a new school year...

the first week of school is done and tomorrow my girls find out who their teachers will be. i have dreaded school starting again since school ended. i love summer holidays! i love the warm weather--even if i'm too hot and have bfs. the solution for cooling yourself down is much better than the solution to warming yourself up. and i think it is easier to do too. but i digress. it was just so nice having the girls home everyday and sleeping in until 9:00 and reading little house together during breakfast and lunch and not having to go anywhere and being able to go on my run even if e was still sleeping and being able to shower without her crying. i loved it. and now it is over and maybe next summer mic won't want spend so much time with me. i hope i haven't squandered my time with her.

i have hopes that this year will be a lot less hectic. after a lot of thought and discussion with the girls we have decided to not continue with ballet this year. nat was happy to try something else--quite excited about the possibilities and asked me regularly what she was going to do. she told me a few things she wanted to do and said she'd like to do any of them equally so whatever is cheapest. mic said any of the options were good and wouldn't make a decision. in order for her to continue in dance she would have had to go to parksville 3 days a week and since she wasn't so passionate about it we gave it up. in some ways it was a real hard decision to make. she has worked so hard and was doing so well...i agonized over it. but once the decision was made it felt good. so now the girls are taking piano lessons--from sharon. she gave me a deal because she loved my sisters so much. in fact she said lots of nice things about them. she said she has never had such talented devoted students and that she expects to never get their equal again. the nice thing about piano lessons is i don't have t leave the house. so far they have only had one lesson, but they are quite keen--especially nat. the down side of piano is the recitals. don't get me wrong--i enjoyed hearing the twins play, it was everyone else i didn't care to sit through.

this and that...blah blah blah

i am finally done the end of the school year frantic pace thing and have a desire to write about some of the things that have happened...now that i sit down i have nothing. let's just say there were ballet practices and birthday parties and ballet recitals and achievement nights and ballet exams a gazillion doctor appointments and then ballet. the good news is...it is over for awhile and mic got highly commended for her exam (that's a really good score.) the bad news is...never mind. i don't feel like getting into that right now.

so...brent has gout. he has become an old man. and i think i have rheumatoid arthritis so i have aged right along side him. to me, he is too young to have gout. he shouldn't have anything with such a yucky sounding name. doesn't one of the less favorable characters in one of jane austen's stories have gout? and i feel that i am too young to start having to live a life of chronic pain. it is actually rather depressing to me.

on a happier note,my baby just seems to get cuter every day. as she grows i keep thinking that now she is in best stage. i guess that i just love every stage. she is becoming quite the little parrot now. she says akeeya for her sisters and geen for food and drink. she can say light and night night and baby and woof. she even sings the gilmore girls song whenever she sees me put the disc in. she loves balls and often carries her favourite one in her mouth as she crawls. yesterday we went to the church for adriel's party and she sat happily for quite awhile hugging a basketball. she is usually so happy and sweet and i feel such a close bond to her.

anyhoo, here are some photos that chronicle our life over the last couple of months:

we just can't seem to resist the bath pictures


and now she has teeth


in one of her many easter dresses. can you guess which child star she reminds me of in this pic?

 

we went to shack island--you had to walk over a bed of oysters to get there.



and now she's crawling


see? she is such a sweetie!





we went camping with the strattons


she gets to try some yogurt because she is on antibiotics for impetigo


she's not sure if she likes it










poor nat was sick and spent most of the time looking like this


elizabeth's first birthday







enjoying her first freedom with food--birthday cake!


frisbee golfing



this is what happens if you try to use "red eye" on a baby

I'm Bored

yes, i'm bored. so that should be a tip off to you about the tenor of this post. it isn't going to be that interesting. i sometimes get bored on sundays now that we don't have family get-togethers anymore. today is probably exacerbated because i didn't go to church. i went to the doctors with nat and the bamboni and from there to the pharmacy--that was the extent of my contact with the outside world. interestingly enough we had no wait at the clinic and even got to see our regular doctor. when does that ever happen i ask you? nat has an ear infection. she has had it since thursday which is past the 3 day limit for viral infections. before that she had a fever and so she missed a whole week of school. luckily elizabeth is fine. other than her moluscum contagiosum which is supposed to go away on its own. the problem is, i have to be careful not to spread when i apply sunscreen. i have the flu which is one reason why it was i that stayed home with the sickly nat. i'm sure the flu is affecting my lethargy too. if only i had a good book to sink into...i already read twilight again (ok for the 3rd time) and the next book is just too blah for me to want to get into it right now. i'll read it when i'm nursing or maybe i'll only read the parts that edward is in. and i read north and south online and then watched it again on youtube already (what can i say? i have an obssessive personality) we didn't have sister movie night because i was sick and we didn't have it last week because sarah was sick. i crave a good story to lose myself in right now. is that so much to ask? since i can't just sleep away my discomfort?

on other topics, here are some tidbits about elizabeth. she is just growing in her top two teeth and has developed a new smile where you can only see her new teeth. she says hi and waves now too. she crawls around scavenging for any crumbs she might be able to pick up off the floor. it is kind of like having a puppy. when she finds something you can tell because then she makes a happy humming sound as she crawls with it in her mouth. the funny thing is she will do that for a long time with just something little like a grain of rice in her mouth and never swallow it.

ok. now that i've spread boredness around a little, i'm going to put you all out of my misery and stop rambling.

i am tired

it is 12:40 am as i sit here to type this with elizabeth on my lap. we are having some sleep issues. today things took a rare turn and she went down to bed when the other girls did and i had a baby free evening...right up until i was falling asleep. so i got her up, nursed her, she fell asleep, i put her down, she woke up. after repeating this scenario twice, she was awake so here we are.
it is now 2am. i got her to sleep but she woke up 20 minutes later. i tried to bring her into my bed and continue on with my sleep but no such luck. i find it pretty much impossible to sleep when she keeps unlatching and relatching. at that point i felt like pushing her off the bed, so here i sit again. like i said, we have sleep issues.
as for the rest of my life, i have nothing to say. it is not blogworthy. (not that this is)

i'm done being a ghost

so, yeah...i feel like i'm the ghost sister in the family and now i'm done--at least my part of being a ghost. being a ghost is basically being there but hardly being noticed or thought of or there really. i'm sure you may not see it that way but i do and i have for some time and i know that i am partially to blame for this. the reasons i think that i am a ghost are these:
1)i have not participated much in the blog world but when i have i've just sort of "ghosted" in, reading a few of your blogs here and there and not often commenting.
2)i have read your blogs after i have done things with you and it is hardly ever mentioned and if it is, it is mentioned sort of in passing.
3)when major life changing events happen in my life it hardly seems to be noticed by others
4)major things have happened in your lives and for many of them i never knew until way later.

it has saddened me to see this happening in my life so i have thought long and hard about why things are this way for me and i think it is partially because of my personality, partially because of my where i am in life and how it is different from so many of you, and partially because i withdrew from the blogging community.
so...i am going to try to get back into the blog thing and to do anything else i can do to not be the family ghost because i care about you and what is happening in your lives and i want you to care about what happens in mine.

so here is what has happened recently in my life:

 

we went to bowen park for "the tradition"

 

 

elizabeth consumes my life

 

so that's all for now. i will try to do better and be more involved.