Updates and a Piano Recital

I’ve been informed by my sister that I’ve been too remiss in my blogging. There are several reasons. First, after being back and forth for two months, we actually moved. And it’s definitely a case of things had to get worse before it got better. Case in point: We attempted to assemble the girls’ bunk beds. However, the bag of screws was nowhere to be found. Apparently it had been set on the floor next to the bunk bed after it was disassemble and hasn’t been seen since. So for five weeks the bed has sat, half-assembled, in the girls’ room while the girls slept on mattresses on the floor in Bridget’s room. Because they were in Bridget’s room, Bridget’s been sleeping in the loft—and rising with the sun between 5:45 and 6:15. Because there was no room in the girls’ room because of the partly assembled bed, the rest of the furniture couldn’t fit in their room, so it resided in the playroom. This meant there was no room for kids to play and toys were strewn from here to Timbuktu. And on and on and on and on… Aaron’s parents arrived on Friday, and as soon as they arrived I put them to work. Kerry helped me move the rest of the food storage to a little utility closet (we won’t be rotating for a while, until we find a better system!). Then he examined the bunk bed and decided the screws that we were missing could easily be bought at the hardware store. So one trip to Home Depot and an hour later, we had a fully assembled bunk bed and one very happy mama. Seriously, I haven’t been that thrilled about something in this house since the carpet went in. We then moved furniture around, unpacked a few boxes, hung a door (glorious day! We have a bathroom door!), ripped out tack strips in the kids’ bathroom, vacuumed, sorted too small/big kids’ clothes, and had a mostly-functioning downstairs. Bliss. Apparently I’ve learned to lower my expectations about what is awesome around here. Bridget turned 9 months old on the 19th of this month. I can’t believe she’s that old. She’s still a teeny tiny thing—only 15 lbs. We’re trying to fatten her up as best as we can, but apparently it’s not working too well. She’s got two bottom teeth and is working on her two canines up top, which has made her extremely grumpy. She’s also not sleeping or napping well since she’s in the loft without curtains or doors, so she’s not her usual sunny disposition. She’s sitting on her own, pulling herself to standing, and waving. She loves to drink out of a straw and is obsessed with playing in water. Her mama is her absolute most favorite person in the whole world, and I love it.   First real bath in the tub. She’s enamored, and I frequently stick her in the tub so I can do my hair and put on my makeup. Katie had her first piano recital on the 5th of May. She did a wonderful job on her solo piece—not a single mistake. However, she failed to inform me that she had an additional song that she was playing as a duet. She hadn’t played that song in about three weeks, so it definitely was not the best she could have done. Poor thing, we couldn’t find her piano books after the move, so she had to practice her piece from memory and hope it was accurate. Of course, we found her books about 2 hours after her recital was over. We’re sad that the year is over. Miss Bethany was such an amazing teacher. We’re still debating about whether or not we should make the commute to take piano lessons. I’m having a hard time finding anyone who will take new students over here.