I have no babies...

This past week went by tooo fast.  I can't believe a little over a week ago we were still in Mississippi.  We got back into town and I had to work four mornings, which meant I went to bed earlier than usual, which meant that the day went by super fast.  That in combination with the gargantuan "to do" list I had when I got back into town made this past week somewhat of a blur.  The deck project, the school room, pickles, cleaning, laundry, some of it got done and some didn't and some is in the almost-but-not-quite stage. 
Jason and our friends, Robin and Will, painted and got the deck addition put on while the girls and I were gone in July.  So I've been trying to finish that project which includes painting deck furniture and adding a step.  All in all this is going to be a $200 deck upgrade that I think we'll all be happy with!  The pallets were free, we had to buy a little bit of lumber and paint and that's about it.  Now if I can nurse the grass back to health after the crazy dry 100+ July we had, we'll have a neat-o place to hang out with friends!
Jason's dad, whom the girls affectionately call "Pop," got to come down and spend the weekend with us.  I know he hates being so far from home (South Miss.) but it's nice when his job puts him within a 6 hr. radius of Champaign.  So the girls got to hang with Pop all weekend, which of course included eating at SteakNShake.  I don't really know how SteakNShake got associated with Pop to them.  I'm pretty sure he didn't come up with it, and they don't really ask much to go there unless he's with us so it is a bit of a mystery.  Anyway, we went and the girls HAD to have the hats and little cars that MUST be taken home but then immediately get discarded and thrown away.  But they are fun for the short time that they are kept.

Sunday we all went to church and it was nice to be back.  I've missed our church family and the awesome worship teams that help make Sunday worship so meaningful for me.  One of our eldars preached on the sower parable and it was a good reminder to me.  Often when I've read or heard others discuss this parable (Matt.13 and Mark 4) it's framed as the different seeds being different kinds of people, but he framed it as different kinds of responses to the Word that everyone can and does have often in the same day.  So the decision to respond to the Word as a seed in fertile soil is a choice to consiously make daily.  Pretty good reminder as I said. 
Well, I truly have no more babies because Monday was Lyla's 5th birthday. And boy was she excited.  She couldn't go to sleep Sunday night thinking about it, even though I really needed her to because there were things I wanted to do for her birthday that had to wait until she was asleep and I needed to go to bed early, which didn't happen.  She ended up staying awake until well after 10.  Oh well, what's a little sleep?  As I had to work Monday morning, this was the first time EVER that I haven't been there when my girls have woken up on their birthday.  It's kind of our tradition that we have our family presents out and ready to be opened upon waking up on the birthday.  So Monday they waited on me to come home first.  Although, Lyla did receive a bike and that wasn't wrapped so she had already discovered that present prior to my arrival.  When I got home, she opened the other presents.  She has been super excited to become an official Girl Scout, which had to wait until her birthday, so she of course was happy to finally get her Daisy uniform!  Now we've got 3 Girl Scouts in the house. 

The rest of the day was spend getting ready for the Lyla's party.  "Her people" were coming so her excitement was hard to contain waiting for the 4pm party to get here!  - As an aside, Friday night she we had run into some of her friends from preschool at an outdoor concert on campus and she kept telling us she wanted to go dance with "her people."  So cute! -  4pm finally rolled around and the party finally arrived, she had a blast!  Gwyn and Celee were super helpers too.  They handed out party hats and lays to people as they arrived and then played "lifeguard" when the little ones were in the wading pool.  It's so nice to see them really enjoying helping to make Lyla's party fun.  They are pretty good big sisters!  The birthday girl only had one meltdown - in the aftermath of the pinata pull.  (We got the pull-string king instead of the whack-it kind) (And actually it was the train pinata that I bought for her 3rd birthday party and forgot about, so we just pasted Bubble Guppie figures in the windows of it and made it the Bubble Guppie Train)  After a quick recovery it was back to the fun!  One of her presents was a Barbie news reporter camera and microphone which was a hit.  They were all so cute pretending to interview each other about robbers that were in the area.  :)

So my to-do list rolls over into this week and school starts in less than a week.  The pickles have yet to be made and the carrots are ready to come up.  There is still deck furniture to be painted and school stuff to organize.  It looks to be a full but fun week to come!