Five Happy Campers: I'm back!

Sooo . . . hi!

Yep, it's been a while.

And now you are in for like, the longest post EVER.

It's been a wild summer y'all. So many things to update on! My goal is to get all caught up here in the next week or two.

The biggest "adventure" started last spring when I started having trouble with my ears. Yes, my ears. No, I'm not 80 even though I sound like it. My inner ears malfunctioned. At first it was a minor annoyance, but it became a serious issue when the dizziness kicked in mid-May. And didn't go away. And it's finally just in the past couple of weeks I've started to feel better. So, this summer will go down as the one in which I struggled to balance my condition with the needs of my VERY ACTIVE family. It was rough, but I learned a lot.

I learned that each day of "normalcy" - no matter how boring it may seem - is truly a gift from God.

I learned in a first-hand way that we are sooo not in control. And have no say in whether or not we will have another year, another month, another day, or another 5 minutes of good health.

I learned to pray even more than I did. And more. And some more again. And to keep at it and not give up.

I learned to fully rely on God - on a daily and sometimes hourly basis - for strength, for peace of mind, and for the ability to keep moving. It is only by His hand that I was able to keep up with my kids this summer.

I learned to find the good amidst the bad. To focus on what I could do instead of what I couldn't.

I learned I'm stronger than I thought I was.

I learned to have a greater amount of patience and empathy towards those who are struggling with health issues.

I learned how incredibly patient my precious husband is, and what wonderful friends I have.

Even though this wasn't a life-threatening thing, I have learned that life should be LIVED. Right now.

I've learned to have patience with timelines that are not my own. I would have liked to have been done with this in, say, 2 days. But, like I said, it's not up to me.

I'm still not 100%, but at least I'm moving in the right direction, and I'll take that. I've been told that inner-ear issues can take months to resolve. I'm just grateful that I've seen an improvement!

So, enough on me. Let's get to my favorite blog topic - Jack and Noah. We're going to head WAAYYY back to May when we were finishing out the school year. The kids' favorite year-end event is the track meet. I wasn't so great about pictures this year, but these first two are Noah:

And Jack . . .

This year they tried the running long jump:

Then we had volcano-eruption day - the kids built homemade volcanoes (even made the molding dough from scratch) and then put some combination of liquids in them to make them erupt. (Noah is in the red shirt)

(Jack is in the white striped shirt)

And this spring we started traveling for soccer. Our first trip was to a huge tournament in Denver over Memorial Day weekend. The boys' team made it into the championship game - and lost 2-1 - but we were all so excited that they took 2nd place! It was a HUGE accomplishment with all the teams that were there. (Jack and Noah are in the black)

That brought us right up to birthday weekend. Because they were turning 10, we tried to make it a little more special. We started out Friday night with turning the office into a huge fort. Which they thought they were going to sleep in. But that only lasted until about 11 p.m. :)

Saturday morning we took them to the air show at the Air Force base with one of their best buddies, Christi (her husband is the B1 pilot who was deployed at the time).

Saturday evening we had a big party for them at a bowling alley - we invited families who have played a big part in their first 10 years - it was a wonderful time and really reaffirmed for us how blessed our kids are to have such fantastic people in their lives!

One of the things I've been praying for is that Jack and Noah would have really good buddies in their lives, and so far, they do. They have friends who are really good kids, and I'm so thankful for that.

Sunday was their actual birthday, and we let them dictate the day. We started out with church, then went to Taco John's for lunch (Noah's pick), then headed to Flags and Wheels - an indoor go-kart place.

I stood on the side with my camera - didn't want to drive with my dizziness - and came to some conclusions about my kids driving. Noah is very calm and focused and careful: