Sweet Mabel @ 7 months

Our sweet girl passed her seven month mark two weeks ago. She continues to be such a joy for us with her chubby, toothless smiles and shrieks of delight.

Thankfully, Mabel is quite a bit behind Luke's development at this age ... she's not sitting up on her own, she's not crawling and she doesn't have any teeth yet. We don't mind at all!

She IS rolling and scooting all over the place, scrunching her nose in the cutest way and "saying" ba-ba all the time. We think she's trying to say brother :)

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Smelling like Spring

The past few weeks we've had some warmer weather which has brought SO SO many flowers into bloom that I have been lovin' life! Being outside when it isn't freezing/snowing/sleeting is such a pleasure!

Last week the lilacs started to open their blooms up and now every time I step outside the air smells gloriously of them. Even though they don't last long inside, I haven't been able to help myself and have been bringing them inside anyway.  One thing the long, yucky winter is good for -- creating amazing lilacs and awesome tulips (and a host of other flowers)!

We've had a variety of things growing and surprising us with their beauty in our yard, making us realize that someone did love this place before even if it seems no one had loved it lately.

We are really thankful to Jason's Dad for providing us with a whole box of some of his own tulip bulbs in the Fall. We have such a variety of colors blooming, it's really lovely.

Our sweet landlady from our first Idaho home thoughtfully purchased and planted Princess Irene bulbs (created during WWII for the Dutch princess) along the front of our house.

The path through our yard has been covered by apple blossoms looking like huge snowflakes.

I've been bringing tulips into the house by the arm load and we still have a yard full of them -- heavenly!

Feeling exhausted --

I know that pretty much everyone feels tired, but I have to admit having two kids + a husband in school has really kicked up my level of tired. As Jason enters his busiest month of the semester (and is realizing that taking 21 units might have been a bad idea) we are both wondering how we're going to make it through the next couple weeks?

We've had fabulous weather lately -- temperatures up into the 70's! Woo-hoo and SUNSHINE which certainly helps give me more energy and a much better attitude. Plus Mabel does occasionally sleep through the night which is amazing (unfortunately, Luke somehow chooses those nights to wake up with terrors or toileting needs, etc)

Needless to say on top of normal life stuff, we've had other {good} things adding to life & our level of exhaustion
-- electricians spending over a week re-wiring our entire house (during which we really couldn't be in the house and were really, really thankful to have a car especially since we were still having days of rain/snow/sleet/hail)
-- Easter in Spokane with Jason's family
-- Spring finally arriving which means spending time in our yard actually feels like fun instead of torture ... but it's also making us realize just HOW MUCH work we need to do to our house, and
-- Luke turned three.