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how are things at home?? Any better? I sure hope so..

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Bad to worse. At least (unlike some people here :-( -- sorry to hear of your problems) our health is no worse, though my wife's teeth continue to give her problems. (All that radiation therapy, even after they pulled her teeth and gave her overdentures, she doesn't have a working full set.)

But I'm still unemployed. Came close with some good companies, but not close enough. I've got another 8 weeks of unemployment insurance, and then I'm really screwed financially.

The kids have been fighting among themselves (lots of stress around here, and they pick it up, even if they don't understand it -- much goes back to our involuntary redistricting to the shiny new school) and the school nurse noticed that my daughter came in bruised twice in three weeks, from (un)lucky blows landed by my older son, and after talking to me and what I thought was an open dialog, she filed a report of suspected child abuse or neglect. So now we are involuntary patrons of our state's Division of Social Services, and strangers are demanding entry into our home assessing us, and generally finding us wanting, although I still don't know what it is that we did that we shouldn't have done, or didn't do that we should have done. (There were 72 hours from the first call from DSS until the home visit -- it's amazing how quickly you can clean up a house that was so messy you wouldn't want family to visit in that time, when the custody and well-being of your children are at stake, if you drop everything, including job searches, enlist all able-bodied family members, and start brutally throwing away everything except about half of what is obviously either immediately valuable or irreplacable.)
DSS is still visiting, and we're still home-improving, although we're now down to things we wouldn't be ashamed of, painting walls that didn't absolutely need it, replacing ugly fixtures and window treatments where we hadn't bothered, and so forth. The big decision now is whether to have a dining room, or have a not-quite-big-enough eat-in-kitchen and a formal living room. But among the home-improvements, we ripped up the yellow wall-to-wall carpet that the former owner had had -- OK color for an old lady, but not for a family with young kids -- and found that as we hoped, there was hardwood floor underneath it.
There are still going to be months of sorting out all the odd clothing that was stuffed in contractor bags and thrown in the basement, and months, once I'm re-employed, replacing furniture and major appliances.