Blog

Over The Fourth of July weekend my brother and his family came to visit.  We always have a great time seeing him, his wife Bekah, and two adorable sons Nick and Chase.  Sunday evening when they were here, my whole family came over to our house.  My parents and two sisters were also there.  Phil’s Dad Craig showed up as well.  We built a fire and had our own “fireside.”  We sang a hymn and then all drew questions from our family journal jar.  Last year I created a family journal jar with tons of questions inside.  The questions cover a wide array of topics such as childhood memories, goals, and favorite things.

Whenever we get together as a family, we answer questions from the journal jar.  It has been a lot of fun learning about each other and sharing so much.  We have enjoyed learning about my dad’s favorite childhood toy, my mom’s biggest bargain, Phil’s most frustrating experience with his car (which happened to be when he purposely got his car stuck in my parents driveway during a snow storm when we were dating and he had to spend the night—he totally embellished the story!), my thoughts on what I believe the key to a successful marriage is, my Brother Brad’s future goals, my sister in law Bekah’s most important friends, My sister Mallory’s views on each family member, and my sister Miranda’s weirdest dream.

After our “fireside” we roasted hot dogs, marshmallows, and made s’mores.  We had a great time and I am so thankful for my wonderful family.

Ella goes to preschool three days a week.  She loves school but doesn’t like getting ready to go.  She is always too distracted by toys, books, tv, her brothers, etc. to get dressed and ready to go.  I am constantly yelling, prodding, and poking at her to get ready so we can leave!  Today, Ella went upstairs to her room without me saying a word, got dressed and did her hair for school.  She quietly walked down the stairs and announced she was ready to go.  Phil happened to be home for lunch and was the first one to see her.  He started to tell her she couldn’t go to school looking like she did.  When I turned around I noticed she had several barrettes of varying colors all throughout her hair.  As silly as she looked I was just glad she got ready for school all on her own.  So, I told Phil she looked just fine and off we went to school.  I know someday she will look back at this picture and say, “Mom, why did you let me leave the house looking like that?”  I know she will say that because I have said that many times to my own mother about my short curly, permed hair from the 80’s and my big pink glasses that I fought her to get!