January, February... um May? Where Did You Go?

I swear, you blink and 5 months are gone. Life has been going reasonably well in the Raymond household. Lots of fun and a lot of organizing and cleaning. I decided my One Little Word for this year would be purge, so, I am going through every room trying to decide what to keep, what to sell and what to trash. It has been very freeing and super rewarding to see extra space open up. I started with the plan in January and happy to say that we are making steady progress.

Also in January we celebrated Elijah's birthday.

 With Balloons

And Presents

We had a small birthday party with his cousins and some friends at his Grandma's house. I forgot my camera, so she took pictures and posted them on her blog. Even though it was small and simple it was still fun.

In early February Joe's parents treated all of us to a trip to Disney World! We were there for 8 days and had a good time. If you click here you can see the hundred some pictures we took. It's on facebook, but I made the album public, so non-facebook friends could view it also.

March was busy also. We went to Penelope's pink puppy birthday party(pictures here). The boys had a great time playing with some friends they don't get to see much. At the end of the month Easter was super fun. We went down the in-laws and had an Easter egg hunt inside, because it decided to rain. They also made resurrection rolls... a lesson and a yummy dessert rolled into one. The recipe is here.

[borrowed this picture from wisdomformom.com]

April brought the skating show and Elijah did wonderful!

He was an Elf

And a Gentleman

[that blurry thing you see is his hat being swung around]

April was actually a very challenging month for me. I was sick to my stomach a lot, but it wasn't from being pregnant. For weeks I couldn't figure out what was going on. Originally I thought it was stress and being mad at someone, but once those feelings "went away" my stomach issues were still going strong. I tried eliminating things from my diet one by one and found out that dairy was the culprit. So now I am on a no dairy diet. It is super hard, but it's worth it, since I don't feel horrible all the time.

And with that it brings us to May, which has been.... well, it's just been. At the beginning of the month Caleb was evaluated for speech delays. We found out he has a 25% delay, so he will be doing speech therapy in the coming months. Prayers regarding this would be really appreciated as I'm sure it will be tough on all of us.

The first weekend of the month Charlotte had a Tangled themed birthday party.  The boys had lots of fun. Caleb really liked walking around the yard and Elijah thought it was great he got to play t-ball with the other kids (and some adults too). Now he always requests that Joe go out back and play catch with him.

A few days after that, the newest cousin, Louisa... "Lulu", made her hurried entrance into the world. Four weeks early, but perfectly perfect in every way. 

[borrowed this picture from Katie's instagram]

Mother's Day was very relaxing... That was a gift in and of itself. I also love the other presents I received. They included two 6-packs of Lipton ice tea, a Starbucks gift card and three Mother's Day cards. 

The next weekend we took a trip to DC. We were long overdue for the trip, since the weather around DC took forever to warm up (and is still trying). It wasn't the best trip, but we managed to hit up the Air and Space museum, for Elijah to play with the experiments in the kids area. Then we walked a very long walk over to the Library of Congress, so I could see Civil War artifacts exhibit before they took it down on June 1st. We plan on going down a few more times this summer/fall, weather permitting.

That has been life... or at least some high and low points of the year so far. Until next time...