The silence is deafening.

Howdy all.  How was your summer?  Mine?  Mine ended up being busier than I anticipated and therefore many of my normal daily tasks got shunted.  Like this blog.  :(

My teenager has officially started high school in WA.  The silence I mentioned is what is left behind in my son's wake.  Silence.  No Minecraft. No conversations about Minecraft. No more watching other people online playing the game and talking incessantly about Minecraft.  

Don't get me wrong, I miss my son every day when he's not here. I will NOT, however, miss Minecraft! 

The house is actually pretty empty right now.  My husband had to emergency fly to Atlanta on Saturday.  His mother.  She finally lost her battle with her terminal illness on Monday afternoon.  He and his brother are handling everything, side-by-side.  Messages and phone calls have been pouring in from her estranged siblings.  If nothing else, it's brought most of them together for the first time in a decade.

In other, much happier news, we are just a couple steps away from finally owning our own house!!  We're waiting on the seller to take care of some repairs and then it's ours!   Three bedroom ranch house built in the late 50s.  Hardwood floors, brick exterior.  Front deck, built on woodshop, metal shed, fenced off garden area, next to a canal (water rights!), short trail to a big park, near the bus line, AND... three doors down from our best friends!! 

I really need to back away from my enthusiasm. We don't have the keys yet!

I've been slowly packing.  No major whirlwind yet.  I'm also working on a locker-hook rug.  Actually, I started it probably a year + ago, but now that we're going to have hardwood floors, I've stepped up my work on it.

We're going to drop cable and probably TiVo, or at least go with a lifetime membership, if they still do that.  Husband never figured he'd have the service for as long as he has, or he would have done the lifetime thing from the start!  We don't watch much that we need cable (and the bill!) for.  And things end up on Netflix or various other websites, that we don't really need it.   I'm perfectly happy with the local channels and the various PBS channels. And we'll drop as much of our cell phone bill as we possibly can. Consumer Cellular is great for that.  He still has his BSU free bus pass, so that will save on gas, too.
If we really scrimp and save, I might not have to go back to full time work, just to afford the new house.  I'll look into some work-from-home things and see what will work for me.  I can do them and babysit for my friend, at the same time.

Well, kids, that about wraps up things in my life.   Hope your summer was grand and if you're a student, have a fantastic school year! 
Make good choices!