It's been while, my poor little bloggie...

Wow - so it's been a month and a half since I've posted ANYTHING on here.  Kinda shoots my goal of posting more regularly in the butt.  But that's OK.  It only means that real life has been moving along and, as a nice change of pace, has been fuller than ever socially for our family.  Which is awesome!

In the last month or two, we've been frequenting a local Armata Bianca group that meets weekly.  (And who knew?  There's even a website!)  My little guy is still suspicious of the whole "pray first, then play" structure of the group (sitting still for an entire Rosary followed by Fatima prayers and a short talk given by the priest amounts to sheer torture for an active not-quite-3-year-old, but the experience is affording us all growth in all sorts of different arenas.  I actually see other Catholic moms regularly for unstructured and very enjoyable conversation.  The kids have slightly older kids to horse around with and I've even found myself starting a St. Louis de Montfort Total Consecration to Mary class, complete with the consecration taking place on December 8th (Feast of the Immaculate Conception) potentially at the cathedral.  Sweet! 

We also recently celebrated Jelly Bean's 1st birthday - they get so big so fast!  You want to tell them to stop growing, but then you'd be changing diapers for the rest of your life!  (And holding them back from their full potential, blah blah blah...)  I'll have to post pictures soon of the cake (and cake eating - love it)!  We also had family pictures done, including birthday shots for the kids.  I'd love to tell you all about the photographer - she was AWESOME - but that would disclose our location and the agents would have to give us new identities and all that bothersomeness (yup, new word - you heard it here first).  That being said, if you know me in "real life", I will happily disclose where you can get some of her photographic expertise going.

If you've read these posts regularly, you may notice my unmistakable "Early Morning" writing style today - Hubby is reporting to another location for work today (and for the next 3 weeks or so).  The commute and earlier start time require him to get up at 4 am! (!!!!!)  He's been requesting that I get on the same sleep schedule with him for this, and though I've been whining and carrying on about how horrible it "will be" and how "I'm exhausted just thinking about it!", and even though he totally gave me an out this morning when the alarm went off, I have been up for nearly 4 hours now, and the kids aren't even up yet.  I'd been doing OK with getting up around 7/7:15 for a session of Shorter Christian Prayer up until a week or so ago - this is only an extra 3 hours earlier - right?  So I'm sure I'll crash around lunch time, but for now I can delight in the fact that I've already started the laundry, run the dishwasher, balanced the checkbook and had breakfast.  Maybe later in the day I can work on the adorable shoes I started making for Jelly Bean - who knew you could make shoes?!

SOOOOO CUTE!!!!  (Apparently I've been up long enough to wonder if this would be an appropriate placed to interject:  "Squeee!!!")  ::Sigh::  I'm scary in the morning.