Hiatus

Well, I did what I thought I would never do and what I hated when other blogger friends did it... I took a break from blogging....

A very long break....

In fact, we're coming up on almost a year of no new blog posts now.

Scandalous, I know!!

And I'm not saying I'm back for good, because this blogging stuff is hard work. Especially when you have perfectionist tendencies like I do and have to have edit your pictures before posting, and limit to just the absolute favorites, and make sure to post in chronological order of events, and try to remember the little, fun details within the re-telling of your day-to-day adventures. It's exhausting!!

And I thought I'd be WAY better about posting once Ethan went to school and instead it was just the opposite! I spent my Ethan-free hours cleaning, running errands, working out and volunteering at his school and blogging fell to the back-back-back burner. And then I was so far behind I just stopped.

So, here I am, almost a year later! What have we been up to??
Well...

* Ethan went to Kindergarten where we learned he is above grade level in reading (like, best-reader-in-his-class above level!) but behind in his hand-writing. He struggled all year with hand-writing and is still working on getting up to snuff, but it's getting better. I suspect it has something to do with his not having a dominant hand until after he started school. We thought he was going to be a lefty, but it turns out he prefers writing with his right hand. Though he still eats his cereal with his left hand. He'll catch up... Other than that he LOVED school, loved his teacher, loved his classmates and made some good friends, loved learning and loved recess. He is already excited to start the new school year!

* For Halloween Ethan and I were pirates and Sean was a spy.

* We spent Thanksgiving in sunny Arizona w/ all of Sean's family, which meant Ethan got to ride on an airplane for the first time! 

Sean gettin' some brotherly love!

Ethan and cousin Ella (they're only about 3 weeks apart in age and hadn't seen each other since they were babies! They were instant buds, though. :)

 
* Christmas was spent in SoCal w/ most of Sean's family. No Disneyland trip this year (because we'd gone for Spring Break).

Ethan and Maddy dressed as angels at the Festival of Nativities.

Adding the star to the top of our tree.

Getting to sit on Santa's lap at the ward Christmas party.

Reading his annual letter FROM Santa... good thing he had sent Santa an email (with Papa's help) earlier the day before to remind him that he was in SoCal, not WA!

Awesome Imaginext pirate ship from Nana and Papa.

Matching handmade Kindergarten picture ornaments by Daddy (1985) and Ethan (2012)!

 
* We went to Oregon for Easter to visit my family.

 

* Ethan had a Knight, Princess and Dragon themed 6th birthday party.

Castle cake by Mom. So close to being a "Pinterest Fail" it was scary!!

Decorating and blinging out their custom shields!

Fighting the fire-breathing dragon!

* At the end of April we MOVED!! That's right, moved! Totally unexpected. Mid-March we found out our landlords were selling their duplexes. Two weeks later, on Easter Sunday, we got a 30-day notice taped to our front door while were were out of town and on April 27th we moved into an apartment that allowed us to stay within the same boundaries at church and only required Ethan to get a boundary exception to stay at his school. Though we weren't wild about moving into an apartment, we gained over 100 square feet in space, carpet throughout (we'd really been missing it!), a bigger kitchen and bigger bathrooms, a fireplace and still have an attached garage. What started out as a very stressful, unexpected burden and trial has turned into a surprised blessing, as we adjusted to living here quite quickly.

And that pretty much brings us to summer... Which has been very busy and blog-worthy and will have to wait....

Baby steps...