Is anyone still out there?

I realized this afternoon how nice it was to have the blog to keep track of the comical day to day with our kids, as well as some of our bigger life events, I've been going through the last few years of posts over the course of the last couple of weeks, and I'm realizing that without posting on the blog, and my utter failure to keep any semblance of a journal, we're losing memories all the time. So, even if we've lost all of our readers by now thanks to a rather extended hiatus, in anticipation of my future nostalgia when the kids are grown and I'm trying to remember all of the wonderful and silly things they used to say and do, it's time to get back on the horse and start posting again.

Hailey: Hailey is mature beyond her years. She takes care of the boys, including her dad. Lindsay is lucky she got Hailey first, otherwise, she'd be the only responsible one in the family. Hailey starts kindergarten in a few months. I think I'm going to be sick, just thinking about it. She still makes friends everywhere that she goes, and she is generally fearless. Yesterday she ended up a couple of aisles away from Lindsay and the boys while at WalMart, and she walked right up to the photo counter, and told the person behind the counter, "I can't find my mom, her name is Lindsay Renee Mills". Lindsay was probably less than 10 feet from the photo counter, so she could hear the employee snickering as she repeated Lindsay's full name into the intercom.

Blake: Blake is the family comedian right now, even if it's not on purpose. A few weeks ago, Blake was hurriedly trying to make it to the bathroom, he got into the room, dropped trou, and flipped on the lights, but the extra time it took to find the light switch lost him that split second he needed to make it in the toilet. Instead, he peed all over the floor. When Lindsay came to clean it up, she, rather calmly and gently, scolded Blake for waiting until the last minute to run to the bathroom. His response? With tears in his eyes, he said, "It was an accident.  Everyone makes mistakes, mom!" Also, Blake currently has an imaginary friend. He is English. His name is Todo (although he is most often referred to as "my English friend". He has blue hair. He speaks Spanish. And his favorite food is chicken and rice. Finally, Blake is still working on his pronunciation of certain words. One of our favorites, he calls Grandpa, Crap-pa.

Nathan:  He hasn't had any fractures since he was around two weeks old, and he is just a happy, sweet little guy. He is growing, slowly, but steadily. He turns 1 in a few weeks, but he's probably closer to the size of a 3-4 month old (he's finally out of the 0-3 month clothes and into the 3-6 month). He  weighs 14 lbs, and is about 24 inches long, I think. He's getting stronger every day, and we think he may be crawling by his birthday. He has started to figure out ways to get around, by scooting and rolling, and he is into everything. He is such a brilliant little guy, mimicking everything we do, and finding ways to communicate. He eats like a horse. At dinner, he's been known to eat more than Blake or Hailey. I'm just trying to figure out where it all goes, since he's not gaining weight or getting any longer...but we're just glad he's a good eater and he's so healthy. (Lindsay put the pink and white fedora on him at the store, a little feminine, but the kid looks cute in anything).

Lastly, a major event in our house, although less significant in the grand scheme of things. We have a functioning master bathroom again! We bought the house in February 2011, discovered a leak in the master shower due to an improper pre-slope on the floor, among other things, in October 2011, and by January 2012 decided that it was too expensive to pay someone else to do the shower for us. So, five months, and countless hours later, Lindsay and I learned how to put up dry wall, waterproof a shower, tile, and grout, and now we can finally use our own shower again!