Here it is mid-April already!  It’s funny that a few days ago I thought I had made the decision to not blog anymore, but here I am (part of this doing-less-for-me-more-for-others mentality I’m attempting).  I have a kid who wants to train to be a babysitter by watching her siblings, and I have a baby who decided he needed a nap – so I find myself with idle time.  Wait, idle time?!?  What’s that?  I’m not used to this; I don’t know what to do!  Usually I try to cram in some housework or laundry or food prep in my “down” time, but right now I just want to sit…  so writing I will do!

Nothing much to say, just a generic update on my family.  The kids are doing great!  There hasn’t been any sickness in our house lately, so we are thankful to God for that.  So a quick update on each of us if I can get it in before Luke’s nap is over…

Taylor is 12 and a half now, and she is a great kid.  She shows so much responsibility and genuinely cares for others.  She is challenged at times with patience with her siblings, but she does well.  I can’t imagine it would be easy to be the oldest in a house where there is always so much chaos and needy little kids!  Taylor leads the worship music for the kids at church, and she also enjoys using her artistic gifts to make posters for church events.

Sammie is almost 8 and is a pretty good babysitter.  She LOVES her baby brother, and if it’s the right day, she’s great with her 5 year old sister and 3 year old brother.  But Sammie has her off-days too, and if it’s one of those days, WATCH OUT!  🙂  She will push buttons of all of her siblings, and she is quite good at getting them going.  She is watching the littles as I write though, so it feels wrong to say bad things about her behavior.  She is getting ready for her 8th bday party coming up in May!

Disney has been causing 90% of the trouble in our house lately.  Our sweet little Disney is going through a phase right now that is making all of us (her included!) crazy!  She had a good day today, but in the past few weeks, she’s been upset about EVERYTHING and also intentionally pushing the buttons that drive siblings over the edge.  She loves school, and she is excited to start Kindergarten in the fall (we do homeschool, but we don’t start homeschooling our kids until 2nd grade for a number of reasons; one is because we like the social skills that kids learn at school in the early ages).

Christopher has been acting like such a big boy lately!  He’s been potty-trained since New Year’s day, and he does well with that.  He’s stopped throwing so many tantrums and is really acting more like a kid these days instead of like a crabby tantrum-throwing toddler.  He does get into his fair share of messes, and he gets especially upset when he goes thru candy withdrawal.

Luke is 6 mos. already, and a handful as always – it’s only getting worse as he gets older.  Then again, he is getting even cuter as he grows, so that’s the plus side 🙂  But what a strong personality and eye for mischief he has for such a young age!  I try not to think about it, but I find myself tempted to worry about how I’m going to stay sane when he is actually moving!  Right now he’s just scooting and rolling around, but he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth and is quite demanding; wanting 100% of the available parent’s attention 100% of the time!  You can see why this is challenging when there are 4 other kids – it’s just one reason why I gave up my social life 🙂

Hubby and I are doing well also.  His working 2 jobs keeps us busy, but in some ways, it’s actually not as stressful as I thought it would be.  It’s amazing how much easier things are when you truly trust the Lord to get you through.  By no means is life easy these days, but I am so much better equipped to handle the twists, turns and busyness now than I was a few years ago thanks to Him.  As I mentioned, we have given up our social lives.  I miss my friends, but luckily we live in a world where I can still keep up with their lives and know how to pray for them when they need it.  I’ve tried hanging out with adults a few times in the past few months, but unfortunately with all these kids running around and being so demanding, it seems better for everyone if I just focus on the kids and live a kid-oriented life.  So, with Hubby now working on the weekends, we’ve been having our family Saturdays  on Fridays when we can.  And we’ve been doing less of the expensive entertainment stuff and have been trying dedicating our hearts to serving more.  My husband has thought of some very creative ways to do this, and we’ve had many an opportunity to get out into the local communities and give and share God with others.  It’s been wonderful!

I was going to write more, but the baby has woken up, and he’s demanding my attention, of course.  I just can’t think straight when he cries and he knows it!  More next month…  haha!

Some comic relief in the title of this post to distract me from quite an overwhelming day today:

Received some devastating news (for us, but don’t worry – it’s great news for some friends of ours) prayed about it, and examined the possibilities that may arise from it.  There’s also been several intriguing and exciting  doors being revealed to us lately, and we are praying on, thinking about, and waiting to see which ones will open and where they might lead.  We’ve been contemplating a huge decision in the past few months regarding our family, and it’s time to finalize that decision.  We spent some time with friends today gathering information and establishing a support system for this possible lifestyle change.  I’m excited but for the lack of sleep wearing me down and making me feel overwhelmed – it’s all a lot to process.  I will write more in a bit – as you can see, I have a new keyboard.  I have a whole July manifest half-written that’s kept me busy – I want the kids to be able to read about our family’s stellar July 2011 on my blog someday, so I’d better get around to it.  Same thing with my chronicle of the Florida trip we took in January that still has the last part missing 6 months later – oops.   I don’t know what my problem is – the only thing that distracts me from blogging is doing homework for my Bible study class – and the fact that I found my Zoo Tycoon game; that’s really distracting from productivity.  And oh yeah – the 4 kids running around the house because it’s been too hot to play outside; that can make blogging a bit difficult.

Realizing I haven’t blogged in awhile, I’ve been trying to think of something to write about.  I have plenty of material; I just don’t feel like writing for some reason.  Plenty of material, not plenty of time is part of the reason.  I’ve even started a few drafts, but at least one ended up being a laundry list of complaint about my dogs’ behavior and other things that have been stressing me lately, and I don’t feel like publishing it.  After all, Walmart complaints are fun, tongue-in-cheek ways to vent about how I feel ripped off after shopping at Walmart, but when I write huge rants of real life complaints I annoy myself, so I can’t imagine my readers’ feelings.  Plus all the complaining doesn’t ease the stress, nor does it help me fulfil the main purpose of my blog – which is giving my family a virtual diary of our lives while the kids are growing up.  Sure, it shares the information, but I want their reading experience of our family blog when I’m gone to be a good one, not something like, “Hey – I DO remember when mom was stressed all the time!!”

So I wanted to drop a quick line to let it be known that I’m still here, still a part of blog world, still interested in posting blogs.  My kids are not any less cute these days, nor my life any less busy or exciting…  just much more stressful, which kind of puts a damper on my creative writing spirit I think.  I’m hoping maybe that will change here soon…  if not this summer, something tells me I might feel  better in October or November with less of the negative pregnancy symptoms and more of the ‘new baby joys’ to focus upon.  Can’t wait!

The month of May for our family has been booked solid for months.  Now that we are in the midst of this wonderful month, there is literally ONE day on our calender for the whole month that remains empty.  But I have to say, when busyness such as this used to stress me out just a few years ago, I have since learned to embrace it and enjoy these good times.  I’ve been able to find a healthy balance between planning ahead and making myself crazy worrying about every little detail; a compromise between taking one day at a time and also being organized enough to think ahead (but not too much to be stressed).

This coming weekend is just an example of the busyness of every weekend in May:  Friday night we are going to Fort Wayne to see a minor league baseball game, Saturday we are double-booked with an event for our youth group (which we will unfortunately have to skip) and my daughter’s 6th birthday party.  We are expecting family from Illinois and almost 10 kids to attend; my kids are so excited!  The kids (mine, not all the party guests!) will spend the night at Grandma’s hotel, and Hubby and I have been tempted to go to the drive-in, which is SO much more relaxing without kids.  The problem is, the drive-ins are about an hour away from our house, and since they show double-features that don’t begin until sundown, we can’t expect to get home until after 2am Saturday night – not sure if that’s doable in the middle of this busy weekend on top of me being already extremely tired.  I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in about a week since our 3-year-old has been coming into our room in the middle of the night and also waking up early in the morning.  But the drive-in sounds like too much fun to pass up, so we’ll see.

We have to rest up for Sunday, another big day.  We will begin by going to early church, then brunch with family, and then our oldest daughter has a playdate, our almost-6-year-old has a birthday party to attend, and I have a get-together for my mom’s group.  I’m looking forward to it, but somewhere in all of this I have to find time to prepare an appetizer, write thank-you notes, and get and wrap a birthday present for my daughter’s friend.  Plus I have to figure out how to do the play date and get my daughter to the birthday party when I am going to take the car to  a neighboring town all day, leaving my husband with errands, all the kids and no car.  Sounds stressful, but amazingly, I am relaxed and ready for FUN!!  I just wish I wasn’t so tired…

This is my 100th blog post!  What a long way I’ve come from my first blog post, aptly and boringly titled, “First Post” – it was a description of me learning to blog!  And what a variety of subjects I’ve covered, from retractable sharpie pens, to kids’ blankies…  from movies and tv shows to animals, trips, and family life…  It seems like forever ago that I was taking you all through the 11, 572 snow days we had, and it’s been fun to share all these aspects of my life on the internet while learning things about my friends and family who read and/or comment on my posts.  So thanks to all my readers, even if you just read because I make you, thanks anyway…  I truly appreciate each and every comment I receive – written and spoken, keep it up!  And might I add that I’m the first tangents.org blogger to achieve this milestone…  hope to have others join me soon!