I should mention...

that the pelican in my banner is a photo I took while on that wonderful vacation in Florida. I think it turned out incredibly well. And I should point out that the quality of that photo is a testament to the pelican, not to my photograpy. Because although I love takng photos, I'm a beginner.

GO, GO, GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, 18-month DD ("dear daughter") is saying her first real phrase. It's "Go, Go, GO!!!!!!" It makes sense. After all, the photo above is pretty much the state of our household at any given moment.

This one is the kids waiting for Daddy to come home. All three, lined up like dominoes.

This is a family photo taken after the kids' Christmas program. I like that we all pretty much look happy here (well, except for the youngest escape artist. But 4 out of 5 isn't bad!)

Friendships

I recently had a fantastic opportunity. I had the opportunity to go on vacation with my mom and my cousin. My cousin is closer in age to my mother than to me, and he and my mother spend a lot of time talking on the phone and texting each other. Each year, for several years running, they have traveled down to Florida, to a small island and a beautiful home there. They spend their vacation talking, reading, visiting book stores.

This year, they invited me. Had the invitation not been issued over the phone, I most likely would have leapt into their arms with delight. As it was, I (relatively calmly, I thought) said I would have to check with DH to square away child duties. And so I did. DH agreed to watch the kids for 5 days while I went to Florida.

Which brings me to the topic at hand. Friendships. I truly, truly believe that everyone should be so lucky as to have deep, lasting, true friendships within their own family. I think that every child should be so blessed as to develop a friendship with their parents when the child has become an adult. I've seen my mother thrive as a result of the friendships she's developed in our family, and I really got to see the beauty and value of those friendships first hand on our vacation.

I already knew that my cousin was a neat guy. Just looking at his life would tell you that. But getting the chance to know him showed me things that I value in a friendship with him: his horribly witty sense of humor ("Java the Hut" anyone???); his intelligence; his firm grasp of current events and ready willingness to debate them; his loyalty; his faith; and just his beauty as a human being.

I got a lot of things out of that incredibly wonderful vacation. I rediscovered myself (we'll save that for a later date). I drank lots of incredible coffee. I perused some wonderful used book stores. I got to walk on a beach and find shells. I met the most wonderful dog in the world (Hi Cooper!!!) But easily the most wonderful things about that vacation were the following: reaffirming and strengthening my friendship with my mother, and forming a strong and lasting friendship with my cousin.

I hope everyone can be as lucky as I am.

more photos

As I'm still technologically challenged, only one photo showed up in the last post. Let's try this again!

That seems to be a little bit better - now the kids can't grow up and accuse me of favoritism and demand that I pay their therapy bills.

Now if only I can figure out how to easily add an entry, I should be off and running in the wild world of blogging. :-)

My first post as a blogger.

So...this is my very first post as a blogger. The first time I typed that word, it came out as "blooger." Would that be someone who's just obnoxious as a blogger? According to my 5 year old's vocabulary, it would be.

About me. I am a stay-at-home mom ("SAHM"). A lot of my friends over at Willow Traders have blogs. It finally dawned on me that this might just be a good way to keep my family and my husband's family in the loop of what is going on in our lives. Plus, it's just a good way for me to journal about what the kids are doing from day-to-day. You know all of the cute things kids to that you mean to write down, but then forget before you can find that notebook, the expensive one you bought for the sole purpose of recording your kids' antics? Yeah...those. I'll just write about them here, then (hopefully) remember to scrapbook about them later.

Which brings me to scrapbooking. I call it a hobby. DH ("dear husband") considers it an obsession, very possibly an illness or a cry out for help. But I really love it. I'm trying to make the shift from acquiring scrapping supplies to using scrapping supplies. That, however, requires organization. Not my forte. Definitely my mother's forte. Have I yet mentioned how much I love it when she comes to visit and organizes my books for me? Seriously! She claims to enjoy it, and I hope that's true, because I just loooooooooove having my books alphabetized within genre. I think that is the only way to go! But....I just don't ever get around to it.

Have I mentioned that I ramble? You've probably figured that out by now.

We have three children: 5, 3, 18 months. Becuase the main purpose of this blog is to record stories about them, I should probably get around to discussing them. Our son is 5. He's a veritable firestorm of energy. I recently sat next to a British man on a flight. We talked about children, and he described his 5 year old son's presence as "an atomic bomb that's just gone off." I thought that was a pretty good analogy. Every night our family room looks like weapons of mass destruction have been tested there. Five light sabers strewn across the carpet in a seemingly-innocent rainbow of weaponry. The football wobbles on a bit of sticky granola bar (despite my rule of no eating in the family room). The basketball is under the rug, creating a safe haven for any other toys that are hiding under the rug. The cable picture is fuzzy because the TV has taken too many hits from the basketball being thrown at the hoop established up above the TV and VCR. Couch cusions are lumpy and flattened from being used as battle platforms for the staged light saber duels. Really, I think if governments are concerned about cleaning up weapons testing sites, they should offer to pay SAHMs. We're used to it.

One daughter is 3. She is her daddy's princess. Or her daddy's little gingersnap. Or her mommy's snickerdoodle. Or her mommy's little cuddle-monkey. Depends on what given moment she chooses to inform you of her identity. She's recently decided that the world can just operate at her whim. I tell her it is naptime. She very seriously informs me of the following: "Mommy. I will eat my Fruit Lops(sic), then I will watch Rolie Polie Olie. Then we will have naptime." "But honey, that is an hour away. We need to have naptime now." "No, mommy. We will have naptime when I am finished."

All right then.

The other daughter is 18 months. She has inherited/adopted the most dramatic and stubborn characteristics of her siblings. You don't tell her no. Telling her no is buying a ticket to the most dramatic show you've ever seen. It involves wailing, collapsing to the floor, fat tears rolling down cheeks, actual kicking of the floor and gnashing of the teeth and rending of the garments. (Okay...maybe not the last two, but you get the picture.) Her hobby? Eating toothpaste. Yep...eating toothpaste. More flouride the better. Every morning I have to fight her to extract the toothpaste tube from her fierce grip. Then, when she reaches her peak volume of screaming, I try to sneak the toothbrush in and give most of the teeth a quick swipe. That fit can be expected to last a full 10 mintues. And she won't stay put. She'll follow me around the top floor, screeching, wailing, kicking...generally letting me know that by refusing to allow her to swallow vast quantities of bright pink princess toothpaste, I have broken her wee heart.

I should probably close this up with some pictures. I'm afraid I'm going to get an error message telling me I've just written too darn much to include. More later!