Warning: Long post ahead... read with caution and a hot beverage

It's been awhile, I know.  Somehow my time is filled with running errands, traveling... a lot, leading a MOPS group (which I absolutely have loved), fixing princess dresses, kissing ouchies, teaching our 17 month old to say please before I pick her up, and explaining that my appointment to see my OB doesn't mean the baby is going to be born.  The girls love to ask about my belly and comment on how huge it is, isn't that nice?  (Oh wait, did I mention that we're pregnant again?!) They can hold their little hands steady on it just long enough to ask, "Is the baby kicking?!" with much excitement in their voices and body language.  I can feel kicking, but they can't because they can't stand still long enough to feel a difference between the baby moving and the movement they are creating themselves.  :)  It's really so sweet and precious.  They can't wait for the baby to get here.

If you feel like reading, grab a cup of coffee or tea and stay awhile. I want to bring everyone up to speed on yet another year that has come and gone and what we are up to now.  Christmas is over and I don't plan on leaving the great state of Colorado before this baby is born, unless I have to.  And if I wait for my life to slow down long enough to write another blog post, well then I might as well sign off for good. There is no slow season to my life and I've decided to stop waiting for it to happen and just embrace the chaos that our life is currently.

A few highlights of 2013 (I hope you're sitting down, I said a few but I might have just lied):

The twins celebrated their 3rd birthday in April with a sprinkles themed party!  They had a great time celebrating with their friends and thankfully the weather was nice enough to let the party animals outside for a bit.

We spent our summer traveling as we always do.  Taking a tour around Boston via a red bus was hot and yet very engaging for our two-3 year olds, 9 month old, and my ADD hubby.  For the 4th of July, we spent a week in a non-air-conditioned, one bathroom house in Ossipee with close friends of ours (and their three kids), swam in the lake, and watched the fireworks from a canoe. The three munchkins and I spent two weeks in Arkansas with my parents and some of my siblings at a Rainey family reunion while Jacob went to Wyoming with some close friends from his Wednesday morning Men's group.

I found out I was pregnant at my family's get together in Arkansas and got to tell Jake the news over the phone.  He was so excited and, as if this were our first, couldn't believe we had to wait until I was 20 weeks before we would find out the gender of our baby.

Piper and Lily started preschool in August at a nearby private Christian school.  They go twice a week and I quickly discovered what it's like to have only one child.  Rainey and I have lots of fun together and she even seems to have more fun when she has the house to herself.  The twins are loving going to school and have made lots of friends, not to mention they are learning a ton about the Bible, their ABC's, colors, and how to say those colors in sign language.  I'm even learning some too!

Rainey-girl celebrated her first birthday with her very own smash cake and a roomful of people admiring the way she ate it.  At first she dipped her little finger in the frosting and then a fingertip turned into all 5 fingers which turned into fistfuls of cake and frosting going straight to the face.  Classic cuteness!

In October, I traveled to Kansas City for the MOPS Convention and had an absolute wonderful time.  I went with another friend and close neighbor of mine and she and I had a delightful time eating junk food on the plane and marveling at how easy it was to fly when we were all alone.  After three days of sleeping in, great conversations, and really awesome speakers, I came home to a sick family and the awful realization that I had left a treasure back in Kansas City.  A precious pink baby blanket that belonged to our dear Molly was left behind as I packed my bag to head home that Sunday morning. Lost in the sheets or stuck behind a pillow, it never got packed and I came home without it.  Going to bed Sunday night without it for the first time in five years, I was wrought with tears and utter sadness as I realized what had happened.  I called the hotel, left messages and cried to Debbie, the head of housekeeping and after a week of searching, the verdict remained the same.  The blanket was nowhere to be found and no amount of my crying to Debbie made it re-appear.  Losing her blanket is one of the worst moments of my year.  I know it's just a blanket and it doesn't mean I have forgotten her, but I slept with that thing for 5 and a half years.  It was a sweet, pink ruffle edged blanket with dainty flowers on one side and plain baby pink on the other.  It had a small classic Pooh and Piglet in one corner where Piglet is handing a flower to Pooh who exclaims, "A flower for me? How grand!" While it was an incredibly huge loss, it brought fresh words and a new stage of grief to my life.  I felt old wounds re-open and grief take on a new look.

In November we experienced a great excitement and learned the gender of our newest addition to the family.  As we cut into a beautiful cake made from a local bakery, here was our reaction:

Gender Reveal Video

After finding out some really great news, we hopped on a plane and left Colorado for 3 weeks.  We spent a few days in Florida before joining about a million other people on a 7-night Disney Cruise which was an absolute blast!!  More on that later.  After the cruise, we stayed in Florida for a few more days and then flew to Arkansas for Thanksgiving with the Rainey family.  We were there for 11 days when we flew home to Colorado which was one of the worst days of travel, ever.  I will spare most details but basically we spent 5 hours in the Little Rock airport before finally flying to Atlanta where we missed our connecting flight to Denver (due to the delay in LR) and ran (me and my pregnant self, three kids, and the hubby) to make a flight to Colorado Springs where we rented a car and drove the two hours home, in the snow, without our luggage.  It was crazy, but the girls were actually pretty good about the whole thing.  I had never been more happy to see our house and sleep in my own bed than I was that night.  Don't forget we had been gone for 3 weeks.

In December we traveled to Florida for Christmas with the Mutz family and then spent New Years at our cabin in the mountains.  We rang in the New Year of 2014 by going to bed early, wah wah.  We are so old now!

So... that was 2013.  Now you see why I suggested you sit while reading this.

Onto 2014.  While we never know what a year will hold for us, and it's a good thing we don't, we do hope to share more of it here.  And a big new years resolution of mine is to get my silly computer running better so that I can share photos easier and make photo books without a trip to the Mac store. Hence there are no photos here.  Darn iPhoto is a thorn in my side.

Maybe the next post will be about our Disney Cruise, because that was so awesome and worth a whole post.  Or maybe I should write about Christmas 2013 and how we celebrated it FOUR times!  Or maybe I could write about our new baby BOY coming April 2014! I am SO excited!! I can hardly believe it's really happening!

Until next time.. thanks for reading!