nothing like greys

surgery in real life is nothing like greys anatomy. as i lay in my bed today recovering i watched the season premier of greys and it dawned on me that my o.r. was nothing like the ones where the girl was having her arm re-attached and baby delivered or the guys who swallowed all the money. now, my surgery was nothing that complicated or intense but have you ever noticed how dark the o.r. is on grey's? hmmmm. just a random thought :) with all my free time i have a bunch of photos to post. so, stay tuned........

september 4th

my first post on my blog, last year, was of the first day of school - with a similar picture of the kids on the front steps of our house. how fast a year goes by... caleb (7) is going into 2nd grade, luke (5) is repeating kindergarten, and lilly (4) is starting preschool. what a day!

caleb was definately the most excited of the kids about starting school. he woke up around 7am and told me that he couldn't sleep (he thought it was still the middle of the night) because he was so excited. when i told him it was time to get up and get ready - he jumped up and down and woke up the rest of the house. he had so much fun seeing all his friends! he is such a sweetheart!

luke wasn't as excited as caleb about starting school, however he still had a great day. luke was a very young kindergartner last year (his birthday is the end of october) and so we chose to have him do two years. he has a new teacher, which is why he was a bit timid, but he fell right into the groove and came home telling me all about his "awesome" day.

our little lilly started preschool on the same day the boys started school. she is only going twice a week in the afternoon, but it seems so weird. lilly had the hardest time of all the kids - she just couldn't understand why we couldn't stay with her "for a long time". it broke my heart to leave her crying. i stood outside the door and watched as her sweet teacher re-directed her to the baby dolls, it only took a minute for her tears to turn to giggles as she started playing. she too, came home with nothing but praises about her time at school.

the 4th was also our anniversary! 8 years! dave came home from the gym at 7:30 am with a beautiful bouquet of red roses for me. yeah, he works out at the crack of dawn! we spent the day toting kids back and forth to school and home and reminicing about the last eight years. after we dropped lilly off at preschool we stood in the hallway of her school for a moment reflecting on the fact that in eight years, this is where we are - amazing! God is so good and faithful. i love where we are at life and i love that i get to share it all with my very best friend. we often call each other our team mates (maybe a little corny, but i don't care) but mostly he is my best friend. after the kids went to bed we sat in our dining room and tried to take a picture of ourselves, we laughed so hard. what you see above was the "best" of the bunch - aren't we cute!

time...

this weekend our family was given the gift of time. time to spend together, resting, refueling. as life would have it, we were scheduled to the hilt and completely overwhelmed emotionally and physically and yet our very big God provided a way for us to slow down and bow out of virtually everything. the lawn did not get mowed, my foyer is still not painted, lilly's closet & bedroom are a disaster, i still haven't gotten all the kids school supplies, my heart is still mush and yet somehow it is ok. it is ok, because we went to the beach and played, i made homemade cinnamon rolls, lilly drew a picture of me and it included a head with two eyes, arms and legs, we visited a new church where we had no responsibilities, we helped a friend move and got ice cream afterwards to celebrate and we did it all as a family.

thank you Lord for the blessing of time and the time we have had this summer sharing it with our family and friends. thank you for this weekend. thank you that i laughed more than i cried. thank you for loving me so much.