Back to life, back to reality (and hopefully back to blogging...)

Wow!  I managed a 3 month silence!  That was not my intent at all for the summer.  I really thought (hoped) that I would have a decent amount of time for writing but that did not prove to be the case.  I had loads of time for family, fun, language study, travel, travel again.  Not actually sure where I thought writing was going to fit into all that but somehow I thought I would.

So the purpose of this post is to say, "no, I have not fallen off the face of the earth" (although there were times in the craziness of this summer that I thought I/we might!).  I'm here.  With lots of topics swimming around in my head to write about.  God has really impressed upon my heart recently that writing is something I really want to do more of so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to do that with the school year back upon us and things (hopefully) not quite so crazy.  Of course as I sit here, Anabelle as rubbing kidney beans from her taco soup in her hair, she just hurled her milk cup to the floor (and yes, got rebuked especially since she stared at me defiantly while doing it), and she is yelling "i, i, i" at the top of her lungs and pointing at the freezer (thank you babysitter in Lebanon for introducing her to ice!!).  How exactly do you teach a 16 month old not to yell the same thing repeatedly for what seems like hours on end?!  Anyway, all that to say, who knows how the new desire to write more will play out, but I'm hopeful.  (And can I just say, that I have the cutest 16 month old in. the. world.  Even though 30 seconds ago she was driving me crazy with her request for ice, she's now melting my heart and she leans over and in her sweet little voice says "hewoaa Meema"  (hello Mia) to our puppy who stands faithfully under her chair for every meal for reasons I don't need to explain.  She's also gnawing on an apple and every few seconds holds it up to me and says, "appa, ummmm Mommy"- In other words I like this apple, Mommy!).

So here we are, back at home.  Just because I feel the need to justify a wee bit my silence, here's an idea of how our summer has gone.  Maybe I'll do a "summer in pictures" post at some point but for now, I just wanted to get something out there- anything- to keep the blogging procrastination from going on any longer.   We spent a wonderful 30 days in America split between Georgia family, Florida vacation and Memphis and Mississippi family.  It was all amazing.  We came back home for 6 days (barely long enough to get over jet lag and unpack our bags...).  Anabelle literally had one good night of sleep before we were off again..  We repacked our bags for another month (have I ever mentioned how much I DETEST packing and un-packing...) and headed to Lebanon for a month of intensive Arabic study for Jason and I.  Since that's where we started our Arabic study, we went back to a school and dialect we're familiar with.  We also wanted to give the girls a chance to say goodbye to Lebanon since when we left 2 years ago we really weren't sure where we would be moving.  We were blessed to be able to stay in the home of some friends who are currently in the states so it's not like we were hotel living for a month.  We returned from Lebanon on a Friday, on Saturday and Sunday we bought school supplies, school books and uniforms, on Monday we left for a week down in Aqaba on the coast as kind of a last hurrah before the school year started back.  We returned Thursday morning, took Anabelle to the ER twice in 4 hours for a nasty case of croup, finished unpacking on Friday and Saturday and the girls started school on Sunday- wheeww!  It's been quite a summer!

Would love to hear how your summer's been and I promise not to be silent for so long.  Time to go clean the taco soup off my sweet baby.  Thankfully "meema" has done a pretty good job of the floor.  And since I can't do a post without pictures here are my babies on their 1st day of school yesterday..

AJ- 8th grade

Maddie Moo- 6th

Nominus- 1st

The whole gang..