Once you name it, you start getting attached to it.

Things happening with us lately (may or may not be exciting to you as well - read at your own risk of boredom)

We have a new pretend pet. Well, it's a real animal, but we're just pretending it's ours. "Pumpkin" the cat showed up around our yard several days ago, and is the case with all animals who come near to our children, pumpkin was mobbed. As it not usually the case, she seemed to enjoy it (as opposed to running away in terror.) We think pumpkin is probably being missed by some family somewhere as she appears to love our kids and our home. In a shocking turn of events, my husband the alleged cat-hater has taken a liking to her and went and bought her cat food and made her a little cat house. We can't find out who she belongs too, and supposedly, we are going to take her to the animal shelter as soon as we get the chance. Supposedly.
We are growing quite attached to another little creature as well. We started calling him Grant, and feeding him and he's been hanging around for almost 4 months now. We decided to make it more official a couple of weeks ago by giving him a blessing. It was a special day in our house with much family around. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that we like Grant infinitely more than we do the cat, which is saying a lot. He is such a good and happy baby and continues to sleep well. A miracle, to say the least.One of all of us on the big day. Thanks, Mom for taking the picture - someday we'll get one where we're all looking at the camera. And here are a bunch of pictures of Grant too, just in case you didn't believe me when I said how much we like him.
In his own eloquent words, Taylor "got a rock chucked at his head" on the way home from school a few weeks ago. A worried mom walking her kids home called to tell me that my son was gushing blood all over the place. It wasn't too bad once we got it all cleaned up, but I did take him to the dr. and they did give him a staple. In piecing together the various accounts from friends, little sisters, and the school we have determined that there was no fighting involved, just a little boy who likes to chuck rocks. Boys just like to do that I guess. I don't know. Anyway, Taylor was too excited to be mad. He loved his attention and has saved the staple in a nice ziploc bag to go in his journal.

Logan got his tonsils out and another set of tubes in his ear. After two weeks of healing and a lot of codeine and gatorade, he seems to be doing well. He sleeps so soundly now that we are tempted to check if he's even breathing or not. He has been talking a lot these days, so we are hoping that his hearing is doing better as well. He was a very good little trooper and we are thankful to have it done with and that all went good.

Soccer is mostly done, except a couple of make-up games, and there is only one football game left, as well. It has been fun, but it will be nice to have things quiet down a bit. (relatively speaking, we don't actually know what it's like to experience quiet!) Hannah is in the above picture and Taylor in the below one. A big thank you to Jef's mom Sandy for all her work throwing me an awesome party last weekend. Since we weren't really in need of any baby stuff at this point, she threw me a "Pamper the Mommy" shower. A great idea, and one I highly advocate. We had bracelet-making, mini-massages, and nail painting (yea for Holly!) and lots of girly fun. I will not deny, I enjoyed being spoiled, and it was a truly nice break.

Oh, and last, but definitely not least...We have officially moved our oldest 3 children into the basement! The inspector came Thursday and gave all our work the okay, and now we have 8 people in 6 rooms instead of 8 people in 3 rooms. If you don't think that makes a big difference, try it for a while and you'll understand how great it feels. We still have a lot of odds and ends to finish up (like the entire bathroom) but we'll take what we got and are very grateful for it. We spent a very long and back-hurting day moving stuff down yesterday and the first night was a success. (No walls fell down, no beds collapsed, no children were eaten by basement monsters, etc.) Thank you again to all of the people who helped make this moment possible. We appreciate you.