It's been nearly a year since I posted. That's a record. I've been blogging since 2005, and I've never gone a year without posting.
Since my last post we:
Sold our house.
Moved to Florida.
Sold our house.
Moved to Florida.
Celebrated the twins' turning 1.
Celebrated our 6th anniversary.
Miscarried a precious little 7 week baby.
Celebrated Gavin turning 5.
I had surgery on both arms.
We bought a new home back in MO.
We moved back to MO.
It's been a busy year.
Can you believe these giant, grown up kids I have???
Quinn is still working from home. His business didn't grow as much this year as it did last year, what with him taking 7 months to move us to FL and play with us every day, and then single dad it for 8 weeks while I went through and recovered from two minor surgeries, but the Lord continues to bless and he's working hard to breathe some new growth into it. I can't believe it's been nearly three years since he was pulling 45-50 hour weeks at the call center AND working 20-40 hours a week to build his online business.
He actually launched a training course this spring, also, which robbed from business building and isn't exactly a cash flow project, but has allowed several friends of ours to start making their first trickles of online profit. It's the absolute basics -- how to start blogs and how to do drag and click formatting and how to get affiliate accounts and etc. It's at CubicleHoudini.com, if any of you are interested.
Gavin learned to read this summer. He doesn't believe he can read, but he sounds out words all the time, and could read pretty well if I could get him excited about it. Not sure how to do that, though.... nothing has worked this far. I might have to start bribing him. ;) He gets confused when I talk about how other peoples' daddies have to go to work every day, and desperately wants to be a construction worker when he grows up.
Helena is the funniest, spunkiest little booger. She chases me and her daddy around the house, begging for hugs and kisses, and waves to everybody every time she leaves the room. She loves pretty much anything fuzzy or pink and manages to be 100% girl, even when playing with her brothers' dragons and tool benches and swords. She has an impressive little vocabulary, and loves pretend play with all of our toy animals. She mostly only uses single word questions and commands, and most of her words relate to food. She eats all. day. every. day. but is still a skinny little bug with miles of arms and legs.
Niram is the biggest snuggle bug you will ever meet. He doesn't think it counts as a snuggle unless he has both arms around your neck and is kissing your face. He talks incessantly at a very low volume, murmuring through every day. When you know the context of what he is saying you can hear complete sentences, but otherwise it sounds like gibberish. He says thinks like "uh oh, Mom, I dropped "bob" (his 'bobby' or pacifier), it's really bad, help please!" He likes to find a quiet corner with a stack of books, a puzzle, or a crayon and paper. Crayons are his favorite. He draws circles and calls them "eyes."
So that's been the latest chapter of our grand adventure. We are currently dogless - we all like Max, but he's TERRIBLE with babies (snaps and growls and runs away from them) and he ruined Gavin's ability to approach a dog without fear and trembling, so he's living with family and not likely to return to the twins' kingdom. Helena tackles every dog she sees, and Niram is pretty happy to follow her example. That would NOT go over with Max. We want to get a more kid friendly puppy to raise with them, as opposed to a previously-abused-rescue-who-never-integrated. I know exactly what breed/age pup I want, but it's gonna take a while to get a fence in the new back yard and a budget for a carefully bred, child safe, hand raised puppy. (Don't hate me, but I am a firm believer in pure bred pups who are chosen to meet the specific needs of a family, especially after trying the rescue route with Max.) In the mean time we might end up with some birds or fish or lizards or something -- the animal free home is just a smidgey weird. ;)
For now, over and out. Hopefully I will keep up a bit better over the next year. ;)
