good news

I am grateful today that our friend, Barb, is well. She had a large mass around her ovaries that was cause for serious concern. I am very pleased that the surgery to remove it went well, that the mass was found to be not cancerous, and that Barb and family are recovering well. Good news is always welcome around here.

Small Things

Today, I am grateful that I had the chance to have Marissa fall asleep in my arms. My not-so-cuddly girl has started resisting taking her naps, so I give her a choice after we read books to get into bed right away or have snugs. Today, she chose snugs, as has become her custom in the last few weeks. As she wiggled her way into my armpit and under the covers, I could tell she was very sleepy. I decided to see whether she could/would fall asleep in my arms rather than put her in bed after a few minutes like I normally do. She sucked on her paci and rubbed her bear's ribbon on her nose and fell right to sleep. Those fifteen minutes were like heaven, and I'm incredibly grateful she shared them with me.

mini vacation

We're leaving in about an hour and a half to go on a mini-vacation. Our dear friends, Gavin and Laura, are in Santa Barbara for a little over a week, and since they live in the UK, we decided we could do some traveling too and meet up with them down south. We love, love, LOVE Gavin and Laura, and don't get to see them anywhere close to often enough ('cause, you know, they live in the UK). I'm really excited for the opportunity to get to see them, for them to see our kids as it's been a couple of years and for our family to spend a long weekend in Santa Barbara.
Today, I am grateful that Landon's schedule presented an opportunity that worked within Gavin and Laura's time in the country. For a while there, things weren't looking too promising. Also, I am especially grateful that Landon's boss hooked us up big time with free accommodations in his family's beach house for the weekend (hooray!). Will be posting soon with some awesome pics of the kiddos at the beach (where Rissa has decided she will be catching a fish -- Me: "Rissa, we're going to the beach today!" Rissa: "The beach?! I'm gonna catch a FISH!").

Verbosity

I have come to realize that concise is not my style. When I started blogging, the idea was that I would write short entries with great regularity (like 3 or 4 times a week). Instead, I have found that I write needlessly long posts like once a week at best. I try to embrace these little quirks in my personality as I become aware of them because I really like liking myself, but I am learning that it is making it difficult for me to post regularly as I have other things to do than sit down and write for an hour every time I post. And here we are again, several sentences in still without getting to the point (GRATITUDE). In an effort to be less verbose and more concise, I am going to try for 10 sentence maximums in my posts, and post at least twice a week. Here we go (the previous sentences don't count, OKAY?):

I am thankful for the time I get to spend raising my kids because I get to hear and see the hilarious things they do on a daily basis. For example:

Today, Mason was trying to convince me that his soccer photos would be at the school where his games are. I told him that he was wrong, and reminded him that he doesn't know everything. Then he told me, "But I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING." I told him that no one knows everything, and he replied, "I WILL."

Recently, Marissa has been fully committed to a love affair with her pull-toy frog, who was named "Harvey the cra-cra Frog" by Mason years ago. She wants to take it everywhere she goes, and I have decided that I don't really care if he does go to the store with us so long as she's happy (battle picking is an important thing for parents to learn). So, we ran errands this week with Harvey the cra-cra Frog in tow: to the pharmacy, to the grocery store, everywhere. I was worried people would think it was odd, but mostly everyone seemed to find it adorable. Because it was.