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to the mountain
This is calling my name. This mountain gives me strength and right now I need that strength. My foot is broken. My hip is ever so slowly healing. My ability to endure is sometimes not as strong as I wish it were.
And so I go. I go to the mountain that whispers strength to me and delivers God’s courage to my soul.
Hasta la vista.
josh burton, a hero in every way
After the miracles of Sunday our hearts were full of joy. Yesterday we received more good news that Elder Burton had excellent color and was doing well, speaking to the hospital staff, being his funny self, and had kept the ability to feel and move his legs. Heather took off for Guatemala with joy in her heart that she would see Josh soon. So when my mama called me earlier and told me that Josh had passed away, I could not believe it. I questioned her and told her she must have read about Josh Burton, the race car driver, not my Josh Burton. But she was right and dear Josh has indeed died today after having several heart attacks.
I am heartbroken and full of tears. I can’t sleep. I am so, so sad for Heather and Allan and their other eight children. Their son Denny is on a mission in The Netherlands. Their son Christian is supposed to enter the MTC, tomorrow, July 24. Their whole family is a tight-knit ball of laughter, bravery, love, and dedication to truth, good government, and living one’s dreams. They inspire me on a continual basis.
Josh desired to change the world through his music. He composes his own piano pieces, practices them till they are just how he envisions, and then performs for anyone and everyone he meets. He knows the power that music can have on a person’s heart because it has opened his heart so much.
I remember hearing Josh speak to a room full of youth at a homeschool conference once. He had them in the palm of his hands. They responded to his message of reaching for your dreams, doing the hard work to get there, and treating others as children of God. I remember seeing him speak to each person who came up to him as though they were the most important person in the world. I remember his smile…his beautiful, beautiful smile full of zest for life and passion for soul-filling music. I remember…and I pray I will never forget how he laughed loudly, spoke boldly, and gave his whole heart to whatever he was doing. He is my kind of guy.
All the Burton children…yes, Heather and Allan have nine beautiful children and now, one grandbaby, Peter, from their oldest son Rob and his wife Naomi.
Rob and Naomi’s wedding
Josh on the left as Gepetto in one of his many summer plays in Cardston.
In Guatemala
Singing his heart out, Josh-style, in Guatemala
Teaching piano lessons to anyone willing to learn
Heather made sure Josh had every supplement, vitamin, herb, first-aid tool, and medical apparatus he could possibly need while he was so far from home. Josh, in signature style, pokes fun at her care. Unfortunately, no amount of vitamins could protect Josh from the roll-over accident that took his life.
My heart is with the Burton’s today and will be for some time. This family has taught me what a family can and should be. They have taught me the power of laughter, of treating people with dignity, of having courage to fight for laws, policies, and a culture of common sense and goodness, of living one’s dreams boldly, and of dedicating one’s life to family AND the betterment of the world. They are my heroes and I love them more each time I speak with them. Heather, please know you are being prayed for in our home and thousands of other homes across the world. Josh’s legacy will be treasured always and his impact on the world for good is not finished.
the hungry fox
Fisher has been raising fourteen baby chicks since the end of March and has done so, so well. This little boy has gotten up all by himself and fed and watered and loved on his chicks every day. He has mucked out the coop and filled it with clean hay. He has done all of it without reminders. He comes into my room around 7:00 a.m. and gives me a report on how his chickens are doing. It is so cute. The first week of July they started laying and one day when Scott was here he got 12 eggs. Talk about exciting! The older chickens he has hardly lay at all and he has done a gob of work without many rewards from them. He has completely proven himself to be a responsible chicken owner.
Now tragedy has struck. While I was gone on my trip, we had a little red visitor at our house who dug and slithered and snuck his way into the chicken coop and killed almost all of Fisher’s chickens.
Oh my. The tears that were shed upon our return home could have filled a pond. When this little guy cries, it is whole-soul-sobbing. He loves his bugs and animals so much that it breaks his heart when they die. Having almost all of his flock decimated about did him in. Richard and Fisher talked and talked and talked and snuggled and snuggled and searched for the fox and many tears later Fisher came in the house to talk to me about it.
“Mom, that fox has never been so desperate before. I am thinking he has a wife and a family of children that he needs to take care of. That is why he is so desperate. Tomorrow I am going to spend the whole day guarding my chickens. I don’t think he will be brave enough to come get them if I am there. He was only brave enough because I was gone.”
Words of wisdom in that boy.
The next day we found nine one-year old hens for $20 (a smoking deal!) and brought them home. His heart is healing as he loves on them. I can never decide how I feel about these life lessons. They are so painful to go through, but I hope they will make him a better man.
Yesterday he even got four eggs!
god of miracles
I believe in a God of miracles. This is one of the deepest beliefs I hold. I have said it to countless doctors who say I can’t be healed. I remember after the car accident seeing an OB for a two-hour pelvic exam and being told all my uterine ligaments were torn and that I needed to have a hysterectomy because I could not bear another child. I looked him right in the eye and said “You may be right, but I believe in a God of miracles and I will not take the opportunity of healing away from God by removing my uterus. He can heal me enough to have another baby and I am going to pray in faith for that to happen.” He argued with me and said faith is one thing, but science is another and in this situation I needed to listen to science. I responded “You may be right. These ligaments may never heal. I may never give birth to another child, but I WILL NOT take the opportunity for a miracle away from God.”
Well, God DID work a miracle and we have our precious Annesley Aliyah. Yes, my pelvis is a big ball of problems and yes, my ligaments are really, really messed up, and yes, I have been living with a labral tear in my right hip socket for eighteen long months…but we have Annesley and really, that is what is important. That is what matters. She is a shining example of God’s miracles.
Today my dear friend, Heather, has been poured out a blessing from the God of miracles. Do you remember when I shared her son’s music video. Go watch it again and fall in love with Josh. He is a remarkable young man.
Yesterday Josh, Elder Burton right now, was in an accident in Guatemala. The truck he was riding in on the way to a service project rolled and he was critically injured, breaking his back in multiple places, losing all sensation in his legs, and many other injuries. People around the world started praying and fasting for Elder Burton immediately. My girls are fasting for him today and our family continues to kneel in prayer for him, his medical team, and his family. Last night he had surgery on his back and I’m sure thousands of prayers were poured out on his behalf throughout the surgery. This morning Elder Burton has been given a miracle. Here is the post from his mama, Heather.
NEWS!
Josh underwent delicate surgery last night to shore up his very broken back. The surgery was successful; he has eight pins in his spinal column to hold things together while he heals and while the swelling and deep bruising subside.
Our first call today was from Josh’s kind and deeply concerned mission president, President Curtis. He carefully broke the news the surgeon had given after the surgery last night. We were devastated. For about 30 minutes this morning, we were wrestling with what to tell people – the bald facts being that Josh has a 1 – 3% chance of walking again…that his recovery will take up to a year and a half…that he can’t be moved for two weeks at least. It was surreal. All we could do was sit in stunned thought…Josh’s love of the outdoors, his joie de vivre, his aspirations with music – wondering how anyone could tell him it might all be different now. We wondered about saying that, despite those odds, all of those dear missionaries and leaders in Guatemala and in the Church, are in deep, thoughtful fasting for our son’s recovery, in addition to the prayers, thoughts and hopes here and around the world. That we were still holding hope for a miracle.
Then Dr. Cameron called us. He is the medical liaison for the LDS Church, our link to the medical professionals in Guatemala. He had just attended the post-op medical examination of Josh after the surgery. He was crying. JOSH CAN LIFT AND BEND AND MOVE HIS LEGS. He said he has never seen anything like this in his 38 years of practise. (He has seen miraculous healing, he mentioned, but not neurological, and not to this extent so soon after a devastating accident.) The surgeon couldn’t believe it. He just kept shaking and shaking Josh’s hand, congratulating him. We are all SO, SO, SO GRATEFUL.
Thank you, dear Father in Heaven. Thank you for this gift for Josh. Thank you to everyone for loving care, thoughts, prayers, faith and fasting. We are just so overcome with gratitude.
We are SO GRATEFUL. There are no words for this. But there are tears and dances in the kitchen!
Hallelujah! I know God is a God of miracles. I know He works miracles in the lives of His children every day. I am so, so grateful for this miracle. Because of experiences like this, I know, absolutely know God can heal me. Because I know He can and is not healing me in a quick, overnight sort of way, I know He is choosing to let me have a different experience. I know this experience of pain and dependency and slowness and frustration is for my good and is what I need at this time. My constant prayer is one of trust…please, please help me trust you, please help me continue to love you when the miracle is not fast, please teach me and comfort me and help me get through the pain.
And He does.
Because He is a God of miracles, a God of love, a God of compassion.
girl’s retreat
I am back from ten days away from home and swimming in laundry up to my eyeballs! I got home late last night with Fisher and Annes and then Kez and Blythe arrived home from Girls’ Camp this afternoon. After an early morning physical therapy appointment, I hurried home to start on the piles of laundry and have been sorting through Annesley’s too-small clothes (somehow she has grown some more!) and am hoping to empty my closet of clothing that no longer speaks to my soul. It is one of those days…those work-in-the-house days that I don’t really enjoy, but have to be tackled nonetheless.
Before I bore you to death with anymore laundry and clothing posts…I mean, they bore me to death and I own the stuff, I can’t imagine how painfully boring it is to read about someone else’s clothing issues…here are some pics from our Girls’ Retreat in beautiful Park City. The whole point of this retreat was to fill Tami up with enough love from her stateside friends to get her through the next eight months she has left in Australia. I hope we accomplished that goal! I can’t even imagine how much love I would need to fill my bucket if I was going to be gone from my friends for an extended period of time.
Katherine was our gourmet chef for the week. She brought baskets and boxes and coolers of food and with her magic kitchen skills whipped up three delicious meals for us each day of the week. She is so gifted in the kitchen she was even able to accomodate some new food restrictions Jennifer and I are implementing, but that she had no idea about till the day of (neither did we – we had appointments with Tami’s dad, my favorite chiropractor and he asked us both to stop eating all grains, sugars, starches, and legumes for a few weeks). We had delicious green salads, dips, swiss chard (a first for me, but boy, howdy was it delicious!), kale, yogurt cups she somehow made delicious without any sweeteners, and many, many other delicious entries that made my whole week scrumptious.
More yummy food along with a Heather and Kat squeeze.
I love this picture of Kat…so much joy in that girl! She was in the middle of preparing another delicious meal while I was snapping pictures from my horizontal chair and she wouldn’t stop chopping to pose for us. Finally I made Boo and Jen jump up next to her and she looked up in surprise at just the right moment.
We went to IKEA where I almost passed out, but was already in a wheelchair, so it was all good. I was able to find Blythe some turquoise boxes for her Expedit shelves and some handy-dandy travel bottles for all the children’s shampoos and soaps. I walked rode out of there having spent only $17! That may be an IKEA record!
Tami, Boo, Jen, and Mikelle rented some paddleboards and had races all over the teensy-tiny lake that was across from our condo. You know I would have been right there with them if my hip hadn’t freaked out on Saturday (well, okay, if I could rewind my life 18 months and not have a hip injury or a broken foot, I would have been on those boards!). Instead I stayed in bed and watched Oaklyn so her mama could go play in the water.
Heather, one of Tami’s friends from Colorado, is turning 40 this weekend, so we celebrated it early with Kat’s delicious chocolate cups (which Jen and I couldn’t eat, but Kat made us a substitute dessert that helped us not feel completely left out of the fun), massages, a movie, and eyebrow waxing by the super-talented Mikelle.
The massage table – it was heavenly for everyone else, but it seems my ligaments are too loose for massage now. I ended up with several vertebrae shifted out of place and my whole rib cage torqued, so I guess this was my last massage night until some brilliant scientist invents a ligament-fixer-upper!
Heather loved on Oaklyn all week long. She is the most thoughtful person I have ever met. Over and over and OVER she did nice things for all of us ladies. I could learn a few lessons from her.
Kris, another of Tami’s good friends from Colorado, brought her Turbo Fire DVD’s and did a workout with everyone in the mornings (again, not me, I stayed in bed and snoozed every single day…if I can’t join the fun, I might as well catch up on my ZZZ’s, right?). She has nine children and looks like she is still 22. Here she is holding Oaklyn.
Jen, who always looks adorable in pictures, decided to take her posing skills to the next level and have people hold her up in all sorts of whacky positions.
Finally she decided to rocket-launch herself into the air and lucky for her, I caught a picture of it!
We decided Jen should pick up Tami as well, but Tami was scared petite Jen would drop her, so she couldn’t make herself lift up both legs.
Attempting, but still too scared.
Mikelle taught Boo, who often sports a ponytail, how to curl her hair into ringlets and it turned out fabulouso.
Mikelle spent lots of her time cutting and coloring hair. She is a superstar hair dresser and maybe when she is out of the little children stage of life she will make gazillions of dollars helping people look their best.
I am not photogenic at all…I turn into a blob of mush when a camera is pointed in my direction, but I tried super hard to get a picture with Tami…it took about twenty tries, but we finally ended up with one that I can live with – I still don’t like it, but it will have to do.
Here is one of the laughter-on-the-way-to-mush pics.
I had the hardest time getting a good pic of these three. None of them would look at me and smile at the same time.
This one CRACKS me up. Tami was posed for so long because Boo wouldn’t look at the camera…she was messing around trying to get Jen to laugh and break her perfect pose…that her smile had become a little stale. I hollered at her to smile for real and show some life and this is what I got…that is some life!
We went and had pedicures done and now my calloused Hobbit feet look amazing. The jets in the foot bath about killed my sore foot, but it was worth it to have pretty toes. This picture however is awful. I can’t lean forward because of my hip injury and Boo couldn’t see me in the picture so she kept saying “Lean forward, Trac! More, more!” Finally, I strained my neck as far as I could and she snapped a pic…and now I am immortalized as the woman with the twelve-inch-giraffe-neck. Oh my goodness, it is awful.
We had so, so much fun. It was wonderful to spend three days with my sister and little Oaklyn. Tami, who was more like a sister than a cousin when we were growing up, is buried so deep in my heart that I can’t imagine life without her, is going back to Australia now. I am so grateful I was able to be with her without any distractions and see her face full of happiness for a few short days. I loved meeting Kris and Heather. They are exemplary women and I learned much about living with trials and hardship from them. They both inspired me to live and love more fully. Boo is full of fun and depth and music and can-do attitude. Her friendship has been such a gift to Tami and I am so glad they have each other as besties. Jen and Kat light up my world. The Idaho contingent at the retreat was missing Jessica, but it was still so fun for the three of us to hangout together.
Somehow we never got a picture of all of us together! What were we thinking?!?
Now it is back to reality…laundry, children, unpacking and packing for the next adventure, finalizing my class plans for iFamily this fall, dejunking my bedroom, working on the yard, finding the fox that is eating Fisher’s chickens, loving on the kittens, planning out our homeschool adventure for the coming year, getting gymnastics classes organized, healing my foot, and figuring out what to eat now that Kat isn’t cooking for me three times a day.
the sounds from upstairs
I am on a Girls’ Retreat with my cousin Tami and her favorite friends. It is her big send-off before she flies back to Australia for the next eight months and our goal is to fill her up with all the love in the world so she can have a giant well of love to draw on until she comes back to us. We are having a great time laughing, eating Kat’s delicious food, playing games, and having deep conversations.
I am lying here in bed, snuggled up with Miss Oaklyn, listening to my friends workout to Turbo Fire on the floor above me. They have been working their abs, arms, glutes, and lungs for what seems like forever this morning. And I am happy for them. I am happy they have the determination to be strong and healthy and they bodies that will let them do it.
Totally happy.
But I miss that life. I miss being capable and strong. Shoot, I miss being ABLE, not even capable or strong, just ABLE to move my body where I want it to go when I want it to go there. I miss being able to do what I want to do. I miss knowing I can count on my body for anything – that I can climb a mountain, run a race (and usually win!), ride my bike for hours, lift a dresser, or do a back flip. I WANT MY LIFE BACK.
I really, really, really want my body back.
But, even more than that, I want the life God wants for me. And right now, He has given me this opportunity to learn and grow and teach. He keeps sending me messages of peace. He keeps telling me this suffering has a great purpose. He keeps blessing me with beautiful, soul-sustaining experiences.
I love God. I know, absolutely know, He loves me. Now I need to turn my heart over to His plan for me. It is harder than I ever imagined. But I am so grateful I can listen to His voice from the heavens – right now it is the only thing getting me through.
the shakes came back
I have spent the past four days at LEMI training getting instruction on teaching two different Scholar Phase classes at iFamily this fall. It was an incredible experience and my brain is chock-full of information and ideas to make my class an amazing learning adventure for my students.
The four ladies I attended with took excellent care of me. Jen hauled my enormous zero-gravity chair everywhere it needed to go and got me set up in it every morning. She moved my table so I could get out of the chair every time I needed to go potty or get some food. Heather wrapped my sore foot up every morning, Emily drove us all over the place, and the other Jen checked on me often and gave me lots of encouragement. They all laughed with me, shared stories, and were delightful to be with.
AND I MADE IT THROUGH! With all that help I made it through!
That is until the last ten minutes of training. All 150(ish) of the students at the classes were together for the last two hours of training, but there wasn’t room for my special chair so I stood in the back of the room. Eventually, my sore foot couldn’t take any more weight on it and I quickly shifted off of it and torqued my hip. Immediately my femoral nerve sent a zing of lightening down my leg and my heart rate shot up to 140, then the shaking started. I made it out to a table and lay down on it, then tried to call out to someone to help me, but I was so weak by that point that no one could hear me. By this point I was scared to death because I couldn’t move and I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t get my heart rate to slow down.
Eventually, class was over and people started coming out to the hallway where they found me on the table shaking. A whole slew of people came to my rescue. Ice packs, pillows, hand-holding, and charley-horse massaging were given to me immediately. A complete stranger started zoning my right foot, someone else called Richard, and a third person started doing energy work on my head. Soon two men came to give me a blessing and delivered a precious, confirming message from my Heavenly Father about the purpose of this injury. I want to remember those words and that feeling forever…I wish I could pack it up in a bottle and let it out whenever I need it.
After a while I felt well enough to try standing up. When that went well, we decided I could walk out to the car. I did really well until we got to the elevator. Something about the drop freaked my body out and I passed out on the way down. Something akin to complete chaos must have ensued because when I returned to consciousness I could hear lots of loud voices swirling around me and feel my body being lifted out of the elevator by lots of lots of hands. They must have moved me to the lobby of the college and then worked on me some more to get everything settled back down. I was in and out of lucidity and every time I was in lucidity I could hear what seemed like a hundred voices shouting directions and trying to fix me (I think there were only about ten or fifteen people with me, it just felt like one hundred). It was a tad crazy. Eventually my body systems calmed down again and I felt strong enough to walk to my car, but no one would let me. I could hear them debating all sorts of various plans and the one they settled on was my riding out to the car on a rolling office chair with two men pushing me. Because of the hip injury I could only kneel on the chair while leaning on the back rest. I am SURE I looked like an absolute nut case coming out of the college and traveling down 400 South in Salt Lake City on a rolling office chair. I made it about forty feet before I felt the all-too familiar sensation take over my heart again and collapsed into the arms of Emily, Jeff, and hmmm, I actually don’t know who else, I was unconscious by that point.
I don’t really know what happened after that, but somehow they got me into the car. When I regained consciousness this time, I realized I had to use the bathroom immediately. Of course no one could fathom letting me try walking again, so instead my dear friends drove me to the grocery store, bought a plastic tote turned bedpan, and helped me pee while I lay in the passenger seat of the car.
Oh my good heck. How embarrassing is that! I mean really, can a girl not have even a tidbit of dignity?
About two hours later I was good as new (ha-ha, my good as new isn’t that hot, now is it?) and could talk and use my arms and laugh and even walk very, very, very slowly if someone was holding me up. My friends delivered me to Tami, who took care of me all night long, and now I am doing quite well again.
I am so, so grateful to God. He loves me. He knows me. He sent people to take care of me. He sent me messages of peace that I needed. He has a purpose for all of this suffering and I must learn to trust Him and His plan for my life. It doesn’t look like I am going to have anything close to the life I thought I would have, but His purposes are pretty amazing and I am so, so grateful to be able to take part in them.
I am also so grateful to all the people who helped me yesterday. I don’t have any idea who most of them were or what they did, but they were God’s hands for several hours and I love them for it. I am grateful to have had four dear friends with me to take care of me and fill me up with their love.
It is really, really hard to be so dependent on others. It is really, really hard to not have control of my body. It is really, really hard to be a spectacle and have all sorts of strangers see my body do all sorts of bizarre things. It is all so hard.
But I am willing. If this suffering is what God wants for me, then I am willing.
God, here am I, send me.
prayers
Prayers, prayers, prayers – they really are my lifeblood. In the past seven days I have been told of two different families that are praying for me every single day and have been for quite some time.
I was shocked when our adorable elderly neighbor stood up in church and talked about how much she loves me and prays for me every single day. I was touched deep down to my little toes to hear this good woman pour out her heart in love for me and my precious children.
Then this morning after a pretty rough night…more on that later…Tami told me her Uncle Jim and Aunt Bev, who I have always loved to pieces, pray for me every single day.
Every. Single. Day.
That is some dedication. When I think about these four people praying for me and the healing of my hip every single day my heart is filled to bursting. I can’t even think about it without crying. Knowing they are praying for me strengthens my own prayers. Sometimes I feel like giving up. Sometimes I feel like I can’t talk to God about this one more time. Sometimes I don’t even mention it and talk to Him instead about others who surely need His comfort even more than I do. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the whole thing…the acute injury, the long-term damage that has been done by the car accident and the last (almost) eighteen months with a labral tear, the connective tissue disorder with its accompanying faulty collagen, the pain, the seizures, the passing out, the calling from God, the blessings he has showered down on me, the financial costs of the whole thing, the stress on our family life, the majesty of my husband’s tender care, the never-ending questions from concerned people asking how I am, my children growing up with a debilitated mother, the rhythms and routines of my home falling apart, the EVERYTHING.
But knowing these four people are praying for me has changed something in me. It is filling me with courage and hope. If they can pray for me every day, surely I can pray for me every day. Surely I can continue to petition The Lord for comfort and company and peace and healing.
Thank you to all the praying people of the world. Thank you for giving me some of your heart.
whoosh – the summer is flying by
Full days, oh, so full. The past twelve days have been chock-full of excitement and due to a missing camera, then a found camera and dead camera batteries, I have almost zero pictures to document them.
Ugggh. I hate when I do that.
My brother and his daughter, Scott and Andie, came to visit for five days of swimming, kayaking, fireworks, a patriotic celebration that Annes, Fisher, Blythe, and Andie sang in, movie in an empty theater, splash park, warm watermelon, lots of big girl giggling, and kitten attacks. Andie ran a 5K and won first place – she is a dedicated and speedy runner. We had a wonderful visit and I am grateful they were willing to make the eight hour drive to come spend some time with us. Blythe and Andie were born just two days apart and have been best buds ever since. They left on Tuesday and I worked on the iFamily website non-stop till Independence Day.
Then my mom came to visit on the 4th for four days of fireworks, small town parade full of tractors and horses, a wonderful movie (I loved Epic!), a temple trip, shopping for Blythe’s birthday, and making dozens of lemon crinkle cookies and lemon brownies with Fisher and Annes. She also put her superhero cape on and put a dent in my piles of laundry.
I think these cookie photos are the only ones I snapped all Independence weekend!
In the midst of all of this fun, I made a big error in judgment. I decided to stand on a tall barstool in my bathroom to clean the upper walls and ceilings. As I was leaned far over to the left to get just one more spot spic and span, the stool tipped to the right and I came crashing down in a splayed out, Russian dancer position. My left foot took the brunt of the force which is a huge blessing because of the shambles my pelvis is already in. Even with the foot taking so much of the force, my pubic symphysis is nearly completely separated and the inguinal ligament is inflamed. My left foot isn’t doing so hot – sometimes it feels absolutely and completely broken and sometimes it just feels sore. Driving is the worst. The vibrations of the engine through the floor make my foot shriek at me in pain. I can walk on it which makes me think it is not broken, but who knows, it very well could be. I am treating it with BF&C, wintergreen oil, arnica, and wrapping it up nice and tight every day.
Saturday night a group of friends and my mama went to the temple with me to complete more sealing ordinances for my family. We did 113 parents and children and six couples. It was a lovely night in the temple even though I was hobbling around.
Every spare minute I have had in the past few weeks has been spent on getting the iFamily website ready for registration for the upcoming fall semester. I am thrilled to announce it is finally done! Last night around midnight I hit publish and then immediately fell asleep. I know there will be some little things to fix, but it feels so good to have the bulk of it done!
Tomorrow I am off to LEMI training and then a girls’ retreat with Tami and friends. Ten days till I see my home or hubby again. I better get packing!
fun in the sun
We love going to the lake. My kids are swim-aholics. They could swim for 12 hours straight if I let them (and sometimes I do!). We spend a lot of our summer afternoons paddling around in our kayaks.
The flotilla.
Making sand angels…yes, it takes days for the sand to come out of her hair.
Crazy poses – she is such a silly girlie.
I didn’t catch any pictures of Fisher. He spent the whole day kayaking and my camera died before I was able to track him down.
Fun in the sun is so good for my soul.