No, I haven't abandoned this blog!!!

Well, folks, I have probably set a new record in the time lapse between blog entries. Most of my friends and relatives have moved over to Facebook, and to be honest, Facebook is a much easier format for me in terms of uploading and resizing my pictures. It takes me over an hour to do each blog entry here, as my camera creates huge files, and I have to resize all my pictures by hand. However, I realize that there are a lot of folks who still don't use Facebook, so I'll try to post the cream of the crop here and link to my public Facebook albums so you all can see the rest.

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Sadie's fourth birthday at Spence's Educational Farm in Chapel Hill. The kids all picked vegetables in the garden, fed the chickens and goats, and rode ponies. The weather was cooperative, and everyone seemed to enjoy the party. Here is a link to Sadie's birthday party pictures:

Birthday pictures

And here are a couple of highlights:

Sadie getting ready to take a pony ride...

Sadie and me walking around the farm. On our left is Charlie, Jen and Molly, and Siobhan and Reilly are on my right.

Redmond and me.

I've also compiled an album with some assorted pictures from September and October.

Random pictures

Here are a couple of highlights.

This picture was actually just taken this weekend. Sadie got a "grow a rubber duckie" gift for her birthday, and it hatched from an egg and grew to be pretty large. She's holding it proudly.

Sadie, on one of her rare "princess" occasions. Actually, she has been dressing up all "girly" more often lately. She is a pretty even mixture of tomboy and girl.

Sadie at the NC Zoo, posing with her head hanging out of a giant "beehive". As you can see, she was getting a little sullen by this point. She's pretty much given up the afternoon nap on weekends, but she probably could still use one, as she often gets cranky around 3 or 4.

Posing with her Mee-Maw at the zoo.


Pretending to be Spiderman on the playground "web".



Redmond and I are kept busy working and chasing the Boo. I find that I'm far busier than I ever dreamed I'd be as a working parent. The days and nights are a complete whirlwind. What keeps me sane is knowing that we can all slow down a little on the weekends and take the time to spend quality family time together. I still wish my house was a little cleaner, but I still tend to choose seeing the world with the family over having a sparkly clean house and no life experiences. One day, Sadie will prefer to hang out with her friends to spending time with her boring old Mom and Dad, so I'm soaking up all this family time while she still likes us. ;-) When she gets older, I'll have all the time in the world to clean the house, though I'll most likely find another excuse to avoid doing it...

Redmond and I are still plugging away at Weight Watchers. I've lost 50 pounds so far, and Redmond's really starting to dig in and lose weight himself. I feel so much better, and I'm actually daring to post pictures of myself these days. I'm hoping to lose about 50-60 more, and then the hard work of maintenance will begin. I know how to lose weight and gain weight, but I've never figured out the trick of how to maintain weight.

We're planning a trip to Bladenboro for Thanksgiving to see my paternal relatives, some of whom I have not seen in over 10 years. I'll try to make sure I post pictures from this trip as soon as I return.