Recently

We're starting to get back into the swings of things around here. In the past it has always been around 4-5 months when I get that coming out of the fog feeling and sure enough, Eli is 4 months and I'm feeling it again. One thing that helps a ton is that he is such a good sleeper.  He is already making it 12 hours between feedings at night!  It's heaven.  He's not the best napper during the day, but I'll take sleeping that long at night over naps any day.  He is a thumb-sucker like his siblings before him and it is so adorable...

My two thumb-suckers:

 

In fact when Eli started, Nate said, "Now he can suck his thumb like a big boy!" 

That's right, Nate.  That's right. :)

The poor boys spend a lot of time in the car driving all over creation to all the activities we're doing after school.  I decided to pack them all in to two days and I think I like it best that way.  We have a couple busy days but the rest are open so we can take it easy at home if we want. 

Natalie and I recently had this conversation:

Natalie: Yay!  It's Thursday!  I like Thursdays because we don't have to go anywhere.

Me: Maybe we should just quit all the activities so every day can be like that!

Natalie: OK...except piano.  How about just piano, gymnastics... oh and swim lessons! I want to do swim lessons.  (this is basically the same as what we're doing right now...)

It's such a balance.  We're still trying to figure it out.  We probably should cut back some more.

Here we are hanging out in the car during Elizabeth's horseback riding lesson:

Here's some shots of Natalie playing indoor soccer:

She seems to really like soccer but unfortunately they are on a young team and haven't won a game yet and they are old enough to know it and be disappointed about it. 

We got out as a family to go bowling and had a lot of fun.  The kids love Wii bowling so we thought we'd try out the real thing.  It was a bit of rude awakening for them but I think they still had fun.

Eli didn't seem to mind missing out on the fun much.

He's such a happy guy.  

He's been known to improve quite a few bad moods just by his smiles and giggles.

He's awfully fun to snuggle with, too:

Especially when he's naked and smiling:

Here's a final picture of the blossoms we had on our plum tree:

I was so happy to see those back in February (you gotta love California for that--early Spring).  Of course now most of the blossoms are gone and the leaves are back.  Hopefully we've got a few more weeks before the heat makes an appearance!