These days

Ellie insisted on doing her own hair for church one Sunday.

Living room fort!

Aunt Jenny came to visit over memorial day weekend. She came with me to see Big Fish at Hale Theater. It was so good, but it was not an easy thing to watch after getting my own cancer diagnosis. I didn’t k ow what it was about when I went so it threw me for a loop. But it was nice to spend time with Jen.

On Memorial Day, we filled our pool and our backyard with a few families over to swim and bbq.

Baby B had her first swim! E didn’t get a picture of her smiling and laughing, but she loves the water.

Our little L Belle graduated from kindergarten.

Every time I see 2030 as her graduation date my head spins. Man, that sounds so crazy.

There she is just below the “we”.

She had been singing all of her graduation songs at home all week. So it was fun to see the big performance.

The night before graduation, she admitted how nervous she was to walk across the stage in front of all those people. So she practiced walking for us. Well practice paid off and she walked across the stage perfectly. After the graduation, she told me she was still nervous but she just looked down and she walked and that worked out just fine.

Daddy, baby, grandpa, and I were all there to see her.


After the last day if school, I made the kids empty out their backpacks. Among other things, kyler found these crusty socks in his backpack. Maybe we should start cleaning out those backpacks more often.

Layla writes notes, lists, and letters all over the place every day. 

Perry took my phone around the house and took some pictures. So here is an evening from Perry’s perspective.

There is a new fire station right down the street so we walked down to the open house celebration one Saturday morning.

My aunt and uncle came into town for a short visit. I hadn’t seen them in years! It was so nice to catch up a little with them and to introduce them to the three younger children for the first time. 

be brave recital

Layla and Macie have been in a music theater class together all year. Layla loves it! The girls were quite excited for their end of the year recital.

Jacqui took some pictures of the girls on her nice camera. I took these on my phone.

Layla was ready for the show when I brought her backstage.



Her class performed a song from the musical "Matilda."



Baby B sat on my lap for the first part of the performance and was mesmerized by the dancers. She spent most of the time clapping her hands and bouncing her body around. I tried to get a picture of it when Kyler was holding her. It was absolutely adorable.





I was so bummed that from where I was sitting Layla was pretty much completely blocked from my view by another girl. If I had known she was placed all the way on the right side I would’ve gone to stand there to get a better view. From what I saw, she did great! And I know she loved it up there.

She came out and took a bow during the finale. This time she was second from the left.

The week of her recital I was still feeling pretty emotional from my cancer crap. I was a rollercoaster. And the emotions would hit me in waves. But in my head I was telling myself that I should be stronger by that point. But I wasn’t coping well. And then I was feeling guilty. And there was just a lot of emotions. So I hated when it was quiet because then my thoughts went to a dark place and I was bound to cry. This recital was exactly the combination to send me to tears. And to top it off the theme of the whole recital was “be brave.” That reminder to be brave was both inspiring and overwhelming. I fought the tears back multiple times. But after the recital I came to an important realization. Being brave doesn’t mean that you aren’t scared. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard. Being brave just means that you do it anyway. So I finally gave myself permission to take as much time as I really needed to cope. Not just what I expected myself to need. And I realized it is just fine if I do it all scared. I am going to do all of the cancer treatments, and I’m going to be ok if I face the cancer feeling scared. Being brave doesn’t mean the emotions go away. It means we allow ourselves to feel the emotions, the uncomfortable ones too, to face the emotions, and to carry on.

I am proud of my L Belle and her cousin Macie for all of their hard work in musical theater this year. They are such cute girls and the best of friends.