Apart But In My Heart

Trip

I am on a bitter-sweet vacation this weekend. I had to leave Chris and the girls behind while I flew to my oldest brother’s wedding. Chris had to finish out his rotation and has a test tomorrow when I will be returning and it was too financially and practically impossible to bring the girls. We had Nana Kathy help watch them during Chris’ work and one more time tomorrow for his test. I flew to St. Louis overnight on Thursday and spent the day making up for the lack of sleep and traveling with my best friend to Nashville. I feel mostly recovered from that night at the airport because of a restful Sunday playing games and eating my dad's famous Thai food before leaving back to St. Louis Airport. I have a flight to Las Vegas tonight and will spend another night in an airport because my last flight home isn't until 1pm.

Wedding

Spending time getting from St. Louis to the wedding was a fun road trip with my best friend. It was so great to get so much time with her! Then I also got some quality time with my family which was wonderful as well. We all got to the shared house on Friday night and woke up to greet each other just in time to be tired and get ready for the wedding. Both the ceremony and the reception were held at a beautiful church where we also took the wedding pictures which was very convenient. Once we had our fill of their wedding cheesecake, we got to spend time together at the house doing a puzzle, games and talking. A small handful of us went to a Nike store and got new shoes then accidentally found a yummy ice cream place on our way home...Now I have a new sister-in-law and I’m sad to have such a short time to be with my family. 

Claire

This week was fun for the girls for the first half because they had their friends back to come to play with them. Claire is getting so fun to talk to and get her to explain things. She will decide that she loves homework only after saying, “not homework” but then have a blast finishing so fast while I’m doing dishes that I say, “how did you do that?” She gets so satisfied with herself but still needs to have me give reward hearts for her completed work. I love talking to her on the phone and she is so excited to hold daddy's phone and show me things even though it's only a phone call. I sometimes watch our nanny cam at home to see her showing me her stuff and she giggles because I can see what she's doing. Her love of princesses holds strong and anything that is pink or purple, fairy or unicorn, and all things sparkly are included in her castle collection. 

Shay

My precious baby really missed me and had a few sad times like when she got home with Chris after dropping me off at the airport and she realized I wasn’t with them. We talked on the phone and I realized how hard it is to understand her when I’m not in person! Time to start practicing enunciating all the parts of the words instead of letting the last letters get lost. The only other time she was upset was after church today and it made me really miss her! I wish I could have brought them because they would have had a lot of fun playing with their cousins. I can’t wait to give them hugs and kisses again, this was my first time willingly going on a vacation without them. Last time I was in the hospital with a ruptured appendix and was rather distracted most of the time almost dying to think about missing them.