No Christmas In February

Well, I've meant to catch up what's been going on around here for a while now and just haven't, and the longer it takes the longer the list grows of things I should write about. And the longer the list grows the harder it is to do, so today, in an attempt to make the task manageable, I decided to delete a few things from the list so, I'm sorry, but you won't be hearing about Christmas this year (because really - who wants to hear about Christmas in February?), but believe me it was a great one - you wouldn't believe all the celebrating that went on around here!

On to January, which started bright and early New Year's morning with a trip to the emergency room for Wynn, who couldn't live with his back pain one more day. It turned out he had a herniated disc in his back, with some other medical details that I wouldn't know how to spell even if I could remember them. He spent most of January like this:

And taking all these:
But luckily avoided surgery with physical therapy and rest, and is doing much better now.

Also in January Ella made a leap into the world of maturity and finally allowed herself to be bribed into wearing underwear. Yes, we were all shocked.


It's been over a month now and she still cries most days begging for a diaper, but usually I win. Every child of mine has been more difficult to toilet train, which is something I've never seen addressed in parenting books and the main reason why we are only having four children.

The last exciting news of January was a new dishwasher.

Our last dishwasher broke in November and we stubbornly went through Thanksgiving, company two times and Christmas without a dishwasher, but when faced with a month with a husband who couldn't stand, sit, bend, lift or drive I had enough and we bought a new one. I wish I could say I was excited to have a new dishwasher, but mostly I just look at it and think it looks so innocent, just sitting there efficiently washing a whole day's worth of dirty dishes at once with no effort, but I know it's just giving us a couple of good years and then it will break too - just like all those other appliances that let me down in the past - the washer, the dryer, countless hairdryers...

And that's a quick look at January at our house. And yes, the reality was just about as dreary as this post makes it sound - but what else can you expect from January? Maybe in a few months I'll let you in on the exciting things that happened around here in February.

It's All About The Dog

My goal today was to write a post, trying to catch up on things that are happening around here, but first of all I needed pictures so I inserted my memory card into my computer. 833 pictures. Seriously? And I feel like I don't take enough pictures! Then I went through and removed all the pictures children took of various parts of the dog. How many pictures were left? 178.

Defeated By An Onion

Yesterday I planned to make chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles for dinner, one of my kids favorites, but when I went to make it I didn't have an onion so the kids had popcorn and ice cream for dinner. Have you ever been defeated by an onion? That's what January does to me - it makes everything seem harder.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Pumpkin Carving

Ella's Birthday

Ella turned three August 23rd. She was excited to finally have her birthday and practiced holding up three fingers in anticipation of the big day. Wynn makes fun of me because I always make sure to get a good picture of the cake and table setting at every celebration - preferably without any people to block the view, but look at that cake - can you blame me?

I enjoy the mixed look of concern and enjoyment on Ella's face in the second picture - it's very much her personality.

Life Lessons

I stopped posting during the summer because I was too busy living life with my family. When school started and it seemed too overwhelming to catch up on the last three months so I still didn't write anything. Then last week our computer completely died and for a while there we thought we'd lost everything, including all our pictures, from the last three years (yes, everything is now backed up on discs - thanks Glenn!). Luckily everything wasn't lost and after three days of long hours (on Glenn's part, not mine) we have a computer again and I have learned a few things:

1. All that computer stuff you read in magazines, like be careful what you download and backup your files regularly, really are good ideas. I wonder if they really mean that stuff about identity theft?
2. I can add computers to the list of things in my privileged life that I would have a hard time living without, along with washers, cars, electricity and indoor plumbing.
3. I should write more on my blog so even if I do lose important stuff like pictures someday I will still have some record somewhere of my life.

So here I am writing on my blog to show that I learned my lesson. If only I had something more to say. Hmm. That will have to wait until another day.