33 weeks

Mother's Day

I opened my presents from the kids bright and early Sunday morning. They made me such cute, thoughtful gifts. Jenna made me this beautiful bouquet of paper flowers. I wish you could see each flower better. They are all beautiful and unique. She also made me a book.

Here is the back side of the bouquet.

Here is a picture of one of my favorite pages from her book.

William also made me a book and drew me a picture. The book was really amazing, and I can tell he spent a lot of time making it. I took pictures of a few of my favorite pages.

If you can't read it, this page says, "I like being with my Mother most when we have time to play a game."

I love my kids so much and I'm really thankful that I get to be their Mom!

Surprise!!

It was Thursday evening. Most of us were finished with dinner. Jenna was in the back yard, Adam was playing somewhere, and I was talking with Will, who was still finishing up his food. I got a call from Joel and the first thing he said was, "Knock, knock,". Then someone knocked on the door. I was telling Joel about the strange coincidence that he had said knock knock right when someone knocked on the door as I went over to see who was there. Right before I got to the door it opened, so I figure it was just Jenna and she had come around from the back yard. I was wrong. Standing right outside the door was... that's right... JOEL!

I very literally could not believe that he was here! I think I said, "Shut up!" a number of times. I was frozen in place, couldn't even go to hug him. He came in and hugged me and it still took a second for me to move to hug him back! I cannot describe the level of my surprise! I cried, of course, and kept saying, "How?"

Joel had been very tricky; he booked a flight to Mesa last minute Thursday morning and had a friend pick him up from the airport and bring him to our house all without my knowledge. It was such a wonderful early Mother's Day present!

We had an awesome couple of days! It was so wonderful having him home and just being near him. It probably took 24 hours for me to stop saying, "It's really you, you're really here," and things like that. We laughed so much together and really just enjoyed our time together. The kids were obviously really happy to see Dad! The older kids were almost as confused as I was when he showed up because they understood how long he was going to be gone. They were really sad when they found out he wasn't staying, but they had so much fun with him while he was here.

I didn't get any great pictures because I just used my ipod. But here's a few pics from Friday and Saturday.

(Isn't he so handsome!!)

We took him back to the airport this morning. That was rough for me, to say the least. I'm sure I looked like a mess at church, but oh well. I got some fun things for Mother's Day, and I'll do a post about that soon. Having Joel home was definitely a wonderful present! He is now back in Wyoming for the rest of this rotation, but we are almost halfway done.

Thank you, Joel, for coming to spend the weekend with us! And thank you for doing it in such a spectacular way! We love you SO much!!