Month: June 2016

I dropped off Ethan at church Monday morning and sent him on his way to a middle school event at Johnson University near Knoxville. He’ll be back Friday afternoon. I don’t think he’s ever been away from us without family for this long. It felt strange driving away. Isaac and Audrey both were crying a little. I love that they love their brother so much!

I have not heard from him since he has no phone and it didn’t dawn on me to even give him one. This is a strange world we’re in 🙂 I never called home when I was away on trips with church. I guess my parents figured no news was good news. These days, kids have phones and tablets to call or text. Ethan has a tablet, but I told him to leave it home because I didn’t want him to lose it. I have seen a few glimpses of him in photos and videos the youth pastor has posted. It looks like the kids are having fun. I expect he’ll be full of stories when we see him.

We had an emotional day with having therapy on Monday afternoon for Audrey. It was pretty hard for her and she talked about some difficult things. I feel like I’m a crisis counselor most days. I’m still trying to figure out what is the best thing I can do to help her without reinforcing the OCD issues and becoming part of routines that need to be broken up.

I got an ocular migraine yesterday. That’s a really strange experience. It happened to me one time before so I knew what was happening this time. It hits pretty quickly and, all of a sudden, I just can’t focus when reading and then my face/eye start to hurt for a while. A headache in my eye.

How about I wrap this up with a photo from Ethan’s trip? (Ethan is in the bottom right picture and only has half of his face out of the shadow!)

 

 

 

The kids had a week full of VBS and fun last week. They had a so much fun and I’m glad I signed them up even though it wasn’t with our own church. It was so miserably hot, it was great to have alternatives to fall back on.

On Saturday, we went to a birthday party for a friend. They rented a big, inflatable water slide.

We were worn out after a day outside in the hot sun, but the slide was so fun! I even went down it before we left (several times). Nathan has a video of it somewhere 🙂

 

We have no big plans for this week. I have a lot of laundry that needs to be folded and there are chores that are calling to me. Right now, I’m doing my best to ignore their calls 🙂

 

June is almost half over and I have not posted here since Mother’s Day. Yikes!

In the meantime, we made a trip to MN for our annual Henning Family Reunion. We had a lot of fun. The kids look forward to this so much. It’s so funny to me because they only see my cousin’s children once a year, but they love spending time with them and pick up like no time has passed.

This time we chose to bring Max along on our trip. It made our drive a little more tricky, but worked out alright. For the two nights we were at the reunion location, he stayed in a kennel. The rest of the time, he was at Dad &  Joyce’s with us. I even bought a belly band for dogs to keep him from being able to mark anything in their house. It worked really well.

I turned 40! I have mixed feelings on it. Isn’t 40 sort of old? We spent the day of my birthday at Valley Fair. It wasn’t intentionally planned as a way to mark my birthday. It just ended up being the best weather day of the week to go. We had so much fun. No crazy rides. The wildest ride I did was the old 40-year-old roller coaster with my dad 🙂

Last Monday night, I celebrated my birthday with a group of my friends. I felt so loved. My friend, Miranda, decided she wanted to do a party for me and took care of all the details. It was perfect.

Nathan worked a ton of hours last week. Even though he took a half day of vacation last Monday, he ended up working 56 hours (give or take) last week. The project they have been working on is mostly done.

Yesterday, after church, Audrey and I spent the afternoon together. We get a pedicure! Audrey chose pink and I chose blue.

We’ve been spending time at the local pool 🙂

And just for fun, here is last year’s first day at the pool picture:

 

 

And the previous year:

Look at that baby face on Isaac. Crazy how fast they grow!