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...

Suffering from T.B.N.

I'm just going to come out and say it....

This summer I had a debilitating case of T.B.N.

Not to be confused with T.B.I. [Traumatic Brain Injury]

Though not as severe or serious as TBI, TBN is extremely dangerous when your closest family is 2 HOURS away by car and ALL of your immediate family (siblings, in-laws, grandparents, etc.) are in different states.These people depend on me to keep current with what's been going on and I failed them.

So what is TBN??  

Total Blog Neglect.

I swore I would never get this bad and yet it happened. This summer I completely neglected my blog for not one month, but TWO whole months. And then some! July had one lonely post in a poor attempt to get restarted. No luck.

Never fear! TBN is reversible!!

And with Ethan now in school full-time, (yes, he started Kindergarten last week... though you wouldn't know it from our blog!) I am making a goal to spend a little time on our blog every school day to get us caught up and current.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.
Together, we can make a difference with TBN.

Thank you and good day!! ;)

Chaos

These past few weeks have been just crazy around here. We're not super, super busy... just lots of different things going on. Let's see if I can pinpoint the start of the craziness... Oh, yeah! Right when Sean started working his summer job with new hours! Our whole schedule has changed. Just to give you an idea of everything from the past couple weeks (and what you have to look forward to reading)...

- Sean's Summer Choir Concert
- Father's Day
- Checking Account Fraud (see 2 posts back)
- Avengers Movie Date with Ethan
- Overnighter in Oregon for
- Sean's Birthday which included
- Combined Southworth/Toftdahl BBQ and
- Visiting the Olympic Track & Field Trials
- Ethan's Last Swim Lessons for this Session
- Multi-Family FHE and Fireworks
- Piano Recital
- Independence Day
- Oregon Trip for Ethan and I (3 1/2 days)
- Lake
- Movie Night
- Our 7th Anniversary (which is today!)

I'll try and get going on all the posts I need to do...

I bet you're thinking I forgot I have a blog...

Well...

I didn't.

Just been neglecting it.

For over two weeks.

As more important posts and post ideas and pictures continue to pile up....

But it had to be done. Family comes first and we've had some crazy weeks.

Mainly it's just Sean that's busy. He had something going on every single night for over a week - on top of work and piano lessons. That means I'm busy because he's busy. When his schedule gets like that I do my best to take care of everything else around the house - even more so than usual. It also means no help at bedtime most nights.

We survived that craziness and then I got sick with a nasty sinus cold, even though I tried to tell myself - will myself - to not be sick. It hit hard. Knocked me on my butt for a couple days and then took the rest of last week to get to really feeling better. I think Friday night was the first night I didn't wake myself up coughing or with a plugged nose or sinus headache.

So I'm back for now and working on covering everything that we've been up to the past month or so... Check back soon. I'll be working on more posts!!

By the way....

We went to Southern Cali for Spring Break! We'd been debating for weeks. Torn between wanting to visit family and the financial costs of a trip. We decided late Thursday night (March 29th) and left less than 24 hours later!!

Crazy.

But we had a GREAT trip.

Got to:
- visit and hang-out with some of Sean's family (parents and oldest brother and his family)
- watch Conference together
- have lunch at In-N-Out with Sean's friend
- see Ethan and his cousin Spencer bond over hours of playing together outside, with toys and while watching some cartoons
- go to Disneyland!
- celebrate Ethan and Lynnie's birthdays a little early

So... a last-minute 2,000+ miles round-trip vacation
PLUS Easter
PLUS Ethan's birthday
PLUS me having a job interview and Ethan starting swim lessons
EQUALS one super-busy family!! Lots of new posts, pictures and even some videos coming soon! :)

Still Alive... Still Kickin'... and Ready to BLOG!!!!

This past month, I took a vacation. There was no packing, no plane ticket, no sandy beach and not even a road trip. I took a vacation from blogging. And it nagged at me ALL month. But I knew I was far too behind and far too busy to even attempt to catch-up, let alone throw in a few short posts with our random December events.

So, I neglected it.

100%

Didn't even upload photos.

Yesterday the tree went out, the decorations came down and living room was rearranged.

Today, Sean went back to work and so am I!

Ladies and gentleman, I am now in blog catch-up mode!! Or, at least, I hope I am.

So, what was it that kept me from our family journal, aka: Southworth Family Updates? Well, let me tell ya... In the past month (in random order), I:

- learned to sew
- made a quilt square for Sean's grandma's quilt and then jammie bottoms for Ethan
- decorated the house for Christmas
- took family photos
- followed through with my "brilliant" idea of a semi-homemade Christmas for all of our family (this took up the bulk of my time)
- wrapped a bazillion presents
- shipped packages all across the country
- had stomach flu
- baked around 38 dozen cookies, divided amongst 5 different kinds and then made up 20 goodies plates that also included caramels and buckeyes made by Sean and then hand-delivered them to our WA friends (this took 3 1/2 days)
- made a quick Christmas card online and mailed out cards (some before Christmas, most after Christmas!)
- picked Christine up from the airport and the next day packed the Explorer up to the brim w/ suitcases, gifts, pillows, etc.
- attended Sean's choir concert with the Portland Ensign Choir & Orchestra
- hosted a Christmas sing-a-long and had over 30 people show up for our last-minute shin-dig
- taught my last Sunday School class in Primary with my 2011 class
- watched the Christmas ships on the Columbia River
- celebrated Christmas in Oregon with my family
- missed Sean's family terribly and hated that our budget didn't allow for a trip down to SoCal to visit
- went shopping with my sisters
- took Ethan to see Santa
- went to a Woody Allen & His New Orleans Jazz Band concert
- went ice skating with the Colemans
- got pink eye
- celebrated New Year's in Washington with some of our WA peeps
- watched the Oregon Ducks WIN the Rose Bowl!!!

Not to mention the daily stuff, like cooking, cleaning, laundry and being a wife and mom - though some of that stuff also suffered from neglect but not nearly as much as the blog!!

My friend Lindsey said it best on her blog, "Ahhh......December. You busy month, you. So very fun and full of activities & excitement & magic. How can I feel so happy & trampled all at once by you?" My sentiments exactly.

Uhh... Ditto to the last post.

Seriously. In my mind I have only neglected our blog for a couple days. A week tops. Not the whole freakin' month!! I am so embarrassed and must. catch. up!!!

This week was a little different, though. Ethan and I were at my family's house for a couple days and their computer hates my SD picture card so there was really no point in trying to upload any pictures for a new post. Plus, we were busy visiting with friends, grandparents, my aunt, my sister, etc. AND it was my parents' birthday. AND my beloved Grandma Mary had a mini/minor stroke and gave us a bit of a scare. She is doing good now, but did have to stay in the hospital 2 nights. I was bummed to not get to spend more time with her and try to redeem myself in another game of Rummy. My mom and I both lost to her last time!!

Let's see... I finally got my book ['Matched'] back from Lizzy. Got it for my birthday in May, but was right in the middle of a couple different series. Then I let Lizzy borrow it for their road trip in August and now I finally have it back!! And I am only 100 pages from the end. And it's been nice to have something to read. I took a good month+ break after reading The Help and I have been anxious to read something new. I think this will bring me up to 12 books read this year. That's pretty much a record in recent years! And I've still got several I'd like to read this year. I think next up is 'City of Bones' - especially because I saw the other books in the series at Costco last time for less than $7 each.

I have been busy working on Christmas gifts, ideas, etc. It feels good to actually be ahead of the game - usually I don't really start planning until November. This year I already know what I am doing and just need to get supplies. We're (I'm) doing a lot of homemade this year... partly because I love what I found and have the know-how to do it and partly to keep the cost low. Funds are tight... again. And we want to be able to make the drive down to visit Sean's family in SoCal. And that means sticking to a budget.

This weekend we don't really have any plans. I'm sure we'll do something. The Duck game is tomorrow at 12:30pm and Sean has some sort of Elders Quorum breakfast/football thing in the morning. We already went to the Pumpkin Patch {pictures to come... I promise!} so I'm sure our pumpkins will probably be carved within the next few days. Other than that, our Primary Program is on Sunday. Keep your fingers crossed that Ethan can make it through all of Sacrament without any major fits and {if we're really luck} will actually get up and say his part. No promises!

Signing off for now... Happy Friday, everyone! Hope you enjoy the new Fall-inspired blog header and background!!

I swear, in my mind, it has only been a couple days since I last posted...

...NOT almost TWO weeks!! GAH!! Where has the time gone?!?! And what's really depressing is I have been home the whole time. No day trips, overnight trips, nothing. I have been HOME. And we haven't even been sick! Seriously, I don't know what I can blame my lack of posts on. Pinterest, maybe?! He he he!! Just kidding. Sorta. Well, it is kinda my new addiction....

Anyway.

The truth is, we just haven't been up to much around here. September is notorious in our house for having a severe lack of pictures. Seriously. It's like my camera just wants a vacation after all the fun, sunny photo ops of the summer. In fact, I was just looking through my picture files and realized I have not even uploaded my photos since September 13th! That's just sad. During the summer, it's at least twice a week. What's even more sad is that I'm not going to share any with you today because I need something to share in my September Recap that is still to come! Lame, I know.

So, what have we been up to?? Well......... In the last couple of weeks we have:
* Put out our Halloween decorations.
* Made peach jam.
* Signed Ethan up for Preschool (starts next month)
* Been counting down the days until Uncle Tory comes home (just over 4 weeks!!!!)
* Been eating home-cooked meals together at the dinner table almost every night (a far cry from our summer when Sean had weird work schedules and we were gone a lot).
* Organizing and cleaning the house (a constant battle).
* Been settling into the cool, Fall weather. I nearly missed my opportunity to put out my spiced apple Yankee candles (that smell so, so good!!) and have already moved on to the spiced pumpkin. Mmmmmm.... Love the soft glow from the candlelight in the even and the warm, spicy scent in my house.
* Sean has been crazy-busy adjusting to having the number of piano students doubled since the recital - up from 5 piano students to 12!!

Please forgive my lack of posts... My goal is 10 posts per month which equates to a new post every 3 days or so. Yeah, I've got some catching up to do!

Fun Stuff Coming...

We have been so busy with fun little day outings and a few over-nighters this past month! I am trying to catch up and get everything posted, but there are a LOT of pictures to got
through. Not to mention, we are still busy trying to squeeze every last ounce of fun out of this summer - especially now that the weather has been so beautiful, sunny and hot!

Here's just a peak at what we've been up to:

* Clark County Fair


















* Ward Camp-out


















* Klineline Lake


















* Oregon Coast

Homeward Bound

Well, in case you have been missing me and my cleverly-written posts, I will finally be homeward bound... tomorrow!! After 2 days in Oregon last week for work and almost a week in Utah to visit Christine, we are driving back tomorrow. I am not looking forward to the long drive, but I am SO looking forward to seeing my boys, hugging my boys and kissing my boys! I have missed them so much, but have had some fun adventures with my mom and sisters... talk about a fun girls-only trip!

In case you're wondering, here's what you have to look forward to in future posts...
- Father's Day {yeah, I've still got to do that!}
- B-days
- another movie rental review
- June Recap
- July Utah trip which included: Carrie Underwood concert, visiting family, Seven Peaks water park, lots of swimming and spending time with my sisters :)

Check back soon!!