In March, Katie got started on her journey to a better smile. There was some work that had to be done to move her jaw before she could get her braces, but that didn't take long and brackets went on in August.
In May, Ethan and I drove to OU in Norman for the State piano auditions. He scored a 1+, the highest rank he could get. We're very proud!! The day of this audition was the beginning of some serious weather.
It rained so hard on the way down that people were driving 35 mph with their flashers on. We even pulled over and waited about 45 minutes before moving on. It rained a lot and for a long time. Our part of the state experienced flooding for weeks. People were evacuated, businesses shut down, roads washed out. It took about 4 months for things to open back up and be normal. In the picture above, the river begins beyond the trees and is many feet lower than the road. There is a walk/run/bike trail somewhere under that water.
We also changed up how we do school. The program we were using was an out of state accredited private school program. It worked just fine until we hit Ethan's freshman year of HS. It was a tough year and we were fed up by the end. We made the move to an Oklahoma based online charter school. We wanted help with all the stuff that comes with getting a kid ready for college. That's what we got! Our assigned teacher is fabulous and we LOVE her! Because all of the work is online, we have had some adjustments to make. However, the kids are doing great and are learning so much more than they had been. We're now nearing the end of our first semester and are very pleased with the change.
My youngest celebrated his 10th birthday in Sept. and my oldest will celebrate his 16th in Jan.
All four kids tested for their 2nd recommended black belt and passed. They will test for their 1st degree in March.
The weekend of my birthday I left the kids/dogs with my mom. There were also other cousins hanging out during this time. I should have know better and brought my dogs home. My mom's current house is tiny and Dixie doesn't do well with crazy(even though she herself is just that). When I picked the kids up, my mom informed me that Dixie had bitten my niece and caused her to bleed. I had told the kids, even with Lola, that if the dog bits and breaks skin we can't keep her. So...Dixie has a new home. The family is super nice and all of their kids are older, which works out great. She's been out of our house for about 10 days and it's much calmer here. I am much calmer. I feel good about the situation and we're moving on.
The biggest thing for me this year has been my marathon. Yep...I ran a marathon. A friend asked if I'd like to run, and it has been a bucket list item, so I said yes. Then I talked my brother into running it with me. I knew I would need a little motivation to get in all the running so I set a side goal, 1000 miles before Dec 31st. The closer it got to my run, the more I was DONE with running. I started wondering if I could finish my mile goal with my marathon. I did. Nov. 24th was a beautiful day. No layers were needed and it wasn't raining. We signed up to do a .3 detour and make the run a mini-ultra marathon. Even with that addition, we finished in 4 hours 30 minutes. This also happened to be the top of my finish time goal. In one run I hit 3 goals...ran 1000 miles in a year, ran a marathon/ultra, finished in my set time frame. We had a good time and now I can mark that one off my list. There's just 3 weeks left in this year. Time is moving on whether we want it to or not. Better make the most of it!
