Not only are we still alive...

...(thanks for asking), we are awesome!

We have been enjoying ourselves so much these last couple of weeks - it has really been wonderful! I was driving to the grocery store on Saturday night- after a long, full, wonderful day with my family- and couldn't stop smiling. It had been a near perfect day and I felt really, really happy.

How could I not with these characters around? :)

That's mud on Lily's face.

So much has happened over these last few weeks that we've been absent that I have a lot of catching up to do. The leave of absence started with all the madness getting ready for the CureSearch walk, then there was prepping all of us for a week out of town, the Walk itself, an AMAZING week at the camp I teach at, and then catching up from all the insanity - grocery shopping, laundry, appointments, unpacking, babysitting, a root canal and crown pour moi, doctor's appointments, etc. When a family as medically needy as ours seems to be :), is out of our normal routine for a week, there are a lot of appointments to be made up - try four in four days!

And I want to share with you the lesson of the week that I learned: when the dentist tells you two years ago that you need a crown, don't balk at the price and say, "$800 is too expensive! I'll tough it out." Do the crown then!! For the love of everything - DO THE CROWN THEN! You'll save yourself a lot of pain, new diagnostic fees at the dentist, $1000 for a root canal because the tooth that needed a crown is now too far gone and causing you extreme pain, and the original price for the crown that you still need to cap off the root canal.

I'm just sayin'. :)

Anyways, posts on Camp and the CureSearch Walk and other things will follow, but for now I'll begin the recap with part of Saturday's activities. We started off by sleeping in and then headed to an awesome HopeKids activity - a gymnastics clinic (so much fun - a post will follow shortly just on that). After that we came home and had lunch, put sleepy kids down for a nap, and Eric and I watched a movie. When the kids woke up, we headed out to plant the rest of our row in the garden (our landlords had some extra space in the garden that they are graciously letting us use) and played around in the backyard. When the light was waning and the mosquitos got to be too many to ward off, we headed inside and finished up with a lazy pizza dinner. A pretty awesome day!

The garden so far:

Cabbage, onions, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, carrots, and corn

Our additions:

Watermelon, cantaloupe, zucchini, summer squash, green beans, cilantro, and basil (the first four have been planted for a while - we added the green beans, cilantro and basil that night.)

Elena enjoyed helping us plant and while Lily was glad to be out with us, she was mostly interested in digging in the dirt. The dirt which became mud after we watered our new plants. This was interesting for Eric and me. Our first gut reaction was to tell her no and stop her from getting dirty (because of the restrictions we have had to have with Elena). But we stopped ourselves when we realized that it was perfectly fine for Lily to get dirty. She's got an immune system just like any other "normal" kid. So Lily went at it - she got so into it that she chucked her shoes about the time it got muddy. :) Her bum, feet, hands, legs, and face were all covered in mud.

It was kind of liberating for Eric and me, too. It was so nice not to have to say "no" about silly things like digging in the mud, like we have had to for the last 16 months with Elena. It felt great to let Lily be a kid.

This was our first uncommitted Saturday together for a few weeks and although we've really enjoyed our adventures and projects, it was so nice to just be together. There's nothing like a full summer Saturday where you collapse in happy exhaustion at the end of the day.

More to come...