Hi there

I have been around.  Just not here, it seems.  THough I do check, and comment here and there.  I'm on Facebook a bit. Twitter too. Keeping things to 140 characters is fun. You can be vague, and add the snippets of your day which would be totally boring (or strange) or you otherwise wouldn't bother posting about, because they were too well... not postworthy enough to sit down and write a huge bunch of stuff around and make it funny. Or poignant. Whatever. Follow me on Twitter!  It's fun!

I honestly can't think of anything remotely exciting to tell you all.  Adam and I are dieting, again. Doing better this time around, though, of course, we got sick. Apparently.  Yesterday, I felt so rotten sick, if I hadn't known without a doubt I wasn't pregnant, I would have been sure I had morning sickness... metallic taste in the mouth and everything. I did not move from my bed unless I absolutely had to.  Adam was hilarious. Obviously, the diet wasn't working, and we needed to eat more stuff. Like meat. And dairy. Both of which we have dropped, and have felt better than we have in years.

Please ignore the fact that we ate salt and vinegar chips and drank coke the night before and got all of 4 hours sleep.

Which is what I put the blerkies down to.

I'm still struggling with keeping up with the vast amount of housework my family of 7 creates.  This is not improved with the washing machine breaking on Thursday last week.

Yes. The Washing Machine. For a family of 5 very. grubby. kids. Who need uniforms.  I borrowed a friends machine for three loads of essentials on Sunday after church.  But sheets need doing, and

The oven also broke. So, I've been improvising most of the the things I cook to stovetop or grill (broiler, I think you in the USA call it.)  Anyway, the dude is coming on Thursday to fix both.

Goodbye $300.

The things that we all need to go to the doctor for are slowly adding up.  Remember when Beth broke her nose a few years ago? And the doctor said she was fine and they didn't need to do anything?  Well, she hasn't breathed through her nose since.  She can, she just chooses not to.  I don't think she get;s enough oxygen that way, so she just uses her mouth.  We've noticed it getting a little noisy too, as of late.  And she snores pretty shocking. 

I keep losing my voice for no reason at all.  I'll just wake up and it's gone.  It comes back in about 4 days.  My throat doesn't hurt at all, I just can't speak.  In the last 12 months, it's happened about 8 times.  My research is leading me to lean pretty strongly to suspect vocal polyps.  NOT GOOD.

My right ear hasn't really bothered me lately, (did I ever tell you it seems like it hasn't 'popped' sometimes?  Usually if I've been singing or talking for an extended periods of time) though I am getting short bouts of ringing in it every now and then. 

Both Adam and I have some moles that need serious attention, and there's one on Beth's face that I've been watching pretty closely.

My periods haven't been regular now since Eli was born. They fluctuate between 21 to 30-something days and are still pretty heavy.

The kids are still in A Season. Adam and I, more so I, are at a bit of a loss as to what do next.  They will do as Adam tells them. No worries there.  Me?  You would even have known I had spoken most of the time.  Seriously.  They plain ignore me.  They moan and groan if I ask them to do something, like pick up their own toys etc, and then don't.  Or they'll pick up one, then go and play.  I can't yell, because that seems to exacerbate my throat problems (further concreting the supposition of polyps) and spanking just doesn't seem to get through to them.  Neither does Time Out, because that just gives them what they want... to not do anything.  *sigh*

It just seems that there is a real spiritual battle going on in our house the last six months, what with things breaking and costing a fortune to fix (there have been other things), all the sickness... we are NEVER sick... and now the children's behaviour.  We are seriously considering having the pastors and intercessors come through our house and pray.  We aren't feeling up the the task ourselves.  We have had certain curses broken off, which was wonderful.  We do need to be more vigilant in our prayer life together as parents though.  We find that that is the part we suck at most.  I also miss how we used to sing together all the time.  Looking back, it was because it was the only way we could really worship God in music.  The previous establishment (as I call it) frowned upon striving for musical excellence as "showing off" and so we would just do it at home.  Now, with the new leadership, we have the permission to have great music during worship, and we have a great team building around us and we no longer do it at home together.  We should fix that.

Adam and I have started walking in the evening with the kids, and it has been a fantastic time together as a family. (Drew struggles a little with whining, but we'll skip over that for now).  Bethany has been relishing in it.  She loves to do stuff together.  If there was one child who thrives on one-on-one time, it's her.  We need to work more on that.  Troy is growing up so fast.  He turns 9 in a two months, and we've been giving him a little more responsibility.  While he is struggling with it, he also shines in some areas.  He pushes a stroller when we walk, and we only have to tell him 50 times not to run with it *grin*  His reading is going so well!  He reads books to himself now.  It almost happened overnight.  Drew has had a good couple of weeks at school, after a few where the teacher was like "what on earth?!"  We were like that at home.  Drew responds well to praise.  Amy remains her delightful self, though she has been SCREAMING lately.  But this shall pass.  They all went through it.  Amy still loves to worship.  You can't tell me it's anything else.  She only dances to christian music, and the arms are up, and she sings.  She turns three soon, and her vocabulary has exploded.  Eli is gorgeous.  He's going through the hitting stage that comes with 18 months of age, but other than that, he;s a wonderful, snuggly, kissy cherub.

Adam has grown a beard.  Sort of.  It's a moustache with a goatee, with a thin line around his jaw.  I've gotten used to it.  It's not completely horrendous, as he agreed to keep it short and tidy.  It was my one stipulation once I conceded.  He shaved it all off once.  He kept looking at me strangely I thought.  I didn't notice!  He had to point it out to me.  I nearly died.  He hated it.  So he grew it back.

I think that's about all   I cut my hair really short, and I'm loving it.  Struggling with shifting baby weight, but it'll happen.  Slowly purging our house of all accumulated crap.  It's never ending.  I'm sticking to the mantra of "keep nothing but that which you know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."  It's incredibly freeing.  Though I still struggle with the kids toys, because, you know, I paid for that.

So there you have it peeps.  Everything I can think of that you might be remotely interested in.  And if you weren't, well, at least you had the pictures to look at