Merry Christmas!

Before I begin to pratter - Merry, Merry Christmas to you!!!  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas day filled with lots of family/friends, love, and Jesus!

Now then - We found ourselves at M & A Studios a few weeks ago for a family photo, finally, finally using a gift certificate we were generously given in Christmas of 2012.  (I know, our punctuality game is strong with a capital S.)  The certificate was for a studio session and some prints of the product after and, I’ll be honest, I prepared myself for the worst.  When I think of in-studio photography sessions, my mind brings me back to 1990…  …when sponge-painted backgrounds married with my mom’s infatuation with hair spray plus lotsa back-combing were a thing of desire.  I’ll let you guess which electric shock victim was me.  And then let’s all take a moment of silence to thank the Lord that that madness is passed us.

Back to our session though, I was very pleasantly surprised when the photographer worked his magic and kept 1990 in the twentieth century.
As you can tell, I even added a few flakes and glitter here and there and sequentially had our Christmas cards printed and sent out.  So, consider yourself a virtual recipient!  If stamps weren’t killer when it comes to snail mail these days, I’d have sent out a hundred more to you, and you, and you too!

More importantly though…

Happy second day of Christmas!  We are fighting colds and fevers after a wonderful Christmas Day which is all so fun but leaves me wishing for the turtle doves instead.  I hope you are all faring much better and enjoying this wonderful season.

Thanks be to God for sending His Son to save us from ourselves!  The Christ is born!  Hallelujah!   

Gold-Dipped Dresser

Holy moly!  I’m about to type up what was a whole month of work – an hour here, two seconds there, half hour here – in one post.  I’m not sure if it feels like I’m cheating or just not giving this project justice but either way…

Remember this dresser?
Well, that’s how it looked when we first got it.

Set inside the twins’ nursery, I gave it a two-toned look and some new, spray-painted hardware:
And now, I look back on that two-tone decision and I think “what the heck was I thinking?”  The french provencial style of the dresser married to a more modern, two-tone look probably wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.  I mean, it didn’t look awful but it definitely wasn’t as pretty as I thought it was at the time.  It’s funny how your perceptions change, isn’t it?

Well anyway, it doesn’t look like that anymore.  I spent the last month turning it into this:
I was inspired by a picture of this gold-dipped dresser I saw on Pinterest (pin’s link is broken) months ago and vowed to dip this one someday and that someday, or should I say somedayS, finally came around.

The Baby Excuse

Oh my sweet readers, I promise I have not been avoiding you!  A three week break was not in the plans!  Haha!  The past three weeks have been abnormally busy over here!  Not that a single one of you noticed…and I don’t blame you because there is life outside of reading blogs!  We’ve been trying to finish half-done projects, clean the house, and keep kids alive and thriving and Anthony has been uber busy wrapping up this semester of grad work.  He finished writing his final paper last night so he’s done for a month and just him being finished with school work (especially with the hours and hours he’s put in this past week) feels akin to getting him home from a month-long trip!  We were laughing this morning about how maybe we could watch a movie tonight because we’ll have nothing to do!  :D  And maybe we can start planning our little kitchen wall removal project or finally get that little wall out of the kids bathroom and tile the floors.  Or maybe we’ll bawk all these big plans we’ve got and then just end up lounging around.  OR, we could finally get our Christmas tree up!  That might be a top priority considering the season.  ;)

Anyway, freedom is marvelous.  Well, semi-freedom.  The one thing that’s been majorly holding me back from blogging during the past three weeks is this little something:Yes darling, you.  The one who has been keeping my beauty sleep nice and segmented thoughout each and every night.  The little reason why my brain and every thought, written and spoken, seems to be so discombobulated that I regret it coming out.  Seriously, I read posts from the past few months and I wish I had time to back and re-edit, rewrite, or just toss out.  ;)   

However, I’m NOT complaining.  I love this sweet little monster with all of my heart and I’ll glady do it for a few more months and maybe longer if she keeps up the cheeky smiles. 

On a more productive note, having this one attached to me at most times of the day does make it easy to get those monthly pictures done.

Her first month had me thinking, “Hey, I think I can do this whole four-kid thing!”

I forgot that all that infant sleepiness doesn’t last, even though it kept on through…
maybe because her newfound sainthood by Baptism made her a saintly sleeper? 

But then it puttered to a stop in the midst of the third.

I also forgot about the four months sleep regression – all that newfound alertness during the day, taking in allll the surroundings, making nighttime the time when I need to catch up on all those calories I exerted during the day looking at ceiling fans and picture frames on walls, and those little creatures prancing around and prodding me and saying things like “HEYYYYY BABY SISTER!!!!!”.

And then at… everything around here is still so exciting so she’s still eating, eating, eating what seems like a thousand times per night and just when it seems like maybe she’s getting the hint that we eat during the day, sleep during the night, two little white things start making their way up the bottom gumline and any hope of sleepy nights is dashed until they finally make their debut and those aches go away (for now) and we’re getting closer to full REM cycles at…

Closer being the key word because Lord knows we ain’t there yet, any and all of my yawns will tell you that.  ;)

Anywho, I started writing this post while the babe above was soundly sleeping and now she’s up gnawing on the remote on the floor, Seraphia is ten feet away begging me (for the hundreth time) to once again put the diaper on her baby doll (she plays this fun game of mom-puts-it-on-and-immediately-baby-poops), and the other two, our most devious, are being way too quite in the other room which has me thinking maybe I should check on them…or maybe I don’t want to find out.  It’s like they’re all trying to prove some point to me, the mom blogger, that I really can’t write well and mother.  Fragmented thoughts be mine, I guess.  ;)

But really I should skidaddle before too much slobber finds its home in the clicker SO…

if you’ll excuse me, I have a baby to tend to…and a toddler…and two more kids after that.