Thoughts on this lovely life we're living...

Nine months.  NINE MONTHS!  Can it be?  Yes, we deserve it.  We deserve to be here at nine months.  Wow, what an exciting, challenging, grace-filled time it has been.  I do realize it's been a looonggg time since I've updated the blog.  To be honest, I write in my head a lot.  But when it comes down to it, when I do have some free time, I haven't come here to write.  I sew a little, I read a little, I cook a little.  But most of my time is taken up by caring for and playing with the five most amazing children I'll ever have!  And I'm okay with that.
Many people continue to ask us how we do it.  Our answer is always the same:  with a lot of help.  I've always said you do what you have to do because you have to do it.  You'd do it too if this was your life because you want the best for your children.  This is a challenging live to lead, but I feel like we are in a phase where 'having to do it' is more fun than a lot of work.  Well, it's still a lot of work, but when work becomes clapping, laughing, playing, and gibbering (yes, there's still laundry) your perspective shifts as it always will!
I learned a great line from watching a TED video several months ago:  Hard is HARD.  There is no sense in comparing your life to mine when life is hard for everyone.  This is our HARD.  Yours may look completely different (and probably does!).  But this is ours and we choose to share the love, smiles, laughter, and good times with you because getting bogged down in the bad-harder stuff has never worked for me.  It's not a pretty place to live and even though I go there sometimes--who doesn't--I refuse to live there.  There's just too much good that God has graced us all with and that's that.
I hope this video explains it.

The Fab Four are nine months old and Mason is getting closer to being a 4 year old.  I've got more on that, but right now, I hear babies waking up from nap (and I hear a big boy playing instead of napping) and I've got some clapping, laughing, and playing to do.