Busy little Capras!

I can't even begin to describe the tremendous amount of stress that I've been under the past couple months or so! Gone are the good ol' days when I was actually able to accomplish the tasks I set out to do. Challenging and meaningful tasks. These days I get excited when I accomplish even the most simplest of tasks...like exercising, taking a shower, making the bed, getting the laundry folded and put away in less than three (or four) days and maybe squeezing in two minutes to check my email every other day or so. Yikes! What is happening??!! I feel like I'm losing control of what used to be really quite easy for me to handle! Like keeping the house clean, making grocery lists, keeping the laundry in check and cooking most of our dinners at home. Everything seems to be unraveling before my very eyes and it seems impossible to get it together! What's happened to me??!! I'll tell you what's happened to me! 3 kids - that's what happened!!! I wouldn't trade my kids for a clean and organized house and life for anything in the world, but I must say...I am feeling extremely exhausted and a bit overwhelmed!! It could be because Caleb has been crawling like a maniac all over the place for the past three months...or it could be because Kristin and Katie have started fighting more than they used to...or it could be that loading and unloading 3 kiddies into and out of the car is a mountainous task in and of itself! I just can't put my finger on it, but whatever it is - I'm pooped!!!

But enough of my whining!! I'm very grateful to have my hubcap and 3 kiddie-poos! Sure they all demand without ceasing, but I'd be so very sad if they weren't all in my life! So enough complaining! It's time to get you all caught up with our crazy lives!! ;)

First of all, Kristin and I started her 1st grade curriculum September 7th. I'm not sure why we started so much later than we did last year, but it doesn't really matter I guess. We're still scheduled to finish by the 2nd week in May. I use the Calvert home school curriculum and I must say that I am SO much more pleased with the 1st grade curriculum than I was with the Kindergarten one. It's much more interesting and colorful. I've tried to include one cooking activity and one art project per week, but we've missed one here and there - since we've had so much going on lately, but we're slowly getting back on schedule.

Kristin's first day of 1st grade!!

Kristin and her "Mommy teacher" :)

We begin each day with the pledge of allegiance and finding yesterday's, today's and tomorrow's date.

Kristin working on her first assignment of the new school year

Katie and Caleb didn't appreciate being left out of the 1st day of school picture, so they demanded a do-over the next day. ;)

Kristin is all ready for her cooking activity - s'mores bars!

Me and Kristin get started

Kristin rolling out the graham crackers to make the crust

Katie always enjoys helping with cooking activities (and anything else kitchen-related)!

Of course the camera battery died at this point, so we have no finished product to show off. :( It ended up tasting okay, but it was a little too rich for my liking. It was apparently not rich enough - because they were all devoured within a day or so. Yikes - way too many calories!!

So for each day of school, Kristin gets a sticker if she did a good job and tried her best. She can save up her stickers to pick a place to go each week - like the playground or Sea World. She can save up two weeks of stickers to go to Chuck E Cheese or buy a new book or coloring book. Of course, she chose to save up two weeks of stickers for CEC for her first couple weeks of school. Katie and Caleb get to partake of the fun without doing anything to earn it, so they're lucky that Kristin tries so hard in school! Those little moochers!! ;)

A mean game of table hockey at CEC - Jason and Caleb vs. Kristin

Kristin enjoying table hockey...even while losing to Daddy and Caleb!

Kristin is all ready for her first science experiment...which ended up being lame when it didn't work!

Waiting for something to happen... to no avail...

I don't think I mentioned it in my other posts, but after we got back from Jason's brother Joe's wedding back in August, Jason decided that he wanted to specialize in Anesthesiology doing Pain Management. He'd been going back and forth with the idea since he first began his residency. For some reason he finally made up his mind and began the application process. It's a two-part process. He had to apply to schools/hospitals that offer Fellowships in Pain Management and he also had to apply to the Air Force to get their permission/funding to do further training after residency. It took a few weeks to complete both applications and it was a bit stressful getting a hold of all of the documents and transcripts required for the application process. Fortunately, the stress was worth it - because he was invited to interview at Stanford the end of September. It was an unexpected expense that we hadn't planned for (yay or 0% interest credit cards!). He was only given a few days notice, so plane tickets were outrageous (which of course doesn't include hotel or rental cars). I figured out that it would cost just as much for Jason to go out by himself as it would for all of us to all drive out there together...so we ended up making it a mini family vacation. So we headed out to Stanford (which is in Palo Alto, CA) September 22nd after Jason got home from work. Yes - the drive was long and horrendous, but I did the first 10-hour chunk of driving through the night, so all of the kids slept until breakfast time the next morning. So the first half of the drive wasn't too bad (besides me being exhausted...with dark circles under my eyes...). ;) We spent one day driving all the way through to Jason's Uncle Doug's house (which is 3 hours away from Stanford). We ate dinner at a Greek restaurant while we waited for Uncle Doug and Aunt Gala to get off work and pick up their kids from school. Then we headed over to visit for a while before heading to bed. The next morning we drove 3 hours to Palo Alto to look at the apartments at Stanford (for residents, staff and employees only). They were REALLY overpriced, but they were SO nice! I don't really like the idea of moving back into an apartment after living in a house for the past 7+ years, but they were really more like townhouses with attached garages and the community felt really safe and cozy!! And you could totally tell the people who live their are all spoiled living on civilian doctor pay (we even saw a couple of resident couples outside with their kids at the playground while they had maids cleaning their apartments! Oh my goodness - are you kidding me??!! I could not imagine needing a maid for a tiny two bedroom apartment!!! Sheesh! Oh well - I guess if you have money to spare. I'm not sure what that's like, but I still don't know if I could justify a maid for an apartment even if I had money to spare!!! Anyways - I'm glad we were able to go with Jason. It was fun to look around what could potentially be our next home (for one year anyways). The training is only 1 year long and then we'd be off to Jason's next assignment - wherever that might be. It was also nice to visit Jason's Uncle and Aunt! We've never been out to their house before - all of the other Capras live on the East Coast (besides Uncle Jim and Aunt Shelly in Dallas). They've always lived so far away from everyone - that we've never have a chance to visit them. So after looking around at the apartments and surrounding area, we spent the night at Travis AFB an hour from Stanford - which looks like a really nice base (at least it did at night - we didn't see it in the daytime). This was the night that I dropped our camera and broke it. :( I was taking pictures of Jason in his first suit (another reason the 0% interest credit card came in handy). He was so excited about it. The only other suit he has is the suit from our wedding!! He has only ever needed to wear a uniform, so we've had no need to buy him a suit. Anyways - I was really disappointed about breaking the camera - because we have no pictures to show for our trip (except for iPhone pictures - which definitely aren't as good). :( The next morning, we left REALLY early to make sure we didn't get stuck in traffic. We got to Stanford an hour early, so we played around at the playground at the apartments until Jason had to leave for his interview. It was an ALL day interview that lasted from 10am to 5pm or so. Yikes! The kids and I walked around a lot and looked in all the different shops and grocery stores while we waited. The interview ended up going really well and Jason was really excited about it. That night we drove back to Uncle Doug's to spend one more night. The next morning we began our drive back to Texas. Only we were so close to Disneyland...with just enough time to stop by the Disneyland Hotel and eat brunch at Goofy's Kitchen!!! I just love Disneyland (I don't know why). We didn't have time or money to go into the park, but just being at the Hotel made us feel like we were in the park. We also walked in Downtown Disney the Disney store to walk around and then we pulled ourselves away and began the horrendous drive back home. We stayed in Arizona after 8 hours of driving and then we drove the last 12-13 hours the next day.
A week later we found out that Jason was accepted to Stanford!! Unfortunately we've had to wait to find out what the Air Force will say. The Board meets December 5th and we'll find out on December 16th! I can't wait to find out!! If they accept his application, we'd be moving to California July 1st. If not, we won't find out where we'll be moving until February/March! Eek! I'm anxious to find out where we'll be going and I'm trying not to worry about anything. I'm comforted in knowing that God is in control, so that makes it less stressful, but I'm such a psycho! I'd love to know now!!! :)

The kids with Mickey Mouse outside of the Disneyland Hotel

Kristin taking her first test of the year. I don't remember being so happy taking tests when I was little! ;)

I need to post this and move on (since I'm SOOOOOO far behind), but I must say that I'm getting so aggravated with blogspot! I don't know if it's just me and I haven't had time to figure out all the new updates, but nothing seems to be working the way it used to! All of my pictures are messed up (with huge gaps) and I can't seem to figure it out! So sorry for the mess! And if you have any pointers - let me know what I'm doing wrong!!! Argh! Hopefully, I'll be getting another story/pictures posted on here within the next day or so (if I don't pop a vein out of anger)!!! ;)