More of Katie's 1st Birthday Memories

Very curious about Tommy playing the recorder that morning!

(I love the pancake-eater and dog in the background)

Getting ready to celebrate with her grandparents!

Time to sing!

And now, time to eat!

Some present-opening

The "fly bike" is a little big!

A sweet Vera Bradley dress

And her favorite new dolly!

Then we went to a nice lunch at the Black Walnut Cafe.

Katie had a good time playing in NeNe's purse!

On Sunday she practiced her walking after mass

And then spent some time visiting over at Steven's parents' house

Happy Birthday, beautiful girl! We love you!

One Year Old!

A Thousand Years by Christina Perri

(lyrics to slideshow)

Heart beats fast

Colors and promises

How to be brave?

How can I love when I'm afraid to fall?

But watching you stand alone,

All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow

One step closer

I have died every day waiting for you

Darling, don't be afraid I have loved you

For a thousand years

I'll love you for a thousand more

Time stands still

Beauty in all she is

I will be brave

I will not let anything take away

What's standing in front of me

Every breath

Every hour has come to this

One step closer

I have died every day waiting for you

Darling, don't be afraid I have loved you

For a thousand years

I'll love you for a thousand more

And all along I believed I would find you

Time has brought your heart to me

I have loved you for a thousand years

I'll love you for a thousand more

Happy 1st Birthday to our beautiful blessing, Katie Grace!

You are so very loved, sweet girl!

Monday Motivation

I miss blogging!  I just never sit down at the computer anymore. I'm on my iPhone a lot; it's just too hard to blog on it. But I miss uploading and sharing my photos and sharing about what's going on with us. Every day I think I'll find the time, but every day is too loud and crazy, and every night I just want to snuggle into bed and watch a show on Netflix. We also moved our computer into the living room a few weeks ago, so the kids are often watching shows or it's just too busy for me to sit and write. 

Playing Little People, playing AG dolls with friends and reciting Latin declensions, Katie at church after mass.

Daddy looking handsome after mass, Superbowl Sunday with the B dam, and my bday breakfast

My bday fajita takeout dinner, sick boy with his doggy, and 3 kids napping one morning

We just went through two weeks of illness. We had some kind of flu or respiratory virus that went through everyone except Steven and me. It's still lingering through one last victim who has just about beat it.  We've also had some cold and rainy weather here and there, and I'm definitely feeling that February funk! We're struggling with schoolwork and behavior issues, and I'm just lacking in energy to deal with it. Someone has been sick nearly every day of this month so far, so I know I need to give myself a little break but also try to get back on track with our routines. We're in the middle of a likely parish change for our family, so that has added some changes.  And then there's the house. I don't even know where to start except to point you to the last photo of the last collage below which shows the flood that happened in our master bathroom/bedroom today due to a broken pipe. Sigh.

Standing and almost walking! sweet paci baby, sleeping Steven.

Tommy ready for baseball, his 1st practice, and another morning bed full of kids.

Apple pie for Valentines week, a happy baby ready to eat, and late-sleeping Ellie in the boys' room

My baby turns one in a few days and I'm not ready for that. I'm not ready to let go of her infancy and watch her head into toddlerhood! Steven reminded me this weekend that it's about to get really hard with her! It has already started.  She can't stay in the pew for most of mass, we have to watch her every minute around the house, and she has become much harder to put to sleep. I miss those newborn days. But I also love watching her learn new things each day and seeing her little personality emerge. I'm not yet sure how we will celebrate her big day, but I know it will be fun and I've already ordered some special surprises I know she'll love!

Katie found daddy's bathroom bag, teaching Blue Knights last wk, slurping fettucine and waiting for the boys to get home from baseball.

Valentine morning breakfast with heart cinnamon rolls, MC selfie, Valentines dance

Watching the iPad with the housekeeper's children, Katie pestering my hardworking schoolboy, and the bathroom flood.

Lent is upon us and as always I'm not ready. Hopefully I'll take some time to reflect tomorrow and prepare my heart and mind for this season. I know I need to carve out some time for prayer and exercise. I know I need to work on my eating habits and my yelling habits. I know I need to focus on relationships and work ethic. May God give me the grace to examine my heart and plan a fruitful Lent for myself and our family.

Goals and plans for this week:

1. Lenten prep: prayer, Confession/Adoration, hopefully Ash Wednesday mass, and Friday Stations

2. Morning routine and school starting in a timely manner

3. Katie's birthday

4. 4-H meeting (make phone calls for Roundup info and backup location)

5. Baseball and ballet

6. Schoolwork catch-up for certain children ;-)

Have a lovely week, friends!

Real Quick

I had to get out of bed just to write a little bit about what the insanity of our nighttimes are like at the moment. Here goes...

We ate a late dinner of grilled steak and chicken (thanks, honey!) after 8:30pm and finally started moving towards bedtime around 9:00. Katie was very overtired after going with me to baseball practice and ballet. But we kept her up through dinner and then I went to nurse her to sleep. Steven took the boys to their room and the girls went to bed too.  But Mary Clare came in to say goodnight to Katie and me, and she subsequently woke up the baby. There was no getting her back to sleep, so I went into the living room with her to let her "play it out" for a bit. Some people let their kids cry-it-out, but my strategy is play-it-out. I watched my latest Netflix obsession, "Parenthood," while she crawled around and bugged the dog. Parenthood has helped me survive the past week of craziness, which started exactly one week ago tonight with Thomas' ear infection.

So anyway, she started getting fussy and I decided it was time to try to put her to sleep again. She was in that half-asleep stage when Thomas started wailing. I had to locate Steven (husband) who was asleep in Ellie's room. (It's often like "musical beds" around here!) I asked Steven to stay with Katie so she wouldn't crawl off the bed while I went to check on Thomas. Thomas obviously had some ear pain going on due to his ear drum rupture last week, and it was draining again on the pillow. I made him go to the bathroom (always my first line of attack for nighttime wakings), got him some water, and then tried to convince him to take an Advil chewable while I wiped out his ear a little. I wasn't successful at getting him to take the pain med, but he ended up in our room trying to fall asleep with his head on the dog on the floor! I got him set up with some pillows and blankets by our bed, and then went back to work on getting the baby to sleep.

Finally I succeeded in getting Katie to a deep sleep, and then Ellie came in crying. She sometimes has nightmare sleep-walking episodes. She had one a couple nights ago while Steven Joseph was also having crazy fever-induced hallucination-type things and the baby was hysterical (Steven said he felt like he was in an insane asylum!). Tonight I convinced her to go back to bed if I went with her.  After a few minutes she finally stopped crying and shaking and fell asleep watching Lennon and Maisy YouTube videos on my phone.

Cue Steven Joseph's coughing attack. He has been having coughing attacks the past few nights. Thankfully it isn't the croupy kind like last week, but he is still very uncomfortable and crying. I sent him to the bathroom and got him some water. I tried unsuccessfully to get him to agree to some cough medicine, and sat with him while he fell back asleep in his bed. (Don't worry, I'm sure he will be in our room at some point before daylight!)

Katie again! Baby started fussing for Mommy and I had to go nurse her back to sleep. It's at this point that I realized just how utterly crazy these nights can be and that I should write it down for posterity's sake. Most of our nights aren't this insane, but with a week filled with fevers, ear infection, teething, headaches, coughs, and nightmares...this past week has been quite a doozy! Now it's midnight and I'm hoping for some good sleep, and hoping that we don't have another night like this for a long while...

My Birthday Week

(plus lots and lots of pictures from the past couple weeks)

I had lofty plans for my birthday, including a big playdate with my favorite cake and ice cream and a family dinner out with friends. On Monday I started to sense that some sickness was starting. Several of our good friends had been sick the previous week, and after a ballet drop-off and a crazy grocery trip with the three littlest kids, I came home to make dinner and then hunker down for a rough week.

Katie's fussiness started last week. She's really not happy in the evenings and has a very hard time going to sleep, probably due to teething and now this virus. Thomas started with an earache Monday night. Over-the-counter pain meds didn't help much and after a few hours of crying and writhing, Steven opted to take him to the ER at 1:00am. Tommy wasn't keen on this and threw a royal fit about getting into the car, which resulted in a neighbor's call to police. Steven was surrounded, one cop came to the door, but after a few minutes they realized that all was okay.  Still more drama added to the otherwise rough all-nighter.

Katie wasn't doing well the next day, so I took her to the doctor, and then went back the next day with Thomas after his eardrum ruptured and he spit out most of his medicine. I had an insurance fiasco with the pharmacy, and sat in a lot of traffic. Now Steven Joseph appears to have croup, so I imagine it'll be another full night. There have been continual fevers and ibuprofen-administering, faucet-noses, and tissues all over the house. My clothing has been covered in child-snot all week long.

Tomorrow I was supposed to lead our first 4-H meeting at our homeschool park day. Piano lessons were rescheduled, then canceled. Our new swing set hasn't been touched all week. My days have been spent trying to appease the baby and make sure the sick children are comfortable. I have a stack of bills that haven't been opened. I've been wearing yoga pants and no makeup all week. Even my "big" jeans are feeling tight. So much for the step counting on my FitBit.

But being forced to have a quiet week at home caring for kids is really what my birthday is all about. It's about being given the best birthday gift ever...a wonderful family with a great husband and five beautiful children. What better to do than to spend the week focused on them and not on silly old me?   What better way to thank God for my life than to offer back to him these precious souls he has entrusted to me.

I can still hope for a happy weekend and a new week filled with healthy kids for Valentine's activities though! May his healing presence be with each of my children, and may they always know my love and His love. Thanks be to God for 37 happy years of life!

And here are some photos of happier days, since I'm not sure when I'll blog again...

piano lessons

goddaughter's skating party

fun times in the backyard

around the house

her first Shipley's donut

and at the park for a friend's birthday

Beauty in the Everyday

As much as I'd love to blog about more interesting and worldly topics, I usually just end up sharing about special events in our family, the ones that force me to get out the camera and the ones I want to have in our collective memory...holidays, birthdays, new pets, trips, park visits, and family outings. But I really love the Instagram phone app because it challenges me to snap photos of the everyday moments and to find beauty in them. 

It's often hard as a mom to find beauty in those mundane moments throughout the day. It's much easier to find annoyances, frustrations, things out of place, eyesores in the house, and areas (or people) that need tidying! I tend to have a critical eye, but I need to train it to be more of a beauty-finding eye! Grabbing my phone for a quick shot is an easy way for me to find some of this beauty, and the Instagram filters and editing options make it fun! I'm trying to do this more with the big camera too, so I can work on my photography skills. But here's an Instagram set from my iphone starting with just after Christmas...

Top row L-R: kids all painting together, making Leo's tag, New Year's with friends, Katie and Leo buddies, MC getting her nails done on her birthday

2nd row: Tommy was ready for back to school, Katie with brother's cars, Katie at the movies, a little reunion at the IL's house, and sweet brothers reading

3rd row: Vera floral beauty, MC's bday gifts-camera and tripod, craziness of boys, skating rink with friends, and Apple store fun

4th row: Rays shining on St. Joe after mass, boys at playground, MC with Katie at playground, our new playset, and a silly selfie

bottom row: new backyard, goddaughter's skate party, sweet sick sleepy baby on a rough day, grandparents visit, and a MC/Katie selfie!

January has been a fun month for our family. We celebrated Mary Clare's birthday, and have had some nice family weekends and some visits with friends and family. We have worked on our backyard, getting a new fence, new (used) swing set, and new picnic table. We've had a lot of rain and then a lot of beautiful sunshine to enjoy the backyard! We're still working out some kinks and trying a new reward system with schoolwork, and we have to finish up semester grades and some work to be turned in for the oldest in the next few days.  I just realized that my birthday is in a week! I love February and am looking forward to my birthday, Valentine's Day, Katie's birthday, and hopefully some more sunshiny days with family! God is good and I am grateful for these everyday moments to share with my beautiful blessings <3