Sledding Party & Sam's Birthday

We had the most beautiful late winter day on Saturday!  We had a bunch of kids from our Patch the Pirate Club at church here for a sledding party (and a few parents, too!).  What a fun afternoon it was.  We have a great driveway for sledding and everyone had a blast, and thankfully there were no injuries (which was amazing considering how many kids were going up and down at the same time).  Here are a bunch of random pics from the day, and a couple of videos.

 Ari got right in there and kept up with the big kids.  She played hard all afternoon, was bouncing off the walls by bedtime, and slept great that night!

I got a couple fun videos of some of the action...the snow was really perfect for all kinds of sleds!

 Hot chocolate and cookies were greatly enjoyed by all!

 with my sweet friends Karla and Gail 

 After the sledding, we switched gears and finished getting ready for Sam's birthday party.  He turned 15 last week!  He got several new Lego sets, which made him very happy.  Hasn't outgrown Legos yet!

 He also got a few books, including this one about a Maine railroad.  He's really enjoyed reading through them already.

 Grampa and Ari regaled us with this rendition of "You Are My Sunshine" 😊

Words can't express what a blessing this guy is to us.  He is a neat kid!  

 He and I combined our efforts and made a delicious dark chocolate cake with a brownie layer on the bottom.  Yum!  Happy birthday, Sam!

January Ramblings

Well hello, blogging world!  Long time no post!  I've started out to write here several times over the past few months, and each time I got sidetracked before I had time to finish and actually post what I had written.  By the time I remembered and got back to it, the things I had written were no longer relevant in the context of the season.  It was (is!) a little frustrating to me that I am apparently so disorganized that I can't even get a thoughtful blog post written, and I've let 4 whole months go by with nary a word here in my little space.  I miss it.

So, one of my goals for 2017 is to post here once a week.  I'm going to try to actually carve out time for either a family-related post, random thoughts, something that's been a blessing to me, goals...or whatever comes to mind on that particular day.  I really love the fact that for over 10 years, I've kept a pretty decent record (at least up till more recent years) of our life here on our back road.  I just can't bear the thought of shutting down the blog or posting so infrequently, because I know one day I'll be kicking myself that there are such big gaps in our "history."  This is the only journal I keep at present, and looking back on memories here is such fun.  Maybe some weeks I'll manage to post more than once, but I figure if I can put up 52 posts a year, I'll be happy...and it'll be so much better than what I've done lately!

So here we go...some January ramblings.  (I do hope to put up another post in a few days with some pictures and thoughts from December, so I can record our Christmas memories and activities in one place, too.)

January Goals and my Word for the Year

It's been a very long time since I set specific goals for a year or even a month.  This year I honestly haven't had time yet to set many goals, but I did choose a few, as well as my "one word" for 2017.  I will start with that...my word is "Thrive."  I thought over several words such as "purpose" and "discipline" (both with the same idea, I guess) but then the word "thrive" came to me and I knew it was just right for this year.  You see, the past two years since Ari was born, I've pretty much felt like I was in survival mode.  I'm not blaming this completely on Miss Ari, and I hope it's abundantly clear on my blog and in real life, just how much of a blessing that little girl is to our family!!!  She's a sweet and precious gift from God, and we all can't imagine life without her now, even though she was not in *our* plans!  BUT...just being honest here...she's a lot of work.  She's our high-maintenance child, and it was definitely a change to go back to little sleep, working around naptimes, juggling school for older kids who still need a lot of Mom's time, paying bills, taking care of the home, etc.  We did a lot of "coasting" over the past two years and I let a lot of things go because a) I was so tired and b) I wasn't managing my time well (partly because of being so tired, partly because I'm a time-waster by nature...oh my, did I just admit that?!).  Anyway.  I know that some things need to change this year, and the word "thrive" hits the nail on the head for what I want my year to be like.  I want to thrive in the area of managing my home and taking care of my family, in my personal walk with God and prayer life, in my friendships with others, and in my health and fitness.  I want my kids to thrive too, in the rest of their school year.  This doesn't necessarily mean that I'll be going overboard trying to do "all the things" as I know that will just lead to burnout and more exhaustion...but it means that I'll be making a conscious effort to improve the way I manage my time (and theirs), determining what things to say yes or no to, and using tools that will strengthen me spiritually.  (More on those hopefully at a later date!)  I know that some of you can relate (and some MUCH more than I can, because you have larger families!) that it is so different to have both older kids and toddlers or babies.  In some ways it is easier...because the big kids can all take care of themselves for the most part, and they're a big help with the little one(s).  But in other ways, it makes Mom so much more stretched, I think.  I'm running the big kids around to activities (not a lot, but a few) while trying to make sure Ari still gets my time and attention (and naps), and homeschooling takes up a lot of our time.  It's so much different from when I was 34 and had a 6, 4, and 2 year old...at that point we only had one kid in school and it took maybe 2 hours start to finish.  I was doing things like baking all our bread, always keeping goodies on hand, etc. and now I find it hard to fit those extra things in.  (I know I need to train the big kids to help with the baking and stuff like that, but sometimes it seems impossible to even fit that in!  We will get there, I think...it just takes time.)

Boy, I really went on and on about that, didn't I?! :D  Thanks for listening to my rambles, whoever is still out there reading.  As for my other January goals, they are fairly simple:

• Read 2 books
• Lose 5 lbs (gotta get back to losing that baby weight, since my baby is actually a toddler now!!)
• Have a daily quiet time
• Blog 4 times
• Use my new planner daily (I got a Happy Planner--yay!  So far I LOVE it.)
• Drink 3 quarts of water daily
• Exercise 20 times

And I think that I'll wrap this post up so I can actually, you know, get it posted before I get distracted!! :)  Happy New Year everyone, and may you THRIVE this year too!

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. :)

December at Our House

Okay, yes, I realize it's been well over a month since I last blogged, and that it's now the end of January, and I am JUST NOW putting up a post entitled "December at Our House."  It feels a little out of season already, but since I didn't want to miss recording our holiday memories, I'm putting it up anyway. :)  Finally!!  This post will be mostly pictures with a few captions...come along with me as I go back down memory lane!

We decided to buy a real tree this year--our first in probably at least 5-6 years!  Jim wanted to get a BIG one and take advantage of our high ceilings. :)  I think it was around 9 ft. tall.  The kids get more into the decorating every year, and lots of fun was had by all!

A silly Julia tried to catch Sam under the "mistletoe."  On the ladder!

Our beautiful tree...we compromise on the lights. The kids like colors and I prefer white, so we have some of both!  Having such a ginormous tree really made our living room feel a bit small, but that was okay!

My attempt at doing a Christmas/winter themed book advent calendar.  I only got about half of the books wrapped ahead of time, after that we just read a book a day without the trouble of wrapping or unwrapping.  Next year I want to have these ready well before the end of November.  It's such a special tradition for the kids (me, too!).  

We also did our Jesse Tree/Jesus Storybook Bible advent calendar.  This is possibly one of my all-time favorite parts of the holiday season.

Somebody got into the icicles!!  Look at that guilty face. ;)

She also learned to climb ladders...boy, were we in trouble!  After that we had to watch her VERY carefully and keep the bottom of the ladder blocked off when the older kids were using it to bring things up and down from the storage space.

She still naps in the swing on occasion...all that climbing and activity wears a girl out!

One day Ari got her very own box from UPS!  A belated birthday gift from Uncle Joe.  She was apparently quite excited!

Family photo after church, a couple weeks before Christmas (after our church vespers program)

The kiddos in their Christmas finery.  Josiah is wearing the same clothes Sam wore at Christmas for the past few years.  The girls' dresses were a happy serendipitous coordinating look...Ari's was from the thrift store for a dollar, and Julia's was passed on to us in a bag of clothes from a friend.  (I bought the sparkly red sweater at Walmart.)  I loved how they looked so nice together!

Our sweet pastor's wife Patty made Ari this adorable little tutu.  Soooo cute!

Snuggles with Daddy.  One of her (and his!) favorite things. :)

She also loves to snuggle with her siblings, especially Sam.  

Brother-sister love :)

We finally baked our traditional sugar cookies a few days before Christmas.  Ari didn't really help, but she had fun watching!  I'm sure next year she will be in the thick of things.

Happy bakers!

And a silly little observer :)

The sweet moments that memories are made of.

Finished cookies

Christmas Eve...everything's ready!

I had made the kids each a pair of pajama pants, and we let them open them on Christmas Eve.  Ari's aren't in the pic, but they match Julia's.

Bright and early Christmas morning!  Ari was still sleeping at this point.

A box of Legos for all three big kids to share.  

This picture is out of order, but I'll just leave it here...Ari with Great-Grampa when he and my parents came over sometime after Christmas.  She really warmed up to him and he seemed to have lots of fun playing with her, too. :)

Back to Christmas...the kids have been enjoying these historical graphic novels and Sam was happy to receive a new one for Christmas!

Hotwheels cars are a popular stocking gift around here!

Julia with a new Lego Friends set

The kids received several Star Wars books to share--this encyclopedia was a big hit (and continues to be a popular book around here!)

I was thrilled to receive some books and coloring books--here are a couple of them.  

Ari got a sweet Peter Rabbit board book.  She LOVES books!

Here she is later, in a new outfit from Grandma and Papa, sitting on a pillow quilt made by Grammy.  She had a great Christmas too! :)

A few days after Christmas, we finally got some snow.  

Snow baby!!

Josiah

Julia snowboarding.  The snowboards we found at the dump continue to be popular around here!

Getting ready to slide with Daddy

Later that day, some of our neighbor friends skied down the road to play with us.  How cool is that?  (The road hadn't been sanded yet.)  Here you can see Nicholas, Sam and Madeline getting ready to slide down the driveway.

Ella, Julia and Josiah.  Julia is wearing Sam's coat from last year, and I still keep thinking she is Sam till I look closely at the height and her face!

Kiddos trudging back up the hill.  There are times I don't love our driveway, BUT having a perfect sledding hill makes it worthwhile. :)  

So that is a peek into our holiday season.  Now, of course, we are back into the middle of school and normal life, but it sure was nice to have a few weeks off to celebrate and play.  I've been struggling again to find time for blogging, but I hope to set aside at least a little time once a week to post something, because I sure do miss it.  It's a relaxing outlet for me, but I have trouble letting myself take the time to sit down at the computer when I feel like I "should" be doing all kinds of other things.  I think I need to get over that! ;)  

I am still working on thinking through goals for 2016 and I hope to blog about that, later.  Well, little sweetie just woke up from her nap, so it's time for me to be done here.  Till next time...