Swimming with friends...

I continue to be grateful for pooldates with sweet friends for my little fish. This was from one of our many mornings with the Sheerins.

 We love sharing our guns with Carlton. Thankfully he never needs to be reminded to not shoot grown-ups or dry towels like some little girls I know.

 Clara is about to turn one, and she and her floatie are quite the hot topic at the pool. The girls love loading up her float with a garage sale of toys. When she abandons ship to hang out with her mama, my girls play queen of the mountain with that baby float. I'm not going to tell them we own the identical float in our garage- they'd never want to do anything else!

 This was from one of our days with the Joneses. Boys vs girls, it appears.

Abby Jane has discovered the underwater world this summer. In this photo, she chose to stay underwater rather than obey and stay above water long enough to smile with her buddies. Love the new skill, don't love how easy it is to just duck underwater and not hear what mama's saying!

Sally

In June we sold Sally, the Jeep that's been in my life since my sophomore year at Auburn. It's old news now, but she's a family story in herself, so she gets an overdue blog. 


To fully appreciate Sally, you have to know how she arrived in my life. The summer after my freshman year, my friend Grace and I spend a month on a missions trip in the Amazon jungle, living extremely, extremely primitively. Maybe I'll blog about that someday, but that's not today's story. Suffice it to say, I had culture shock arriving back in the States. As in Grace and I slept outside on my mom's back deck one of our first nights home because it seemed more normal than sleeping indoors in a bed. We also walked to Kmart (five miles round trip) to develop our pictures. Because the ability to be in a car just was so bizarre. Our lives had been forever changed by that trip, and it was a really, really difficult transition back into our world.


My sweet and generous mom, not knowing what shape I was coming home in, had that brand spanking new Jeep Grand Cherokee sitting in the driveway with a huge red bow on top when we arrived home from the airport. I was so thankful for her amazing gift, but at that moment Sally couldn't have demonstrated a starker contrast between my world and the world I had just left. On top of all that, it ALSO signified me having to give up my absolutely beloved Jeep Wrangler. So Sally and I had a rough beginning. 


Luckily, we eventually bonded, and this is what I told Facebook the night we sold her, pictures interjected: "We just sold Sally, the Jeep that's been in my life since my sophomore year at Auburn. She's taken a lot of you on college rode trips, drove Jake and I away from our wedding, 

In front of our first home

has been cross country twice, took Jake and I on all our pre-kid adventures, carried a crib home strapped on top as we drove along the PCH, and brought Abby Jane home from the hospital. 

I cried when they drove her away. But her new owner is... entering her sophomore year of college. May Sally continue to make many memories! 

We'll miss you, old friend!"

Two trips

Did I ever mention I left my phone on my bumper and backed over it? It was awesome. It happened the morning Jake was leaving on a writing retreat. Advertisement for the Otterbox- phone still works, just got a new screen. Advertisement for Jake Gross: his name is synonymous with grace and forgiveness. 

 So Jake has a great coworker who provided her home in Amelia Island for Jake to go hole up and write for almost a week. He is defending his dissertation this fall, and in a home full of four women all desiring his attention simultaneously, it's pretty helpful to have focused time away to be productive. Since his writing time just happened to overlap our 8th anniversary and it's probably against the rules somewhere to be at the beach without your spouse on your anniversary, Jake flew me down for the last two days of his trip. He still had to do a lot of writing, so I was horribly burdened to read and relax and have no responsibility for any other human beings for two days. It was hard work.

Bonus: the picture above and below were both taken with the phone pictured at top- in the same shape as pictured at top. Thus the hold-out-the-arm picture. Can't ask someone to take your picture with a phone as ghetto as that. That's also why our one photo together from the trip is a little blurry. Cracked glass does that. Highlight of trip, other than being with my best friend at the beach: getting more time on our paddleboard in the ocean. We had some good times and good laughs in the post-Ttropical Storm Debbie swell.

 A few weeks later was the annual roommate weekend. This year we had one lady on bedrest and one lady nursing a six-month-old, so we were required to do a whole lot of nothing. It was AWESOME and gave us great time for talking and laughing all weekend, which we happen to be fantastic at doing after years of practice. These girls bless my heart, refresh my soul, and I am so thankful to the Lord for allowing them to be a part of my life. I cannot fathom having a better experience at Auburn than I did, and I cannot fathom these ladies being anything other than an integral blessing in those years and, by God's grace, the years beyond.

Monday Night Lake Night

I think we've started a new tradition. It involves food.

 It involves grandparents.

 It involves the water.

 It involves quality time.

 And it involves a lot of laughing!

Peas in a Pod

The Kelleys invited us for supper last weekend, and it was so wonderful to spend time with them! Our girls all line up in ages and those girls are like peas in a pod. The Kelley girls did a wonderful job sharing all their treasures, and our girls just ate it up!

 Anna Beth had all kinds of activities lined up for them to do together!

 Speaking of eating things up,

Shelley put a scoop of ice cream and Oreo crumbles in little silpat flower pots, and the girls were in high heaven eating their "dirt"! We sure enjoy that precious, gracious, creative family and are so glad they are local again!!

Creativity

Why not accessorize with a bucket?

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