Last week it snowed here, much to the girls’ delight.  As much as I hate winter, cold, and cold-wintry-precipitation – I have to admit that it was very pretty.  The sunsets were gorgeous, the moon was nearly full, and everything contrasted stunningly against the clean white canvas.

Dan kept suggesting that we take a walk, and I kept agreeing, but somehow that never actually happened.  When I started thinking about dressing three babies for a snowy walk, then carrying them when their tootsies all got cold, it seemed like way more trouble than it could possibly be worth.

However, Dan, good papa that he is, did take the girls out to build a snowman.  He also took all of these snow pictures, so that I could enjoy the concept of snow, without actually enduring the reality of said snow.  I’m such a wimp.

Wondering if I still remember how to do this blogging thing.  I’m considering picking it back up again, because I miss it!

A glimpse into Kinsley's imagination

Since we’ve moved out here, I’ve really enjoyed the quiet evenings Dan and I have had together.  The kids (at least Kinsley and Truxton) seem to be settling in to fairly reasonable bedtime hours, though sometimes Sophie insists on being heavily involved in everything Dan and I are doing.

We’ve enjoyed a few quiet evenings on the porch, sitting on the creaky old swing and sipping wine or coffee.  We read together, talk, we’ve worked a bit on a model ship,  we even picked Yahtzee back again.  I admit it, I love Yahtzee.

A week or so, we were out on the porch enjoying the night air, and I was wishing that just for once I could capture a scene the way I see it at night.  So I drug out the camera and tripod,  messed with all the settings for a while, and eventually ended up with these shots.  I was really happy with what I got.  They’re not wonderful photos or anything, they’re just pretty much the way I was seeing them.

The highlights:

The old dresser that my twin uncles refinished in highschool, a very funky chair which my mom scored for $5 at a sale, and which I happen to really, really love, and the hand carved boat that was a present to Kinsley from her Grandparents J.

Now I realize that bathrooms are usually not cause for great excitement, but please notice the shower curtain.  Mom got an incredible deal on it at a yard sale, along with coordinating shower hooks, towels, washcloths and even a matching bed set (which is now on the girls bed).  So please admire the dots.

The bathroom itself has very limited storage, so the shelf with all the extra towels and other bathroom thingies, got parked outside the bathroom at the end of the hallway.  The shelf is one that was Dan’s (given to him by his brother and sister in law quite a few years ago), and it has been in every bathroom of his before we were married, and every bathroom of our since.

When you walk in the front door, this is the scene that you will see. The closet houses all the heating equipment for the house. In order to make it “fit”, we painted it with a magnetic primer and several coats of chalkboard paint.

The yellow chair belonged to my great-aunt, and I “rescued” it from the porch of this house (which at the time, was vacant). While it’s little detail, the blanket on the back of the chair was a wedding present from my Aunt Shelly, and has been very well used and well loved since she gave it to us.

Since we’re on little details, the pillow on the chair was a hand embroidered pillow which came from India. A missionary that my family has known for 20 years had started a sewing school there so that orphan girls will be able to learn a skill to support themselves financially – and the pillows were a learning project for these young girls.

The table came from our former neighbor’s yard sale. It had belonged to a family who owned a retail store in Saint Louis. They built it to be a display table in their store.

Wow! I hadn’t intended to go into such detail on these house tour pictures!

I”m not certain  if it’s fitting, or just perverse that the first picture I post to the blog in a long time (six weeks exactly?!?) is of dirty diapers and unwashed breakfast dishes, but I’m sticking with “fitting” for now.  Life is getting back to normal hectic, instead of insanely hectic, and dirty diapers and unwashed breakfast dishes are facts of life.  Sometimes I even think they’re cozy facts of life.

We have successfully moved.  This week has been all about settling in, picking up old routines, and starting a few new ones.  Over the next few weeks, I will slowly post “house tour” pictures, and try to wade back through the piles of photo archives to see what’s worth posting, just in case I still have any interested readership left.

This is Bear Bear.  He’s been in our lives for a while.  About eight years, acutally.  He belongs to a certain little nephew of mine.  Bear Bear is a friendly fellow and has endeared himself to the hearts of many little cousins and siblings and even aunts, uncles and parents.

Last night, Gage came home with a terrible headache and went to bed in misery without the comfort of Bear Bear, who had gone missing.

During the night, a voilent storm blew through the area, a loud thunderclap sent me tearing out of bed to look out the window and check the radar.  I peeked at the babies in their beds and noticed that Trux was clasping Bear Bear in his fists.

So this morning at breakfast I asked Gage if he missed Bear Bear last night.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Did you know that Trux had him in his playpen?”  I asked.

“No ma’am!”  He answered, his eyes growing huge.

An hour later when I was in my room checking email Gage came in and asked if I thought it would be okay if he got Bear Bear now.  Once he found the bear on the bed, he hugged it to his face and said under his breath as he was walking by Trux – “Was he cozy?”

I assumed that he was talking to Truxton, but then after he had left the room I heard him say (undoubtedly to his Bear Bear) “It’s okay if you sleep with him once in a while.”

These two thugs are my brothers. Some of them anyway – I have a couple more. For some unexplainable reason, this picture makes me want to cry.

Where did the time go?  Almost more importantly, is it going to go by that fast in the next 25 years?  Because I don’t think I can stand it if that happens.