Yet More Navel Gazing

Lots of things to catch up on with y'all:

We bought a new minivan. To all of my friends who I asked to shoot me in the head if I bought one...please don't!

I'd been driving a 2002 Hyundai Elantra GT. It's the "sporty" version of the regular Elantra with a hatchback, leather seating, and a zippy 5-speed manual transmission. I bought it when I was living in California and the manual was handy going through the Cajon Pass. But since then, we've added another child and our older child got friends. I really resisted it....and then my good friend Katie pointed out to me that, "your days of parallel parking in hip parts of the city are over for awhile" Funny....and true. Now when I go to hip parts of Chicago, I just put the car in a lot :)

So....Goodbye, hip, zippy car

Hello convenient family car (with heated leather seats that make me feel like I just peed myself)

See how they made the picture for the Hyundai brochure look all stylish and cool?!?!? It's as if its the type of car one might take to the opera! But we're more the type to go to the strange, ethnic restaurant type.... The 2007 Hyundai Entourage really is a nice car and handled very well in the snow that happened the day after I took delivery...and the snow that happened again a week later.

Katie and I had a booth for our business, Knowledge Journeys, to the In-Home Conference. Didn't make a lot of sales but we learned a lot about selling, setting up booths, and how homeschool people buy things. Saw some great stuff out there too, take a look at Homeschool, Inc. Since we're electic/unschooling types I thought this wouldn't be helpful to us but since their booth was right next to ours, I spent a lot of time talking with the business people I really had a chance to learn about their product.

I'm learning how to live without taking care of my dad. Part of me really doesn't think he's gone...its more like he's just in the hospital again. I finally managed to go to the funeral home to get the death certificates Friday. There it is in black and white that he's dead. I've had a lot of angst about if I did the right thing by him...usually at night when I'm trying to sleep.

Anyway.....enough for now