hiatus

tonight i logged in here for the first time since august 28.  i hadn't realized i'd taken a month-long hiatus, but i guess i have.  i've felt pangs of guilt from time to time when liam or susanna have brought up a story they read in one of the old blog books, as it's hit me smack in the face that i've been neglecting this outlet that i've loved for so long.  because not only have i not been posting here, but i'm also woefully behind in printing the 2012 blog book.  i think i'm up to mid-june at this point (you'd be surprised at how long it takes to alter layouts and upload pictures -- especially when you have no system for organizing your 1,500 digital photos that you've taken on your iphone in the past year) and and i'm honestly not sure i'm going to finish 2012 before the real-life 2013 ends. 

all of this, sadly, closely parallels the rest of my life.  i am barely treading water at this point.  work is crazy.  liam's new school is crazy.  my volunteer commitments are crazy.  tennis is crazy.  i recently discovered the timer feature in my car which keeps track of the time i'm driving, cumulatively from one trip to the next.  after i saw in one week the amount of time i spend in my SUV, i can say that driving is crazy.

and on top of all of this craziness that is just our life in general, we are dealing with this:

and that's the craziest thing of all.  how do we decide when it's time to let super go?  do we wait until she's having accidents on a daily basis?  until we physically cannot continue to carry her 55-pound body up and down the stairs?  until the kids are ready to say goodbye?  if that's the case, i don't know that we'll ever make that fateful trip to the vet.  liam's a wreck, pleading with us on a daily basis to wait just a little bit longer, while he dissolves into tears.  and if i'm honest, i'm not quite ready to be in this house day-in and day-out without my little brown sidekick.  so i give into liam easily, unable to take that final step.

maybe it's a good thing i've been away from here for a while.  september hasn't been sunshine and rainbows, friends.  but october is right around the corner, bringing with it, i hope, brighter days, even if they're shorter.  until then, i'll leave you with this image of our three children, enjoying a fun weekend afternoon -- ironically, surrounded by chalk sunshine and rainbows. 

which is a perfect reminder that amidst the craziness, there's beauty all around us, if we just open our eyes to see it.