Fall Break fail....ish

We've had the past week off for Fall Break. We've really enjoyed our time at home in this beautiful, beautiful weather... except...

...Tuesday we had big plans for Mud Island. It's fun, it's free and the kids have never been there, that they remember.

Well... they still haven't.Of course, the day we plan to do something outside is the only day this week it rains. We have plans to do something outside tomorrow. We'll see if that works out.

Nani, the kids, and I packed the car with a picnic lunch and headed all the way downtown and wouldn't ya know, it started raining half way there.

We made the best of it and enjoyed a car picnic at Riverside Park. We admired the houses on the Bluff, talked about the mighty Mississippi with it's barges and tow boats, and we dodged homeless people in the parking lot.I think all in all, the trip was an unexpected success.
Actually, the best part was the long, long naps we all got when we went home. THAT's how to spend a rainy day out of school.

Speaking of quotes I love...

Your Children are not Your Children

They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

-

Kahlil Gibran

Sweet lady

When I was in middle school, I became friends with a girl. She had a great family and I was always welcomed by them. I called her aunt, "Aunt", her grandma, "Grandma". They were all great people.

Several years later, when I was about 15, I started going to church at the same church as this family. Aunt Lorna was my Young Women's leader, and Grandma was too. One day, in the mail, I received a card- maybe for Valentine's Day, or as some Girl's Camp project. Grandma had written a letter to me about how much she loved me. She said that she thought a lot of me and felt like I was a part of her family.

Many years later, Aunt Lorna would become my mother-in-law: I would marry Grandma's oldest grandson and give birth to three of her great-grandchildren.

Grandma Bonnie passed away this July and it's taken me a while to want to blog about it, but I ran across that card again today and some pictures on my computer and my heart is feeling full.
I hope that when I pass, I will have loved as much as she did. I hope my posterity will have as many crazy, funny, heart-felt stories and feelings to share about me. I hope when I move on in years, I will be as full of life as she was. I hope I still think as rationally, giggle at dirty jokes when I think no one is looking, yet have as much class as that lady did.

She wasn't perfect by any means, but Grandma Bonnie touched the hearts of more people than anyone will ever realize.

I'm not a person who naturally dwells on the sadness of death. I know I will see these people later and there is enough to do right here and right now to keep our minds on things in the present. Instead, I like to think about the lives of the ones who pass and what can be learned from their experiences and thoughts and such.

I love quotes. I have collected hundreds of quotes that mean something to me over the years and I have a habit of applying a quote to every feeling or situation in my life, or in the lives of others. For Grandma's life, I think of a favorite quote by Mother Teresa:

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless."

#3 is 2!

(We're just going to ignore the fact that this post is almost a month late)

Sometimes I imagine that before God sent Leilea to us he did an Emeril: "Let's kick this up a notch. BAM!" Maybe even followed by a little snicker.Leilea has the quickest smile, the heartiest laugh, the shrillest scream and the quickest temper. This girl has been doing nothing but l-i-v-i-n' for the last two years and we love her for it.
It's amazing to me how different each child can be when they come from the same two people.
I've said before that when I was pregnant with her, it was easy to forget that I was even pregnant. Boy, we'll never forget about her now. She makes sure of that. She's grown up the fastest... sort of a survival skill, I suppose, but she'll always be our baby girl. The exclamation point at the end of our family sentence.We're still taking donations for her bail fund.
Happy birthday, Boo Boo.