Juggling: Why I've been gone for two weeks

I keep throwing balls into the air and pretending that I am a juggler. In reality, I've always had a fear of balls, so as they hurtle towards me I am trying to dodge and deflect their blows.
Balls I have recently thrown into the air:

Home Preschool: Sherrie, Trisha and I started a group for our 4-year-olds with three other moms. We're each taking a week and developing our own curriculum. So far Kenzie loves it, but cries and gets clingy when I try to leave. She has this Jekyl/Hyde sort of thing going on. She wants to be big and grown-up, but she still likes to cling and cry.

Home "Joyschool": Hannah has been so excited to do a school of her own. So Summer and two other girls in my ward and I started a Wednesday school. We're trying to make it somewhat educational, but still lots of fun. We all have little girls in the same school age group. We're not using the Joyschool curriculum, we're making it up as we go around a theme for each month. On Wednesday morning I have 1.5 hours without the girls. This works out wonderfully as I try to juggle my next "ball."

Work: This is the time of year that things get really crazy for me as a writer for the Standard-Examiner. Cross country, Xterra races and fall road races really add up. This year I picked up a few stories on Lotoja as well as what I thought was easy money on some election stories. It turns out I chose to cover two towns of people who don't have email addresses and don't understand that I have a right to get election results.

Trips: Mike and I just returned from an absolutely fabulous 5-day vacation to San Diego. I'll have to post more when I get caught up. We're also planning to take the girls with us to China Lake in California in a couple weeks while Mike has a work trip there.


Canning: Somehow, even though we don't have a garden, we ended up with copious amounts of produce. It made me happy and stressed all at once. Some of it I bought and some of it was given to us by neighbors (Thanks Melissa!), and some of it was thrown at us while we were trying to escape. :) Not really. We went to pick blackberries at Mike's uncles and walked away with loads of blackberries, beans, cabbage, peaches, tomatoes and corn. That same week blueberries and strawberries went on sale and I decided to do peaches and pears. I plan to do a completely boring detailed post about my canning experiences as well. Gosh dang it. I still need to do applesauce.

I'm feeling a little crazy right now. If you see me muttering to myself or hitting myself repeatedly--no worries. I've probably just dropped one of my juggling balls.