How did I get on that tangent?

I haven't blogged in a while. That's becoming a theme around here, isn't it? It's not that I don't want to keep this little scrapbook of sorts up to date or share our lives with you all. It's just that with a new house (that requires a lot of upkeep and fixing,) 4 children (one at age one and 3 that I am spending my days teaching,) and 5 animals to clean up after (one in particular I have to keep chasing down the street,) well, life just is busy. Too busy to get photos uploaded and sit and wait for them to appear on my blog. And too busy to tell you all what we've been doing. And then when I sit to do it, I get overwhelmed by how far behind I am. (I have this 'thing' about doing everything in order.) I hate to make dinner if there are dirty dishes in the sink - in fact, for some reason I can't bring myself to. Yet I'm so tired after cooking and feeding everyone, that most days the dishes don't get washed right after dinner (gasp!) and so I end up doing dishes before I start cooking the next meal. Which means we start eating later, and I get done cleaning up later, and then I'm too tired to do the dishes, and ... you get the idea. And yes it's the same with uploading the photos. Well, it is to me anyways, but you all are probably thinking I'm crazy by now. So I haven't actually decided if I'm going to post all those pictures and try to tell you about the events, or just pretend all the fun things we've done for the last 3 months didn't happen. Ok you know I'm going to post the pictures, I can't stand it. Here goes!

On October 29th, our baby turned 10 years old! It is hard to believe. We are so proud of who Emelyn is becoming though. She is a wonderful helper, smart in school, more like a second mommy to her little brother than a sister, and genuinely cares about others. We had a little party for her to celebrate and she also received swimming lessons at the local Y as a gift from Garr and I. She loves to swim and is a natural at it.

Daniel still says very few words - mostly he grunts, giggles, uh-uh's, or says mama, daddy or dad-dad, abby, and no. Oh and he can say "mine" too, of course. :) I'm proud to say he said his first sentence this weekend, in sign language! Here he is talking to Grandad - he said ...

EAT

FISH

(goldfish crackers)

Here they are laughing about it together! :)

This past weekend, my aunt, uncle, cousin, and his son came down for a visit! What a great time we had! We took them to the beach since my nephew had never seen the ocean. We had a big (practically Thanksgiving) meal at our house on Sunday afternoon. It was so great - we love having a house big enough to entertain. All 16 of us (the girls had friends over also) sat comfortably in our dining room, with room to spare. Daniel is pouting in the picture of him at the beach. He loved the waves at first, but once he realized they "chased" him, he wanted to go back up on the boardwalk with Grandad. He was not happy with me for making him wait! The next is Eme, who just turned 10. Everytime I look at her I can't believe how beautiful she is. Next is my parents, followed by Abby, Liv, and my other nephew Justin. Then our out of town family!

We have a Japanese Maple outside our window that turned the most gorgeous shade of red this fall. The leaves have recently fallen and the kids have had so much fun with them. Here they have raked them into piles around the driveway, making an obstacle course to ride their bikes through. Rocky loves laying in them too. The tree is also great for little girls to climb and hang from. Unfortunately there was a glare (I was taking these pics through a window) but if you look carefully you can see Livy hanging from the tree and her friend playing inside it. And Daniel has fun with them also :)

That's it for now. I really should head to bed. I'll do two more posts - one an update on the house, and another a school update!