California Cousins

It has been a spectacularly long time since I last blogged. Since my last post the girls (Maddie and Charlotte) have gotten over a wicked flu, we flew out to California for 2 weeks, visited the happiest place on earth (2 times!) one of my best friends got married, Eleanor got her first fever, the big girls missed school for nearly a month and just this week life has seemingly returned to normal. Phew. I have an enormous number of pictures to edit from the past month. I know I've said that before, but I doubt it has ever equaled the sheer volume that it does right now. I got so many amazing shots while on vacation and I can't wait to share them, but this process is going to be slow going.

I'm glad to be home and happy that life is less crazy than it was while we were on the west coast, but at the same time I was really sad to leave. Being around family and friends made me realize how lonely I am out here in North Carolina and how few people we have involved in our day to day lives. I wish there was a happy solution, that we could move closer to my loved ones but also be able to actually afford the life we have here while living there. As this is not likely to happen I'm trying to figure out ways to change the things I can.....serenity prayer and such. *sigh*

One of the funnest things the girls got to do in CA was spend time with their cousins. Alyssa will be 7 in May and Brenna turned 4 in December, so they are all pretty close in age (and size) and had a lot of fun playing together. There actually wasn't one single fight/argument between any of them the whole time they were together! I think that's pretty amazing. Their cousin Shiloh was supposed to come down from the bay area with my brother Dave and his wife Maria Elena, but a yucky virus hit their family and they all stayed home (thank you!!) We missed having them with us, and these pictures are minus a one year old which makes me sad, but the weekend was still enjoyable and I got a few gems on my camera. We have 6 girl cousins on my side of the family and I wish for their sake that we all lived closer together so they could grow up together. Oh well.

Without further ado: Alyssa 6, Maddie 4.5, Brenna 4, Charlotte 2.5 & Eleanor 4 months

I feel like this shot should be in a catalog or something!