Life as we know it

I usually try to have a nice pretty bow to wrap my posts in but putting that sort of pressure on myself often keeps me from chronicling the day in and day out of our lives. Let's face it, often there isn't a pretty bow to wrap around the days. They blur together, they are sometimes awful, there are days when I fall short on so many levels...

The point I'm trying to make is that I'm trying to be better about writing even if there's nothing all that important to write about. Besides, have you ever noticed when you go back and read something you wrote six months or a year or two ago that things get sweeter with age? At least, I feel that way. Something as simple as writing a few sentences about the each day would be so nice to have later on. Once I tried to find a website that would take all my tweets and compile them so I could print them, but I didn't have any luck.

One area where I did get lucky was with an app for my new phone. It's called Lightbox and it's the closest thing to Instagram that I've found. While the iphone was tempting, getting a Razr during the buy one get one sale was too good to pass up. I'm excited for my mom who is just getting started with a smart phone.

This is a photo of Elsa I took tonight and applied a filter through Lightbox. I'm sure some of it has to do with the better camera on the new phone, but I did enjoy playing with the filters as well. I'm excited to try the "Ansel" filter especially. I think it might be fun to try out outdoors with the snow we have. Granted I really hope the snow melts so we don't have to rent skis this weekend. It's been a huge blessing to have the winter completely off. So Huge. I can't begin to put it into words.

The older kids (and PapaBear) got a chance to play in the snow after school and before dance so now it can melt. (sorry if you like the snow, but I'm ready for Spring!!!) I'm ready for garage sale season. I'm ready for planning my garden.  I've actually done more thinking about Summer than Spring lately because we're getting ready to put out the schedule of park programs. I love the planning and brainstorming stage and have lots of new ideas for our weekly Saturday morning program.  This winter has flown by (probably helps that I'm not sick as a dog like last year!). Does it feel that way to anyone else? One of my favorite ways to pass the time is listening to books on CD. Sam listened to the entire Chronicles of Narnia series in less than a month. That's over 20 hours of being read to! We also listened to Tom Sawyer from the library and I found that you can listen to books on my new phone so we're listening to Huck Finn now.

I know birthdays are a long ways off but we are brainstorming ideas for parties as well. You never know what you might find at garage sales if we know the theme ahead of time! Sam wants Star Wars and Julia wants Hello Kitty. Guess we'll be having two different parties again this year! I suggested a joint adventure party but so far it's not going over well. I think I need to sit down with them and show them the fun things I've seen on Pinterest. Elsa's birthday is her golden birthday this year so I'm feeling extra pressure to make it memorable. Yes I know that doesn't make sense. I don't care. :)

Well, the blog book I'm working on is finished downloading the remaining posts I needed (hi Molly!) so I'm gonna get back to work. Just wanted to check in and record a bit about life as we know it right now. I want to remember these days of mothering my cubs, dreaming up adventures with PapaBear over lunch (oh how I love that man!!!!!), splashing with Elsa while she plays in the tub, and feeling so incredibly blessed with the life I have.

Have a wonderful night friends!