buzzing... around my head and in my heart

we spent last weekend in Hico, hanging out with family and playing at the annual Old Settler's Reunion carnival.

grandma reading to the girls. sniff.

we all descended upon the Care Center to pick up yaya.

at the carnival, where I spent the majority of my effort warding off bees. there were so many bees, people!! boo. I know bees are very important and that they're in danger of disappearing, which would mean bad things for everyone, but it's no fun fending them off all night at an outdoor carnival. ah well. maggie was unperturbed. mostly because of my fending skills.

see all those people along the gate? yeah, I'm related to all of them.

daddy took magz in the spinning strawberry!

mica, yaya, and her new wheels. the grandkids all chipped in and helped purchase this scooter. she was so surprised! mica leigh is awesome for finding it and letting us help.

I went down the super slide once. I'm telling you, I was too busy battling bees.

yaya and kaitlin

mugging.

in addition to all of her awesome books, let it be known that our daughter has a taste for deeper things. behold, amy carmichael's "if":

this arresting quote has been attributed to ms. carmichael:

"We profess to be strangers and pilgrims, seeking after a country of our own, yet we settle down in the most un-stranger-like fashion, exactly as if we were quite at home and meant to stay as long as we could. I don't wonder apostolic miracles have died. Apostolic living certainly has." — Amy Carmichael

and that paperback below would be "More Than a Carpenter" by Josh McDowell. mmm-hmm.

she's also been known to frequently pull out "Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God". because, you know, there's nothing like a little 18th century Jonathan Edwards before kicking back with Elmo's World.

this is how it feels a little now. lovely and fast.

she had a hard time going to sleep last night, so I caved and went in to help. she'd gotten herself pretty worked up so I held her against my shoulder, did a bouncy, swoopy dance, and let her catch her breath. we plopped down on the couch in her room and I started singing some of the familiar songs, patting and drumming, and kissing any dear, soft skin that came near me. in the beginning, it was the cabin in the woods song, then she asked for itsy bitsy spider, and finally I moved into 'I love you with the love of the Lord', over and over. she looked up at me with such open trust, such sweetness and beauty in her big toothy smile, such assurance in the half-whispered 'mamas' she said as she patted my face and chest. that I'm her mama, her property of sorts, is something she knows, and the deep intimacy and fierce rush of love completely overwhelmed me. I cried and sniffed and tried to keep singing even as that baby mimicked my sniffles and giggled at her cleverness, and I just thanked God over and over.

I love you with the love of the Lord, I love you with the love of the Lord. I see in you the glory of my King, and I love you with the love of the Lord.

-m.y.

I post photos.

I can't even begin to try to describe the past few weeks. so let's just look at pictures I collected on my camera during that time.

first up, we went to M's friend's wedding over at U of H. here's our fun, pretty, and VOCAL girl:

this dress was my mother's day gift - it's totally fly, for real.

documentation of that first big bruise, compliments of the coffee table. and there's Goodnight Moon, which is still a favorite. she likes to show you where the kitties are.

after my Mexico trip, after work, after the trip to Hico and Grandad's funeral, after the trip home and more work, and after throwing my house together in the blink of an eye, we had Magz' first birthday party. it was a total success - we were so glad to see family and friends, and I really wish I'd had it in me to take more photos. I'm grateful to my brother for snapping a few shots, even though the light coming in from the skylight makes Maggie look like a glowing radioactive cherub:

I rather like the slight blurriness of the photos. it looks a little bit like it felt to me, like we we'd just stepped off the Tilt-A-Whirl and were trying to get our bearings:

this is not clean eating. :)

in a real pool for the first time. we should all have a floatie like this.

with daddy and momo.

100% adorable.

with yaya. fyi, when we went up to the metroplex last Wednesday we sort of stopped giving her bottles. I took some, just in case, but we never broke them out. so it's sippy cups and whole milk all the way for this one-year-old:

I wanted to chronicle the fact that one of her favorite toys around here was this cheap Office Max calculator:

riding yaya's wheels at the reunion in Ft. Worth last weekend:

pretty mo.

unabashedly eating berries. she does not care.

studying cousin K with marmee.

considering a meltdown.

i love my daddy.

and this was today, after I'd read for 5 hrs and hit the church for a meeting. Magz & I ran out to do some errands and give mgb a break, and when we got home I got to sit and enjoy this while I caught up on a stack of dvr'd episodes of 19 Kids and Counting. don't judge.

I think I'm starting to breathe deeply again.

guess what's not in this post? any photos from Mexico, because they're all on my phone. so I'll have to blog again, I guess.

:)

mgb makes good hummus from total scratch. and I love it when he makes us cold wedge salad in the summertime and cuts up bell pepper instead of tomato.

I could not have accomplished the birthday party/housecleaning effort without lindabell's help. really, I couldn't have.

grandad's funeral was wonderful. my brother said the best things.

in the last few weeks, I've let myself off the hook for trying to be awesome at everything all the time, but I'm really ready to start eating well again. and I miss working out.

I am, apparently, a reading machine. oh, and if you're a teacher you may encounter the training programs I'm doing now... why don't you go ahead and start imagining how you can transition your classroom to a multi-media, online format. don't worry, your organization's LMS should be a great help, and you can shoot for gradual blended learning if the online component freaks you out. but buck up, soldier - the technology is here to stay, people are already drawn to it, and it can add a lot of options to your class to help different kinds of learners, so make friends with the computer and let it help us turn out critical thinkers who're actively participating in their educations. *sorry, I've read a lot of these things the past few days.*

I can't wait to have my hair chopped off.

our baby is toddling.

I'm blessed beyond my understanding.

-m.y.