Capture Gratitude: August

 Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.

 Despite my blog silence, August had much to be thankful for...

161. MY TEXAS FAMILY
 We spent the last week in July and the first week in August in Texas with my family. When we were there in March, we saw LOTS of non-family and it was a really quick trip. This time we stayed for as long as we could (trying to be there for my niece's birth...which did not work out, sadly) and spent almost all of our time with family. It was SO GOOD.

OK... So this isn't actually a gift: For a little while this summer, I experimented with uploading my pictures from my phone using dropbox. I didn't like it: it leaves copies on your phone, and you can't sort or organize them as you move them, they just all go into one big folder. But now this is the ONLY picture I can find of our time in Texas. Oh dear. I know they're here somewhere. I PRAY they are here somewhere and I didn't delete them, thinking I'd moved them over. Eek.


162. PICTURES
So thankful for these beautiful pictures Mandie Joy took of our family (if you missed them, click here to see more.)

163. BABIES
My baby niece Finley Rae was born, Michael & Leslie's first.

 She is a BEAUTY and I can't wait to get my hands on her.

164. SUPERMEN
We found a working telephone booth. I don't know why this was so exciting to our boys, maybe Superman?? What would Superman even do now that there are no telephone booths?

165. Family Fun
We got a Groupon for a local fun city place, so we spent the day before Luke's first day of school riding Go Karts and doing other awesome things.

 Of course by the end of the day, it was obvious that Luke was sick. He'd seemed to have been fighting off a cold, but that morning I probably shouldn't have believed him that he was feeling better. I think he didn't want to give up the go karts... But that meant that once we got back from Omaha, I went straight to the urgent care with Luke, where they confirmed he had strep throat.

166. FIRST DAYS OF SCHOOL
Since he was sick, here's what Luke was actually doing on the first day of school:

And here's his first day of GOING to school. I can't believe we have a 7th grader. I have lived in fear of middle school for years now, but Luke loves it, and as it turns out, middle school boys are HILARIOUS. At least mine is.

Tobin had his first day of Kindergarten a week later.

 

And here's Micah, on the first day of "sort of homeschooling preschool" AKA trying to build up Micah's tolerance for structured activity:

167. SPEAKING OF HOMESCHOOL...
I am going to talk more about this, but I am a reluctant homeschooler. I spent the night before public school started not rejoicing that I get to keep my baby with me, but freaking out thinking, "WHAT HAVE I DONE??"

But as it turns out, I love homeschooling (Kindergarten, at least.)

More on this coming soon...

168. BROTHERS
 How many times has this shown up on my gift list? A lot. They fight and I spend a fair amount of my time (more than I should, I think) refereeing. But we do have our moments of brotherly love. I never get tired of seeing this:

 (They are reading Sandra Boynton's Blue Hat, Green Hat, which as you can see they all love. That silly Turkey.)

 What they're doing while I do my Bible study/devotional.

169. SURVIVING AND THRIVING THROUGH DENTAL SURGERY
I should probably do a whole separate post for this... But praise the LORD for how well Micah did through his surgery.

Here he is on the way to the hospital, in the wee small hours of the night.

 Goodbye front two teeth!
He liked the hospital because there was a TV, with many channels we don't have at home. See how he's smiling for me, but not actually taking his eyes off the television?

 Micah did just fine when they took him from us - lucky for us, he got to just be rolled off on his bed. If they'd carried him away, I think that would have been a problem, even with the drugs they gave him ahead of time. But as it was, he was pretty amazed that his bed was a car.

Coming out of the anesthesia was no picnic, but it didn't last long. And it was actually a really sweet time for me. They let me go back in the recovery room, so he woke up in my arms. He was super upset and really out of it, unable to be comforted, for 30-45 minutes. Then he collapsed asleep in my arms, and I held him as he slept for another 45 minutes. Then he woke up just himself again and was super excited to have a Popsicle for breakfast. It was not fun to see him so out of it and crying - but as I held and comforted him, and told him over and over that "Mommy is here!", I was really touched. I kept thinking of the hours I would have spent doing that if I had been able to have him as a baby. So it felt like a privilege to get to do that for and with him, even though it broke my heart.

And then they released us.

We went home and he ate a normal lunch, took a great nap, and spent most of the day relaxing. He was back to his wild self the next day. A lot of people asked about him in the following weeks. I told them I feel like he recovered faster than I did. Between our travels the weekend before surgery, and the sleeplessness the night before, plus the stress of the day, I ended up getting really sick by the end of the week. Micah, on the other hand, was awesome by the next day.

And we like his new smile.