phil’s been on vacation the last two weeks.  ok, say it with me– YAHOO!!!  i’ve probably said this before, but this time it’s felt like a looong time coming.  and as always, it’s gone by much too quickly.  but we’ve had a great time being together as a family and now i get to relive all the fun memories here. on top of that, phil has 30 days left of residency.  (hooray!) on top of that, we’re moving in 21 days.  (we found a house!) on top of that, i have 4 boxes packed.  (ehh, what’s the rush?) anyway, where was i?  oh yeah, vacation.  vacations are rather nice, aren’t…

ok, i’m really late in posting about mother’s day, but stuff like packing and trying to find a new place to live seem to have taken over my attention lately.  but i still wanted to slip this one in! so a couple weeks ago, i (well, lauren and i) went to the kids’ school for their mother’s day celebration.  it was supposed to be a special time for moms and their ONE kid.  but when you have two kids in the same school doing the same activity in different classes as well as another smaller kid who must go where you go, well then, you kinda just gotta improvise.  so…

mikey had such a good time at his friend’s bowling party last month that he wanted to have his birthday there, too.  so that’s what we did.  we invited his whole class as well as some of his church friends to the party.  picture twenty small kiddos unleashed upon a bowling alley and you might understand why i needed most of this week to recover.  ha ha. actually, everyone was really good and had a great time.  it was just LOUD. and mikey had the time of his life. i love that boy. the great thing was that the bowling alley provided pretty much everything– food, entertainment, party supplies, party…

happy, happy birthday to my not-so-little guy!  (where did the time go?  i want it back.) when you reach the ripe old age of six, you learn a thing or two about life. like when the wind blows your balloons all over the place while your mom is trying to take a birthday picture of you… you learn to just roll with it and admire the pretty shadows the blowing-in-the-wind balloons make on the ground. and by the age of six, you’ve learned that birthdays are pretty awesome with lots of fun things in store… but you also learn that sometimes you have to wait for the good stuff to…

i’ve been feeling a bit discouraged lately.  perhaps it’s a combination of feeling overwhelmed with life in general, mommying in specific, and stepping on the same pointy toys over and over again.  overwhelmed with trying to meet every single need of these three little people in our house.  and they can be quite needy at times.  frustrated at not having enough patience, not enough kindness, not enough time to do any one thing well. and having long, ratty, tired hair never helps matters. so phil promptly sent me out a couple days ago to get a haircut.  because there’s nothing like a good chop to refresh the ol’ outlook on…