Happy New Year! (Better a few days late than never, right?)

There was a lot of commotion in our house New Year's Eve.

It was great.

And loud.

I'm a big fan of quiet,

but I know our season of loud is short,

So I deal with it.

And I've even started to enjoy it a bit.

I just plug my ears and watch.

(Because it's so loud, I can still hear through my plugged ears-so I don't miss anything.)

So as I was taking pictures,

(with unplugged ears, by the way--brave me)

I stopped to really look at them.

The kids were all moving so fast.

So many of them (pictures not kids) were blurry.

And I saw these pictures.

The red party blower

(the kind that rolls out when it's blown

and rolls back up when there is no air being forced through it)

-that came in our

"Happy Party Time"

box from the store-

brought so much joy to little mr j.

The pictures.

The pictures to me show what

my life feels like right now.

These kids bring me so much joy.

Sometimes their 'noise' is overwhelming,

but

their young lives are moving so quickly

It hard to capture

the moments.

So I choose to hang on

and

catch the moments that I can

and savor them.

Because someday

my house

will be quiet.

And I will miss the noise.



And this is when little mr j 'hit the wall.'

Literally.

(Actually, it was quite funny to watch him hit his tired wall. He's never stayed up that late before - on purpose- and it was so funny to watch him doing everything he could to stay awake with the big kids.)