Lots of Happenings!

I start every blog post with "It's been a while", but indeed, it has again been a while.  Life has been CRAZY.  So here's the latest:

1.  Leah starts kindergarten tomorrow.  I'd like to say more about that, but my heart is absolutely breaking into a million little pieces and I can't stop crying about it.  I'm trying to toughen up a bit, but this is going to take some getting used to, to say the least.

2.  I had my gastric sleeve done on August 12.  So far, I've lost 41 pounds.  I'm so proud of that fact, I can't even tell you.  I'm not going to blog about it.  There are plenty of blogs out there that do that.  I don't want to be an educator or an inspirer--if you want to do it, do it.  It is much, much harder than I ever thought it would be, and after it was done, I had a serious bout of buyer's remorse and depression.  But seeing my progress, I do have to say I'm proud of what I've done and I'm glad to keep seeing the numbers go down.  No regrets.  And I haven't had any complications to speak of, which is awesome.  The hardest part is sticking to a firm schedule.  I finally set up 15 separate alarms on my phone so I know when to do what.

3.  We are hosting an exchange student from Belgium!  Her name is Ine.  We are hosting her through AFS USA, my 8th hosting experience with them.  She arrives in the US on September 8th and I think we should be able to pick her up on September10th.  I am flying to London 24 hours later, so I will get to know her when I get back, but she's cool about it.  AFS gets its jollies when host families blog about their exchange experiences, so I'm setting up a blog at ourbelgianstudent.blogspot.com if you want to follow our experience.  Our blog about hosting Penny was a big hit, so I'm hoping that this one will be helpful too.  As a host mom, I love reading blogs from other people who have hosted students from the same country.  It's helpful in so many ways.

4.  I'm back to school as well.  I'm probably already messing up the semester--we started last week and I've had time to check in exactly once.  But hey!  Leah starts school tomorrow (sniffle) and then I can get cracking.  It's going to be a challenging and interesting semester, I can already tell.

5.  I'm going to London.  Next week.  I'm glad I was talked into it.  Even though it's not the greatest time ever for me to go, I'm excited.  Because.  England.  And even though it's 2 months late, I'll be done with my 2 year bucket list.

6.  Our garbage disposal died.  I was glad my father was here to help negotiate the price.  Plumbers are crooks.  I'm sure there are good ones, but the ones we were dealing with were crazy.  So we went to Lowe's and for 1/4 the price, I'm getting a new disposal installed either tomorrow or Wednesday.

7.  Lesley came to visit and we went to Delaware to see the Downton Abbey costume display.  It was incredible.  I hope to go back before it closes.

So I guess that's all the news that's fit to print.  Happy back to school time for everyone and we will see you on my next post!