Confession: I kept shooing basketball-playing-Elijah out of these shots, but after uploading them, I love that he is in the background doing his “thing”, while my little girls are doing theirs.

Most recently, she’s been all about getting outside. All. The. Time. She’s escaped a few times, too, courtesy of our deck door being forgotten open by older siblings. Terrifying! And she just runs off helter skelter without a backwards glance. Mmm hmm, she’s chalk full of adventure, too!

She can usually be persuaded to play at the park across the way, though, so long as she can rub some dirt on her cheeks…

Seriously, this is how Ellie’s face looks after every visit to the park. I really don’t know how she manages to do this. I should probably watch her more closely, right? Trips to the park, though, often involve adult conversation, a deficiency in life right now, so…

Well, you get the idea.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how children eschew their myriads of toys and prefer to raid kitchen cupboards, the fridge, bookshelves and what not to have a good ol’ game of make believe?  Or is this just my children?

I caught Phoebe and Ellie playing with many of our condiments the other day and they were just so absorbed and entertained that I said nary a word and simply watched them.  And took pictures, of course. That’s a bit of wisdom that I’ve learned in my 11 years of parenting:  if children are being quiet without the aid of media then you let it be.  Just let it be.

Assuming, of course, that they aren’t endangering a life.

Now…all that being said, I do realize that I’ve been quite the delinquent blogger these days.  I’ve seriously lost my blogging mojo.  Just before we transitioned to this new, free website (Wait… who am I kidding?  There was no “we,” Dave did the transitioning for me.  Thank you, Dave!) I was actually contemplating ending my blogging journey.  The witty, one sentence “updates” that we all give and get via twitter and facebook are clearly where it’s at these days, right?  This had been my train of thought lately.  I felt like my blog ship had sailed and that it was now time to let it sail off into the sunset.  *sniff, sniff*

Something in the blog world still beckons me, though.  Maybe it’s simply the scrapbook-y-ness of it all?  The fact that I’m preserving family memories.  And things like this…

…just beg to be shared.  (She’s such a cutie.)

Or is it that I feel like I have something to “say?”  Hmmmm…  Don’t know.  I do know that I must keep blogging.  I will, I will, I will.

Here’s to the next five years!

I love that they have each other.  So special!