Weekends Lately

A pictures post of life lately:

The Birmingham Barons, our baseball team, host one game per year with a Star Wars theme. It's also 'Pyrotechnic Night' which is the biggest firework show of the season. We went last year and had a blast so we've made it a tradition to catch this game! We love going to the games plus the enormous fireworks show is too good to miss! We didn't see as many Star Wars characters as last year, but we had a big crowd with us so there were lots of really sweet kids to play with!

Jedi Knox and London

The next day we went Christmas shopping because it was hot as creases and that's when I do my Christmas shopping! London apparently decided she was going to be one of those department store sample girls and had a whole plan to walk around West Elm with her gloves on (to be clean) and she would let all the people sample her lipgloss. There were (clearly) no takers but she had fun offering her services to the ladies! :)

School is still not on the 'list of favorite things' so y'all please pray with us that she finds a way to start looking forward to it. She has fun once she's there but she ask if I will PAH-LEEEAAASSSEEE not make her go every morning. Bless her heart. I never expected this transition to be so difficult for her. She does, however, forget that she doesn't want to go to school between brushing her teeth and actually getting to the school house and is happy as a clam until the handoff. 

Could this scene get any cuter? I love it so much!

I teach spin on Wed/Thurs evenings so I've allowed us one 'eat out night' on one of those nights since it's such a rush. We tried a new pizza place down the street from our house that advertises the 'big slice' pizza. While we were ordering, they pulled this monstrosity out of the oven. This is a 3 foot pizza. THREE FEET. It wasn't spectacular but was really fun to ohh and ahh over! (Note: this was not our order! We had one slice each!)

This is Jill's front yard... We drove up one day and there was a perfect semi-circle of mushrooms growing in their yard! A few people said this is called a 'fairy ring' and the folk lore is something along the lines that fairies live under the mushrooms or they grow after fairies dance in a circle... so clearly London has been all about these mushrooms and runs to the front yard every time we're there to see if she can see any fairies. :) 

I'm really interested in learning how to use my new camera so I've been reading a book about it and looking up photography tips on how to best use it. I don't know ANYTHING about aperture, shutter speed, etc so the best place that I've found to get tutorials for idiot adults is.... the National Geographic for Kids website! :) The tutorials are really simple, clear, and fun! Here's one attempt that we tried of 'throwing light'. London is holding two glow sticks and waving them all around while I take her picture. 

Here's another picture taken the same way but the website gave us tips on 'how to turn your friend into a ghost". Dear tutorial, great instructions. I love that we were successful in learning new things but this picture weirds me out. It gives me a strange emotional response! Yesh!

By the time Friday rolls around, we are both wiped out. So, this Friday we kept it very low key and rested. After the tough prior two weeks, seeing this smile and hearing that giggle was good for my heart. It's hard to walk through this world as a momma. Every instinct is to protect your kids, and when it's a situation you can't correct and make good, it's difficult. This is one of the first times we've gone into a stage where she's just had to keep plowing forward and find happiness in there somewhere. I haven't loved this road, but as with all the rest of my life, I'm confident God is with us, allowing this story to be written so that we can help encourage the moms or kids who come behind us. So, we'll keep looking for the joy and doing our best to be thankful for the abundance that He so graciously gives us.