new house party

We had a little party at the new house Friday night, complete with roasted hot dogs in the backyard firepit and a sleepover movie night (well at least Matt and the kids slept over. I went back to my comfortable bed at the old house). The kids loved it. Garrett proclaimed, "This is the best campout EVER!" and they keep asking to go back to the new house.

We've got a bit to take care of before we are officially moved in, though. The kids and I leave tomorrow morning for Jeremy's wedding in Utah, the movers come on Wed/Thurs/Friday, and Matt will join us in Salt Lake on Saturday- then we'll come home to the new house for good, hopefully all in one piece.

Summertime

Our one (and probably only) July post: a photo recap of our California Vacation and our Lehnhof Family Reunion.

California was so fun, sunny, cool in the evenings, and full of family time. We're back now to the apparently record breaking Texas HEAT and HUMIDITY. Throw that in with the hurricane last year and we might just find ourselves a little summer home in Alaska from here on out.

I was a little concerned we'd run out of things to do and drive each other crazy all summer, but we're finding our days filling up way too fast. Between gymnastics, baseball, music lessons, awesome community swimming pools, and buying a new house, I celebrate days like today when I don't have to go out at all.

Happy Summer to one and all.

Garrett's birthday

(February 2003, 9 months old)

Somewhere along the way my little guy turned 7. My first thought is of all the psychology research about the first 8 years being the most critical in development and influential in a child's life. So I guess that means one more year to cram as much in as we can, and undo any damage we may have done, huh?

Really though, he's one pretty fantastic kid in a million different ways, and we love him so much and are so proud of him.

California Weekend

I spent the weekend in Redlands for the wedding of my adorable friend, Cara. Cara stayed with us in Brazil for several weeks last year, at which point this little romance began via Facebook. It was fun to be there to witness the union I predicted 12 months ago. The wedding was beautiful. It turned into quite the girls' weekend with a sister, sister-in-law, and a neice all meeting up at my Mom's for the blessed event. Somewhere between all the wedding activities, we managed to fit in a visit to our favorite nail salon, eating at Cuca's and In-N-Out, and shopping way more than any of us probably should have. It was fantastic! Next time Erin and Bobbie have to join us.

mom, Kerri, Jenny, Sadie, me

It really was such a nice weekend to get away, even though I'm pretty sure I got less sleep than I have in a long time. I'm having a hard time getting back into life as usual. I fell asleep during my Pilates routine this morning in the middle of my living room floor.

the results show

the votes:

Lydia- Girl

Ethan-Boy

Garrett-either

And the winner is....

Ethan

It seems that Lydia and I are destined to be outnumbered, but being Glausers and all, did we ever have much of a chance for it being any other way?

Lydia will get over it soon enough, after all it's still a baby that will need a new diaper every few hours and she's all over that. Plus she now has free reign on my buckets of baby girl clothes for her dolls.

Our little guy:

JON SCHMIDT with LOVE STORY meets VIVA LA VIDA

This is AWESOME.

Love, love, love it.

Love Love Story.

Love Viva la Vida.

Love Jon Schmidt.

I'm so downloading the MP3 and sheet music as soon as they're available here.

Or maybe I'll just buy his new album coming out this summer. I'm due for some new Jon Schmidt anyway.

In the meantime, we'll keep it on replay here.

spring review

I think it's rapidly slipping into summer, but since it's still April, we'll go with spring.

Spring around here brought a lot of sunshine (though we really haven't had a lack of it, it was just the nice warm kind with a cool breeze that we're trying to hold on to as the devilish heat and humidity beings to set in), beach days in Galveston, Easter, family visitors, building a new sandbox with Grandma, a weekend getaway to San Antonio, and the first of my 29th birthdays.

And in honor of the season that's supposed to represent new life or whatever, I'll have you know that in my blogging absence, I've been working hard these last few months growing baby #4, scheduled to arrive the first part of October.

I've been trying for a week to upload an ultrasound picture, but my scanner is putting up a fight. I gave up and reluctantly settled on this belly shot my sister keeps requesting instead. I'll get it fixed before we go in two weeks for my ultrasound to find out if Lydia or the boys get their wish on the gender...

a month and a half later...

I guess I'm back. If for no other reason, I knew if I didn't come back soon I never would.

I really didn't plan on leaving such an ambigious declaration about the blog then leaving it dormant for so long. I just hadn't decided what to do with it. The longer it took me to figure it out, the easier it was to just not think about it. Then I wanted to give it a makeover before I brought you all back. I haven't really gotten to that either, but enough putting it off...

Here's the deal. I've been on the fence for a while now about the blog. I guess I still am. It's been more than 2 1/2 years, and you know how it goes. In that time, my children have been left to fend for themselves on more than a few occassions (resulting in a flooded bathroom among other various household disasters) because I'm almost done on the computer. I have to say, it's been rather refreshing focusing my efforts on other things this last month.

Then again, my camera has a few hundred pictures waiting to be cleared off of it and organized because I've had no real motivation to do it. And other than those pictures, I have no real documentation of our lives since journaling has also taken a vacation. And well, we live in the middle of the country, away from almost everyone, and feel a bit out of touch.

So that brings me back, but not in a public blog. I thought about switching to another blog server. I thought about quitting the blog and switching to a monthly email newsletter. I've avoided the private blog as long as possible. They're a little bit annoying, aren't they? Plus they cut off reconnecting with long lost friends. But I guess we have Facebook for that now.

Come to think of it, why doesn't Blogger offer the Facebook option of being able to request permission into someone's blog? Maybe we should all send them a letter about it.

I've had a tracker on my blog for the last year and a half which tells me a lot about my viewers, and I can figure that most of you unknowns are friends of friends or friends of bloggers- which is great. Still, the tracker doesn't tell me enough to ease my concern about some of the questionable locations and comments I've gotten. Maybe I shouldn't be so fearful, but now that I've got more kids in school and less under my constant care, the cons of a private blog seem to outweigh the cons of having so many details about our lives spread across the internet. Besides, my kids are so dang cute- I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to stalk us.

So here I am. In a private blog, for now, with probably less frequent posts. But that works for me. Thanks for sticking with me.

Wednesday night entertainment

A busy Wednesday, Garrett's sudden stomach virus that mimicked appendicitis*, and the threat of traffic on a long drive almost kept up from going.

But then we would have missed this:

The American Idol star came to Houston (well, Beaumont, but it was worth the drive and the stop at the scary grocery store for chocolate donuts and Advil) and my awesome friend, Kim, had tickets. Okay but seriously, Kim has crazy connections and when she calls and says,

"do you want to go see David Archuleta"

she really means it.

That's us, in a photo op

ON ARCHULETA'S TOUR BUS.

Me, Kim, David, and his back up singer, Kendra.

I know. You SO want to be me. Or really you want to be Kim, so you can stand next to him. Seriously, what a fun night. We were like teenagers- squeeling the whole way home. Then we turned back into Moms.

Thanks to our men who made it work for us to go, sick kids and all. Thanks to Kendra for getting us up close, and thanks to Kim for taking me along!

*Garrett's doing much better. He perked up and the pain subsided shortly before we decided not to cancel our plans. The nurse is pretty sure it's a virus that's going around school that causes sharp abdominal pain. It should go away on it's own soon.

February in Texas

It has it's perks.