Hello Again!

When I say "Hello Again" does it make any of you think of a Dr. Seuss story?  

"what a dog party!"

Seriously - that story (Go Dog. Go!) has so many of these little quote things that stick out to mie at random times.

Sorry I've been away.  Have you missed mie?  Did you even notice I was gone?  I'm not trying to be needy I'm just curious.

I haven't blogged much for the past few weeks because life in our home, as in yours, has a way of getting CRAZY.  The first week or two of slow blogging was caused by a massive increase of activity at work that had mie working till midnight or 1am every night made worse by a quicker-than-expected deadline for my dissertation proposal that just compounded the stress (and lack of time).  SO, I didn't have much time to blog.  Then last week we went on vacation and as much as I wanted to get online to share with you that we were indeed on vacation, driving for a total of 4 days, visiting Disneyland, and celebrating my dad's 60th birthday, I had to restrain myself because it's not wise to post such things as it happens.  Something about telling criminals you aren't at home or something like that.  

So I held back on blogging but I assure you that it didn't take THAT much force.  Not being at home with my 4 kids puts added stress on managing my family.  Not only did we have only 4 days to spend with all of our family that lives in LA and one of those days was spent at Disneyland, we were (gratefully) staying with my parents in 2 bedrooms of their house and visiting the houses of others who, understandably, are not prepared to handle the chaos of 4 children under 6.  While we can usually let our kids roam (somewhat) in our home and only have to follow the littlest one around like a hawk for the hours he's awake, we had to constantly be helping our kids be gentle with other people's things.  We've been very blessed with our home to be able to set it up in a way that makes our family functional and there's only so much you can do to not be intrusive in other people's homes while trying to make it functional.  As an example, our main living area in our home is a big square with a wall in the middle.  The kids can spread out and run around and around the wall in the center of the square but in the end we can catch them all and keep an eye on all of them as we wish.  The homes we visited were setup more 50s ranch style or split-level so we were constantly facing kids running in all directions and there was no way to keep all 4 in the same area at the same time without cages.

Cages are frowned upon by CPS, so we opted for letting them be free and chasing them around the houses endlessly.

For posterity's sake - I'm kidding.  I would never, ever put my kids in cages.  Just sayin.

Anyway - we did have a blast on vacation and made it home safely with all 4 kiddos.  Look for a "Say What (?!?) Sunday post on that soon.  Seriously - the drama of foster care.  Disneyland (yes, with four kids and just the two of us adults) was a FANTASTIC experience - we really were lucky and had a blast.  My dad's birthday party turned out fabulous.  And though I ranted a bit about how difficult it was to manage our family in other people's houses, only one thing was broken.  Of course it was one thing that is somewhat irreplaceable - but I'm going to try.

All this to say I'm going to try to be more active with my blog but I'm also scheduling my doctoral comprehensive exams - a 2 week job on top of my full-time employment job and full-time mommy thing - to begin next week so I may not poke my head up very often in the next couple of weeks.

Know that I miss you all and will be back full-time here soon.