So it's settled : Bobby will be going to Sacramento with Ems. I'm sad I'm not going to be the one sharing those three days with her. It's going to be a really special trip; I'm sure she'll remember it forever. But I guess I do get to spend more time with her overall than Bobby does ...

Anyway.

I'll just have to try to make those days a special time for Steve and Soph right here.

Over the last few days, the kids and I have settled into a nice holiday routine. After breakfast, we straighten up, then go to the climbing gym. Come home, have lunch, and go down to the pool till the obligatory late-afternoon thunderstorm hits. Then run back inside, have a snack, and read/draw/play with Julius till Bobby gets home. It's a nice mix of indoor and outdoor.

It's getting horribly hot and insecty here. I spent yesterday morning hanging out in a friend's yard watching the kids bounce on her trampoline, and got bitten half to death. My legs are still covered in huge icky bites; don't know what nasty Floridian creature gave them to me but they itch like hell. When you walk into the parking lot in the morning, the glare makes it hard to see at first, and the heat radiates straight up off the tar and smacks you in the face; it's vicious. It's almost too hot and humid to breathe. On the other hand, though, when I'm swimming up and down the pool in the late afternoon, with the palm trees silhouetted against the blue sky, this feels like a good place to live.

Been talking to my mom a lot on the phone. I think I've finally taught her that a phone conversation doesn't have to be a terse exchange of information, it can be just idle chitter-chatter that doesn't really go anywhere. It's nice. She's pretty apprehensive about starting the chemo ... I wish I lived there. Or they lived here. The plan is still that they'll come over for a good long holiday at Christmas time. Of course that will depend on how my mom is doing .

I'm trying to decide whether I should keep Sophie out of school again next year, or whether I should put her into second grade. When I got home from England, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be homeschooling next year. I looked at all the stuff we did and I thought - how did I do all that? There's no way I can keep this up. I think a lot of that feeling was jetlag and worry and stress, though. Because now that I'm feeling more on top of things, I can actually see myself managing to come up with more creative and fun activities. Bobby thinks she should stay home next year - he sees how far ahead of her peers she is academically, and thinks she'll be bored in a classroom. Which she might well be. I'm worried about finding friends for her, though. Her best friend from the homeschool group is going to school next year (her mom is pretty much burned out, her younger child has numerous health issues so she really needs some time off) and Soph's Brownie troop has just disintegrated. So I worry that I may not be able to find her enough friends ... and she's such a social person, she really loves spending time with other kids. I think I probably could manage if I really put my heart and soul into it, but it would just be so much easier if she were in school. All that would be done for me. Sophie's no help with the decision making, she says she can't decide. She can reel off whole lists of things she likes about being home and lists of things she likes about being in school. I've been putting off thinking about it, but I don't have that much longer to decide; school starts around August 4th, I think.