Quatro

A month is too long to go without posting a blog update, and I apologize for my absence in the blogosphere ~not that our presence was really missed.
For all of you who were worried, rest assured that we are here and we are okay. Well I think we are okay... When I update you on our life, you might think I need to have my head examined. I've complained that I may never sit at my sewing machine again while I had a friend exclaim that I was never going to post on our blog again. In time and with patience both will happen again.

We are in full-time summer survival mode around our house. I feel like I have bounced from one trip/event with hardly a moment to come up for air in between. It has been an amazing yet extremely busy summer. We have certainly made lots of memories that I will cherish for a lifetime. It has been a good transition from preschool to real school for our family and I have few regrets.

There are a few memories that I won't cherish and those mainly involve the chaos in my house. At any given moment my house is a mess, my children are a mess, my car is a mess, even I am a mess, but we have had lots of together time. Together with our family of five. Together with extended family. Together with friends. Sadly, I have not taken enough pictures to capture these memories, but let me reiterate we have had a ball.

We've made some of those recipes I was dreaming of creating with the 5+ gallons of homegrown blueberries that I brought home in June. We made blueberry preserves! However, I added too much water so we have blueberry syrup instead of preserves for Christmas gifts. No worries, it has been tried and tested on pancakes by my children and their friends, and they tell me I can still give it as gifts. {Maybe I should not trust an almost five year old and her brothers in that department, but it feels good to think it is done.} My mother recalled a year she did that same thing, and she suggested serving it on ice cream.

We made a patriotic trifle for the 4th of July. It included angel food cake, vanilla pudding, fresh blueberries, fresh strawberries, and some of that blueberry syrup I was telling you about. We've made blueberry cobbler and an even better blueberry pie, and my children feasted on fresh blueberries meal after meal for the better part of three weeks. We are still enjoying some blueberry/peach fruit leather.

Okay enough about what we did with the blueberries and on for the life update.

We've enjoyed lots of lake living ~

over the 4th of July ~
with old Mobile friends ~ see more details here with newer Birmingham friends ~with our small group ~



Mary Frances was baptized ~ I'll dedicate another post to that special event.
And there is more ~ The title implies but I have to tell you we are expecting our 4th baby. I keep getting questions such as, "are you excited?," "was it planned?" and comments such as, "Wow!," "Really, four?" The answer is yes, we are super excited and yes it was planned. Frank and I have both always wanted four children. We have even wanted four children in our less than 1700 square foot house with rotten windows and moisture damage.

Now for the house, that is the part of our craziness that was not part of the plan. As many of you know, our long term goal, hope, dream, and desire has always been to tear this house down and build on our lot. It was not our plan for this year, but we have had a few things happen this summer that we can ignore no longer. We sprung a leak and have a blue tarp on our roof and I'm afraid we have some significant mold issues in our bathroom. The problems with our house coupled with the extraordinarily low interest rates have made this the time.

We've engaged an architect and talked to builders. My head is spinning with dimensions of rooms, specifications of appliances, details of reclaimed brick and hardwood floors, the benefits of Pennsylvania vs. Tennessee blue stone, the color and shape distinctions between sandstone and moss rock as well as a myriad of other details.

I hope you feel caught up on the goings on of our life. I will leave you with these...