True Love

It was an interesting start to the week yesterday. It was my birthday, we woke up to no power because of furious wind and rain, and a school delay-turned-cancellation. Let me tell you, nothing says Happy Birthday quite like waking up to darkness and not being able to take a shower, and basically looking and feeling like crud all day long, AND dealing with grumpy people. Lots of grumpy people, ha. But you know what? These are temporary circumstances, and I couldn't help but think of those who underwent so much worse than me all during Harvey and Irma, and who are still feeling the effects. Today the alarm went off, I even got myself a cup of hot tea, and it feels pretty darn good. I'll write more about the day later, but for now, I wanted to post about our trips to the farm and orchard before I blink and it's Christmas! Caleb was really sick two weeks ago, poor guy, but he'd made enough of a recovery by the third day that he felt okay taking a little road t...

I can't get a handle on October this year. I don't remember a month flying by so quickly, but this one sure is. And this is my birthday weekend, and then trick or treating! And of course all the pumpkins. HaHaHa I saw so many cute photos like this floating around on Instagram and I just had to jump on the bandwagon. Too adorable for words! It's also been a gloomy, rainy week, and we've been stuck indoors forever and a day, so...we may be just a bit stir crazy at this point. ;) This sums up how they really felt when they saw Mom get out the camera. I'll have to do a separate post on some of our favorite fall activities and outings. We've also been visiting college campuses. While it's exciting and I love it, I also don't. For obvious reasons. Before all the rain came... Playing in leaves never gets old! This week also marked the end of fall soccer, one of my favorite things in the whole world. Basketball is next! Okay, my comput...

I can hardly believe it's October, but now we're into the second full week!  How is time marching forward so, so quickly?! Here is a little glimpse into our everyday beauty - 10 pictures on the tenth of the month. I don't think there's an active link anymore, but I still like to document these days.  We started our day early, but Levi was acting happy and I got to make our favorite pancakes- I added mini chocolate chips and everyone gobbled them up. (you can find my recipe listed under "breakfast and brunch") Ethan drove everyone to high school and Isabelle hung out with Levi and me before we sent her off to fifth grade. Someone's happy mood deteriorated quickly...no picture of saying goodbye to sister.  Poor baby. :( We were snuggling and admiring the view since we moved out the brown leather sofa to make room for the new one getting delivered later on. Feeling better for a few minutes... ...and then crashing on ...

I'm very thankful for lots of orders to work on, but between that, taking care of a big family, and just life in general, I'm having a hard time keeping up with blogging. And I don't want to give it up because it's such a great way to document all the happenings in our life, but still. It's tough. Poor Jonah was feeling lousy for several days a couple weeks ago, and after he began vomiting and ran a fever, I brought him in to the doctors. Diagnosis: pneumonia. Poor guy. He has been my sidekick for the past two weeks, which has been kind of nice (minus the not feeling well part). Of course I thought back to when Ethan and Isabelle both had pneumonia last summer, and then little two month old Levi got really sick, and that phone call from the doctor a couple of hours after his appointment saying that we needed to get Levi to the hospital right away. As in, don't even finish dinner, just get to the hospital. Thankfully he responded to antibiotics and recovered fa...