Yes, I am Alive!

I am back from my very long hiatus. Did you miss me like crazy?? I am not really sure why I stopped writing. I think I was sick of winter, sick of trying to write something witty every few days, and feeling a little overwhelmed with this family of mine. Not to mention, Taylor was in the thick of her competition cheerleading team, and apparently when your kid decides to become a competitive cheerleader, you, as a mother, do as well. (More on that subject later.)

Hopefully you like the new look of my blog. My very kind, very smart friend Sarah from Clover Lane has helped me every step of this makeover, because I am a little slow in the computer literacy category. I am still working on it, and may add a few things, but it's good enough for now, I suppose.

So many things have happened in our busy little family and I will proceed to bore you with all the details that you probably don't care about, but I feel the need to at least document everything so that in 20 years when I read this blog it doesn't appear that my life stood still since Taylor turned 16.

I am going to try to list everything in order as they occurred.

Way back in March, Taylor and I spent 2 long, grueling days downtown at the convention center for the Northeast's largest cheerleading competition. It is endorsed by The Hard Rock. The girls won the championship in their division, and were also awarded Grand National Champions. What does that mean? I guess it means they get to tote are around a banner and they get to put an autographed guitar in the trophy case at school. Apparently they had the highest score of all the teams  that competed at the competition. I think there were about 80 or 90 total. So I guess it was a pretty big deal. I was really proud of Taylor, and she worked really hard.

In April, Nick turned 33 (Yes, I said 33)

This absoluely adorable ball of fluff became a member of our family in May. His name is Giovanni, but we call him Gio.

Isabella finished her first year of preschool.

I turned 40 (Yes there are 7 years between Nick and me....My sister calls me a cougar)

Shea graduated from 8th grade and will be headed to High School shortly.

Isabella turned 4 this month

Taylor got her driver's license, got a job, and got a car all in a week. (More on the car later)

Isabella learned how to do the Airplane Float in swimming lessons (HUGE, HUGE deal!!) I signed her up for a group lesson at the beginning of summer and quickly realized that she was way behind all the other kids. She proceeds with caution on pretty much everything she does, so I wasn't surprised when she outright refused to put her face under water. The class was 2 weeks long, everyday for 30 minutes, 5 days a week. By day 3, all the kids but 2 were floating on their own in the big pool. And by day 9, all the kids were practicing the crawl basics on their own from their mother's arms 5 or 6 feet to the side of the pool. Meanwhile, Isabella and another girl were in the baby pool trying to work up the courage to put their faces in the water for more than 2 or 3 seconds. It is very important to me that my kids learn how to swim, and to swim well. It's not a competetive thing; it's a safety thing. So we decided to continue lessons with a private instructor and started going 2 days a week since the beginning of July. Isabella negotiated, argued and downright refused at times to let he teacher let go of her in the baby pool so that she would float on her own. Until one day last week, she started at the edge of the pool and just did it on her own like she had known for a long time. And I happened to have my camera in my bag. I was jumping for joy and her very patient, college-aged instructor looked at me with a huge grin on her face. It was a great day at the pool. She is now practicing the crawl to her instructor in the big pool from the steps and goes about 3 feet on her own all the while insisting that she can't do it.

That about sums it up. I will try to be more diligent in my documentation of our lives from here on in. If these darn kids would stop getting involved in so many activites I would have more leisure time to play on the computer. What do they think I am?? A mother???