FAMILY NIGHT!

My reasons for not blogging for the past week are many. I have been feeling a little sorry for myself as of late. Tim has been out of the country for 19 days now. (He comes home on Thursday!!!!!) I never realized how lucky I have been to be able to talk to him when he travels. The time differenc is huge and he is working when we are up. I have talked to him for a total of 20 minutes since he left. I have just felt so lonely. And on top of that....Ryanne got a concussion last week, my sister went into preterm labor , I had her 3 kids (whom I dearly love) but wanted to be there for her also, was worried about the health of her baby, the little girls were throwing up, my keys and purse got locked in the car at my soccer game, we had a dance competition Saturday, etc......

So I was thinking things couldn't get worse! Yesterday my sister called. She had to go back to labor and delivery to see if they could stop her contractions. I jumped in the car to go be with her. I was stopped at a light-talking to a friend-trying to rearrange car pools for that afternoon when I got rear ended. Yes, this is a true story.

Anyway, That little accident was kind of a wake up call. I realized that things could be FAR worse. I am really lucky! Lucky to have happy healthy kids, lucky that Tim has a job, lucky that I am healthy, that my sister is close and I can help her, lucky to have a sweet neighbor who came up to me in church and simply said, "I will take care of you," lucky-lucky-lucky....

Now on to family night. We have the cutest girl on our street. Her name is Shelby. She babysits for me a lot when Tim is gone because Emmie thinks that Shelby is her best friend. I decided that for family night we needed to do something fun as a family. So.... Shelby is taking her driving test to get her liscense today. We made signs and bought tons of candy bars and made a poster for her. The kids had so much fun. That was the first time in a long time that everyone enjoyed the activity. Even the older kids had ideas. We were trying to make a poem and put candy in the place of some of the words. Emmie wanted to find a rock and write, "Shelby-you rock!" Jaxson decided that Shelby was a "hot tamale". Ryanne wanted to ask if Shelby could drive us to Hawaii now. (Next family night will be a geography lesson!) Hanna and Jaxson wanted to order balloons to put on the sign. We couldn't look like amateurs. Morgan decided she would ring the doorbell and run after putting the sign in Shelby's yard! When we got home Emmie was sad because she wanted to go play with Shelby. Thanks Shelby for giving us a reason to plan something fun. We love you. We hope you did good on your test!