What was life like 3 years ago?

One thing I love about having a blog, is the electronic scrapbookness of it.  If I begin to wonder what things were like a few years ago, I can go back and read the archives!   Here is a post I did 3 years ago when I participated in a blog party where everyone introduced their blog.

Originally published March 31, 2011:

Feel free to grab some ear plugs at the door; it's always LOUD around here!

And I must warn you against eating any of the cake!

The ice cream, however, gets rave reviews!
To introduce ourselves, we have 3 biological children ages 8, 5, and 3 years old and are in the process of adopting a little girl from Ethiopia.

As if having 3 young children and an adoption in progress wasn't enough crazy, we recently added a puppy to the chaos. Madeline is a 16 week old golden doodle puppy who really, really loves taking baths, in fact just this week she's discovered a new tactic that nearly guarantees her a much coveted bath:

Yes, that is mud covering her furry blond feet. Sorry for cutting off her head, as it turns out children may be easier to photograph than puppies! And for the record, the puppy is now getting a bath and blow-dry more times each week than I do!

So what's up with the name? Is it really chaos?

Well, there are occasionally backwards jeans.

Teeth have been known to fall out! And we anticipate losing 60 or more in the next few years! And our tooth fairy is way stingier than the tooth fairy for my kids' friends, so I don't know what's up with that! I tell my kids, "Well, their teeth just must be better than your teeth, maybe they brush more!"

I got a sewing machine for Mother's Day last year, The Internet has taught me to sew, and now I make more than half of my daughter's clothes, like this dress I made with this tutorial this week. I delighted in how sweet and girly my daughter looked in it. Then after school, she came home and made mud pies with her brothers while wearing it! Awesome!


There may or may not have been a moment this week when I called my husband at work and said, "All 3 kids are muddy, the dog is muddy, the 8 year old needs to be at soccer practice in 30 minutes, and I really just wish the mom would show up and deal with all this." Yeah, I know I AM the mom, and I did suck it up and deal with it all, even making it to the practice on time.

But the really crazy thing about the mud that made me wish I could turn-over my mom position just for an hour or so? Is that it hasn't really rained here in I-don't-know-when! My children created the mud by toting water from our outside faucet to the dirt under their swing set with buckets!

Back to the "Is it really chaos?" question.

Random face decorating is common around here.


There's usually a science experiment going on.


And somehow my toilet paper always ends up looking like this:

It used to be a toddler wildly unrolling the t.p. and this frugal momma rolling it back up (I mean it's not really used t.p., just unrolled)! Now, the puppy is the culprit!

My in-box pretty much always looks like this:


And while sometimes being the main manager of all the chaos leaves me feeling like this very tired bear.

I wouldn't have it any other way!

This blog is about sharing the crazy journey God has us on -- the messes, the fun, the joy, the pain, the struggles, the crafts (for the uncrafty, of course), the cooking from scratch, the attempt to live frugally for a greater purpose, the learning, the loving. The chaos! But, as the Sanctus Real song says, "It feels like chaos, but somehow there's peace." The peace comes from the only thing truly good about our home, and that is Jesus. I am so glad that He's "up to something bigger than me"!

Thanks for joining our party! Feel free to come back any time for a front row seat to all the chaos. And the best part? You get to enjoy it without having to clean up from it!!