a girl and her pup

ava and roofus are buddies.

sometimes she asks for roofus to "rest" with her at rest time...i can hear her talking to him through the door and encouraging him to play! 

he has started to seek her out too...i found him waiting in her room for her to come home one day.  she loved it when i told her that!!

a day at the lake

we spent an amazing day with the eaton's on smith mountain lake.

we all had a blast!!

eli wore his goggles the entire day.  i guess he wanted to be extra prepared for all the fun coming up next!

 we even got to see michael show off his skiing skills...

the ride home was happy quiet as we reminisced over our day!

lately

when the weather has cooperated, we've had fun adventures outside this summer.  

hiking....

and witnessing this glorious display are a few examples....

but because of rain and a broken arm, we've also relied on video games for some summer sanity.   it's pretty much family game night every night around here.  eli goes around the dinner table to tally up who will be playing wii sports that evening!!

we've tried to spend most of the sunny days at the pool soaking up the sun!!

holes

in the past, the kids have always needed new clothes each season because they grow so fast that last year's clothes no longer fit.  usually a good sized bag gets handed down to friends.  eli's give-away-bag this year is much lighter because he wore his clothes out or had one too many finger dips in ketchup.

it must be fun to be 4!!

mending

mid-morning, i got a call from ava's teacher that "a friend knocked ava down.  she's pretty hurt.  can you come get her?"  once i got to the school, i knew her arm was in considerable pain.  though she promised she was fine and she just wanted to go home and lay down (doctor's office avoidance), we went straight to urgent care.

in the patient room waiting for the doctor, i finally asked her what happened.  tough girl told me a kid (let's just not name him!) was running around the classroom and ran right at her, pushed her down, then told her she deserved it.  relaying that last part, she started to cry.  very possibly, he was trying to get out of getting into trouble...again, but those words are what stuck, not the actions that came first.  i witnessed a part of her innocence shatter as her eyes welled up with those crocodile tears.

one of my greatest fears upon sending ava to kindergarten last fall was knowing she was going to get hurt, not necessarily physically.  this world has a lot of dark stuff going on, and human nature isn't always kind.  as much as i believe God is taking care of us, i daily practiced the roll of protector (aka: mom)!  handing that over to God was really hard for me.

so when ava told me what happened, all at once:

1. i wanted to punch push the kid back and say cruel words
2. i wanted to erase the hurt i saw in her eyes
3. i wasn't surprised.  i knew at some point, she'd get hurt

i looked down at my brave girl, and told her the truth.  that very sadly, this isn't going to be the last time someone hurts her feelings.  she has two options.  she can get mad and angry or she can forgive him and let it go.  she chose forgiveness.

which means i needed to forgive him too, even though i'd rather have done #1 up there!!

the story continues with a little more drama/anger surrounding her return to school and whether or not she'd be safe around this kid based on very little information.

did i mention she broke her wrist?  the brightest, most colorful cast wiped away ava's tears (and got her lots of attention).

**update**
she got the cast off four weeks later!  there is still a brace for another couple weeks, but now we can play at the pool!!  within two hours of cast-removal, we were splashing with friends.  ava even decided to be an unassisted swimmer, practically swimming laps and performing somersaults by the end of the day!

nyc

for the second time in his life, preston was gifted a trip to see the yankees for his birthday!  in college, i surprised him with tickets, but that was the old stadium.  he needed to see them in the new stadium.

our friend michael is also a big fan so we took the trip with he and his wife, mandy!  since we flew up friday morning and came back saturday evening and had a long list of things we wanted to see and do, we planned almost every minute we were there.

we began with a walk across the brooklyn bridge...

then checked out lady liberty...

then on our way to the 911 memorial we ate lunch from street vendor carts (this was important to the boys).  

at the memorial, we didn't take any pictures because they couldn't capture the essence of the place.  it's quiet, big and shiny beautiful.  they will soon open a museum on the complex and we peaked into the windows.  standing tall, yet battered are two huge beams from the tower wreckage.  seeing those gave me chills.  i just cannot imagine...

we hopped on a train to grand central terminal, where we whispered at the wall...

at the suggestion of a local on the subway, we walked to bryant park for drinks and a short breather.  bryant park was one of my favorites.  a huge beautiful library guards one side.

we made a quick stop to our hotel to freshen up and then jumped back on a train to the game.

at this point, the boys got giddy excited.

they yankees won!

saturday morning, we grabbed starbucks and the best bagel in the history of bagels (toasted sesame with strawberry cream cheese) from...

next was our bike tour of central park (the highlight of the trip for me!).

then we shopped at fao schwartz and ate lunch at carnegie deli (for the meat-lovers).

with full bellies, we grabbed a cab and caught our plane home.

it was a full two days, but so much fun!!!

the kids loved their souvenirs!

monkey

while eli is playing t-ball, ava is hanging from monkey bars or hanging upside down.