Caught Up!

So, here it is - the first post for a new year.  Of course, that's not counting the eighteen posts I've done this year to catch up from last year.  But who's counting?

Since graduation my theme has been "Catching Up."  First I caught up on Christmas preparations, but that spilled over into the new year as well.  As we left for Texas I glanced back and saw our un-decorated gingerbread houses, but try as I might, there was no way to fit them in to our schedule or (more importantly) in our car to get them done before Christmas.  Instead, we spent one of our days after Christmas decorating our houses.  I had splurged an extra $1 or so to get the pre-assembled ones, just to shave a day off our gingerbread process - after all, the decorating is what we really enjoy.  When we  opened the package we found that it also came with pre-made icing in TWO colors - score!  We stopped at one of those Candyopolis stores in the mall to get fun stuff to decorate and we were ready.

Our Creative Process can get a bit messy.

Maggie's house is always neat and tidy!

Gracie is just getting started with the candy.

Chocolate rocks were good to make a fish/duck pond.  They tasted good too! 

Gracie's never happy until her house groans under the weight of all that candy!

The front of the houses.

The back of the houses.  

We had fun getting all caught up with that project.

What else have I gotten caught up on?  Well, I spent four weeks off and on getting all my digital scrapbooking content labeled and tagged so that when I go to scrapbook and I search for red paper I get something that looks like this:

Instead of like this:

Which is what happens when you have too many tags on every single paper.  They just aren't meaningful.  All in all, it was a good exercise for a budding librarian.

What else have I caught up on?  Well, I deleted about 1000 emails regarding school assignments, sold back some theory-heavy textbooks, and am still working on going through all those school papers and deciding what to keep.  I still have to put together a portfolio for the state department of education, so I don't want to go too crazy there.  I caught up with reading on several subscriptions that I have to various blogs and magazines, so now I just need to keep current.

Really, I thought I'd have more time when school was out, but it's the same old story.

I thought I'd have more time when the girls went to Mother's Day Out two days a week, but I didn't.

I thought I'd have more time when the girls went to school five days a week, but I didn't.

I thought I'd have more time when I got out of school, but I don't.

Life just expands to fill the available space.

But on the upside - I'm never bored.