Beautifully Busy

When I drop off the radar on my blog, it's usually because I'm too busy enjoying life to update anyone else with the details.  This past week was no exception...although if you asked John, I'm sure he'd have a different story.  

John has been working on a Masters certification in Applied Intelligence Analysis for the better part of a year and this last class has been an absolute killer.  Pretty much every week has been punctuated by a paper due at the end.  Blech.  And anyone who has ever tried to be remotely productive with two crazy children in the house will know that it is near impossible, so the girls and I have been spending a lot of time out of the house trying to give John some uninterrupted time to get papers and projects done.  John's final project in his last class was due Sunday evening and it was an epic series of outings for the girls and paper writing sessions for John.  

Terryn and Bailey are buds...even when she tries to escape him.

The girls and I were out and about so much without John that I think people started thinking I was trying to cover up his suspicious murder with the old "writing a paper" excuse.  It goes without saying that there has been much rejoicing for the return of The Papa.  

Luckily, the girls and I got to have a lot of fun while we accommodated Papa's paper writing. There are seven family/friend birthdays in a week and a half and the first celebration was this Saturday for Miss Hailey Turner.  Bailey was the life of the Party (as is expected) and Audrey spent most of her time in the toy room playing make believe with Hailey's dolls, ignoring everything but birthday cake. 

While we did spend a lot of time out on our own, we also coaxed John out for a few outings.  Natalie and her beautiful brood came over from Seattle to do a family photo shoot for us.  We were lucky enough to get to hang with the boys while Nat and Steve went to a client meeting Friday night and then played with the whole gang in the park the next morning and shot some photos (God-willingly) for our Christmas cards.   

Natalie and our novice photographer

 The next morning was the most glorious daylight's savings time I've experienced since becoming a parent--Falling back this year did not entail waking up at 5am, but meant an extra hour before church, in which I convinced our little family to sneak out of the house to enjoy an Ihop breakfast. 

More syrup, please!

 Life has been a little blurry since then: we've been celebrating the end of John's program by spending as much time together as humanly possible, playing with playdough, reading books, going on walks and generally basking in each other's presence.  Life is busy, but beautiful.  

Audrey with the sunflower she planted as a seed at the county fair