Cheesy grin

I've decided that really the best way to keep myself blogging during this busy season of life, is to put up quick little vignettes nearly every day, like I do on Facebook.  I don't know why I didn't think of this before.  I guess it's probably because I enjoy writing longer, detailed posts here, and I think of FB as the place to put up little "popcorn" posts with a picture and a few words.  I still want to write more in-depth here, but since I just don't often have the time to do that, here's a way to still keep in touch with you all with the amount of time I do have. :)

So tonight's post is a pic of Miss Ari from last night!  She was eating a snack and being silly for the camera while the big kids played a soccer game.  Can you believe how BIG she is getting?!  

This little cutie keeps us laughing with her cheesy grins and her silly antics. :)  She is saying so many words now, it's hard to keep track of them all.  Last night she learned the word "sheep."  And now when we ask her to say "Sam," she says..."SHEEP!" :D  Silly girl.

Homesick for blogging

I NEED to get back to blogging!!!  I know I say that almost every time I finally post something, but the truth is that I am really getting homesick for it.  Today I was looking back on some posts from a few years ago because I wanted to go back and see how we had made our little resurrection gardens around Easter time.  When I saw those posts...and how much I'd recorded from our day-to-day life...it made me sad that over the past couple years I just haven't made the time to record the memories.  To be honest, lately homeschooling has been taking a ton of time, and my days have been chock full.  Teaching three kids in three different grades, while chasing a busy toddler around and trying to keep up with housework, laundry, and dishes, is really challenging me.  (I don't know how you moms of many get anything done!!!)  If it's not school, it's running errands or taking the kids to various events and outings and get-togethers with friends.  All of these are GOOD things and things that we love to do!  But how to make time to get on here (when my arms aren't full of a little girl, which makes it hard to do anything other than read stuff online) and actually post about all the things that make up our life...other than late at night (like right now)...that's the tricky part.  But I really want to somehow fit it in, even if just once a week, maybe on a Saturday or sometime when Jim can watch the kids for a bit so I have a little free time at the keyboard.  Because these days are fleeting, and I'm going to be so sad one day if I don't have much to look back on from these more recent years!

At the moment, the house is quiet.  Everyone is in bed but me...I finally got Ari down a few minutes ago.  She is not the world's best sleeper and has never slept longer than 6 or maybe 7 hours at one time (I can count on one hand the number of times she has--possibly--slept that long).  She starts off the night in her pack 'n play in the boys' room and sleeps anywhere from 1 to 3ish hours before waking, when one of us gets her and brings her back to bed with us (or Sam brings her in!).  Then she sleeps with us or crawls into her cosleeper from our bed, still nursing occasionally through the night.  She's fast outgrowing the cosleeper, so that won't really be an option for her much longer.  My plan is to work on her sleep habits through the summer, but right now it's not a fight I feel like working on. :)  This way I still get a decent amount of sleep, but boy, do I dream of the night when a good straight 8 (or even 7!) hours is normal for me again.

 (And this is little girl is just so sweet that I can't begrudge her the lost sleep...most of the time, anyway. ;))

I have lots of things I could write about, but since it's late and I need to get to bed asap, for tonight I will just share a picture collage from our little hike last Saturday.  I had a to-do list of all kinds of things I needed to tackle that day, but instead we decided that we needed a "mental health" day much more.  So we packed a few snacks and some water, loaded Ari in the backpack, and headed out back to the national forest land, where we proceeded to have a wonderful adventure.  Jim showed us a lot of the places he's hunted over the past few years, we explored old cellar holes, waterfalls and rocks...it was just such a good afternoon.  We came home in much better spirits than when we left!  So thankful for the gift of nature just outside our door, and adventure for the taking.

Hoping to pop in again soon... Till next time!

Ari inside and outside

This little person is rapidly approaching 15 months old!  I wanted to share a few recent pics that capture a little bit of her personality.  She is such a clown--definitely takes after her big sister in that way--and loves to ham it up for the camera!!  I made her an Angry Birds "Stella" hat because each of her older siblings has a hat in that theme as well, and sometimes she wants me to put it on so she can wear it around inside the house.  Sorry these pics are a bit fuzzy, but you can see how she likes to be silly!

 She also has recently starting loving the outdoors.  Today when the big kids went to put their snow clothes on, she brought me her snowpants too, so I bundled her up and had them take her outside for a while.  Jim got home soon after, so he went out to play with them too, and got a few pics while Sam was pushing her around in a toy dump truck. :)

Such a happy girl!!

I'll try to do a better update post about Ari soon, with milestones and such, but for now I just wanted to put up a few pics to remember these fun moments with her. :)