Once again, it has been awhile.

   Things have been busy around here lately, and the blog has taken a back seat.  It doesn't help matters much that for most of the time, I feel as if I could sleep for about 75% of my day, and go to bed early and get up late and still not feel quite rested.  Growing this little man is hard work!  Or maybe it's because I'm older?  Or maybe it's because I had my last baby 3 years ago and so I just don't remember?  Or maybe having them 18 months apart really is actually easier, as far as the pregnancy goes?

Yeah, I highly doubt that. :p

   We like to take a baby moon before a new member joins our little family, and you can read about our first two baby moons here and here.   But this year, with several different things factoring in, we decided to forgo a bigger trip with just the two of us, and do more of a family vacation close by.  And I LOVED IT.  I love traveling and I love getting away just as a couple, but I love family vacation so much too, that it really is a win/win either way.

   We invited some friends to go with us and we had a wonderful time at Sun river in Bend, Oregon.  We swam, rode bikes, grilled hamburgers, walked to the nearby coffee shop, and played games and watched movies after the kids were in bed.  It was a lovely, low-key, laid-back, relaxing time, just perfect for my 8-month pregnant self that really wasn't up to anything much more adventurous anyway.:)

I really didn't take a lot of pictures, but a snagged a few for Instagram.

  The last two were taken at the High Desert museum and it got me on such a wistful "Pioneer life" kick.  I mean obviously a lot of aspects of their life were SO very hard, but so very simple too, you know what I mean?  Everything revolved around survival.  If you darned socks and made soap and kept babies alive one day, that was the highest achievement any modern young mom could hope to achieve.  If you canned tomatoes and swept the floors and patched the roof and butchered the chicken and kept babies alive the next day?  Once again, gold medal of motherhood/wifehood goes to you.

Today it just feels like it is never enough.

   With social media and stay-at-home moms working practically full-time behind the scenes with Etsy shops or photography or blogging or other endeavors, it honestly feels like you could never even begin to achieve enough.  And so sometimes it makes me long for the days when nothing more was expected out of you than the sheer basics of survival.  Anyone know what I mean?

   Jocelyn wanted to be Mary Ingalls but of course I thought she should be Laura with that brown hair.  But the more I thought of it, the more I realized I really do have two daughters that resemble Mary and Laura, just in personality and with completely reversed looks.  How funny.  In any case, I think she makes a pretty darling little prairie girl.  Now if we could just go back to that time of life.....

Anyway, that is all for now.  An attempt at catching up a bit that hopefully I will be able to maintain.