I'm back on my blog

I'm back, with no good excuse for my absence. Life with six kids, you know?

Bits and pieces from the last two weeks:

*My friends whose newborn was in the NICU were able to take him home after eleven days in the hospital. He initially came home on oxygen, but was given a clean bill of health from his pediatrician a few days ago and is now off of all the tubes and wires and doing well.

*The women's study group I've been a part of over the last school year completed our time together studying Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. What a great book! I'm glad we took as long as we did in studying it, because I needed a lot of time to mull over the various disciplines highlighted in each chapter, as well as work on incorporating some of them into my life. Highly recommended!

*Last week we actually began school at 8:30am for three days running. This meant that we were done with school before lunch--absolutely the smoothest homeschooling days in my memory. My new goal for school: start the day early enough so that we can complete everything (with the possible exception of math) before lunch each day.

*This last weekend was dominated by our little guy getting another ear infection. Poor little smidge! He's just been miserable, wimpering and wanting nothing but to be held by Mommy continually. Babies are so pathetic when they're sick. He just couldn't understand why the world had suddenly become such an awful place, when up until now the worst thing he's had to deal with was the occasional bad diaper or bad bout of gas.

*Yesterday afternoon the little guy started feeling better. After grilling brats and dogs for dinner, we took the kids to the drive-in theater. We had a ball, although The Iron Man was wayyyyy too intense in parts for our kids--they spent a fair portion of the movie covering their eyes with their hands. Even comic-book style violence isn't that great for the littles, and there was a lot of it. Lots of fun, too, though. Made for a verrrrrryyyyyyy late night, since the movie itself didn't begin until 9:00.

*Last night being such a late night and me being pretty sleep deprived because of the little guy's ear infection night-time fussiness, we ended up not doing school today. We did take an unexpected field trip to dh's workplace, though, to watch him work on a drill from a location accessible to the public--a rare opportunity. Got some great pictures, which I'll post on Facebook, and the kids were thrilled to see Daddy hard at work.

P.S. In trying to label this post, I've realized that I don't yet have a label for books or reading. How is this possible? I'm a bookaholic, and have been my entire life. I read less now than I did when I was unencumbered by short people, especially since they started growing taller and having opinions and wanting intelligent interaction and all that nonsense, but, good grief! How have I been blogging for, what three months, without mentioning all the books I've read? Some terrible kind of disconnect, I'm sure. I'll be amending that in the future, you can be certain.