Long Lost Blogger

Hello long lost readers! Or rather I should say, "Hello, from the long lost blogger!" I can't believe that a month has gone by so fast. But what can I say? My life is full. And I'm in that strange stage when to talk of my busy life seems like complaining or cataloguing due to the nature of the things that take my time. I'll try to stick with the latter in a highly abbreviated way since most of what I do is mundane. Plus, I'll skipping over all the details that I am usually so obsessed with just to keep this brief. Really- I will!

This photo does not do justice to his glorious thighs!

First off, and my biggest excuse for not blogging: the baby. He's huge- and I don't just mean pound-wise anymore. I mean, he's seven months this week. Sniff. He's sitting, crawling quickly, pulling up on things, kneeling, feeding himself things like crackers, and wanting to be helped to walk around. This keeps me very busy. He's got a gorgeous grin and an even temper. But his teething has caused some majorly cranky days a huge sleeping backslide. I am exhausted from the frequent night wakings! (Notice how I skip the details of said night wakings :) 

Then there was our vacation on Lake Michigan. That set me back a week right there. The little man above wanted no part of the beach, but the getaway was still nice. The kids had a blast in the waves and sand. (See? I skipped listing all of our adventures AND posting a million photos of cute kids and the beach!)

My youngest daughter was smitten with this pony after her big sister insisted we scour the barns for  horses.

We also made a daring day trip to the state fair with the fam. The highly condensed version is that I carried the 22 lb. wiggler in the heat for HOURS. Rides were ridden. Livestock was looked at. Comestibles were consumed. 

This dude absolutely HATES having his picture taken and is quite annoyed with me here. 

 My oldest finally wrapped up his 8th grade year the week before the aforementioned vacation. All the visitors we hosted last year, the travel, my pregnancy, and the new baby set us back. ( I HAD to tell you that so that you know I'm not irresponsible- or a slave driver.) He took his first ever standardized test, speeding through it and complaining that it was too easy, and got a 99. Awesome! The week after our trip he started high school. He's also suddenly 6' 2". CRAZY! (Notice how I am relating events out of order. Do catalogues do that? Do they? I don't THINK so :)

What else was there? My husband did a stint of work travel in there somewhere. We picnicked, pitched tents in the "yard", started a new school year. (I decided at the last minute to school the newly 4 and 6 year olds in tandem! This is no small feat as they're honing their reading.) We dealt with the goats getting dermal mites. We saw a flock of turkeys and the coyote several times (or several coyotes. But definitely the turkeys were several, as they were always in a rafter or a gang. And yes, those are the technical terms for a group of turkeys. I am THAT nerdy.) We got a new toilet installed in the girls' bathroom. (I teased my husband about using the old one as a planter by the road under our "Living Water Hobby Farm" sign. He was not nearly as amused as I was.) And lastly, we attended a balloon fest. I think those are all the "biggies". (Yes, both the balloons and the items.) Everything else was pretty routine, albeit time consuming. And now we're all caught up. 

We decided that the jetpack man should have been engineered so that the flames were by his jet pack, and NOT his...  ahem.