We're finally home!

We actually really did make it home...just haven't had time to update on here at all! We got home from Mother's about 7 Sunday night after a great long drive. It was a beautiful drive!!! Everything is so green and once again I marveled at the fact that we are so blessed to live where we live. The hills are shrouded in every shade of bright green. They were all saturated in Bluebonnets to top it all off! Somehow every year I forget and am reminded once again why I love spring so very much. There's just nothing like it in the whole world.








Wed morning I had a prenatal appt. All looks good there. Contractions are starting to kick in once more so I know that we're not that far off. I asked Brad yet again if they always start this early and once again he said that "yes, they always do". I can now feel Baby Gavin pretty much every time he moves now. I feel him roll and stretch instead of just his kicks so I know he's big enough now to finally overcome the anterior placenta in between my nerves and his movements.

After my appt Mother and I took the children....yes, all of them!!.....and went shopping for the rest of the day. They were thrilled to be on the go so everybody did great and it was only towards the end that I could tell the younger 4 had missed their naps. That started our week of being constantly on the go without stopping. On Thurs we went to the FW zoo and they loved it!!!!! We actually covered the entire thing! We got there at 1p, which was perfect since it was right as all of the school field trips were leaving, and stayed until it closed at 5. They all did great. Garrett fell asleep in the stroller for about 30 minutes and that was all he needed for him to stay in a good mood. He's such a good baby. It was such a great outside day too. I failed to actually think about the fact it would inevitably involve more than a little walking so my feet and back were really ready to call it quits by the end of it. Mother bought Garrison and Grant little monkey leashes so that we didn't run the risk of losing them but neither did they have to stay in the stroller all day. I figured that would just suck for them while everybody else got to run and jump and explore it all. And, as I thought, they were lifesavers. And it proved to keep them running all day long. Aubrey has such a wonderfully engraved memory in her head of our little excursion at Wal Mart where she conveniently got left on an isle and then lost that she is more than aware of keeping up with the group every since. So, she wasn't a worry. Both Garrison and Aubrey were so worn out that they fell asleep while we unpacked the picnic stuff from the strollers and loaded them up. By the time I got in and we were ready to head out I looked back there and they were both passed out in their carseats! They had so much fun and were so good I never dreamed they were THAT tired!

Monkey buddies



The boys really did get used to it after the 1st few exciting minutes



The long awaited Kimodo dragon!!!!! What the whole trip was for! If you look close you can see it in the background.....and yes, it's very real!



Looking for the humongous turtle




According to Aubrey's description.....the "stinky" zebras...and she's still referring to them as stinky due to her hyper sensitive nose!









On Fri we went to the FW science museum with Mother, Kelly and Trey. I'm still not too used to the whole camera everywhere thing, though by the # of pics I take you'd think it's attached to me somewhere!!! So, sadly and regretfully we didn't get any pics of the huge exploration of the museum. Grayson and Grant particularly loved it. They have a huge dino dig in which they all got to dig for bones and then we took all of them in to see Dolphins at the Omni and then see the Planetarium show. They all did great and even the 3 little ones sat great through it. I had great concerns about the boys since the only showing for it right now is at 2:50, which is right in the middle of naptime, but they all loved it and sat perfectly. The exhibit part was fun but really small. They're getting ready to shut it down for a 2 yr renovation so it's really really small. But it worked great for us since I could turn Garrison and Grant loose and they were able to run around and do all kinds of stuff like push buttons and levers and just mess around in general with everything and still be in my sight. Grant's such a messin' type of kid. He's the one that takes everything apart to see how it all works....so he loved today! Garrison is the more social one that could care less about the mechanics of anything and just wants to run and be where everybody else is.....and that's pretty much what he did!


Pretty Evye




And, on a humorous side note, so far in the last 3 yrs or so we've had kids stick so much stuff in different orifices that it is quite a standard and normal day to have one of them come up saying they have an issue with something in some body part. Instead of freaking out anymore I have just become quite the expert on digging crap out of body parts. So, today it was Grant with a small pebble in the dino dig. It was placed very carefully and purposefully in his ear by, of course, he himself. He then came on over to let me know what exactly was wrong and that it was quite a bothersome feeling in his ear. So, thankfully we had tweezers on hand and I was able to tweeze it out by about the 3rd try. It was buried so deep that it took several tries. I actually had to finally tilt his head over and bang his head on my leg fairly hard...which he thought was hysterically funny for some unknown reason!!!.....and it loosened it up enough to fall down the tube towards the outside a little and then I was finally able to grab hold and pull it out. So, that was a small time consuming side issue we had to deal with that wasn't really planned for or timed into our equation of the day's events. Why is it that kids are just absolutely taken with sticking stuff inside their bodies???!!!!!

After the museum Kelly and Trey went with us to the park and we had a picnic. Sometimes I take for granted the people that have so entirely blessed our lives. It's easy to fall away but once reunited I remember every reason in the world I ever loved.......or disliked them!!!! LOL!!!


Exhausted Garrett





On Sat we headed over to Dallas and met Scott for lunch. It's sort of funny and odd in a strange sort of way how Dallas can make a person feel. There's just so many people living such a crazy harried life. It seems quite miserable really. It's seems so strange to me how much people value who they are and what they look like. The conversation at the table next to us between a male and female was just outrageous. And due to the fact children are looked at as such a bother in a society so filled with self focused people only brings more awareness to exactly how many we have and what "profession" I have chosen over any other. In some ways it makes me feel even more important and more than anything so much more loved by what we have been blessed with, but in another way it can make one feel infinitely smaller and meaningless in a world of such great aspirations and money.

It's odd and a bit hard, too, feeling so caught in between the 2 worlds. In some ways I feel like I belong there and never left but in another way my heart was never there to begin with. Maybe it's just the familiarity of it all. I can drive FW and Dallas with the best of them and get where I'm going and hold my own in the world of push and shove and hateful mean people and sometimes it feels like I never really ever left the world of constant motion. But as I drive it and experience it all my heart longs for the dirt roads and open expanse of west TX. The drive is so amazing to me seeing how vast a state can be and how it can go from one extreme to so much of the other. It seems a bit off, too, that Scott and I can be as close as we are and I love him as much as I do but we can live such totally opposite lives. It's just such a weird feeling at times. I can dress the part and play the part but my heart was never there to begin with. I saw the moms with daughter about 10 or so and I saw their new SUV's, their huge extravagant houses, their girls' uniforms of Catholic and completely costly, outrageous schools and imagined them running here, there and everywhere in their hurried life. Their husbands sitting behind a desk all day probably fighting off wondering thoughts of other women, their teenage sons out with their fashionable friends, hardly home and hard to control. How sad and how meaningless a life to lead. The moms tied up in their social lives maintaining their precious social status since, afterall, their identity is held fragilly within it. Of course, I'm not naive enough to think all big city lives follow this mold but it seems more often than not that it is the very sad truth that most really do fall somewhere within these perimeters. I love simplicity and I love my children and I love what Brad and I have willingly chosen to do with our lives.

It was incredible to be welcomed back home into the arms of a very loving and eagerly waiting husband. One who thinks I hung the moon and never desires to hold anyone else but me. How a man can think a 30 wk pregnant woman is even remotely attractive is beyond me but through each and every one we only grow stronger and our love for each other only grows to deeper depths. Our appreciation for each other is ever deepening and widening. Instead of dividing us and sending us farther apart our 2 yrs of separation only proved to show us how much we were meant for each other and how very much we love each other. The respect we both feel for the other is entirely mutual. I feel so blessed to be as in love as I am and be as loved as I am. Hopefully he will not want to be with me forever due to marital promises said at the alter many yrs ago but due to how beautiful I have become to him as I strive to be the most incredible thing that he has ever seen, both inside and out. I am so very blessed.


Ready for church on Sunday morning






We forgot a baby in this one! It's a good pic though despite the absent one! The all inclusive one is at the top of the blog!






We finished off our week in FW by going to church with Mother, Thomas and Granny and then cooked out at Mother's before making the drive home.










30.2 wks.. Fully clothed tummy




bare belly..why does it always look so much bigger when clothes are draped over it???!!!!!