I’ve taken a little hiatus from blogging, partly because I am lazy and busy and partly because there’s been some tough stuff going on with some of my peeps (extended family and friends), and I’ve been feeling contemplative and quiet (ha, me?) and thanking my lucky stars for all and everyone that I have.

A lot has changed, and is changing and happening around these parts.

– My parents headed back to Florida after a 5-week stay here and lots of quality time.  Much to the surprise of some of my friends, I didn’t have a breakdown ;)

– We had a run of over 6 weeks without anyone being sick (not counting M’s pink eye).  Thank goodness for summer!

– I got a new title at work.  I am now the Operations Manager of a Marketing Agency.

– R almost has his teaching certificate (only one multiple choice and one essay test to go in mid-September).

– R got a job teaching high school and elementary music in a town about 45 minutes away from our house (he starts soon!)  This means he’ll probably be out the door before I normally get up, so life in the mornings for me and Miss M is going to be changing big time!  I think we’ll both be eating breakfast on the job, and our hygiene and wardrobe choices are sure to suffer.

– R continues to work on his thesis, and we both hope he can juggle the new job, all his existing teaching and gigs, and the thesis writing over the next year and that we can still see each other once in a while.

– Miss M now goes to daycare 5 days a week (3 days at her daycare center and 2 days at a home daycare).

– Miss M drinks only whole milk (no formula) and we’re working on phasing out the bottle and phasing in the sippy cup, which is proving to be harder than I thought it would be.

– Miss M knows what she wants and when she wants it, and if she doesn’t get it, she gets pretty angry – for example, she wants to play in the dog’s water bowl, real bad.

– Miss Izzie goes in on Friday for her 2nd yearly checkup since her two big surgeries back in the Fall of ’09.  She’ll go under anesthesia and have her teeth cleaned and get new X-rays.  They will probably redo her bonding and most likely pull some more teeth.  Poor baby.

– In addition to all that we’ve got in store for this next year, I’ve also signed up for the 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at my favorite local yoga studio (1 full weekend a month for 12 months starting in September).

– I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of Fall, which is my favorite season, even though it means that Winter is coming.  It’s going to be a busy year!

Here are a fewer new(er) photos.  She’s still got 80’s rock star hair.