grandma nanny turns EIGHTY!

Tonight we celebrated my grandma's 80th birthday with a family dinner. 80 years. When you're young 80 years seems like a LOT- even just 30 years seems like a lot, but when I was thinking about it on the way home I couldn't help but realize that with as quickly as life happens, 80 will be here way too soon. It's also a little reminder that while we can't slow down time, we can slow ourselves down. We can focus on the really important things, we can stop ourselves from rushing from one thing to the next, we can prioritize where we are and who we're with instead of trying to be everywhere with everyone, we can take deep breaths and be in the moment, we can stop multi-tasking... we can soak it all up so that when we do turn 80 (or 90, or 100...) we can look back and really remember it all and re-live it all over again through stories we'll tell (and re-tell) our children and grandchildren. Happy 80th, Grandma- here's to many, many more!

Jackson is a little obsessive with certain things being clean- his hands and everyone's feet fall high on that list. He asks for his hands to be washed countless times a day to which Dan frequently responds, "just wipe them on your shirt"- initiating a fit from Jackson and an eye roll from me. I mean, really, who tells their kid to wipe their dirty hands on their shirt? Jackson also inspects our feet from time to time to make sure they meet his standards of clean. Last night I did NOT pass the test and he let me know how disgusted he was while running to his room to get some wipes to clean my feet. I had no choice in the matter, my feet were dirty and he was going to clean them and then decided the table and floor good use a good wipe or two too. Dan insists he is not "normal" but honestly who is? 

playing dress-up: reason 1,352 to have a baby girl

i'm going to go ahead and assume that anything we could possibly receive for Christmas would fail in comparison to these two. and isn't that was christmas is all about? about realizing that all of that 'stuff' you give and get really doesn't mean a whole lot unless you're surrounded by the love only blessings given to us by God can bring?