Another busy weekend

Well, we are about halfway through our marathon of busy weekends! We have a few more to go! I’ll be ready for a weekend with nothing planned where we can just be lazy!

Friday night, Ava wanted to read the bedtime story to Reed. He loves to give me the side-eye.

Grant is still such an easy to please baby. He ate saturday morning and then promptly fell asleep for a three hour nap! 

Later that afternoon, he was ready to cheer on the Hogs. Too bad they let him down! 

Sunday morning we got up and left the house by 7:00 to head up to Stephen’s. He had Ainsley baptized Sunday morning and we wanted to be there for them. Precious girl. It was sad listening to their pastor announce Stephen and Leslie as her parents and that Leslie had been gone for two months. It made me cry when he said that and watching Stephen up there all alone.  

Caroline was funny and didn’t want to take pictures with Stephen and Ainsley.  

The last time all the grandkids were together since Grant was born was at Leslie’s funeral and we didn’t get to take a picture of them. Trying to get seven little kids to look – ain’t happening! This is as good as it gets!

We stayed for lunch to celebrate AInsley, and we also celebrated little Caroline’s 2nd birthday with Leslie’s family.

All the kids really had a great time playing together!

Caroline was excited to open her birthday presents. She had fun getting some new toys and getting to open her packages. Almost everything she opened, she asked “Open?” because she wanted to play with it! 

She also loooooooved her birthday cake! After it was set in front of her, she kept eating icing off it. We sang and she went right back to the icing! :)   Singing happy birthday to her was very sad. I just kept thinking of her momma and how it was surreal that she wasn’t there. I posted a picture of Cee on instagram and a couple people mentioned they were happy to see Stephen moving ahead with life even though he probably felt like not. And that’s just it – life is going on and moving on. Without her. And it still hurts. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her or miss her. It’s only been a little over two months but it feels like it’s been an eternity. I was nursing Grant upstairs in Ainsley’s room and there’s a photo in there of Leslie and Ainsley from Mother’s Day when Leslie was in the hospital and it was just so hard sitting there looking at her photo. I could see the toll her illness had taken on her physically and it was just hard to see. I’ve been sad lately thinking of what Ainsley and Caroline are gonig to be missing in life. My sister said it so perfectly when she said  that Caroline doesn’t realize what she doesn’t have in life right now. But my heart aches for the day that she will realize. And Ainsley, too. Wow. Totally didn’t see this going here but it is what it is.

Me and the almost birthday girl! She was saying cheese but no smile was showing! ha!

It was an absolutely beautiful day and the kids had so much fun playing outside together. They were just running and laughing and being carefree. We are going to a cabin at a lake in Missouri in two weeks and they will have a couple days to play together non-stop and we are excited for that!

Our niece, Katie, is an absolutely doll! She’s so sweet and OH so spunky! 

These girlies love Uncle Zach. Caroline has grown to love him and pretends she’s scared of him, but when no one’s looking, she is his buddy! ;) 

Sweet Ainsley bug. This girl doesn’t like to sit still and she is busy, busy, busy!

These sweet cousins are only a couple weeks a part in age and are so cute together. They both like to say no a lot and I have a feeling they will be big time friends as they get older!

It was a hard weekend, but a sweet weekend. It was great to see my siblings and their families since we are all spread out. We still have much to be thankful for, and I think Leslie was there today – we felt her presence. It was nice visiting with her parents, and brother and SIL, and all being there for Stephen and the girls. Those three are very loved and I know that we will see beauty from their sad story. God is good!