Where does the time go?

8 months has just flown by. So many things have happened that I've totally forgotten to come update.

The girls spent the summer with the grandparents, the neighbors from hell moved in next door, the baby was diagnosed with 'failure to thrive' and then rediagnosed as normal, just small. I got little to no crocheting done, but I did purge the downstairs of many many boxes of books and magazines and purged the kids' closets of clothes that don't fit anymore. Sheesh, there's really just been too much going on. Hopefully I'll get back to updating this on a regular basis again.

Clarity

Every once in a while in the midst of my hectic life there comes a moment of such clarity that it makes me pause. Today I had one of those moments. While I was holding the baby, and my son was sitting on the floor playing, and my 2 oldest were tearing up the kitchen in their quest to make breakfast it slapped me in the face how truly blessed I am. I have 4 beautiful, healthy, intelligent children. No...they don't always behave. No...they don't always clean up after themselves. Yes...they drive me absolutely bonkers. But all in all they are truly wonderful and in my day to day life with all the work and frustrations of trying to raise 4 kids on just one income, I tend to forget. Thank you God for blessing me so.

And as the oldest 2 start fighting and the youngest starts crying, the moment is gone as I hunt down the toddler to make sure he's not dumping shampoo or taking the ornaments off the Christmas tree...haha

Finished Sweater

I finished the sweater and cap! Can't believe I finished it this fast, but I actually got a couple of hours of almost uninterrupted crocheting in today! I haven't tried it on the baby yet as I didn't want to wake her, but when I do, I'll make sure to take a pic and post it for all to see how it ended up fitting.
Now I just need to find a good (read easy) pattern for booties that is similar or figure out how to make them myself.

Reunions

It's always fun having reunions with long lost siblings! The girls' oldest sister came for a visit this weekend and they had a great time with her. The last time they saw her was almost a year ago. She recently moved closer to us to go to college, so hopefully we'll get to see her more often.

Poor thing, I thought they were going to run her over when she got here. (We didn't tell them she was coming so it would be a surprise, kind of an early Christmas present!) I think they stayed up most of the night playing games and watching movies. Here they are hamming for the camera.

While she was here we braved the seasonal madness of the mall to get her a dress to wear to a semi-formal party. It was crazy there and I swear I'll never go back during a holiday season.

Making progress

I'm finally making progress on Allie's sweater and I think she'll actually be able to wear it for a month or so before she gets too big for it. I finished the first sleeve (finally) and got about halfway through the other before I had to stop and get the kids ready for bed tonite. Hopefully I'll get it finished tomorrow. Just need to finish the last 2 inches of the second sleeve, edge the body, and get some cute buttons for it. Of course there's still the little cap that goes with it, but I should be able to finish that in one or two evenings depending on how needy the little ones are.