I am a happy tennis girl! Okay, so I keep losing, but I'm a winner anyway :). I am playing in a member-guest tournament with a friend, and we won our first match, lost our second, and lost our third in a tie-breaker...but we actually won. How does this happen? Well, as soon as we got off the court and reported our score (1-6, 7-5, and a 7-1 tiebreaker), we were told that we still won because one of the players on the other team was a substitute, since the original partner was sick. That is a huge bummer for them, and I felt really bad. On the plus side, however, we advance to the finals in the A flight (the top of the "loser" bracket). Plus except for that first set, where I was really dizzy and felt faint and vaguely like I was going to barf, I was totally on in the second set, and I felt like I played well and aggressively. Considering I haven't been on a court for almost 3 months and am relatively out of shape and, ahem, didn't get bumped up to 3.5 like I think I should have been based on my record for the past two years, I'm rather pleased with how well I'm doing. Overall, I have had a great time and felt pretty on this week. Tomorrow night we face our final match of this tournament, and I think we honestly have a good chance of doing well. These ladies were defeated in a tiebreaker tonight by the ladies we played our first night of the tournament. Not that this necessarily means anything, but hopefully we have a shot at it. I have won my flight one other time in a club tournament, but usually I only make it to the semi-finals; this is the boost I need to get off to a good start once the real season starts for me in two months.

I am really rather very excited to throw myself wholeheartedly into tennis again. Surburban starts the last week of March, which I'm sure will be cold. I was not very engaged this fall and I didn't play in many matches. My goal this time is to play as often as I can, hopefully with some help from Kerry getting Frances and the boys to drama and math class. This summer I hope to play 3-6 times a week. I was a slacker last summer because we were busy and I was stressed and could barely fit one more thing into my schedule, but this year should be back to obsession again.

And I made my decision about next year. We are signing up for Classical Conversations. I'm hoping that this will be a good move for us and will give us the structure and academic community we need. The pluses of it are that it is relatively affordable, it is close to our house (15 minutes or so), it is complete (6 subjects, covering all core areas), it is rigorous (the expectations sheet clearly sets up many hours of work at home each week), and it uses all of the kinds of curricula that we either are already using or would like to use. They use Saxon for math, which is what we have been using for about 3 years now. They study Latin, which is what we have been doing for the past 2 years, and they use IEW, which is what we use for writing. I'm so extremely excited that I wish it would just happen right now and we could get started right away! A huge bonus is that all four kids can attend. Walter, Ollie, and Frances will probably all be there from 8:30-3:00, and Rutledge will go from 9-1. I love it when I feel really confident about a choice I've made and can feel at peace with it; I am the world's worst decision maker because I see nothing but shades of gray in everything and waste way too much energy on second guessing and buyer's remorse. I'm not feeling that at the moment, and I'm not feeling torn any more. Yay!

There is an incredible smell wafting from my downstairs. I thought it was the bowl of Pad Thai that someone left on my dresser (yes, we do have a rule that food must be eaten in the kitchen!), but now I'm realizing that there must be a Crockpot set to go all night with a roast or turkey in it. It smells like beef, but I know that we have a turkey thawing in our refrigerator that needed to be cooked today or tomorrow, so I'm guessing that that is it. I sure hope so, since that would make a most scrumptious breakfast.