I need to do this more often...

I was going to title this post "Where do I begin?" and then, I realized it was the title of my last post. So much seems to be going on lately that: #1-I haven't had the time to sit down and blog, or #2-I know that it will be big task to summarize my life in a single post that I continue to put it off, which means that I just have more I need to blog about. So, I am going to try to highlight some of the things that have been going on...

Meg Goes Back to School
The newest chapter in our life has begun--That of the story of two working parents. So far, it is not as hard as I thought it would be. Meg went back on March 28. We have yet to do a full week of this, due to spring break. It's kinda nice now that Meg is back, since we are both equal now (not that it was a competition or anything). What I mean by that is, when Meg was home, she felt she needed to give me as much Maddie time as possible when I got home. That meant that Meg made dinner, cleaned up, made lunches for the next day, mixed up formula, etc., while I got to play with Maddie and put her to bed. I felt incredibly guilty about this, because I knew that being home with Maddie all day isn't all that easy (see later in this post), and frankly, I actually ENJOY most household chores (no seriously, I am a geek that way). Now that Meg is at school all day, she is just as much in need of Maddie time as I am. So, we've got a good system going where one of us does housework, and one of us takes care of Maddie, and then we switch off. We also have family time, and, after Maddie goes to bed, Mommy and Daddy time, which usually involves cuddling on the couch while watching the same episodes of Scrubs again, because we are both too tired to get up and change the DVD.

Meg's perspective of this is much different than mine, since she had to deal with returning to work, as well as dropping off Maddie for the first time. She has done a nice job of summarizing her feelings in her blog.

Traffic Court
I usually am ecstatic at the start of a long vacation, counting the seconds until that final bell rings. Thursday 4/5 should have been like that, but I had my 5 PM court appearance hanging over my head all day. I had expected to be yelled at by the prosecutor, and then the judge. I had expected an emotionally crushing experience. Really, the only thing that was affected was my wallet. I showed up about an hour early, and was 2nd in line to talk to the prosecutor. I was glad I got there early, because there were a lot of people in line by the time court began. I guess when they have so many people to get through, my speeding ticket was just part of the process. The prosecutor was helpful, and amended the speeding charge to "unsafe vehicle operations," which does not carry any points, but does involve a $250 surcharge from the state of NJ. When I was called up in court, the judge completely dropped the whole insurance card thing, since I had proof that I was insured at the time (after cleaning out my car yesterday, I FOUND my insurance card). I did walk out of there $410 poorer, but at least I don't have to worry about points on my license.

I got home, and Meg and I went out to Friendly's to celebrate the start of...

SPRING BREAK!
Ah, a little reminder of what summer can be like. Well, not really this year, since the weather was pretty much cold and rainy the whole time. I am trying not to get bummed, as today is the last day of Spring Break, and tomorrow starts a full week, with not another day off until Memorial day (and my Spring Concert between now and then AHHHH!!). But on the other hand, there are only 65 days 4 hours, 24 minutes, and 45 seconds left until summer vacation. And that is calendar days, not school days (I haven't gotten organized enough yet to figure that out). We are now officially in the fourth marking period, meaning the year is 3/4 over (so it's gotta be slightly less than 45 days). Thinking back to my analogy of the year as a week, we are at about Thursday morning right now. Thursday as that "the weekend is near" feeling, but you realize you still have two full days of school to get through before the weekend. So a Thursday (the rest of April and then May), and then FRIDAY (June), and then, on June 19 at 3:15 PM, Summer Starts! (Friday after school begins).

Whoops, I am supposed to be blogging about spring break, better get back on task...

Friday was a yardwork day for me--actually, all I did was clean out and organize the shed, but considering that you couldn't even walk in there before, it was a pretty big job.

Spring break started out with a trip to Gettysburg for Easter. We borrowed my parents van (for the last time! to be explained later), loaded everything up on Saturday (including Maddie and Max), and headed over to Gettysburg. Maddie had a very nice first Easter. We headed home on Monday, and basically unpacked, went shopping, and went to bed.

Tuesday was like a summer day for me, in that I got outside and got a lot of yard work done. On Monday night, I bought a new bagging lawn mower. So, I spent Tuesday raking leaves, de-thatching, aerating, and mowing the front lawn.

Wednesday-Friday were my Daddy-Maddie days, as Meg had to go back to work on Wednesday. The first day, we pretty much hung out around the house. I took several cute videos, and took Maddie on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart and Lowes (nothing says home improvement better than buying plumbing supplies with a baby in the cart). When Meggie got home and took over baby duty, I got started on my next spring break project--fixing the pipe that burst underneath the deck this winter. This project also involved moving the hose bibb to a more convenient location. This was probably the biggest plumbing project I have ever done on my own, but it was actually a lot easier than I thought. So far, there are no leaks, and everything works. The worst part of the project was having to climb underneath the deck (lots of ivy and spider webs)

Thursday, Maddie and I visited my parents during the day. I also got my haircut. Meg met us after school, and we hung out there for a little longer. We got home, I buckled down and got to work on finishing my grades, since 3rd marking period grades are due when we get back to school. I stayed up very late that night, because after finishing my grades, I decided to crunch the numbers on our 07-08 household budget. I went into this project thinking, "how are we going to be able to do this, with having to pay my mom to watch Maddie," to "wow, we are way better off that I could have ever expected (due to our raises, and other cost-cutting measures), let's buy a

...Minivan!"

Friday, Maddie and I brought lunch up to Meg at school. I pretty much spent the rest of the day researching minivans. And narrowed our list down to a Dodge Grand Caravan, a Kia Sedona, a Honda Odyssey, and a Toyota Sienna. Friday night we did our Wal-Mart and Sam's shopping.

Saturday we went van shopping. I had already ruled out the Dodge, since my parents seemed to have a lot of problems with theirs. We started out a the Honda dealer, and looked at a 2003 with 67K miles on it. It was 18,000, and had a lot of features, but was a little older than what I was looking for (ideally 2004 or later, but not new). We then went across the Turnersville Auto Mall to the Toyota dealer. We test-drove a blue 2006 Toyota Sienna, with 26K miles for $21,900. It was the standard model, and does not have a lot of the bells and whistles (all of them really cool, but completely unnecessary), but it did have two features I really wanted... 3rd row fold-into-floor seats, and an auxiliary jack for my MP3 player. By this time, we had ruled out the Kia, since the impression we got from both the Honda and the Toyota salesmen is that they are cheap for a reason. The Toyota was a little more than what I wanted to spend, but our monthly payments worked out to be less than the $500 I budgeted for. So, after a talk with Meg, and a phone call to my dad to double-check his professional opinion of Toyotas (he drives a Camry to work everyday and loves it), we decided to buy it! I thought we would have to come back later to pick it up, but we took it home that day! Now, we were at the Toyota dealership for hours, because they were very busy (they had already sold over thirty cars by the time we left).

After getting home, I played around with the car for a while and read the manual. So far, I am happy with it. I would post pictures, but it is pouring today, so I can't get out to take any. But as soon as I have some, I will definitely post.

Today is a "getting organized" day, since tomorrow starts a full work week. In fact, I gotta wrap this up, because there is a lot to do around the house