A New Year

I haven't gotten lost but have just been a wee bit busy.  I have gotten better at not comparing myself to other women but sometimes I do wonder how other women keep up with the demands of their family and still have energy to run marathon's, hold a job, have a clean home......There are a few things stacked against me that are jeopardizing my energy levels but hopefully within the next few months those areas will improve. 

I started out this new year taking some long, hard looks at life (my life in particular) and decided it was time for me to take the reigns instead of being run by my life?  Make sense?  Now there are things I still have no control over such as the many doctor and dentist appointments.  It takes a lot of effort and visits to keep everyone up to date on all their check-ups.  Of course there are the everyday tasks of laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, having healthy snacks for the kids when they get home, etc.  But after all the necessary things are out of the way it was time for me to be more purposeful with how my time was being managed and spent.  More time on the floor playing games with my rapidly growing family, more time spent reading and digesting the Word, more time spent reading books on my "to read" list, getting myself regular time to exercise which will in turn produce a healthier and more enjoyable person.  Introspection and self-examination is always so good for me even if it can be a bit uncomfortable.  So far I feel like the "goals" I have set for myself are realistic and overall a long time in coming!

I have some sweet pictures to upload but have been trying for days to get blogger to work for me and it hasn't yet.  Not sure if it is me (very possible) or blogger (also possible but less likely).  Since I posted last we have had some fun happenings at this house.

First, Naomi became a legal and forever part of our family!  It was a wonderful early morning hearing at the county courthouse on December 20th when we gave our brief testimony and a judge placed his signature on our adoption decree.  Couldn't have asked for a better Christmas gift!  And I am extremely frustrated that I haven't been able to share those pictures with you.  We are so grateful for her life and are excited to celebrate her first birthday soon!  She is still the sweetest little thing even though she is reverting back to her night time partying habits.  Last night we had some good quality time from 3:00-5:30am.

Of course there was Christmas which is always a big event.  We usually do one gift from Santa to keep the intrigue of St. Nicholas alive here.  Eden came home from school one day and informed me that one of her friends told her Santa isn't real.  I asked her how her friend knew and she said that she looked it up on the Internet.  Who knows, maybe it's the same friend that sang the lyrics of a wonderful song to Eden "I'm sexy and I know it."  Eden wanted to know what that meant and her older brothers simply told her it is just not appropriate.  We try to avoid the whole good and bad issue and just say things aren't inappropriate so they don't assume people are bad if they make different choices than maybe we are comfortable with.  A while later I heard Eden say, "I'm sexy and I know it.  Oh wait!  No, I'm not!" 

We had what felt like an eternal snow storm!  At least it felt eternal to this mother who had almost a solid six days with Mark gone over Christmas vacation.  The kids were wonderful though and they spent hours out in the snow.  The time they spent outside gave me some much needed quiet moments.  Heidi had fever for the five days following Christmas so we hunkered down and made the most of it!

Eden lost a tooth this week and Naomi got her upper 2 front teeth.  Tristan informed Eden that although there are boy tooth fairies we have a girl tooth fairy.  Who knew?

I overheard Tristan ask Naomi recently if she speaks English or Espanol.  We raise bilingual children, you know.

Last week driving in the car Heidi and I had the following conversation:

H: Mom, why did God make us?
M: Because He wanted us to be His friends.
H: Oh......
M: Do you want to be His friend, Heidi?
H: No!  I don't want to share my things!! 

We raise honest kids too!

Hopefully I will get this whole picture (or lack thereof) conundrum figured out because I have some really, cute pictures!