We’ve had a nice summer.

Vacation is over. The kids start the official preschool (this week is just open daycare) next Tuesday and James starts school this week. He took the summer off from classes, and it has been NICE. Now that it is over, and we’ll go back to 2 days a week not really seeing him in the evenings, I can REALLY appreciate how nice it has been over the summer.

It has gotten me thinking about the things I want to do though. First off, once again, back on the Weight Watcher’s bandwagon. This summer has pretty much been crappy, although I’m happy to say that squinting down at the scale this morning, I was relieved. I could have gained 15 lbs (especially considering the fabulous food we had on vacation, and ice cream every other night) but still seem to be hovering at 265. OK, 268.5, to be exact. Can I tell you how hard it is to actually post real live numbers here? It is hard. However, looking at me, you’d know I am grossly overweight, so really, who am I trying to kid. So, skinny page is going back up (I took it down a while ago). Project Skinny back ON, baby.

As a way to try to keep myself on track, I’m starting a new page on the side, where I’ll be tracking what I eat along with points values and exercise. I went grocery shopping yesterday and bought a lot of stuff that will help me stay on track – I know from experience that a big part is to get RID of stuff that is going to tempt me, and keep stuff around that will be good for me. I was going to make my lunch today, and for the week, but didn’t get to it yesterday, so I’m going to try to do that tonight. Subway will be my friend today at lunch.

I also would really love to learn more about photography. I’m debating whether or not to take a photography class from NOVA, or take the Canon 20D/30D PhotoSafari thingee next month. Maybe I could do both.

I also want to take a sewing class. I have very basic skills from 8th grade home ec, and as I look at some projects I would like to do, I think I’d like to take a beginning sewing class to see what exactly I don’t know. G Street Fabrics has a few – anyone else know of a place that offers beginning sewing?

And this is kind of out in left field, but I would like to take a basic carpentry class. This is one that I am not interested in doing right away, but maybe sometime next year I could find and take a class. I think it would be interesting. Right now, my interests lay more in the sewing/crafty projects than the wood projects though. Someday.

I’m looking forward to fall. I’m so glad it has cooled down, although it could still come down another 10 degrees and I’ll be happy. Ethan will also be excited – that boy LOVES to wear pants and long sleeves. I brought along his favorite long pants/sleeves outfit in case we met up with a chilly day on our vacation, and on our way home from the Pequot Native American Museum last Thursday, it was raining cats and dogs. Despite James running for the car and pulling it up in front, we all got soaked (although, not as soaked as James). So when we got back to the yellow house, I pulled those clothes out of my bag* for him and he SQUEALED in delight. Then he wanted to sleep in them that night. Then he wanted to wear them the next day. We compromised and said he could wear them the next day IF it was cool enough and IF he put jammies on for the night and he was in heaven.

* I had to put them in my bag, because if he had seen them, if he had even been AWARE of them, he would have wanted to wear them and would have thrown a fit to have them and our entire vacation would have been RUINED! RUINED I SAY! He just loves snuggly clothes. He gets it from me, I think. The number of times he has tried to convince me (in the middle of 100+ degree weather) that it would be FINE for him to wear pants to school is just funny. He will be so happy when I bring all of his long sleeved stuff down from the top shelf in his closet.

– amy forgot her headphones this morning. First mornings back to work suck. Especially with no head phones.