I am using this blog entry to discuss the craziness of the last three weeks because, although I feel like the stress may kill us, going to Liam and Skyler’s school conferences this morning made everything feel okay again!

Three weeks ago we lost our nanny.  It is a VERY long story and I really do not want to get into it here, but it was abrupt, awful and we felt the loss of her help pierce through the house almost immediately.  However, in hindsight (if I can even say I have that at this point), I do believe God’s hand was in this.  You would think that with a full time nanny, life would have felt more manageable for Leif and I, yet it really wasn’t.  Both he and I simply worked more in order to (a) afford her, and (b) fill up the time that she freed.  As I think about it now, it was a total luxury having Erica but in a lot of ways, we delegated many of the parenting duties that I enjoy to her and filled our extra time with work.  How is that God’s plan?  Isn’t work supposed to come 4th or 5th on the list of importance?  And yes, it is nice to have someone that cleans my house and does my laundry.  But I like to be the one in charge of what my kids eat each day and when they have playdates or downtime…I want to be the one they come to after the school day to share their excitements or disappointments…the one that takes them to all of their doctor appointments and is there to give them the security they need.  So in the end…I think this is just God’s way of saying….once again….SLOW DOWN CRAZY PEOPLE!!!

To make the last few weeks even crazier, our car was stolen out of my mom’s parking lot.  Yes…stolen.  Yes…in Kirkland.  WHOSE CAR GET’S STOLEN??!?!  Its just so weird.  So, after three weeks of dealing with our insurance (who I really can’t complain about – they have been great), and lugging three kids around in a fabulous electric blue Nissan Versa that smells like stale smoke, our car was found in a church parking lot.  I have mixed feelings as we had all but moved on to a new car, but the reality is is that we would have taken a financial hit since we could not recover the value that we originally put down on the car and we could not, for the life of us, agree on whether or not to get a minivan.  It is inevitable, I know, but this gives us one more year to contemplate and accept it!

Now for the good news.  We went to Carl Sandburg this morning for Liam and Skyler’s conferences and walked away feeling like “maybe we are doing something right!”  They are both thriving in school, got nothing but praise from their teachers and are both testing off the charts.  It was so fun and so uplifting!  Their “report cards” are below.  Note that the only thing Skyler was tested on was Phonetics and the “goal score” for Kindergarten students is 10 – she scored 40 (actually, running past 40!).   The “goal scores” for Liam are the numbers shaded underneath his scores (yes he did score 104 when the expectation was 27!).  Hey…if I can’t brag on my kids blog (that only their grandparents read), where can I brag!!!

SO SO SO PROUD!