the first day, he was just amazing! I had practiced it with him in his playroom, and he went in to practice very connected with the situation and participated as any other child, looking at the teacher the entire time. Today, in practice, he yelled, "stop that singing!" So...we'll see if he actually does it!!

Well, that's about it for now.