Real Life.

I seem to be in the habit of taking big breaks from blogging and then saying, "Gee where did the time go?"  Well, real life intervenes, doesn't it?  There are sometimes when I feel all warm and gushy about what is happening in my life and I just want to shout from the mountain-tops how awesome it all is.  And then, there are times when I am quietly grateful for the creature comforts and relative ease of my life:  food, clothing, warm beautiful house in a lovely setting, healthy family, loving spouse.... those things that I would take for granted if I didn't make a habit of gratitude, something I am actively cultivating in 2012.  A friend of mine is working on a gratitude project here:  Random Acts of Gratitude and Generosity and it fits right in with my commitment to spend some time each day really feeling grateful, and talking about it with my kids.  It is sometime easy to fall into a habit of complaint, or just disgruntlement.
Real life included for us a Valentine's Day gift of head lice, and a month of frantic hair combing and massive amounts of laundry.  We have a whole heck of a lot of hair, thanks to this mama's good genes.

 

 Some of us have a little less hair now.  I did not pull most of mine out, but felt like it.  Strange how life's little beasties can really get to us.   And while this real life was happening, we had to slow down, and do things quite simply, and comb hair, groom each other.  It really puts you in touch with your primate roots.

Meanwhile, another Valentine's Day gift also happened:

They're not really drowning.  They're cooking in the soup!  Bwa ha ha ha!  This is the famous 9-10-11 soup!  For three days and three days only, the big kids were 9, 10 and 11.  Earlier in the week we took delivery of our beautiful HOT TUB!  Robert has been dreaming about one as long as I have known him.  When we moved into our house here in Aloha, there was a broken down old hot tub, but it got our dreams working in the direction of HOT TUB HOT TUB HOT TUB!  And now, We have one!  Yay!  I hope that you will come and visit and soak away some of 'real life' with me sometime soon!

Something else exciting happened this month:  My buddy Joel Mason came to town to visit his little sis Tessa who goes to Lewis and Clark and we all took the day and went out to Multnomah Falls for a little real life, Oregon style.  It was incredibly awesome to just be with Joel again.  One day maybe I'll post some old-school photos of travel with Joel.  He is a soul brother and I'm so glad he has a good reason to visit here often

 In crafty news:  I did NOT finish {{the BIG project}}  but I did finish this little Christmas gift.  It's incredibly cute and makes an incredibly cute kid even cuter, if I do say so myself.

 It has not affected his ability to consume many many dried blueberries.  This kid is filled with anti-oxidants.
And, in VERY REAL LIFE::  BIRTHDAYS!

LUCY SKY IS 9 YEARS OLD!  

Here's Proof:

Happy birthday to my beautiful girl!

And GUS IS 12 YEARS OLD!!!  OH MY GOODNESS!  

He even lit all of his own candles!

And... in other news, no less exciting, we have a new family member!  Her name is Dexi (but she's called Dixie and Dax, too!) and she is sweet sweet sweet!  She is also the subject of PHOTOSUNDAY this time.  Check it out!

 

Sometimes we have to use the leash for Forest, too:

 

 In daily real life:  We have been sorta arty around here.  I took the awesome e-course

INSIDE-OUT

 Forest wakes up in the morning and says, "Paint, now, mama!" So, he paints:

 And mama paints too, making some Affirmation Trading Cards!  This is part of a much bigger project that I'm workin on. (Details soon!)

 And, last but not least, we celebrated Pi day on 3.14: