The Pictures

This is how Jillian looks when I go in to get her now.

 A few weeks ago, my brother and his kids came down for the weekend while my sister-in-law spent the weekend in New York City with some girlfriends.  Lucky girl.

 Holly has always LOVED her uncle.

Aside from trips to the swimming pool, the kids did a lot of this that weekend:

 I later realized that Alan was playing a very disturbing game.  The graphics weren't fabulous - just stick figures - but what they did was extremely disturbing.  So that the part I did see made me cover the screen with my hand to hide it from him.  As if he hadn't already been playing the game for an hour.  Stick figure 1 shoots Stick figure 2 for no reason and makes Stick figure 2's head fly off and red splatter everywhere.  But in a way that would make you want to hide it from child eyes, too.

 Holly may have some competition for her Uncle David's attention, soon.

As my brother and his family was packing to leave, we found out that Sean's grandmother had passed away.  So Sean, Jillian and I made arrangements to go to Tennessee.  Jillian got to meet a lot of family for the first time.  She really loved sitting with Great-Uncle Greg.

 And she was also quite content to sit with her great-grandpa.

 And just a couple days after we got back from Tennessee was when we took the big kids to meet Oliver and headed over to Charlotte, NC, to see my grandmother for her birthday.  My grandma was happy to watch her whole family - except 3 - all gathered together.

 We gathered at the lake house that she and my granddad bought in the 60's and that my cousin now owns and has beautifully fixed up.  The upstairs used to not come out over the porch.  In fact, the porch wasn't there before.  And you'll have to take my word for it that the inside was as gorgeous as the outside.  My cousin has a great decorating sense and I could picture any room in the house in a magazine spread... beautiful and efficient all in one.

Now back home again, aside from dealing with the drama of Life and Growing Up, we're into the season of awards and final performances.  Holly was inducted into the local chapter of the National Elementary Honor Society.  Her school is the only one in our county to have an NEHS chapter.

 And we got to have cupcakes afterward.  Just me and Holly.

Tonight is Alan's kindergarten performance.  It conflicts with an introduction to the middle school, but since Julia is going today for a tour during school hours I'm not going to stress over it. 

I think I'm going to adopt that attitude a little more in my parenting tactics for awhile.  Relax.  Not stress over it.  Let her roll her eyes and stomp.  Draw the line somewhere else...

Take a few deep breaths.