Update

Happy Father's Day to all you Dads out there. I have the utmost respect for good Dads and am so grateful the ones in my life. I feel so blessed to have been raised by such a great man for a Dad. He is still such a huge support and Brennan and I both rely on his wisdom, insight, generosity and love on a regular basis. I also feel so grateful to have Brennan as my partner in raising our kids. He knows how to make everything fun, but also knows when to be serious. He seems to just intuitively understand when to be gentle and tender and when to be firm. He helps keep things in perspective when I start to focus too much on one of the kid's challenges.

For Brennan's paragraph this week I'll share something that I don't mean to be obnoxious about, but as this is our family history this is something I want our kids to read about their Dad. As previously mentioned Brennan has been beyond-my-ability-to-describe-happy about qualifying for the State Am. However, this week as he was out golfing he realized he had 15 clubs in his bag and that he did during his qualifier. Evidently that's very illegal in a tournament. He knew of a guy who won his (like got first place) qualifying tournament walked out to the parking lot, realized he had 15 clubs, went back in to report it and was disqualified. Brennan was sick about his discovery, but called the UGA and told them what happened. Evidently because it was 2 weeks after the fact, he wouldn't be disqualified. Had he or anyone else discovered it that day he would be out. He risked all that hard work to be honest about an innocent mistake. We love Brennan.

I am doing well. It's an odd time right now in that there's a lot of discomfort and anticipation of even more discomfort; however, the miraculousness of it all has started to dawn on me. I feel an overwhelming sense of humility and gratitude to be part of such an amazing process of bringing a new life into the world and into our family.

Anna has had a really great week. She is loving tennis and is showing some great potential. She's also had so much fun playing with and taking care of her little nieces. We've been with cousins a lot lately and I'm always so grateful that even though none of the cousins who live around here are even close to her age, she LOVES any chance to be with them. Most of the time she devotes her time to her 4 yr old and two 18 monthish little girl cousins. They all absolutely love her and relish the attention she gives them. We love Anna.

The other day Abigail was telling me about why she no longer liked a little girl who had been in her school class. After she finished telling me all the drama she said, "Sometimes I wish I was a boy. One day they're like 'I hate you!' and then the next day they're all 'Hey, wanna play football?' Girls just don't forgive and forget like that." Last night she said, "Mom, I know this will be really hard for you, but could you please get up early and help us make breakfast for Daddy?" LOL, it was hard, but I did it. Abby is also loving tennis and we're so excited to have them learn some fundamentals so we can go hit with them. We love Abigail.

Nathan is in swimming lessons and loves it. Which is so great considering two years ago I literally could not get him out of the car. He got a marble track racer thing for his birthday from Grandma Jamie and Grandpa John which he has spent HOURS on. He begged for marbles for his birthday and is so great at occupying himself with these simple pleasures. He and Ben and I were the only ones awake the other morning and I was helping them set up the marble thing when Nate spontaneously said, "I love you Mom, I love you Ben." We love Nate.

Yesterday I walked into my room where Ben was napping and discovered him awake. "How long have you been awake?" I asked. In his taking-himself-super-seriously-voice he replied, "Furty-seven (thirty-seven)". We then went to the pool at Liza's neighborhood and he was decked out in Nate's swimming mask, a big huge swimming floaty suit in the kiddie pool which is not more than a foot deep. He was jumping and diving and struggling in a way that we just knew in his mind he was conquering waves in the unexplored oceans far far away for a very important purpose. We love Benjamin.