Increase

I'm happy to say that I'm now living in 2013.

So happy new year!

It's going to be a good one I can tell because something I've been longing to hear come out of Chandler's mouth really did come out.

"Mom, I need to go poop."

I was in complete disbelief as I lead him into the bathroom, sat him down, and was in the presence of a miracle I thought would never happen.

I mean it was last January that we were here:

Back when I used to babysit Chan's cute little friend Sonny.

But despite the comfy cozy accommodations...

...and the after-school-cheerleaders/fellow-pbskids viewers: (lovin' Hallie's face)

 #2 just had to wait until the following January.

I was then faced with keeping the promises I'd made to him over the course of one desperate year.  And if you think a three year old will let you forget things like that, guess again.

We went bowling:

-He also got chocolate doughnuts and renewed time with an old race car. 

I got....a new lease on life.

Hallie got a private sewing lesson from her grandma Firmage one morning, and came home proud as a peacock to show us this:

Rachel is literally one step away from walking ;) but has no problem ridding every reachable shelf clean of all of its reachable contents.

She's a speedy crawler too.

And boy do we ever love her.

Hallie will often say, "mom I just love having a baby in the house!"

She's actually our first baby ever to be just fine and content to sit and snuggle with Elon.  In fact every part of her squishy little body comes to a flailing wiggle every time he enters the room. 

And I don't think he minds.

If only one other thing could be different from her siblings, and that is an earsplitting screech that makes our eardrums twist.  They all have this deeply embedded.  And I don't think I could ever earn the empathy of anyone who hasn't really heard it.  So hear it is...our dinner time music.

Go ahead and hit play about 39 times during your next meal :)

It's a wonder that we can all still hear around here, and I really wish I were joking.

Rachel has also taken the Johnny-Jump-Up to a whole new level, watch this:

Alright, so I quit making New Years resolutions a while ago until my sister told me that a friend of hers picks one word to aspire to every year.  And since her husband happens to be in the service and spends long segments of time overseas, her word for this year is "brave".  Kim picked "patience" for her word.  I thought that was just about the niftiest way to improve over the course of the year.  I mean whose going to forget their special word?  Heck, you don't even have to right it down!

Mine was hard to think up.  I thought of words like "learn", "teach", "lift" - all good words but nothing was like "BAM, that's it!"  That was until my friend JaNeal was saying the closing prayer at the end of church, and asked the Lord to help us all increase in our knowledge and understanding...the rest gets hazy and I'm not even sure if the first part is quite accurate, but what I do know, is that the word "increase" sent a lightening bolt straight into the part of my brain where I had stored the brainstorm of goal-word prospects.

Increase.

That's what it is.  I want to increase my knowledge, my abilities, my faith, my gratitude, and my love.

I've been very blessed to know and understand that if one is not moving forward, they are moving backward.  There is no stagnancy in this journey through life.  Therefore, if there is no increase, there will be decrease.

I want increase.

And I better get moving because the only thing that has increased since the ball dropped is my waistline :/

One last look at 2012

Holy moly has it been a while! and much to my chagrin.

Here we are smack dab in the firstlings of 2013 and I'm simply not ready !

I was sitting and ready to start posting to my blog with thoughts of New Years hoopla dancing in my head, when all of the sudden I was scrolling through a sea of photos from this past year that just can not be left by the digital wayside.  I mean are they ever going to be printed, clipped, and pasted into a scrap book?  Not at all likely.

Oh the blogs I had intended to post!  There were soooo many precious events that I want cemented into our memories that simply didn't make the cut.

So many pictures made me giggle inside, while others put me into disbelief that my kids could really change so much in just one year.

Did I blink ?

So I'm at a loss at what to do because there are just some photographs that need to be seen from our life in 2012, and so this has the potential of being the longest blog post I've ever done.

What a great year is was.  The highlight of course being the birth of our beautiful baby Rachel who makes us smile and act goofy every day.

We had a Firmage family reunion that was chalk full of quality time with loved ones we don't get to see much of.

Uncle Ken became a fast hit with the kids.

There's nothing quite like a fun Uncle and a fun Grandpa to physically lift and lug exceedingly playful kids.  (Don't miss Uncle Ken in the background making a run for it with Hallie on his back!)

We went to the beach and the lake a lot.  And the kids got a mini biology lesson from Grandpa Firmage.

Leah held a "cousin camp" that Hallie was sooo excited about!

Can you find the sleeping baby?

We went to York's Wild Kingdom with our friends the Bucks.

Elon had a birthday in July.

I'm pretty sure it was this point in the party when we heard the door bell ring.

It was Todd!

Todd and Elon go way back.  He lives in Utah and the funny thing is, you just never know when he's going to show up, and we were pleased as punch that he came just in time to celebrate Elon's birthday!

And I won't tell you how old he turned, but the kids sure loved these colorful balloons ;)

And hey, he's the reason that I'm on the other side of the camera here:

I guess Father's day happened before his birthday, but it's a little too sweet to pass up because Hallie wanted to hide her dad's presents.  (I'll have you know that this shot is completely candid - it's these very moments that I try my darndest to capture).

And before that, Hallie started horseback riding lessons from a sweet gal we know from church, Ana.

And it'd be a complete understatement to say that she loved it with every fiber of her being.  She has such a special place in her heart for animals.

2012 also marked the year in which I was able to conquer a fear that I've had for the past several years.

And that is the operation of this:

It was all thanks to my dear mother in law when she came over to teach us all how to can beans and use the pressure cooker to do it.

It was quite the fun project I thought, especially with all the eager little helpers around here.

Boy does it feel good to know how to use that thing.

We went to the Windsor Fair with Elon's parents.

And despite Chan's disgusted face up there, he became a huge fan of fried dough after that first piece.

This sheep's wool was a sweater waiting to happen.  His/her wool was so deep I felt compelled to dig my fingers right in to feel just how deep, and my fingertips still didn't even touch it's scalp!

Then there's the Homecoming parade that Elon always drives Bill MacManus's golf cart in.  And the kids are always so happy to ride along too.

Here's one of our nieces, Katie and Leah with their soccer team.  Katie has the blue and white socks and Leah is on the end with the sunglasses.

Then there's this picture I love from the apple farm:

We had met my mom and Jim there, and were able to hop a wagon ride through the orchard.

Halloween happened shortly thereafter.

And I became the proud mother of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia.

They took their rolls very seriously.

And which one of these is not like the others??  Poor Rachel was a pig and a misfit for Halloween.  And she looks a little less than impressed about it don't you think?

Elon's Grandma Myer and Grandpa Bob came up from New Jersey for Thanksgiving, which we were all excited about.  And it was quite the undertaking seeing how Grandma is 93, and Grandpa is 83.

Hallie was probably the most excited of any because she and her Great Grandma have such a special bond, and I love it.  Hallie actually shed real tears as we were leaving after saying goodbye.

The month of December was bitter sweet for us because of the unexpected death of Hallie's friend and classmate, Avery.  The cause of her death was complications from the flu.  That's all we got.
This news sent me into a cloud of sadness for days on end.  Memories of my encounters with Avery were pushed to the forefront of my mind, as I remembered dropping Hallie off every morning for preschool two years ago and seeing she and her dad doing the same.  During the summer I took the kids to the playground and Avery was there.  We chatted as I pushed she and Hallie on the swings.  Hallie and I were so happy to find out that Avery would be in her 1st grade class since she remembered her from preschool.

This news ripped my heart out.

Then two days later, a whole bunch of other six year olds from Newton, CT joined Avery and I'd had enough.  Watching Hallie bumble around with her siblings and be silly pained me for a while as I gained an isight of the type of void so many households were experiencing.

But despite the gloom, we managed to keep busy with baking and gift prep.  The kids absolutely loved helping me make these:

You pop these in the oven on a low 200 degrees until the kisses get all "sweaty" and then you push an m&m down on top of each one and let them set.  (*WARNING* - they're brutally addicting.)

I love how Chandler's steeling a quick bite here:

Christmas came and went and I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't even so much as take my camera out of it's case on Christmas eve or Christmas day.  But Elon video taped everything so I'm good right?

After Christmas however I did manage to get one of Hallie and Chan with their new jammies and matching-jammied buddies from their Great Grandma Jerree.

So the next pictures to follow make me happy.  They're snapshots of moments in time when the hustle and bustle of housewifery stop for a split second to let my heart swell for a bit.

Like the time our washing machine sounded like it was going to bound right out of our house, so I opened it to find this orange stowaway:

Or when I asked Chandler to put all the blocks back in their white bag, and came back to find this:

Chandler used to wear this hat around the house a lot and would describe it as the "one with chocolate chips".

We Firmages are so into games, and one of our favorites is called "rotten sardine" which is a huge hit with our kids!  It's kinda like hide and seek, but when you find the person hiding, you hide with them, and the last person to find the whole gang is the rotten sardine.

When Rachel and I walked in on these guys I had to force them to stay put while I grabbed my camera.

Before Chandler got a real batman mask and a real batman cape, and real batman gloves, he had to improvise a bit.

And if you ask me, he get's an "A" for effort and and creativity.  Don't mess with catman okay.

He also likes to beg his dad to watch spider man movie trailers online, and here they are watching just that.

This next picture fills my heart with gladness and takes away all my sadness.  It eases my troubles, that's. What it does: (I mean can you blame me?)

As does this one:

And these ones:

I love walking in on moments like this.  I quickly go grab my camera, then quietly tip toe back, and snap a picture in which the third subject is love. 

I swear that my kids' favorite piece of furniture is their dad.  I had to really narrow it down to only the best shots of them draped all over him.

This one reminds me of the countless times my own little brother had me pinned with all his might.  What Hallie doesn't realize is this is only the beginning :/  :)

I had so much fun cutting this sword and shield out of cardboard, but I would strongly recommend not doing it with dull scissors.

I love that Elon works literally across the street from our house.  He usually walks when there's not snow on the ground but for whatever reason, this day he drove.

And lucky for me, Chandler, and Rachel, he gets to scoot home on his lunch break every day!

In fact one of these days was during teacher appreciation week where the teachers can go down to guidance and grab some goodies and snacks.  He's always thoughtful enough to smuggle stuff home for us too and this particular day he walked home having filled his pockets with these:

I think there may be room for the Guiness book of world records here, am I right ? (!)  Because these seven cookies aren't exactly "fun" sized.  Boy do I love that man :) (I'll mention that the women in the guidance office wanted these cookies gone because they had been sitting there all week, tempting them to keep going back for more - just needed to throw in that tidbit.)

Hallie was all aglow with this book she wrote about a whale:

I love that Chandler loves how his little tongue is showing in this one:

Oh the beauty of 2012!  Even this star-gazer lilly from my Grandma and Grandpa Libby's garden:

Phew....I think I'm done.

Now I can button up 2012 with a little more ease and move swiftly on to 2013.

I am never going to play catch up on an entire year like this again!  I'm exhausted...

...serves me right.