Here’s what I happened while I was neglecting my blog:

Halloween:

I had a big ol’ bag of candy special ordered from the states, and boy was it worth it. I’m still nibbling on Reese’s Peanut Butter cups.

My little guy turned 4:

Overall, great time had by all. And yes, there were cupcakes involved.

Sunday stroll:

Took a lovely Sunday stroll with the kiddos at our favorite park. Although no sugar was involved, it ended up being the perfect ending to our day.

I’m still too tired to post Here are some pictures from DisneyWorld in the meantime…

Even though it was 1,000 degrees (and that’s in Celsius), this is always the happiest place on earth…

These people deserve medals…

By the way, I had some real interesting guesses on our whereabouts (Africa topped the list), but we were obviously in South Florida. I’ll tell you more about the trip in the days to come.

We’re going on vacation to a different country for the next two weeks. I’ll leave the destination a surprise, but I’d love to hear your guesses .Hint: It’s not in South America, but it can feel that way…

There will be plenty of pictures posted when I get back.

Toodles!

You may or may not have noticed, but I haven’t written on Words to Live by Mondays in a while. It’s not that there’s a lack of quotes that inspire me, but it got to the point where the same types of quotes were always coming to mind. I made the decision when I started this blog to only write when I really had something to share. I guess I started to feel a little boxed in by the format and would simply skip writing on Mondays to avoid the constraint.

So, I started thinking of replacing the Words to Live by with something else…like a post about race. Or, maybe incorporate a Wordless Wednesday with a picture like so many other blogs. But then I saw into the future and it goes like this: I eventually feel boxed in by assigning something specific to do/write about on a certain day.

In the end, I decided to start including pictures that I take and sometimes about which I don’t have much to say. I did this once with a picture of my little guy and for some reason I felt like I was cheating. Well, I’m over that now. I’m not designating a day of the week…I’m only committing to posting one of my pictures sometime during the course of the week. That’s reasonable, right?

This is a picture of our miniature foosball table. I was drawn to photograph it because of the contrast of all its bright colors. Enjoy!

Note: These are straight out of the camera.

School started for the kids last week and after letting my body catch up with the fact that summer’s over and I now have to wake up at an inhumane time, I started thinking about how much the kids have grown. I tend to miss out on the little changes because I see them all the time, but every once in a while I get a clear picture of how old they’re getting.

My little guy will be 3 years-old in a few months and I remember being pregnant with him vividly. Sometimes I look at his old pictures and it doesn’t even look like the same child. He’s already lost his chubby cheeks and sometimes he gives me the face of an adult. I think he’s got an old soul…

I’ve always said that I look forward to when the kids are older so we can better communicate (if you haven’t guessed, I’m quite the talker). When they’re little and can’t express themselves, so it’s hard to know what’s hurting or what they’re feeling. It just dawned on me that as they become better communicators, they also become less my babies. Their bodies change, they become taller and all traces of infancy are are erased. My daughter sees pictures of herself as a baby now and asks “who’s that?”

I guess this is my time to mourn the end of their babyhood and to rejoice in them becoming little kids. On the one hand, I am thoroughly enjoying seeing my daughter’s personality develop (she reminds me of Zoey from Nurse Jackie) and my son is becoming more independent every day. I’m assuming that one day I’ll look at them and no longer see little kids, but teenagers. That thought is simply overwhelming and it reminds me that I need to enjoy them while they still think I hung the moon. As fast as time flies nowadays, they’ll be filling out college applications come January