September 2015 little things

Dave hasn’t been much of a golfer lately.  But at the beginning of September he headed out with some friends and got a hole in one.  Yep, you heard that right, he took a giant swing (with amazing accuracy and strength I’m sure:) and that ball disappeared heading right to the green.

He and his friends followed it to the green and there he pulled it right out from the hole.

They sent me the video of the whole thing which was pretty awesome.

Pretty great “big thing” to check off on his bucket list.

Dave’s brother Bob and his wife came to town in September.

Which of course means that parties abound with all the in-town family.

Here we are after half left the potluck dinner at our house.

Max took off for college at the end of August so September was filled with lots of notes like this from the girls:

It only lasted five days, but hey, there were two on day 5…

These girls sure miss their brother.

And their mother misses him too.  Sometimes I just ache to have him here at home again.  It took me a while to get to the point where I would even go into his bedroom and every time I gather all the kids my heart aches a little that his giant calm presence isn’t there.

But when I get things like this it makes me calm down:

He loves it so much up there, and is blossoming and learning so much.

At first he was too busy having the time of his life to keep in much contact with home.  It was a whole new world that he was trying to soak in.  So luckily I have friends and even random strangers who forward me things and give me updates.

I already posted this picture, but he and his friends always get the front row for the football games (I guess they take turns manning the camping out spot days ahead), and they are eating up that atmosphere there.

After a couple weeks of minimal contact my friend gave me the advice to set a time to skype each Sunday.

And that advice was golden.  It totally works. Check how excited Max is about it in this picture:)  HA!

On the note thing, he left this one for Lu before he left and she keeps it close. 

And also I found this one that had slipped to the side of his nightstand in the packing hoopla…I guess it was a reminder for him before he went to bed each night to remember the most important things.

Isn’t it funny how little things like that can melt a mother’s heart?  Oh how I hope he will always have that great relationship with Heaven that we have tried to help foster.

Next came the big mission call.

But I already told all about that back HERE.

It was one of my favorite nights.

Within a matter of months Max will be committing two years of his life to teach people about the gospel of Jesus Christ over on the other side of the planet.

…and he’s so excited he can hardly wait.

She was graceful and tiny.

Dang I’m mad I didn’t inherit any of that 😉

Grace and I got cavities….and had a little date to get them filled together.Our mouths were kind of messed up for a while after that!

She’s been loving cheering.

She even got to cheer at the Homecoming varsity game which was pretty exciting.

Lucy has a new pretty awesome Braille teacher.

She’s getting pretty good at her little homework assignments.

Claire is so lucky to have some pretty awesome cousins who live close-by.  She adores hanging out with them.  This one is particularly creative when they get together.  This particular visit they made some pretty delicious smoothies:

…and made all our eggs almost too cute to crack when I got them out to make Jackson Soufflé the next morning.

Claire is getting into sketching lately.  This is one she drew up of her favorite activities:

She and a few friends got creative and caught some little frogs in the close-by canal one day.

Lucy is a good bed-maker.

Lately she’s been making her bed like this:

When I asked why Rapunzel was upside down she explained that Hedwig the owl likes to hang upside down so Rapunzel wanted to join him.

Duh.

Should have known that 🙂

She still has her nose in books…constantly.  Some of her best reading is when I’m doing her hair.  She will read out loud to me and I adore hearing all the expression she puts into what she reads.

Grandparent’s Day comes once a year and since we don’t usually have Grandparents in town I tend to be the “Grandparent” on that day.  I love any excuse to be at the school with these two:

Oh man she cracks me up.

Some friends at the school after lunch:

Loved this humansofny post:

Elle got to go on her “Day Date” for Homecoming.

Such a cute guy that she got to go with.

That is always pretty dang fun, right?

I went out to lunch with these lovely ladies from my church…so many good examples right there…

It was so beautiful.  I need to take my family back.

We found a little “secret” spot to hang out with these good friends after we went to dinner one night…

…more to that story but boy we sure love these guys who have been with us through thick and thin since college days all those years ago.

Claire got to go to the lake with her friend.

Thanks, Holly, for the great pictures!

Elle’s friend sang at the Constitution Fair.

I’m telling you, that girl is going to be mighty famous.  She has an incredible voice.

And speaking of incredible voices, we had our Primary Program at the end of the month (where all the kids 3-12 have parts and sing their hearts out for their parents during the main church meeting). My singing-leader-partner and I showed up accidentally matching and thought that was pretty funny.
The kids sang spectacularly and filled up the whole room with the most beautiful spirit.

Oh boy I really do love my calling.

Dave’s parents came to listen in on the program.  So fun to have them back in town for a little while.

Here are the girls after their big debut Sunday performance.

I was a little sad that Lucy was kind of in the back where you couldn’t see her very well during the program because although I know I’m biased, that girl swaying her body and singing her little heart out with emotion just pouring out of her for those songs made the emotion in me swell up so much.

Some day I will try to get a video.  I’m telling you it’s do die for.

We always have Family Home Evening after church and this particular day the girls were pretty excited to be there.  Ha!

I love that family time so much.

Every once in a while when I’m at the grocery store I just have this feeling overcome me that Dave wants to buy me some flowers.

Especially when there are tulips there.

So I help him out and just pick them up for him.  I mean, that’s the least I could do to help him our, right?

Then I text him on my way home and tell him thank you and how much I love them.

Ha.  He’s a very thoughtful guy I tell you 🙂

Lucy is plugging along on her multiplication.  Not sure how fast she is compared to other third graders at this point, but I’m so thankful that she seems to be getting it pretty well.

More cheer…

Homecoming activities…Elle had a pretty fun week.

Pretty cute couple right there.

They had a pretty great time.

We wrapped up September taking off for the grand MFME that I’ll have to finish documenting soon.

September treated us well.