Work, work, work...

I don't have much time to blog or to watch my kids. I have been busy the last couple of days getting work done for my boss. I am working on an annual listing of obligated project report, I updated a spreadsheet of Knoxville's High Proirity Projects and I am getting ready to recieve 120 plus project list of transportation projects so that I can financially constrain them. So I finished with the first two proejcts this afternoon and they should be ready to go as long as my boss does not request any changes. So I feel better and now I am ready to work on the Long Range Transprotation Plan. After I get this done I really should not have much work to do. It seems to come in spurts where for months I will not have much to do and then little plans come up and I am busy again. The winter time is kind of busy with the Congestion Mitigation and Air Qualty report and the annual lisitng of obligated projects and the Long Range Transportiaotn Plan is updated every 4 years so this just happens to be the year it needs updating so that is why I am helping them with it.

I do enjoy the work and it does keep me involved in planning but sometimes it is hard and frustrating since I am not physically there and I always have computer problems. Also I don't have all the information in front of me since I am 400 miles away. So I really don't mind it it just bugs me when it comes on all at once and I really don't have that much time during the day to work on it. I had an hour while the kids were in school today and then I worked 1.5 hours while Nathan was sleeping and Mallory was watching TV. So I mostly feel bad for her because she ends up in front of the TV which she does not mind but it annoys me. However, it is temporary so I can handle it and I feel 100 percent better since I got those two reports done this afternoon.

We had a great New Year's celebration. Our neighbor had a party and the girls got to stay up until 12:00 so they had fun but they were also tired. Nathan went to sleep around 10:00 at their house but he still had fun. I tell you he loves my neighbor (the dad). He would leave me and walk through the crowded party and find my neighbor and want him to hold him. My neighbor enjoyed holding him and spending time with him but I also felt bad since it was his party and he was greeting everyone and walking around talking to his guests while holding Nathan.

Everyone is back at school and it is nice to get back to a schedule. However, it is also a pain to be on a schedule and have to wake Julianne up for school and have to wake Nathan up from his nap to pick Julianne up. Oh well that is life and we all adapt.

My stepmother has us take a picture of the kids every year for her Valentine Day card (instead of a Holiday card she sends a Valentine Day card). So my brother and I are usually incharge of doing that. This year she got shirts for them that had their ages on it and we took a picture. However, Nathan was not coorporating with the picture so I had to revisit my photoshop skills and cut and paste him into the picture. So we took a picture of the other kids and then I took a picture of Nathan by himself and then cut and pasted him (well it included more steps than that) and put him into the new picture. It worked pretty well. I had to soften his edges so he did not look like I just plopped him in there and I had to make sure all the colors were the same, etc. It is was fun to do that again. I did that several years ago when I took a Photoshop class but have not done it sense.


Picture of Nathan not very happy

We tried it again and he was still not happy.

Picture without Nathan

Picture of Nathan later without anyone and happy

Nathan pasted in the picture

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Nathan roughly turning my head and giving me a sweet kiss on the cheeks.
-school starting back
-snow on the grass
-my ability to multi-task