Summer begins

Summer has officially begun and we finally know for certain that we will not be moving to Ireland for the year.  While we are a little sad that we won't be moving, and frustrated with the prospect of a potential job lay off, we are happy that we can finally plan things for our summer.  It's a little late for planting a vegetable garden now, so it's not likely that we'll have home grown vegetables this year, but we plan to continue work on the exterior of the house (mainly getting the grass established) and small projects around the house.  

Aaron turned 1 month old last week and caring for him will, no doubt, consume much of my time this summer but I hope to be able to spend a lot of time playing with the kids and doing activities as a family.  I took Aaron for his 1 month check up (at 5 weeks) and is now 10 lbs., 9 oz. and 22 1/2 inches long.  He is growing and gaining weight at a steady pace and even offered his first smiles last week!  He still seems to be pretty fussy, constantly wanting to be held, and hasn't gotten into a good routine with his sleeping patterns.  But he did offer me 2 nights last week each with a 4 hr. period of uninterrupted sleep.  During his first couple of weeks, he spit up quite a bit but that has slowed down significantly (which helps a little with the amount of laundry I've had to do!).  We took him to get his 1 month portraits at Sears last week as well and so I'll post them once we have them.

Many of you know by now that our initial plans of moving to Ireland for the year have been trashed and I'm happy that, at least now we can start putting things on our calendar for the summer.  There is so much uncertainty in life, I'm learning, and I am once again being forced against my natural instincts to control and just "go with the flow" of life!  We are now trying to shift our focus on saving for improvements to our home (that we really wanted to complete in 2008 during construction) and filling our calendar with events that will create many family memories for us.