Update

Long time, no update. Life has just been so very busy lately, I really haven't had time to take many pictures or update this blog. Also, there's this little thing called Pinterest that seems to take up a lot of my internet time lately. Check it out - it is seriously the most amazing website in the world. I am getting so many home improvement and craft ideas from it, it's ridiculous.

We made it through the sickies, and Raegan is fully recovered. Right now she is absolutely loving puzzles and reading. Neither are new things, but she is just full on, gung ho into doing both as!much!as!possible! right now. Before that, we were in a coloring and playdough phase. She still wants to do both, but it's not a daily thing like it was in October. Her favorite books right now are her toddler Bible (hand-me-down from Zane) and all the books from the Llama Llama series. Raegan is so amazingly smart. She has her Llama Llama books memorized, and I only brought the Misses Mama one home a week and a half ago. If you start reading and pause halfway through a phrase, she will finish just about every line of the book. She still loves singing and sings ABCs and Twinkle Twinkle to us frequently. She's also started singing "Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee." It's quite darling to hear her say, "Ouch, stung me!" at the end.

She's still counting to 13, then skipping up to 18. She names capital E and A now, and she's starting to be able to retell stories from what she did during the day, with some prompting to get her started. At child care, they work on spelling their names, and if you start "R-A-E" she will say, "G-A-N, that spells Raegan!" When you ask her to spell her name without getting her started, she says, "A-O-C-N-O-P-N-O-P, that spells Raegan". Love it!

Besides Pinterest, I've been keeping busy with some projects around the house. Luke put the railing on the front porch a couple weeks ago, and I've just finished painting it all a beautiful bright white. The cold weather kind of slowed down getting that done sooner. After I finish this post, I'm going to go touch up the paint on the east wall of our bedroom. I have a couple shelves and pictures I want to hang in there, then I'm going to post pictures of what a drastic change we made. We also finally weatherproofed/stained our back deck, and my front flower garden is all cleaned out and ready for winter. I've actually been very productive over the last two or three weekends, which I'm very proud of myself for. No more wasting away naptime on the internet for me! (Well, not ALL of naptime at least!)

Zane will be 13 in another week and a half. I cannot believe that he is that old. A teenager.... oh boy! For the most part, he's pretty helpful and kind, although he does have his moments of teen angst, obviously. We got his report card a few weeks back and he had 5 A's and 2 B's. Woo hoo! His first band concert of 7th grade will be coming up next month, so I'll have video and maybe some decent pictures to post from that. The lighting in the auditorium always makes for crappy pictures. Zane has gone through another growth spurt recently that has made it necessary for us to buy him new clothes.... again! He's now wearing jeans from the men's department and he's got at least a good two inches in height on me now. Our grocery bill is also showing the effects of his growth spurt. I'm going to have to start shopping in bulk at Sam's for more food here pretty soon.

So that's about all in our neck of the woods. I'm off to finish our bedroom. Pictures to come! :)