March madness

It's been a while! Maybe you thought I had given up. I thought I had, too, because some kind of madness has taken hold of our lives and seems unwilling to let go. So this blog may be a remnant of a bygone era, when I used to sleep more than four hours a night on a regular basis and not have to cram more work into every spare moment that the kids are not awake at night and on weekends. Or maybe I should say, when times like that would exist in short bursts instead of seeming more and more like the new normal. (Don't get me wrong, I love the work, and I LOVE the amount of time it still allows me to spend with my kids. It just leaves me zero time to do anything else, including something as seemingly simple as taking photos off my camera and putting them on my computer.) However, as I was complaining about this to my very smart husband, he suggested that rather than abandon any family archiving altogether, I may just need a new media to better meet my needs. Enter Tumblr. This is the new next everything: thenexteverything.tumblr.com

I'm going to try to post much more frequently, but also much more briefly. If nothing else, its structure will capture the essence of my life right now. But for old time's sake, and because I had all these poor orphan pictures on my camera that I was feeling really guilty about, here is March 2012.

We started off with an amazingly gorgeous and fantastic belated meximuse with Sadie's godparents to Tahoe. Some friends you feel like no time has passed since the last time you saw them every time you're with them. These are those kinds of friends. Except, the darnedest thing: our kids keep growing like weeds! Clara wasn't even walking the last time we saw her, and now she was chasing Jack around the cabin, and sometimes even catching him.



Jack was a big fan of Clara, as evidenced by the kissing we only had to barely encourage, but I think the biggest spot in his heart is for Nick. Perhaps this should not surprise me since nobody else has ever helped him build a dilophosaurus out of snow (why would you build a snowman when you could build a snow dino??).

Sadie tried to get in on the action but we really did not equip her very well to face the snow, so I think she kind of preferred to remain on our laps, in our arms, or inside where she could climb the stairs and other things she really had no business being on top of. She also enjoyed some quality time with her godsister and godparents.



Of course the snow beckoned, and, snowsuit or no, we could not miss out on hiking and sledding. Unfortunately all my hiking photos were on my phone which has since been stolen so the photos are gone because I was too lazy to sign up for iCloud. Incidentally I find it highly ironic that as I'm struggling to keep my Lenten promise to give up multitasking because it's just so hard to unplug from the phone, the universe goes and loses my phone for me. But back to the snow. It was gorgeous and fluffy and deep and just what we had been waiting for all winter. We hiked up a steep trail right from our cabin door, which we had gone up together two winters before, and made it about one tenth of the way. We thought of all kinds of excuses, the kids were heavy, the snow was heavy, etc, but I think we all felt a little sheepish and wondered hmm is this what being over 30 means? oh well! You know what does not get harder with age (yet)? Sledding! We had such a time!



It was really just so gorgeous up there. We haven't managed to make it back since, because it's been snowing every weekend and I refuse to get stuck on 80 with two screaming kids in the car, so I'm glad to have had such a perfect weekend to look back on.

All that snow up there has translated into rain down here, which was good because it had been one of the driest winters on record until this month. The hills have finally started to green up, a few months late, but just in time for St Patty's day. I've never really been that enamored of this Irish holiday, I guess because I'm not really any part Irish I don't think, but for some reason we got excited about dressing our whole family in green this year, and then went to a party where everyone was also dressed in green, and it's kind of amazing how a dress code can really make you feel festive. Something about seeing kids running around together in their matching cheerful shades of green just puts you in a good mood. That and I never met a corned beef I didn't like. Especially one from MSF!



And here are some other assorted favorites from the past month.




So this may be it for the Wordpress version of the blog. Maybe I will still add to it occasionally, when there are too many pictures to post one at a time. Or maybe not.