53 Pages

Okay, so I didn't quite top my record of 70 pages in one crop, but in my defense let me just say, this crop wasn't as long as the last one I went to.

I put together a crop for our Sunday School class ladies and we had 4-5 ladies at a time, people kind of floated in and out as their schedule allowed. I worked Friday night from 6-11 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. until 6. Everyone said they had a good time and most of them got done what they set out to get completed. We are going to do it again in January, but change it to a one-day crop and open it up to anyone that wants to come.

My goal was to crop all of our Atlanta vacation pictures and I did it. I put together 12x12 pages for our family Places We Go album and worked on smaller pages for the kids' albums. I also taught them how to do the box bag and they were super-thrilled with that project. One lady left the crop, went to Hobby Lobby, bought paper, went home and put together 25 of them for her son's school fall party.

I have decided to sell my Cricut and save up to buy the Expression. I am in love with my Cricut, but I want the bigger one. QVC has an Expression package for $379, which is $20 cheaper than HL and it comes with four cartridges and a bunch of other stuff. Damon sold my Xyron Wishblade for $90 and that is going in a savings account awaiting the rest of the money. The Cricut is just the coolest little toy.

I started a second job on Thursday, back at Graham-Rogers, the insurance company I worked for before I took the job with EDGE. Business with EDGE is struggling and everyone is taking an hour/wage cut. I dropped to 25 hours a week. Graham-Rogers gave me 15 hours a week, for a couple of months to come in and clean up all of the marketing stuff that has gotten messed up or dropped since I left in February 2006. I am hopeful that after we get into first quarter of 2010 and our new sales guy gets in the groove, business will pick up for EDGE.

We went to parent-teacher conferences for each of the kids Thursday and Friday. Damon went to meet with Jackson's teacher. He had B's in Language Arts, Science and Social Studies, but a C in math and that C came purely from not making sure he answered every question on his worksheets. And, he struggles with organization. So, we are now sitting down each night, with his binder, going through helping him organize all of his papers and walking through each paper to make sure he has answered every question. We told him 90% of life is showing up and making sure all of the lines are filled in. He understands most of the material and does well, when he slows down, reads things carefully, and then TURNS IN THE PAPER.

Reid's teacher said she is doing MUCH, MUCH better with her listening and following directions. She still struggles with staying focused during circle time, but most of the kids still struggle with that at this stage of the school year. We are going to spend more time working with her on letter recognition. She can recognize "R" and that it is the first letter in her name, but she can't look at "K" and tell you it is a "K."

Okay, signing off now to watch The Next Iron Chef.