Almost a month....

since my last post. I am so sorry for all of you that follow that I have been so inconsistent with my posts. I think about you guys all of the time. Things have just been so crazy around here lately!

So Ken and I are back on track, like nothing ever happened. Of course we were still in counseling, but then decided that all it was doing in the end was putting soooo much pressure on us to do the "right thing", that it was stressing us both out, and it outweighed the benefits of counseling. The option is always there of course. But for now, things are going great!

I have been very sick for the last week. A chest cold really, but it hit me hard. Getting sick with 4 kiddos isn't allowed to hit you as hard as it hit me! My mom came down to help and Ken stayed home a couple of days. I went to stay with my good friend Jessica who offered her spare room to me to recuperate until the antibiotics did their job to keep me from being "contagious". The doctor says that even though I am still hacking up a lung on a regular basis, I should be alright to be around the kids. All of us got the H1N1 vaccine. Violet got very sick a few days after. Of course we were very panicked about the whole thing, but after waiting 10 days to get the test results back (she felt better by then) we found out that she was just fine...no swine flu in this house! I am starting to feel better, but still a little under the weather.

I am so excited to be doing a portrait session tomorrow with a couple that I met through our Mommy and Me group. Their twins are the same age as Noah and Violet and they are getting their pictures taken for their Christmas cards. You would be surprised at just how much business comes about just for the mailing of Christmas greetings. Crazy! Anyhow, their two boys are like little Gerber babies. They really look like they could be in commercials. I will try and get a release form signed so that I can post them.

Gia has officially become the know-it-all of the house! She is spouting off more and more words...mostly very close imitations of what we say to her. It gets to be quite commical hearing her say "use your words" to her brothers and sister when they cry or when Katie puts on her shoes she says "one foot, two foot" as she puts them on her. (Yes, I am *that* mom that narrates every move to her children)

Jackson and I went for a run in the park this morning at 6 am because I couldn't get him back to sleep. We have a pretty regular schedule at our house and when something rocks that boat, it makes for a long day! So, I let Katie know where I was headed and started off to the park. Little did I know that there would be 500+ geese at the lake in the park, so of course there was no falling asleep then. To begin with they were pretty loud, but even if they hadn't been Jackson was so enthralled, sleeping was not going to happen. It was a nice little Jackson-Mommy outing. It is rare that I get time with one at a time until Ken gets home from work. Especially with the three youngest, because they always seem to get lumped into 1 group.

Gia is up and wants juice. Apparently the male species doesn't have thumbs that are capable of opening a juice box, so Mommy is on the way to save the day!

soli deo gloria