Thank you Thursday: Someone you can turn to

Dear Rudy,
Since you have no daughters and I have no brothers, we've always made a pretty good pair.  You send me Valentines day cards in the mail, and marvel at my girly dramas, and scold Brandon for allowing me to pump my own gas - all the kinds of things a girl with no brothers usually don't get attention for.  And I give goodbye hugs, and talk to you about mermaids and books, and help you plan secret surprises for Mare - all the kinds of things a girl brings into a family.

But in this recent year that we've lived back in town, you've taken on a new role in my life - you've been my go-to guy when I'm caught in a pinch (which with two kids - my 'times in a pinch' seem to be growing at an alarming rate).  As a long time planner, these are moments that I'm not particularly proud of, as I like to think that I have my stuff together enough to handle things in advance.


You will say (as you always do) that its no trouble and you're happy to spend time with the kids - but I also know that you have things planned and items on your to do list to get done.  You may say its not a big deal for you, but know that it is a big deal to me. Once I called you at work to see if you could pick up Grey later that afternoon because I had forgotten about a doctor's appointment.  I've stopped by with the kids while you were at home working on a project and completely hijacked your entire afternoon just so that I could get in an adult conversation and have another pair of eyes on the kids while I was feeling exhausted.  You've picked up, dropped off, taken out, and stopped by more times than I can count and mostly because I've asked at the last minute when I panic that I can't do it myself.

Rudy, thank you for being there with an outreached hand no matter how little notice I give you.  Thank you for being someone I can turn to when my life starts to unravel.  Its in these moments when I'm feeling ill prepared and distressed that you help me see I don't need to always have it together; that I have people around me that are ready and happy to help even when I let it get down to the wire.

love,
tab

Next Thank you (third) Thursday:  Someone who makes you better

Dadda's at work

Have you been wondering where I've been? Well, we are in the thick of "Dadda's at work" month. Brandon works normally but this month he is heading up a grand opening for a new store in his district (an hour away) so he's been staying in a hotel and working long hours and we've been missing him. Oh, and he's hijacked our home laptop so forgive this post as it's coming to you live from my blogger app on my phone:)

In the meantime I've been cleaning up the aftermath of one of our biggest events of the year (beer olympics this past weekend), dealing with some odd diaper issues (I'll spare you the details- you can thank me for that), drinking obscene amounts of coffee, and kissing my babies everytime I miss Brandon.

Oh, and sending Dadda lots of picture updates.

We've been finding things to keep us occupied though. We visited Jojo and met his puppies and horses.

 

And visiting Sophia and taking in some minor league baseball.

 

And enjoying live music and vendor food at Thunder in the Valley with family.

And knocking items off of our 50 things to do this summer list.

 

We are also making sure to get in quality time with Dadda when he's home or we go out to kidnap him for dinner.

 

It's been a hard couple of weeks on all of us, but we know it's only a short while and it's a good chance to remind us that a team works together. And to get through the hard parts, we all have to be flexible and find a way to make it work.

Thanks for working so hard, Dadda and for giving us this life we are so lucky to live. We love you and are proud of you.

Brandon
In the future when teachers and coaches describe our children as hardworking, that will be because they learned that by your example. Thank you for that.
I love you,
Yours.

Scf 2012

I'm the oldest of three girls.  Somewhere between the arguments over our Barbie's Ken doll boyfriends and sharing clothes, and rolling our eyes at our parents, and that one time we had to carry Tasha from the woods in a soaking wet snowsuit because she fell in the pond - we became best friends.  On the baby's 18th birthday, the three of us went and got matching tattoos of the letters "scf" in which we end emails, and decorate picture frames, and Kayla gets sewn into summer purses for us.  It means 'sisters come first.' 

And for the past four years, we've set aside one weekend out of the year that just us get together and spend scf time together.  This year we got to invite Gemma since she's a sister now.  scf - the new generation.  Our mumma came along too (to celebrate and babysit - thanks Mum!) as she has her own rightful place at scf weekend, considering she is a co-founder :)

Scf weekend was located in Pittsburgh this year and we spent Friday evening chowing on pizza, drinking wine, and finishing each other's sentences.  Oh, and loving on Gemmi.

On Saturday, we had a shopping spree and some lounging before the three sisters headed out to the LadyAntebellum/DariusRucker/ThompsonSquare concert.  To spare you the details, lets just say each of the 'Adams girls' our super friendly, slightly obnoxious, and wild in our own right...and then three of us get together and I'm pretty sure we look like some kind of strange giggling tornado of dance moves ready to gobble up innocent bystanders without warning.

In short, the concert was a great time, the music was good, the beers were big, we were witness tot he brightest double rainbow I've ever seen, we attempted to guess a strangers name (like out of all the names on the earth), we ambush-slow danced some old guys, we randomly found ourselves in possession of backstage passes and laughed until our stomachs ached (or until we peed our pants a little bit...whatever).  So it was a typical scf weekend, quite honestly.

We safely navigated our way home and spent Sunday recovering and laughing about the ridiculousness of the three of us combined.  Gemmi and I sent a pic text home to our boys to let them know we were missing them too, but having fun.

Welcome to the club, Gemmi Rose.
Scf<3 forever.