Some explanations

I think there might be a little confusion out there about the current state of our family, plus there may be a few of you who are just joining in from this last adoption so I thought a detailed explanation of "us" might be in order.

Mark--sole breadwinner and highly esteemed physical therapist, house rehabber (rebuilder!), and worm digger

Courtney--highly educated (not the same thing as qualified, FYI) stay-at-home mom as of this past Monday, former maker of medicines, now dispenser of more band-aids than can be counted

Alex--8 years old and going on 40, loves history, has issues with anxiety especially with schedule changes

Tim--7 years old, loves to tell jokes and do "magic" tricks, keeps me laughing when he's not driving me crazy with his antics

Danielle--7 years old, thinks she's a princess, prefers not to do any work (princesses don't have to do work, do they?) and is definitely going to want the largest share of the mirror as she gets older

Bianca--6 years old, new to the family in March 2011, loves language and almost knows the alphabet song (there are lots of C's in her version)

Emily--5 years old, thinks she's cute (and will tell you!), never ever EVER stops talking

Julia--5 years old, new to the family in March 2011, has an infectious giggle and a monster pout

Those of you who've seen us out and about during the week have probably also seen another little girl with us. That's R. She's 18 months old and the daughter of one of Mark's co-workers. We babysit her during the day. We did not adopt another child right after Bianca and Julia. :)

As you can imagine, things at our house are a little chaotic. Right now during the day it's usually just Bianca, Julia and R, but on days like today and tomorrow when the other kids are out of school I have all 7 at home. I've found divide-and-conquer to be an effective strategy. As in, send two to play in one room, two upstairs, etc. ;)

In the stay-at-home realm, I am still LOVING IT. I am so much more relaxed than when I was working (that should say something since I have 7 kids at home!). I love that I can do all of our meal preps during the day. I am slowly tackling various projects around the house to try to better organize and streamline our lives.