Long time no...time. To write that is.

You would think that with Cooper in Asilo now, I would have all kinds of time to do stuff like blog. That's what I always think. Unfortunately, I have found I somehow have less time to do stuff. By the time we bundle up, walk Cooper to school, walk back home, clean up whatever messes/wounds Zeke has managed to accumulate during travel, and get the baby down for a nap, it's about time to get all bundled up to begin the pick up trip. And then we come home and eat lunch and by then everyone is so exhausted that my house looks like this:



And I know what you're thinking now- that this is a perfect time to sit and mess around on the computer! Again, this is what I always think, too. However, in reality I have approximately 30 seconds to a) take a shower (possibly the only one I'll get this week), b) take on some housework, or c) sit and eat junk food/watch tv and attempt to not weep out of sheer exhaustion/the feeling of being overwhelmingly behind in, well, just about everything. "A" and "C" get chosen alarmingly more than "B". But then it is back at it, nursing the baby, wiping hineys that have just produced "tree whole poops!!", and partaking in the internal dialogue of "do I spend time playing with my kids, or actually clean a bathroom or mop a floor so that we can take our shoes off in the house without stepping on something crunchy or sticky?" Somehow with three kids three and under, there just isn't time for all of it. So in the interest of saving myself some time, but still keeping anyone bothering to read this up to date, here is the Cliff's notes version of what we've been up to.

Jesse surprised me for my birthday with a trip to Amsterdam. They had Starbucks. It made me happy.

Amsterdam was beautiful.

We wandered around a lot.

We also ate a lot. This was dinner in France :).

It was yummy.

Zeke turned 2!!

He had a Wall-E cake that he liked. A lot.

Poor Payton was left to watch from the sidelines, as usual.

Zeke was really excited about all his cool new toys.

Payton is getting so big and can actually play with things now. She loves her excersaucer.

The kids were all sick, so we spent a lot of time watching movies.

Payton loves her Daddy. Payton loves people in general, but especially Mommy and Daddy.

And she's really cute, too.

We took the kids rock climbing. Twice, actually. This is how they feel about it:

A hand up to get started.

Go, boy, go!

Cooper is a climbing fool.

She loves to climb to the "ABCD's"

She was almost as proud of herself as we were of her.

Climbing away.

Uh oh, Mom's turn.

This looks intense, but I'm actually about three inches off the ground. I was watching the kids run wild, hence the worried look (there is a river on the other side of the road).

"I think you've taken enough shots of the booty. Do you think I could come down now?"

On the sidelines, as usual. Happy just to be there, as usual.