I love this girl!
And she turned one on February 10. Rachel and Hobo recently moved into a super hip neighborhood off East 11th so they had the family and a few friends over to their new house to celebrate. Of course Rachel did an amazing job at hosting and we all had a great time celebrating this little lady.
The boys spent most of the time outside in the back yard by taking turns pulling each other around in the wagon, or playing with these hilarious flying balloons that Rachel found. You blow them up with a straw and then let them go....they make hilarious sounds and fly and flap around until all the air is out. I think the whole party was outside cracking up at them at one point.
Lola was not quite sure about the cake, but Cash helped her break it in a little bit.
Happy birthday sweet Lola!
We celebrated Valentines Day...at home....we are not ones to go out on Valentines, but none the less, it was a great day to spend as a family. The boys all had their Valentines day parties at school, and came home with too much candy that was hidden away the first time they turned their heads!
We stopped by Eli's class party for the last half hour or so. I had Owen and Cash with me so I didn't think we could handle the entire party. He was happy to see us there and Owen and Cash just stood against the wall quietly and watched in awe.
We also had a good stretch of some beautiful weather!!!! We would literally drop backpacks in the house after school and head out front until dinner time. It was a bike/scooter/4-wheeler-palooza with all the neighborhood kids out too! Cash has in interesting taste in fashion. Any chance he gets, he slips on some swimming trunks, and pulls up his socks, wears a soccer jersey (who cares if its dirty!!!), a quite possibly changes his outfit up to 4 times a day when no one is looking.
One day we met up with our buddies at The Wildflower Center and they played around by the Family Garden.
We got to hang with this little lady and take her on her first wagon ride while Rachel and Hobo were in Italy!
I found Cash hiding under the bench with a little pile of chocolate trash scattered around him.....tricky kid.
We of course, had our usual wrestling matches before bed....oh living in a house full of boys!
Someone is always bound to get hurt...
We also drove out to Elguin to celebrate one of my childhood friends son, Miles. He is the cutie in the blue shirt in the jeep with my boys.
Spent some time at Lolli and Pop's house on Sundays....everyone always wants to be close to Lolli!
And we rounded out February with a sick kid. It has really been a long time since Cash was sick, but he handled it like a champ. And I got to have extra snuggle time with my little guy.
Even when he isn't feeling well he is happy. Or maybe it was because he was up in the middle of the night cuddling with me in my bed watching cartoons. He was so happy to be there with me that every few minutes he would look up at me with a big grin and just say "Hi Mommy!"
On February 24, we lots a beautiful person to PTSD. Brett and I went to middle school and high school together and were both at UT at the same time. He was Rachel's age, and closer to her than to me, but nonetheless, he treated everyone as his best friend, never met a stranger and was all around an amazing human being who lived his life to help others.
There is no doubt that PTSD is a huge problem for returning vets. Twenty two veterans are killing themselves
every day. Brett had a passion for helping others with a focus on preventing suicide among veterans. As said as his memorial, the one soldier he could not save was himself. In the words of his mother "...it is indeed a tragedy of epic proportion. To be so magnificent as a human being as Brett was and yet to have your brain so altered my trauma that you become blinded to your own beauty is absolutely nothing short of a tragedy." There has got to be more that we can do to help our soldiers. This really hit home for me. I think that most Americans have no idea how much they owe men like Brett. Our leaders only give lip service to the sacrifices these troops have made so that the rest of us can sleep safely in our beds. We have got to do more to support these men and women when they return home so they know there are more ways to get help and other options out there. They are not alone.
SO.....to end on a happy note, did I mention by BFF is having a BABY!!!!! Its a BOY!
We are celebrating this baby with weekly lunch dates with no doubt his two favorite (non-related) aunts with weekly pictures. I don't have all the weekly update pictures in order yet, but just could not wait to share the oh-so-exciting news!!!! Yay Baby Greenwood!!!!!
