A SUPER fun day!!!

Monday morning it was SO fun to wake up at Tutu's house! So fun, in fact, that the kids were up EARLY - of course, they weren't awake driving until midnight I suppose....Anyways, Monday is my mom's big teaching day. She has that day off from working at the church in the music office, so she teaches piano lessons ALL day. We decided to get out of her hair and take advantage of the day to spend with my dear friend Courtney! (You all know her - probably half of you read her blog!) We've been friends since my freshman year in high school - it's been 16 years!! Can you believe that? I was writing our her birthday card last week when that dawned on me - I've been friends with her longer than not! I love that! anyways, you talk about "doing" life with someone - that's us. Dating, college, getting married (we got married 2 months apart from each other...of course), moving, job changes, babies, babies, babies, parenting issues, etc. We have done it!! I always love to steal a day with her when I'm visiting. I feel like I pop in and check on their family every day through the blog, but to actually get the opportunity to love on her kids and sit on the couch with her all day and talk - oh, it is just good heart medicine for me!!

Here's all 7 of our kids (she has 4, I have 3...well, 3.5 if you count the one growing inside me...) waiting for lunch. They all are SO happy to be together and always play so well!!!

For those of you that read courtney's blog, you know that Bailey has "parties" in her room every day. Well, she invited me to one of her parties, and this is Jacob when he came in...probably "messing" with her music for the party. She's a great party host! :) We had quite the conversations during that party. Courtney was feeding Sawyer, so Bailey had be undivided. And by conversations, mostly I mean Bailey talking to me and telling me ALL kinds of things!

Sorry - no energy to flip the picture. But this was the "bigger" kids downstairs playing Sorry. They played LOTS of games while we were there - they are all gamers! The little ones were napping, so they took advantage of the time to play without the little siblings messing it up! They were so cute!

Sawyer was napping, so he missed out on this group picture, but you get the idea.

L-R Rebekah, Josiah, Joshua, Jacob, Bailey, and Callie

It dawned on me that morning driving over that our kids' ages are 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2. Sawyer is about to be 1 this summer, and our new baby will be 0! How crazy is that!!!

Half the time, Callie was following Bailey around. The other half, Bailey was WANTING Callie to

follow her around. Callie was tired from the weekend, and was a little more....hmmm....reserved than normal. Reserved is not a word in Bailey's vocabulary. They were the cutest. On a good day, I think if you put the two of them together, they could DEFINITELY do some harm together!!!

Courtney's oldest (Rebekah) holding my youngest (Callie). I told REbekah that I wished so badly that we lived closer so that I could hire her to come babysit! I would too!!!

Me and my dear friend. I am SO thankful for her. She completely understands me. Even though we live in different cities (and soon states :( ), we can pick back up just like I lived down the street). God has given me a gift in her. It was very soothing for me to have a day where I could just sit and be. My kids were happy and occupied, and I could just have a day for me.