Mother's Day and First Spring Volunteer Flowers of the Season

Yes, it was a Happy Mother's Day.  How could it be anything else when presented this handmade token from my youngest son?

And not to be left out, some first flowers of the season are braving this desert climate.  I'm rooting for you flowers!  ;)

Blogging Again

Well...  Hello there! 

If this were a journal, I would have given myself a big Fat F!  It has been just two months short of five years since I have posted anything in this blog. 
Why is that?  Maybe the better question is why do I think I want to pick up blogging again?

Does anyone even do this anymore?  Write for the pleasure of writing and sharing?  Or are all blogs these days monetized and with posts no longer than a tweet?  I miss the days of reading fellow expat blogs (back in the day we also lived in Italy) and even for a few years after we moved back to the U.S. it seemed a lot of people kept on blogging.  Maybe I'm just out of the loop, and these blogs still exist. 

I know my attention span has definitely seemed to shorten.  These days my online activity is frantically quick paced to encompass as much as I can in the ten minutes it takes me to slurp down my morning coffee.  Or I can make use of the time that belongs to me during the workday (lunch hour) that I will spend gazing at my phone... playing games or social media.

But... but, how I have enjoyed looking over this blog this past weekend, almost re-living life when my eldest two boys were so young, back when I first started blogging.  It was a joy to look back on my rather long winded musings of our family life.  So yeah... that's why I think I'll pick up blogging again.  This allows me to reflect on our life even better than a scrapbook would, even if this format is highly edited since I'm much more apt to share the joys than the sorrows.

So, hello again!  The above photo is of a nearly 21 year old Matthew packing around Luca, because Matthew wanted us to see a glorious sunset, and Luca came outside without his shoes on... and our desert sand is littered with thorns.  And wherever we are, our newest addition to the house is to be found as well.  Meet Lilly, our German Shepherd girl.

The sunset:

Love,
Amber