Birthdays and Airport food

Last day of August. I am so excited! It is my least favorite month. On Saturday we set out on some more adventures to the park and to watch the planes take off from Briscoe Field. There is a little restaurant there with a patio and you can sit out and watch the planes and the occasional jet take off and land. I can't believe we have never been there before. The kids loved it!

Saturday afternoon after naps we went up to Pendergrass to Jamie and Josie's 13th birthday. Mom and Sam met us there with Tristan in tow. The kids had a ton of fun jumping on the trampoline and Abby loved playing dress up with the girls' shoes. It was a little chaotic having three little ones at a party. When there are so many big people there are so many places for them to hide! Jolee and the girls were gracious hosts as usual and even let us spray off the kids in the shower as they were filthy.

This morning was a real juggling act with all three kids in the house. It went by really fast though. The Tristan factor really changes things up a bit. I am in awe of women who do this everyday and seem to do a really good job at it. It is nice to work part-time. Not too many profound sentiments this afternoon. I am exhausted. :)

Yellow River Fever

Here it is...my first blog. Wow so this is what it's like. I have been wanting to do this for sometime and finally inspired by having just too much fun today. I wanted to call somebody everytime Adam or Abby said anything funny. Some background..



Yesterday I got a wild hair after talking with my friend Lynn. We were lamenting over how long it has been since we have seen each other and how our respective children were driving us absolutely crazy. On Wednesday I had sent Adam to "camp Grandma" up in Madison Springs and enjoyed some "one on one" time with Tristan. The idea was to trade off kids on Thursday and then meet up again on Saturday where I would take all of my offspring home with me.



After hanging up with Lynn I got a crazy idea that I could take her little one Abby up with me to "camp Grandma" and Adam and Abby and I could come back on Friday to Lawrenceville and make a fun weekend of it. Lynn and Abby agreed and we were on our way to Madison Springs!



Tristan happily "chatted" with Abby all the way up to "camp" which really means Tristan babbled all the words he knows and Abby recapped by telling me "Tristan said shoe. My brother Luke doesn't know how to say that yet" and so on down Tristan's list. Tristan was captivated by Abby and relished all of the attention he got from Adam's girlfriend.






So Thursday night was a great night at Camp Grandma. We cooked out over at the "campsite". For those of you who haven't been to the campsite yet my parents put in a sweet little campsite on the area where my aunt Audrey's home used to be. There is a screened in porch, a blacktop, a firepit and their vintage Airstream trailer. We sent Tristan home to bed with Grandma and roasted marshmallows over the fire pit. What a blast.



Today we came back to Atlanta and went to the Yellow River Game Ranch. The ranch is a great place that has been there since before I was Abby and Adam's age. It is a petting zoo/regular zoo. They have such a variety of animals and you could spend hours there with kids. It was amazing to watch them run around together because it struck me that they are creating there own real bond together. They have been forced together because their parents are great friends and until the past year or so they mainly engaged in "parallel play". Now I can see the formation of a real relationship and it is fascinating. I couldn't help but wonder if they would always be friends. The chances of real friendship enduring are slim considering the difference in their gender and the likelihood of their separation. I was then struck with the reality of the fact that all we are promised is this moment and that I should just be living in it with them! Kids understand that so much better than we do.

It is funny how a change in scenery or changing out your kids can make all the difference in the world not just for the parent but for the child as well. Abby has so many wonderful qualities and like any child so many not so pleasant ways of expressing herself. It was so nice to deal with somebody else's idiosyncrasies for a while but at the same time I still felt very indoctrinated into my own family drama. It reminds me of when I was in Peace Corps and we would visit our friend's sites. We each had our own horrible things about where we lived and each of us had completely adapted to them even if it was a dysfunctional adaptation. I would visit my friend Ariann and just be so inconvenienced by the distance (and peril) of the travel but she would visit me and be aghast by my lack of water system. Raising a child is so similar. Whatever it is going on in your little world you just suck it up and trod through. It is nice to be intimately involved in somebody else's world like I have been with Abby these two days. It helps so much just to create space around your own issues and trials. It really does "take a village". Never has the need for community been more apparent to me. Lynn keeps thanking me for helping with Abby but just like in all experiences of giving, you get back what you give in spades.