Welcome to my blog.

Hello all (at least anyone who cares).

This is my first attempt at starting a blog, just an easy way to try and keep people up to speed with what's going on at the Monn house. Now that Sofia has just turned four (and she insists that we still celebrate her birthday a week later!) and Ethan is a very busy two year old boy, we find ourselves constantly hopping from one place to the next. But there are some good things going on in the next couple of months that will hopefully make life a little easier for all of us. The above photos were taken on the annual Malone camping trip to Chetek, WI. We all had a great time.

Sofia and Ethan will be starting in 5-day a week day care in November at Kid's Count, a small privately owned day care in Prior Lake, literally a minute away from the clinic where I work. Since the day care has a preschool program, we cancelled Sofia's registration at Circle of Friends Preschool (where she was supposed to start 3 day a week p.m. preschool right after Labor Day), and she will start a 5 day a week, full day program in November. We have had an au pair for in-home day care for the past 4 years, so this will definitely take some getting used to on my part, but should be good for both of them!

A big part we made this sudden change in their day care is because Kevin will be working from home a lot more starting in October! Yea!!! He will hopefully only be traveling every other week, instead of every week. It is hard to work from a home office when you have two kids staring at you all day long and trying to push down your office door!

I am still working at Scott Lake Veterinary Center and am still very happy with this change. Despite the fact that Kevin is still traveling full time and the kids keep me busy, my stress level dropped precipitously with the job change in January. It was a good change in many facets of my life, but my health has probably been most affected. Since losing the stress of my old job, I was able to focus more on ME and have managed to lose 40 pounds since January! I feel great and have actually signed up for my first 5K, to be run on October 24. I am super excited to get out an start running -- more motivation to keep up the hard work that I have successfully managed over the past 8 months.

Just a quick recap for those that are interested, and I will try to post often!

Time to take the (neglected) dog for a walk, so talk later. A.