I'm Back!!

My goodeness...has it seriously been over a month since I last blogged?!? I have missed this so much...funny that I miss it when I feel like I'm not that good at it. Apparently it's more therapeutic for me than I knew. ;) But since it's been over a month, I have quite a few things to blog about to catch up on...so bare with me. (That word "bare" is bothering me but "bear" doesn't look that great either!...is it bothering you too??) And some of the reason why I haven't blogged in so long is because someone moved our USB that I need to download pictures. Forget that, I'm just going to come back and fill them in later!! Don't know why I didn't think of that before! ;)
Praise God, we all made it through the month of June!! I pray that we never have to be separated like that again!! I know, there are couples that have to spend time apart all of the time for whatever reason. But Jeff and I aren't good at that.
Jeff returned on Friday, June 26, and had the next week off completely. That was SO nice. Especially since we swapped houses with his parents that week....in the 100 degree weather!! Poor Jeff. Yes, you read correctly...we SWAPPED houses with my in-laws. For those of you that don't know already, they decided to move to Many, La, which is pretty much where they are from. But to keep from paying the state income tax in Louisiana, he has to have a house here that he pays property taxes on. Initially, they planned on getting an apartment. However, when they started looking they realized 2 things: #1 They are wasting their money with paying rent #2 Our mortgage was the same, if not less, than most of the apartments they were looking at. They needed us to stay in their house after they moved for a little while anyways to see if the market got better in a few months so they wouldn't lose money with the sale. So we got to double in size while they halved in size over here. The house in Many is quite large. We still aren't at 100% but we're at 90%. It's been nice. Pretty confusing for my Kendall but she's got it now. :) The houses are only 0.4 miles apart so that helped. But moving into a house that is not empty is quite the challenge....one room at a time.
While we were moving I had an exchange with Kendall that I wanted to blog about so bad. I'm so thankful that the Lord let me remember it! ;) So the girls and I were driving over to our old house for something. I turned on the street to enter the neighborhood and yelled, "HOLY COW!!"
K: What hattened Mommy?
Me: Oh nothing honey, that truck just scared me...a truck gunned behind me after I turned and it was really loud and about gave me a heart attack
K: Oh! No, no cow!!
Oh, I just love kids and what they say. I cracked up! I just said, that's right and kept going. I mean really, was there any reason to argue with her that there wasn't a cow??
It was so great to get to go back to our church finally. I can't remember the last time I missed going to church for an entire month!! I don't think I ever have since I was in the hospital with cancer as a child....so i can't say I haven't ever missed that much before. Don't get me wrong, we went to mass with his family while in Many. But you know that it's not the same when you go to another church than yours...especially one that worships quite different. So we were so glad to be back. Fortunately, I'm friends with many of the people that we see up there and got to fill them in on why we weren't there at all.
Here's Avery's little tidbit. Here was a conversation we had on the phone yesterday.
A: Mommy, can I give my horse to Melanie?
M: The stuffed one? (that she actually likes...she isn't a big stuffed animal person even though she has so many of them)
A: Yes ma'am
M: Well of course, you can. It's yours to either give away or keep. That's so very sweet of you to give it to Melanie.
A: Thank you, Mommy!!
My sweet, Avery. She is SO giving!! I will say that she's gotten that honestly from both sides. For those of you that don't know them well, my in-laws are the most giving people that I know. They give almost to a fault! I have learned so much from them. Then there's my sister who is the same way. I don't care how little or how much she has, she will give it to anyone in a heartbeat. She has always been that way....even when we were kids. It just tugged at my heart to have that conversation with her. That isn't the first thing she's given away, but that exchange was so precious to me.
Avery has a big shiner on her right cheek now. Last weekend Leah and Brenden took her to Hawaiian Falls in The Colony. That's a water park that is pretty big and is owned by Christians. This was her first experience at a water park. So she was pumped. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that she started swimming in 2 hours. She went from not knowing how (she knew the basics from lessons last year but had never swam outside of them) to swimming, jumping in and going down a big slide in about 2 hours time!!! Leah was meeting my brother, Robby, and his family over there and begged to take her too. We let her know that she would be in so much trouble if she didn't stay right by everyone in the pools over there. There have been so many drownings in DFW already. She did great. But you guys know my children. We have dramas occur to us quite often. So when Leah called on the way home saying that she bumped her cheek I was thrilled that was all. Jeff was a little upset like he always is when anything happens to one of his girls...whether he's there or not. But I reminded him that her coming home with a shiner was much better than a broken bone or going unconscious from partly drowning. ;) I'll post the pic later.
This is going to be a big weekend for me though. I'm leaving, and brining my mom, for Shreveport tonight. I've had a reunion with my sorority sisters from Louisiana planned for Saturday for a few months now. I'm SO excited!! There's going to be over 30 of us there...if everyone that said they were coming shows up. You know how that goes. ;) But facebook has connected me with so many people that I haven't seen in years. This is one of the products because of that. We're all meeting at Superior...which is like Joe T Garcia's over here in FW. I'm going to see my cousin that I haven't seen in over 9 years too. I will post the pics when I get back. I'm going to bite the bullet and buy another cable...no telling how long it will take for me to find!
So this weekend is going to be a big weekend.