Alive and Kicking

I've been so quiet online these past few months... Not for a lack of ideas, just a lack of fully formed paragraphs, fully formed thoughts, and actual energy to complete a sentence.

Do you know how long it took me to write the above?

My pledge to myself is to "just write" again. It's worked before, and I have faith that it will work again. I am committed to filling this blog with literary crap, photo ops, and family fluff.

On that note, look at what I made:

I made a human who can bend into a pretzel, do freaking cartwheels on 4 inches of wood, and throw herself into the air while making it look effortless.

I MADE THIS.

I'm like a magician.

 Corinne is having a fantastic second season in competitive gymnastics, and continues to improve her scores, place high in her age bracket, and do it all with a positive attitude. I honestly don't know how we got so lucky to be her parents.

Speaking of being lucky, this year's visit to the tree farm in Leland, IL was everything I had hoped! All of us drove the 40 minutes to Indian Creek Tree Farm (including the teenager! Who was happy and enjoyed/moderately tolerated the family bonding!) and picked out the most gorgeous tree. People were happy, nobody cried, and it was just like Christmas Vacation, but without frozen hips or eyeballs and we remembered a saw (that the farm provides. But still).

It should be noted that, despite my convincing "lumberjack pose," no actual tree was cut by me. It was very muddy and I was wearing my nice jeans. Patrick and Corinne gracefully took one for the team.

Just mere moments before we slaughtered our fir tree. Awwww.... Memories.

Evan was with us, but kept doing a sneaky-secret agent-photo blur thing.

She still likes to put on the tree skirt and dance around...

Corinne in 2009, age 4. How is it going by so quickly?