The Circle Of Life

I started this weekend out celebrating a dear friend's birthday.

Celebrating the day she was born.

Celebrating her life.

Friday evening, was Mom's Night Out.

We celebrated motherhood...

friendship...

and WoW....did we celebrate!

Okay, so I was home...in bed...by 11 pm.

I guess my age is catching up with me.

All of us had to be up at the soccer fields by 8:30 on Saturday morning.

Yes, I wore my baseball hat AND sunglasses for soccer!

After soccer, Laney went to ride in the combine with Jon, while Emily, Henry and I met my parents back in my hometown for a fall festival.

My sweet boy...oh how those animals intrigued him!

Emily doesn't ask for much...but she couldn't wait for a pony ride.

These rides make me cringe.

I feel sorry for those amazing creatures.

I want to let them free.

Before Em's turn, I asked her if she would do one thing...

and of course she did...

I watched her do it.
I'm so happy that she leaned down and whispered to her pony....told the pony that it was beautiful.

It was nice being back in my hometown, with my parents...

with my children....

celebrating my childhood memories.

Visiting my childhood home.

Looking through my bedroom windows.

Celebrating my youth.

We came home to two front door packages.

Jon's Aunt Karla sent some art goodies!

Emily definitely celebrated! She loved her clay.

Later, the girls celebrated Laney's gift as well....scrapbooking supplies!

Today was a day that I will never forget.

Jon's grandpa...

his second father...

his high school coach...

our neighbor down our lane...

passed away.

And what we did later on in the afternoon...was a gift.

Jon, and I got in Grandpa's little pick up truck.

All five of Grandpa's great grandchildren piled in as well.

It smelled like Grandpa.

We rolled down the windows and drove across the road to our pumpkin patch.

Jon started cutting pumpkins off their vines.

The girls and Henry collected.

~Megan~ ~Emily~ ~Madison~ ~Laney~ ~Henry~ The girls loaded pumpkins into Papa Dave's truck bed.

We got back in and drove back to our lane.

As the wind blew threw my hair and I smelled the inside of Grandpa's truck,

I smiled.

I could hear Grandpa laughing...

at what a sorry sight our pumpkin patch had produced this year.

Laughing...giving us all kinds of static about our goods.

Laughing...

our grubby clothes, riding in the pickup, tearing up our weedy patch of bits of nothing...a true gift from Grandpa...something he would have LOVED to do with us.

I will terribly miss the man who I called simply Grandpa.

There isn't one person who didn't love him...

Here's to Grandpa...

celebrating his life...

Both here and above.