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.

Wildlife and sugar, sugar, sugar {p.h.f.r.}

{pretty}

Well, zoo animals aren't necessarily so much pretty, as interesting and fascinating (though yes, many of them are very beautiful).  It's fun watching my little guy try to interact with them.  My darling girl even gets in on it too, sometimes.  You should have seen the uproar the normally casual prairie dogs were in after she chattered at them a while.
I always enjoy the burrowing owls, especially this one that actually leaned in when I got close to the glass to take this shot, and the moose, which oddly enough is kept just feet away below the deck the owls are on.  I'm still trying to figure out why I always have this strange urge to "moo" at the moose.

{happy}

Yesterday was my hubby's birthday!  We had a delicious dinner of bistro burgers on the grill and a marble cake with chopped chocolate in the butter-cream filling.  Turned out better than I expected.  I was also thrilled to be able to give him the present that I'd been hiding for the last 6 months.  My guy is an Eagle Scout and loves seeing bald eagles on the river sometimes when his work takes him there.  The first one that arrived (on the right) didn't exactly live up to the photo I based my purchase on, plus the legs had big cracks in them!  But, much to the seller's credit, he made it right and sent the replacement on the left.  Beautiful!  So, now we have two - we're talking about putting the smaller one in the garden.  Heck, maybe it'll keep the crows and rabbits away!

{funny}

My poor girly girl - aside from the Cheerios addiction and the constant "Cheerio-butt" syndrome (which definitely contributes to the Cheerio-laden state of our kitchen floor), we add insult to injury making her wear her brother's old bibs.  No girl should have to suffer through having "That's my boy!" hanging around her neck.  Curse those awesome rubber-backed bibs.  Hopefully this isn't why she's always stealing her brother's Matchbox cars.

Here, it's a little hard to see, but my son fully tried to take the cake (literally) before dinner last night.  We all agreed it was a shame, considering the effort put into it, and the time-out that resulted, that he didn't even manage to get a good finger-ful of frosting, instead just leaving deep fingerprints - the evidence leading to his arrest and conviction.  (Don't worry, we had more than just circumstantial evidence against him...)  Hubby and I made a bet this morning regarding just how many times the kiddo will be begging for cake before lunch.

{real}

 It's tradition at Hubby's work that the birthday celebrant brings donuts.  Apparently there were some (read: too many) left over.  This was breakfast.  Or rather, the jelly-filled long-john you no longer see on that piece of tissue paper was breakfast.  I'm not even usually much of a donut person, but dang, that was good!