Update!

When Andy mentioned that I hadn't posted a blog in a while, I knew it was time since he catches up on my blog about once a month or less. So here you go:

The thing is, I have been super busy. I think once you see what I've been up to, you won't fault me for the delay.

• I spent and entire afternoon making all of the hangers in my house "non-slip". Spoiler alert: I spent 4 hours burning myself with a hot glue gun "simply drawing strips of hot glue on the hanger". Please, please don't ever think stay-at-home moms don't do anything. We are a productive and resourceful group who will do anything to find a task that allows us to sit in front of the television for one hour or more.
• I stripped all the cloth diapers. Takes about 4 days and 10 loads of laundry, but guess what, the diapers don't leak anymore. Sadly, this is a monthly/every six weeks task that I will have to do again and again until Avett gets out of diapers. Saving the environment, that's what cloth diapers do.
• Picking up dirty tissues. This is a biggie folks. Probably spent at least two hours doing this and four hours bitching at the kids who leave the dirty tissues around the house and in incredibly hard to reach, but easy to spot places.
• Avett got his first cold. This meant --> hours second guessing my own decision to take/not take him to the doctor --> googling home remedies --> talking to Andy about said home remedies --> him telling me to google "death by [insert specific] home rememdy"--> cancelling plans to use home remedy--> calling the doctor's office for advice--> going to doctor--> getting diagnosis (bronchiolitis)--> doctor advising original home remedy--> entire family getting a cold--> tissues everywhere.
• We got hooked on Mister Money Mustache, redid our entire budget and figured out how to cut spending enough to pay off our rental property in less than two years. This, folks, required A LOT of mental energy, so much so that nothing was left for writing. (Side note: we've been Dave Ramsey fanatics for a while and have always lived below our means, but MMM, as he is affectionately referred to, helped us take it to the next level. We are ON FIRE!)
• Debated about what I want to do about this blog. Internal debate goes like this: I LOVE blogging, but I think Blogger is low level lame as shit and I'd like to take it to the next level. So, do I switch to Wordpress- kind of a lot of work- or just keep doing my thing here? If I switch, what do I call my new blog? What do I want to write about? I have lots of interests and things I'm passionate about, but what do people want to read about? Just my crazy kids? Sarcastic parenting? Making hangers non-slip? Budgeting? House projects? Reading? There's a million blogs about all these things, not to mention Pinterest, so let's just stay with blogger and now all of the sudden, I don't feel like blogging because it's lame on blogger and I don't know what exactly to write about. 
• My mom went away for 10 days and since she does a bit of work around here that left ME picking up the slack- here in my own house, with my own children for goodness sake! Once she came back I spent a little time bossing her around to make up for all the time she was away and while that didn't take a ton of time, it was a lot of energy. I had to nap afterward.
• Attended an Emerge session. My friend Amanda has always been awesome, but now she is teaching people how awesome she is. (I met Amanda at exactly the right time in life and now our families are super close. We couldn't do this season in life without friends like David & Amanda.) Anyway, Emerge session reminded me about all the things I can do better for my children and brought me back to the Connected Child (TBRI) and so I have spent time intentionally parenting my kids, which is a TON of work, but as they say, I can pay now or I can pay later.
• Started meeting my children's (especially Eloise's) sensory needs. Backstory: this child gets out of bed RUNNING and does not stop bouncing, making noise and seeking sensory input until she goes to bed, and even then.... When I am not helping her meet those needs this looks like her chewing on- and ruining-every water bottle straw, crying over nothing, stomping very loudly everywhere she goes, not sleeping, biting her nails, not sitting still- ever, and generally knocking shit over because she can't stop moving. Meeting her needs looks like this: buying Chewlry for her to chew on which does not destroy anything and meets her need to calm, saying "yes" to gum, letting her bounce on balls, holding her and giving her body input by rubbing or scratching her, and my least favorite of all: sensory bins --> the neat mom's nemesis. A word about sensory bins: I assure you, your kids will do the most destructive or messy thing they can think of immediately and it will be something you never imagined when you violated every ounce of good sense you had and graciously stepped out of your comfort zone to meet your kids needs. 
• Here is a brief rundown of our sensory bin experiences: 
• Beans- Vaughn immediately used a plastic spice container that was in his play kitchen to crush the beans on our hardwood floor. The kids opened a "Benz Shop" where they put beans in every conceivable container and sell them to us. Beans will be found on our floor for months to come. 
• Water beads- these neat little things are sold at the Dollar Store and their original use is to put in plants or flowers where they slowly leak water into your plants. (Made in China they probably also leak lead into your skin.) They are rubbery and bounce and do feel great in your hands to pour and play with. Vaughn- crush water beads instantly so they break into a million pieces you will never find again until you try to sell your house. One morning at breakfast a terrible smell assaults everyone. What is it? The water beads have somehow rotted. 
• Fake snow- mix shaving cream and baking soda. Eloise wants to watch & make the snow fall which means baking soda all over everything for days.
• Hours on Pinterest. Enough said. Somebody send help.
• Working on my New Year's resolutions- one of which is eliminating at least 10 of our chemical household and beauty projects (to both save money and our health, but more about saving money and being resourceful). This means- hours on Pinterest, a few minutes on Amazon to order 'clean' supplies, a few more hours on Pinterest to get the recipe down (and OMG did you see this??!!) and at least 5 minutes putting said recipe together and labeling the jar.
• I made my own baby wipes. This took...I don't know...a while. See above.
• Laundry. In MMM style I have gone from 8 to 5 loads a week. Read his blog and you'll see. But still- 5 loads a week. Half of them are baby clothes which suck to fold and there are 500 items in a load vs. 10 adult or small child items. Takes forever.
• Staring/playing with/feeding/holding Avett
•  Took Avett's five month pictures and I'll post those soon. Desperate for pics? Follow me on Instagram  for more regular photo updates and in turn I will follow you because I have also spent some time here in the past month.

As you can see, time for blogging has been limited, but now you are caught up on the last 30 days.  Maybe soon I'll figure out the whole 'what I want to do with blogging thing' or I'll keep posting here. In the meantime, if you do read my blog, will you let me know what you like/love about it? Do you read just because you know me? Would you read this blog if we weren't friends? Do you just want to see pictures of my cute kids? Would you like for us to get chickens this spring and just post pictures of them? What do you people want??? What should I do with my life??? HELP!