Wow, end of September. Hmm. Blog much? Let’s see, where did I leave off…

Back to School! Yay!
Roan started Kindergarten this year.

He was a little nervous which is actually unlike him, but Dean had recently begun teaching him to read this past summer and somehow Roan got it into his head that he had to know how to read in order to go to Kindergarten! He did that with Tae Kwon Do, too. He’s been watching his big brother for years and begging to go. So, this year I signed him up and his response was, ‘But I don’t know Tae Kwon Do!” Good times.

I’m in the process of job hunting now that all kids are in school. I think I might be a substitute teacher. I want to have the same schedule as the kids including holidays, etc. and this is one way to make that happen.

The biggest most frustrating news in our lives right now is the soap opera with our van. 2 ½ weeks ago Dean ran the Blue Ridge Parkway 200 miles relay. This was his 3rd year. He loves it. It ends in Asheville. He then flew out of the Asheville Airport to Connecticut for his Aunt’s surprise 80th birthday party. He flew back into Charlotte Airport where I picked him up. On the way back home, about 48 miles out of town, our transmission blew! It took 2 hrs for the tow truck to arrive. I will try to make a very long frustrating story short. Basically, our van (a HONDA no less) is only about 8 years old with 120,000 miles. The transmission that just blew? It was the THIRD one. So we tow the van in, and they try to tell us that WE are going to pay for our FOURTH transmission in eight years. Do tell. So Dean has been ‘negotiating’ with them for 2 weeks, and finally gave them the go ahead after getting them down from $3700 to $490. Really they should be paying 100%. Anyway, on top of the $490 we are also paying for towing and about 4 or 5 days of rental cars. Now they keep telling us the van will be ready then calling back saying they found something else wrong. Yesterday they said they found ‘xyz’ wrong but they’d eat the cost. I asked Dean if they’d like ketchup with that. Supposedly we are to finally get the van back this morning after almost 3 weeks. Here’s hoping…

The weekend that Dean was out of town, Roan celebrated his 6th birthday. Since Dean wasn’t there we scheduled his party for the following weekend. However, on his actual Big Day, he brought a giant Yoda cookie to school. He LOVED that!

He party was, of course, Star Wars. He had several friends come. He was very excited. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROAN!

ROAN QUOTE: Roan’s been saying stuff that reminds me he’s growing up like ‘My bad’, and ‘hold that thought’. Also, he’s been trying to expand his vocabulary. He has noticed that Kai and Alyssa are praised when they use good words. So the other day, he was upset over some legos he was building. When I told him to calm down, he said, “I’m just really frustrated right now.” He came home from school the other day and told me he’d learned two new words that day, hibernation and exclamation point. He was very proud.