Brave

I ran out of chocolate but there is still "me" time, as previously blogged about.  It makes a difference.  Even if that time is usually me hiding in the bathroom for 20 minutes, because I put my Hunger Games trilogy behind the extra toilet paper refill rolls, that I'm confident no one will ever touch except for me :/. I'm a huge Peeta fan. Katniss doesn't deserve him, but that's what happens in love sometimes.  I feel in many ways that I don't deserve my handsome and strong husband, and he realizes that he's also an idiot and doesn't deserve my brains and charm - so, it balances out. 

I have also made it a point to teach the girls and Wade to use the basic points of the camera (brave). There are so many pictures of the kids with everyone except me - even though I'm always there, behind the camera, for almost every single picture that we have and everywhere they go.

I have sucked up the fact that I'm plumpy and that photos won't change that - so I may as well embrace the me that the kids see every day so that someday when they're older and have sent me to an early grave for various reasons - they can have a little bit of evidence that I looked happy - even if I have on no make up, a tight pony tail, raggedy capris, and my belly sticks out like Jupiter. I am me - the one who cares for them, chases them, loves them, and obviously neglects myself for them. Hopefully they'll see me in this light as opposed to the light that says something like "holy cow, aunt Bethie/Mom, you look awful! Didn't you ever change out of that shirt?".  Brave.

This next picture is probably as nice as I ever look these days, to tell the truth.  We're all dressed for church. The girls MADE me buy a new shirt for myself when a Fashion Bug coupon arrived in the mail.  Furthermore they picked it out.  Brave.  

Most of our self-timed pictures turn out hilarious in some way.

One of our favorite places is the beach.  We have already gone 3 times this summer, and each time we go it's like the world disappears and we laugh  at ourselves being pushed over by the waves, forget duty and inhibition, get super dirty getting buried in the sand, and wear bathing suits in public without caring because most average-joe's look like us at the beach anyway - except for those really gorgeous volleyball players.  Here's where I'm going to get really brave. Or tasteless, whichever.

You know, bathing suits were always a hilarious thing to me.  No one would walk around in their bra or boxers without feeling mortified - it's even a subject of nightmares for most people to be in public without clothes on - yet there's something okay about wearing a skin tight piece of spandex/polyester that shows nearly every curve and crack on the body?  Weird.  Reminds me of the story of the Emporer who had no clothes.  Nobody acknowledges that they're basically nearly naked and it's okay because we're all swimming.

This is me holding Taylor, who is terrified of having her face go under water.  She threw herself on me and nearly drowned me a few times while I used what strength I had with my arms to hold her torso up out of the bigger waves that would have otherwise crashed onto her head. We laughed when I could finally breath again.

me and my boy - Allie's handy camera work

a walk with the dogs in one of our favorite parks

the park that inspired Sam's 4th birthday gift (a really cool sandbox)

when it's time for us to leave this park, everybody a mile away knows it

the girls attend a zumba class - Sam, as shown, is always less than enthused

We done much more - but this is a sample of our summer. And, I've been brave enough to even include pictures of myself!