Memorial Day

The day started off awesome. I got up and decided we’d do school while I cooked. My kids deserved more than just cereal or oatmeal for breakfast. I took out the bacon, took out the toaster and the eggs. We were going to do this right. My mom walked into the kitchen and I asked her to cook the grits. We were going to have a nice Southern breakfast.

Somehow my mom ended up taking over the breakfast duties, which was fine because she’s so much better at the cooking thing than I am or ever hope to be, will be, or wish to be. I put the girls to the table and get them started on their writing. Layla starts tracing letters in the alphabet that are in her name, while Rowan works on learning to write her last name and her full name. I sit on the floor in the family room and work with Jory on his math worksheets as I separate the summer clothes.

Why can’t weekend mornings or other days that I’m off go like this? We got in a good hour of school before we ate breakfast. It was perfect.

I continued to go through clothes while watching a House Hunters marathon and the kids played. Aunt Lavonia and Uncle Bobby dropped by so Rowan and Layla could be Kayla stand ins, so she could see how Kayla would look in the bathing suits she bought.

Finally at 4PM, I decided if we didn’t go over to Aunt Carol’s for bbq we’d never make it over there, so off we went. We barely made it on time, some of the good food was low or almost gone. Jory found Aunt Carol’s gardening wagons and took them out front to play with on her cul de sac. After our late lunch/dinner, my cousin handed me her granddaughter. I took the baby outside and we watched the kids play. Holding Sanaii, I realized this was one of the few times I had ever held her, definitely the longest period of time I held her. And it also dawned on me, that this was the first nine-month-old I held since Rowan was nine months. The first baby I held since my Layla.

So weird, she felt so loose in my arms. I held her and wondered if this would feel like if Jack came home. We walked around the block with the kids. The girls wanted to give her a bottle so desperately, but she wasn’t feeling it. They tried to get her to play with her toy, Sanaii wasn’t feeling that either. Though Rowan did get to sit all the way back in a chair on the porch and hold the baby all by herself. My big girl enjoyed that very much.

After her mother returned from walking around the park, I handed the baby back. I made a to-go-plate and we said adieu. I love living near family. I love being able to step away from a choir, to go eat and hang with my family, then go back home and step back in the choir. We are very blessed, some people don’t have that ability. Some people have families they aren’t close enough to do that with or don’t get along well enough to do that with. TTT and I are truly blessed.