In short, February.

Someday I will sit down to do a post and something brilliant will come to mind.  In the meantime, I will just lament, in every single post, that I don't have something more thoughtful to say.  Life is starting to feel funny.  For the first time in my married life of nearly 15 years, we don't have a move on the horizon.  That feels weird.  I'm trying not to get antsy but I am fixin to rearrange rooms again.  See that?  I said fixin.  That's so Texas.
But rearrange rooms is what I do when I start to get bored and need a change.  That, or cut my hair, but I will get to that in a second.
 Sometimes it gets really foggy here.  Like, really foggy.  So foggy in fact that I imagine I am about to drive right off the edge of a road that has fallen into a massive fault line.  It could happen.

Haley has been playing the violin for about 3 years now.  Maybe 4ish.  She enjoys it enough to not want to quit but doesn't really put forth the same effort as she does for piano.  I hate for her to set it aside because I love that she can play.  This was her a couple of weeks ago at her UIL Solo and Ensemble.  I sat in the cafeteria and watched about 50 super nervous junior highers practice their instruments.  And I enjoyed it.  It's a lovely sound.

I took a leap and got myself some bangs.  It was risky and the verdict is still out on whether or not I like them.  I think I do, and then I don't.  I figure I will live with them while the weather is still cool and then just let them grow out as the weather warms up and I start to sweat so bad that the hair sticks to my forehead.  In any case, I only actually wear them down a couple of days a week, maybe.  And I don't have any good pictures since I got them cut...maybe I should take the hint.  Until then, this is the best I got.

Haley got braces.  I didn't think we could escape that for long.  Abby is getting them in a couple of months.  Haley was oddly excited about it all.  Four days into it and she already broke a bracket on a Cheetoh.  This could be a long, and expensive 2 years.

Haley was also in a dance this last week.  She takes dance at school as her PE elective.  They have a couple of opportunities throughout the year to participate in pep rallies and other dance performances.  They have to try out and I was really proud of Haley for making it.  She was over the moon excited.  She did one at Halloween time and then another one this month.  Tomorrow she is trying out with a couple of friends to be in the end of year show with a dance they choreographed themselves.  Cross your fingers for her.

I think that everyone should just have mustaches on hand.  It's important. 

Last Sunday evening, after the extended family had all left from our weekly family dinner, my little family was just chillin, and chillin well.  It doesn't happen so often, that we are all just hanging out without the normal distractions of our week, and liking each other.  So we stayed up way too late on a school night playing games and just having fun being with each other.  We turned out all the lights in the house and were thoroughly entertained by watching Jonah with a head lamp on.  Those are the moments that I love.

Last Monday was my mother in law's birthday.  We had grand plans of a campout breakfast at the park but when we woke up to chilly rain we opted for a party at the church instead.  There was food, roller skates and music as well as about a bajillion grandkids.  It was so fun we plan on making it some kind of "Monday off" tradition.

I forgot to document the energy and ambition I had to actually help the girls do cute Valentine boxes for school - I can't remember everything.  But I did do Hazel's hair in a cute heart braid so that was cool.
I am also realizing that perhaps I need to take more pictures of my middle children lest they have cause to lament about their "middle child status" as they get older.  In my defense I really only take pictures of the littlest one because he is the cutest by default fact that he doesn't talk back yet.  And the only reason I have so many pictures of my oldest is because she steals my phone and takes selfies.
So here is a token picture of those "other" children of mine:
Hazel, 100th day of school.  Wearing overalls and being cute.

Oops, how did another one of Jonah get in there?  The mannequins at Old Navy are his friends.  If I don't let him hang out with them then he gets very ornery.  I like to call this one "Mother?"

Abby, looking an awful lot like Haley.  But also, being cute despite the duck lips.

And poor Mia, the ONLY picture of her on my phone in the month of February was because she woke up with lion mane hair, an occurrence that happens more than I would like to admit.  And since she is already the super legit middle child, I might as well humiliate her on the internet with how crazy her hair can be.  Her hair is unbelievably thick, course and crazy.  I keep trying to convince myself that when she hits puberty, something amazing will happen to it.  My goal will be to take more pictures of Mia in March.

 

 In closing, sometimes I call my dog Professor Lupin because that's who he reminds me of. 

True story.

The end.

Life's little goings on...

I never know quite what to say when someone asks me what we've been up to.  As just about anyone can attest, it is very possible to be very busy with little to show for it, besides this:
The Fam.
We don't change that much.  We do what we do.  A little of this.  A little of that.  A lot of this.  A lot of that.  It's all good.  I know some people may long for the day that all the kids are in school and they are left with a good chunk of time each day to be useful.  I'm not there yet.  I can do this for a while longer.  Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of days that I wish I was a fabulous working girl living the single life in a highrise in the city but I probably wouldn't be very good at that either, and this is more fun, so I might as well keep at it.
This was taken on a day during Christmas break - we went downtown to meet Dad for lunch and then bring him home with us.  He was showing professionalism in the workplace.  We weren't.  Plus we were the only people in an elevator made of mirrors.  What were we supposed to do?

Jonah loves juice.  As a child who has a rather delicate "digestive system" when it comes to juice, I take great pride in finding one that keeps him at a healthy state, if you will.  Therefore, he loves his juice.  And this is how he feels about it.

Hazel got horseback riding lessons for Christmas.  She loves it.  I love it.

I enlisted the talents of a woman from church to make fabulous aprons for the girls for Christmas.  My hopes is that it will inspire us yearlong in our new tradition of trying out cookie recipes together on Sunday afternoon.  I anticipate gaining some weight.

I let Rocky wake up the younger girls with me.  He does this by sitting on their heads.  It is very effective.

In January I had the tremendous pleasure of having two very good friends come for a visit from Virginia.  I love these ladies.  It made me so happy to have them here.  I had to get somewhat creative in our activities because after living just outside of the Nation's capital, an unending trove of fun and exciting, Houston is found...lacking.  So I took them to do what we do here.  Antiquing, Buc-ee's and Cavendar's Boot City.  It was so fun to have them here.  Clark forced us all on late night walks with the dog, movies and lots of crepes.  They are so awesome.  I am most grateful for good friends in my life.

Then Clark got sick.  He never gets sick.  He even missed work.  He laid in bed and tried not to die.  I'm not gonna lie, it was nice to have him around.

We went out to a friend's house one afternoon to take a turn on their ponies.  The girls LOVED it.  They were in heaven.  Friends are the best.

I seemed to have glazed over some of the highlights of the end of the year; like going to a dog Christmas party because we have a fancy dog now, so that's what we do, I guess.  It was fun to attend the Gulf Coast Viszla Chapter annual Christmas Party because we got to hob nob with other Viszla owners, ask questions and get the scoop on our not so little pup.  It was kind of crazy to see so many of them playing together but Rocket was in puppy heaven.

Christmas break was somewhat uneventful.  We played, we lazed about.  We grazed so regularly that I don't think I cooked a meal the entire time.

Have I really not even covered Christmas?! Geez! Oh well.  The reader's digest version is what I provide here.
Clark loves to throw the kids in the air.  The kids love to be thrown in the air.  Jonah is the only one that gets any height anymore since he weighs about as much as a cat.  And if you angle the picture just right, it looks like he is really high.

Abby helped kill and dress more turkeys.  She enjoys doing this.  I don't know if I should be proud or worried.  In any case I will be staying close to her during the zombie apocalypse because I only eat meat if it looks like meat and not like an animal.

Grandma and Grandpa had each family over for a special Family Home Evening with them.  It was deliciously quiet and calm (as Jonah and Clark had been left at home since Jonah was sick, I think.) It was a beautiful memory.

The adults try to get together every once in a while for a night out to eat.  It's lovely.  We love these families of ours and adore all the children.  But we sure enjoy the adults too and sometimes it takes leaving all the kids behind in order to actually get to talk to each other.

 Museums are hard to get used to here.  They are pretty cool but they cost money.  The Smithsonian are awesome, and they are free.  You see my dilemma.  It will take some getting used to.

Christmas was good.  I love being with my family and creating memories and establishing tradition.  I'm hoping some of the happening of this year don't happen again - that being, the barfers on Christmas Eve through the night and one still barfing in the morning right through present opening.  I asked if she wanted to delay our morning just a little but she refused.  Haley would open a couple, run to the bathroom, open a few, run to the bathroom and so on.  I made her hide her barf bucket for the stair picture.  Luckily, Hazel was finished by morning and ready for festivities.

This was my one request for vacation.  Despite the fact that we have a lovely media room upstairs, we deemed it much too far away from the kitchen for the day's festivities.  So we moved every couch possible into the same room, piled our pillows and blankets and watched Harry Potter all day long, only stopping for snack and potty breaks.
It was glorious.