Don't Call it a Comeback...

And just like Britney, the Carpenters' Chaos is back in effect!!

We feel rested, refreshed and revived and are ready to hit the 2009 blogging world with renewed vigor. We are so thankful for the outpouring of encouragement over our short break and we are excited to be back in the swing.

Several of you have asked what happened to us over the last 2-3 months, and while there is not really a concise answer, I think the obvious aspect was the arrival of Addis. We knew he would change our life forever, in the same way any new child (biological or adopted) coming into your family would, but I don't think we fully grasped how major the shift from 2 to 3 kids would be.

It is not that Addis is extremely difficult or even having any real issues, it is just that we quickly realized that we needed to take a step back from our normal life for a while. We needed to let some balls drop and really focus on us. It seems silly that blogging would be one of those things, but it was. The pressure to have new pictures of him up and answer all the questions was just something we decided to put on hold for a little while so we could make sure the foundation of our changing family was firmly in place.

So, here we are. The "fog of change" is lifting and our new normal is becoming, well, normal. We probably won't try to catch everything up over the last 2-3 months, but we will certainly hit the highlights. There have certainly been some good ones...

Regarding some of the changes to the blog, they will be ongoing, but we hope you like them. We have added a comment tracker that shows the leading participants on the blog and we have added a feature allowing you to subscribe to the blog easily.

So, happy new year everyone and welcome back to the chaos!