Chuggin' Right Along

I know, no pictures for a while.  The camera needs new batteries.  What a drag.  Also, just not in picture-taking mode these days.

Life got better after that one bad week.  We did have ANOTHER truck issue, and even more repair bills.  Ugh.  In some ways, life is harder than it's ever been for us, but we seem to be handling it better than we've handled similar trials in the past.  The Lord has and continues to bless us in so many ways, we just keep pressing on.  And despite the many stresses hanging over our heads, our days are happy.  And the good news is that things can hardly get worse, so we have pretty much nowhere to go but up. :-)

I made it to the gym this morning, after about 7 weeks off.  It's really hard to plan on that the night before, because nights are when I feel my worst.  And waking/getting up has never felt good either, so it's hard to know if I'm suffering morning sickness, or just general unhappiness-to-be-woken-up sickness when that alarm goes off.  But I made it today.  *Go Me!*

We had a great Thanksgiving.  The usual good food and good company.  We stayed in town and went to Mom and Dad's.  We'll be sticking around for Christmas too.  I feel bad that we spend so little of our holidays with Brian's family.  They have fun traditions, and we always miss them when we're not there.  And I feel guilty about the lopsidedness of whose side we spend holidays with. (Self-imposed guilt.  Brian's family would NEVER even imply...)  But such is the case when you live next to one spouses family and rather far from the other one's, I suppose.

Not much else to say, I guess.  The kids are all going great.  Hollyn is getting so grown up, it breaks my heart, but what'cha gonna do?  She's starting to add a lot of words to her vocabulary, although if I try to get her to say some for you, she won't. :-)  Brennan's doing well in school and is a great help to me.  7 year olds can do SO much, for which I am very grateful.  He's totally obsessed with the computer game Minecraft though.  I need to start putting limits on his play.  It's sad for me, to have to do that.  Why can't he stay little and obsessed with legos and toys?  Asher is enjoying preschool and makes his teachers laugh all the time.  He's still really into drawing, although he's started spending a lot of time playing in his room these days.  And when he plays in his room, he literally bounces off the walls playing some elaborate fight-scene.  From downstairs we can hear him, "Bump!  Thud! Crash!..." from the bed to the wall, to the door.  Making all sorts of battle sound effects. Really, really loudly.  I suspect this is where the bruises on his legs are coming from.  It's pretty funny to hear though.  What a crazy kid.

Anyway, that's the Stevensons... :-)