A day to celebrate!

Today is Jake's 19th birthday!

How can this kid be 19?

Unfortunately, I didn't get any better pictures of him today.

He was having fun with Pilot... although I don't think Pilot felt the same way..

I love that smile!

We tried a Baskin Robbins

Polar Pizza, instead of DQ ice cream log.

It's a chocolate chip cookie crust

with chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on top.

YUM!

I think next we'll try the brownie crust 

with Heath ice cream on top.

I think it's fair to say Jake got spoiled.

The flip flop socks from his Grandma 

got a great reaction.

Jake tried them on with Taylor's flip flops.

Jake left early, heading back to school for a fraternity meeting.

I think he's liking school.

-----

Meanwhile, I got a text from Annie's boyfriend, Noah.

He said he was going to ask Annie to Homecoming

and asked if I wanted to be a part of it.

His mom and I are planning to go to coffee soon, so that

was my backstory and she had no idea when we walked into his basement what was waiting for her.

We walked into a dark room, 

with a blacklight shining in front of the sign.

Annie was completely taken by surprise.

He is so good to her.

What a great ending to a fun day!

xo

Getting lost in the clouds

Thank you God for creating the universe, 

painting such a majestic sky and 

giving me eyes to admire it.  

Last night the sky was so beautiful and changing so quickly I had to capture it.  I was driving home and it was almost distracting.  I pulled into a parking lot and sat for a bit.  It was mesmerizing.  At the time I had no words.  I just sat in awe and marveled that the sight before me.  

I have a thing for clouds and looking at the sky.  As we approach 9/11 there are several memories that stick out in my mind.   Having to tell our miliary neighbors to go inside and turn on the tv when I picked up their son for gymnastics that morning was hard, they rarely watched tv.  And knowing they would soon leave for the hospital for a scheduled C-section made me almost sick as I walked up to their door.  Then, as the boys and I walked into the gym there were the cirlces in the sky as planes reroutining to the nearest airport. It stopped us in our tracks.  We stood in silence with several other groups and stared until the contrails disappeared.  In the weeks following there was an eery absence of contrails in the sky.  Every day I would look for them and when they finally appeared it brought me comfort, something was normal again.  

This morning I read an article about unknown knowns, here's the link - Why the green great dragon can't exist.  If you have a moment it's worth your time.   It makes me glad to be a native English speaker!  

I thought about using a big, long, fancy sentence full of adjectives  to describe the sky last night... but nothing I came up with was close to capturing it.  I'll let you come up with your own description, if you choose.      

It's amazing to think about the things known and unknown.  And about a year ago I remember feeling a sense of urgency teaching the kids everything they needed to know about being on their own, being an adult.  It really opened my eyes to the things I thought they knew - that I thought everyone knows but doesn't.  I had to stop and think and said I million times you may already know how to do this but let's review for my sanity.  Many times they looked at me with blank faces and said they had no clue.  Which makes me think "OH GOD, what did I miss!?  What did I forget?" but I don't dwell on it.  I can't. Introduction to adulthood is trial and error.  And some of us learn the hard way.  That's when I trust and pray.  I trust my children.  I know God is watching over them and I pray he guides them into making smart choices.  And even if they don't, they'll figure it out one way or another.  I'm living testimony to that. I learned some things the hard way.  It was character building.

Peace, grace and love,

xo

Sunflower's at Grinter Farms

Grinter Farms

Sunflower Field

Our Sunday fun day adventure.

Enjoy!

  

Jake and Taylor

Half the adventure was getting there
since Waze took us on several roads with
signs saying "Bridge Out"
Luckily, we never got to the bridge.

We were on the way to 
Lawrence to
celebrate Jack's birthday
with some of my family.

The field was crazy busy.

We were stuck in traffic for about 30 minutes.

We saw one car accident.

There were so many visitor's the Sheriff closed 

it down yesterday for several hours.  

Too many people, traffic & car accidents.

We'll be back again next year!

xo