It All Adds Up

Twin boys
14 months old
5 qt bottle of Canola oil
Distracted mom
+ Hardwood floor
___________________
Oil slick

Fresh Start

It's spring
We now have hyper-speed internet
I got inspired
I revised my blog

Have a great Mothers' Day!

Always long lost

I can't even begin to catch up with life online. I realized a couple of weeks ago that we never did send out our e-Tine. Here's a link http://erwinloves.blogspot.com/ . I have beautiful kids and wish I could share them more. Alas, it's not the season.
Loves!

I know, it's been a long time

Here are my beautiful treaters:

Elisabeth insisted on being Ariel. I wasn't going to do it until I realized that the leotard from her recital was the perfect bodice, that I had some great $1 fabric from Wal-mart for a tale, and that the extra layer in her tutu could make a fin. I'm not big on Ariel (body image & defiance issues), but I love being able to reuse stuff! Elisabeth is figuring out that if she persists long enough, she can get me to make any costume ; ) .

My mom got the awesome fabric for Benjo's handsome prince costume. I had to handstitch the sequin stuff that we used for chain mail (sp?). It broke my thread every time I tried to use the machine. My hand stitches broke on one side, so then I had to safety pin it on. No one noticed though, too busy looking at his beautiful face. He's such a heartbreaker!

So what do you think, are the boys identical? Their overall look is different, but I think it's mostly a function of headshape. As the firstborn, Sam was engaged in the birth canal for a while before they arrived (thus the more elongated head). Gabe was chillin' up top the whole time and flew out in one push, so he got to keep his wide forehead. What ever they are, they are beautiful and so much fun. Sam will be walking soon, and Gabe's working on sentences (though walking isn't too far away).

Dr. Ben

It's official! I am married to Dr. Ben, LMFT! Ben received his license in the mail this week, and he walks at graduation in three weeks (then we get to add "PhD" to the title)!
Sam and Gabe are little steam rollers. Benjo tries to extract their tonsils daily, and Elisabeth has started campaigning for a baby sister. Oh help!
Life is grand though our Internet connection is not ; ). Hopefully I can get some photos posted one day.

We Are Still Alive

We are thriving. I stole away for a moment so I could borrow a friends Internet to announce that BEN PASSED HIS DOCTORAL DEFENSE TODAY!!! He will soon be "Dr. Ben!" Look out Phil!

Kids are all great though E and B are in especially tricky phases. Good thing S and G still sleep a lot.

It's in the 100's this week. Makes me glad that I'm a home-body.

Loves!

They're here!!!

Our beautiful sons - Samuel Hollis and Gabriel William were born on March 2nd, in the wee small hours of the morning. They weighed 6 lbs, 13 oz and 6 lbs 8 oz respectively. Our valiant doctor was down to his last attempt to guide Gabriel into a headdown position when things finally worked, so delivery was as smooth as could be and recovery is going great.

Thanks to help from family and friends, we are settling in just fine. We'll see how we do after Easter when we're on our own again! Thanks for all of your well wishes and prayers on our behalf!

We've made it (almost = )!

Well, we've made it to week 32!!! Only 4-5 more and they wouldn't stop the babies from coming. Then the real craziness starts! `; }
Elisabeth and Benjo are as fantastic as ever. Here is a photo of Benjo riding our vaccum.

I don't know if we'll ever have Internet again (well for a year or so), so sorry for the very sporadic posts.

The Season

The kids and I are visiting my folks this week. I completely swore off going anywhere after our move, but my resolve weakened with the arrival of December. My father mentioned snow (which ironically I'm not even that fond of), and the pining began. My third trimester starts with January, so I won't be going anywhere for a while after that. The more I pondered it, the more I decided that we'd come up. I love the feeling in my mom's house. I don't understand why I'm so drawn here, but I love it. Chasing Benjo around is pretty nuts. This place is so not mommy with small kid friendly, but it's home.

We were sad to leave our Christmas tree behind as it was quite the family endeavor this year. We misplaced our sophisticated-looking origami tree in the move, so Ben got a terribly fake 3' tree for ten bucks. We decorated it with some ornaments that I've had tucked away for years. About 12 years ago, Mom decided that I needed the sci-fi ornaments from Hallmark, so Lt. Commander Data, Dr. McCoy, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Yoda, C3PO, and R2D2 mill around the olive wood nativity ornament in the center of our tree. I had some wavy gold ribbon from the free bin in Wymount and some tinsel with stars that I removed to place around on the tree. That finished the tree off pretty nicely. Initially, I felt a bit heretical and un-Christ centered for having such a tree - especially when we plugged the lights in and heard Darth say, "The force is strong with you Luke, but you are not a Jedi yet." But, when I started thinking in terms of the Plan of Salvation, the Savior's central roll in that, and the dark/light side world in which we live, it seemed metaphorically a better fit than the the refined, coordinated tree I usually envision. So, we have a hot Star Wars tree.

It's nice to have Internet access again. I've come to see it as a necessity, but our finances have forced me to more carefully distinguish true necessities and luxuries. Our life-imposed visual media fast has forced us to evaluate how we spend our time. We enjoy playing more games, getting more sleep, and reading a little more. It's actually kind of good for me not to have the distraction. My children need me right now more than ever and we're just trying to gear up and brace ourselves for the arrival of the twins. But oh how I've missed Google!!!