Well, hello. Apparently I have a blog.

My only excuse for the long absence is that I work for two different companies, just sent a daughter back to college, I'm committed to my gym schedule, and I like to see my husband now and then. In other words, life is busy.

In the middle of it all, I've gotten a few emails from the daughters who don't live at home anymore. Leah sent me one telling me she sat as a model for a teacher (I think) who was drawing a picture of Scylla. Here's how Wikipedia describes her:

Scylla was a horrible sea monster with four eyes, six long necks equipped with grisly heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp teeth. Her body consisted of twelve tentacle-like legs and a cat's tail and with four to six dog-heads ringing her waist.

Alrighty then. Here's Leah:

Here's the drawing:

 

 I can see the resemblance. The teacher's 16-year-old daughter said his wasn't scary enough, so she drew her own:

 

And people tell me she looks just like her mama . . . hmmmm.

I get pretty regular updates from Deb. Here's the latest of the boys watching Cars:

 

Button has put on a substantial amount of chub since we saw him in May, and Deb says he's cutting his first teeth at the ripe old age of three months. All I can think is TOMORROW you'll be paying his college tuition bill.

Ben and I were in the car today discussing the sorry state of our finances when we realized we have only two more tuition bills for Abbie—December and June. CAN I GET AN AMEN?? That will leave one child to get through college. And then we laughed at how just ten years ago we wondered where we would get the money to buy the books and supplies we needed to homeschool. That bill was usually around $500 a year. For five children.

So all this talk about money got me thinking . . . just how much have we spent on tuition for our kids? And the answer is a shocking $226,500. 

SO FAR.

By the time Abbie and Man-squared are finished, we'll be well over $350,000, and that doesn't include Ben's bachelor's degree and master's degree, nor the MBA he's currently working on.

Going to stick my head back in the sand.

Be thankful ~