Wow! I haven't blogged in so long, but it is so hard to find time to sleep enough, let alone blog for 45 minutes. I get inspired reading other blogs, though, thinking I could be blogging when I'm reading :)
So, summer is about to come to a close. Our first summer since having a kid in school. We stayed super, super busy. We've been everywhere it seems. And if you follow me on Facebook you've seen all the pictures from our summer adventures. I'll make the synopsis short. The highlight was definitely Kaleb's profession of faith and baptism. Nothing is better than when your kids accepts Jesus as his personal savior. We feel 1/3 accomplished. We skipped the "buy a season pass to some local amusement park." A good decision, too. Georgia would not have been pleasant if we spent more than half our Saturdays at Sea World like last summer. I mean, really, the place is not that great when you have little bittys...there just isn't anything for the small kids to do. And Jaylan, watching Shamu for 45 minutes....yeah, he thinks that is cool exactly ONCE! We did VBS at least three times, a beach trip, a river trip, a trip or two to Nanni's and one to Grammy's. And a few weeks back we started football.
Football has sort of taken over life, and in all honesty was quite a bit more than I bargained for. It is VERY serious. It astounds me how serious we can be about some 5 year olds playing flag football. But it is serious stuff. And, oh yeah, it is HOT!!! In spite of the yelling coaches and up/downs in 100 degree heat, the boys are loving it. Georgia, not so much. She is being a trooper, though. We started the first to weeks for 5 days a week for two hours each day. The last two weeks have only been three day weeks for two hours each night. We'll keep that pace for the remainder of the season, adding in, of course games on Saturdays. We have our first game the 4th. And for this year, Kaleb and Jaylan are on the same team, so that is nice.
School starts Monday, and we are "meeting the teacher" tomorrow morning. Which reminds me, I should bother fixing my hair for that. First impressions and all :) Kaleb is going to a new school this year. The one that was being constructed just down the street when we moved in. I am very excited that he'll be just a 6 minute walk away, and very excited that I do not have to fight traffic every day twice to get him there and home. I'm not, however, excited about the fact that the school day starts at 730am. I mean, really, when is it they expect elementary school kids to sleep? Apart from that, I'm really looking forward to this new school. Jaylan doesn't start his preschool program until after Labor Day. He goes for 5 hours a day, three days a week to our program at church. He'll have Ms Jodi, who was also his Sunday School teacher (and who's husband is mine and Jeremy's SS teacher) until promotions last week. He just promoted out of her class, but he'll still have her during the week. I am especially pleased with that, because Ms Jodi is wonderful and she loves Jaylan.
So in a couple of short weeks it'll be just Georgia and I for the better part of most days. I'm telling myself I'll be less busy, but I know it isn't really true. I will fill those "only one child" hours with all the things it is harder to do with two or three, and then it will be time for the others to be home. And speaking of Georgia.....she crawls, she has teeth, she stands, she is her own little full time job! At 7 months she didn't crawl, she wasn't opinionated, she didn't eat solids, she had no teeth....oh man, the difference in a month when you are small :) She is QUITE opinionated now. And, the best thing is, she adores her brothers. You should see her face light up at them, it just warms this mommy's heart. And they love her back, so much. It's awesome. My children remind me, everyday, of what a great God we serve.
Jeremy is still working hard as ever. Harder, actually. It seems he is rarely home before 7 or 8pm. He's been helping lots just by getting dinner ready for the boys when they get home from football practice, so I can get Georgia to bed. We really are a team, lately, but all that teamwork sure doesn't leave much time for a conversation. 3am concrete placements and 8pm dinners make life tough, these days, but we are managing well, I think.
I have to add one thing to this post, before closing. I was clearing a bulletin board yesterday and there were a bunch of old Chuck E Cheese pics from El Paso. Apparently we spent a nice chunk of time at Chuck E Cheese. They have this little machine that takes and "draws" a pic of you. You know what I am talking about. We have a 1/2 dozen or so of those. I found one, and Jaylan's eye is crossed (you can clearly tell in this Chuck E Cheese drawing/pic of me and both boys), so it was from a time when that was still an issue. I remember a time when I wanted to burn every picture that had been taken when his eye was crossed, so I obviously didn't know this one existed. There aren't many pictures that were taken like this, it was only about 6 months, but there were some, and one done professionally. I've tucked them all away somewhere so I didn't have to see them repeatedly. This one, though, when I saw it yesterday, and my first thought was "wow, God is so good to me!" I decided it needed framing instead of hiding, because my perspective on that time has certainly changed. I no longer look back on that time as a time my child suffered, that I wish I could forget, but as a time God showed us just a glimpse of His greatness, mercy and power......a time, certainly, worth remembering.
