A Fast Summer

Summer is always super fast! I look forward to it so much, and then before you know it, July is almost over! Crazy! I am still not to the point where I am ready for school to start. That usually hits me a couple weeks into August. For now, I am just trying to enjoy what is left of the Summer. Here is what our Summer has looked like so far:

June 8-15: Single Mom Week #1: Kingwood for me and the girls (Casey went to World Changers in Corpus)
June 20: Curriculum Writing for me
June 25: More Curriculum Writing for me (yay.)
June 24-28: Single Mom (at night) week #2:VBS at our church (This was from 6-8:45 each night..then Casey stayed out til midnight every night with the youth)
June 30: The day of two birthday parties
July 3-5: We spent time in Kingwood for 4th of July
July 6-7: We spent time in Burleson at the Yogi Bear Jellystone Campground with Casey's side of the family
July 7-14: Kailey spent the week with Casey's Parents in Shreveport. While she was gone we were put on a water restriction due to a power outage at the water plant, and the day after that was turned back on, we had to call Roto-Rooter to clean out the pipes at our house. (Thank you Dave Ramsey Emergency Fund!)
July 16-20: Single Mom (at night) week #3: Casey has been working with the youth at a church in Killeen to do VBS each night this week. They showed up to help, by request of the county Baptist Association, and have ended up running the entire VBS!

We have had a super busy summer so far, especially Casey! We still have one more week where I am a single mom, the girls are going to be flower girls in a wedding, and then we are going on a much-needed cruise in August!

Here are some pictures from our summer:

Arthur Story Time at Barnes and Noble:

Water Fun:

A few pics from our week in Kingwood:

Father's Day Pics for Daddy's Gift:

Fourth of July:

Yogi Bear Jellystone Campground (Super fun time!)

Park and Water Fun

Another big part of our summer as been keeping Brittyn's flowers alive! So far, so good. I mean they have their moments..but overall they are surviving! Here are some of my favorite pics of them! (Oh and I have fallen in LOVE with Instagram this summer, in case you can't tell!)

This is the time

This is the time.

The time when I am supposed to be doing the "less than a month" countdown. This is the time when I am supposed to be posting updates about how I am 36 weeks and not even in the slightest bit dialated. This is the time when I am supposed to talk about how my doctor thinks Brittyn is going to be at least a 9 pound baby. This is the time when I am supposed to pull the girls' baby clothes down from the attic, only to discover some of my favorites have stains. This is the time when I look on facebook, and I see 5 of my friends are going through the same pregnancy symptoms as me, and I comment on their statuses and relate to their struggles, instead of looking at those 5 friends' statuses, and weeping because she's not here and I feel she should be. This is not the time for me to be doing the "Ripped in 30" workout by Jillian Michaels. I should be stuffing my face with whatever I want, and stuffing Tums down my face all night long because of the insane heartburn.

It's so easy to sit and cry and mourn for what should be happening, in my own human perspective. Believe me I do that plenty. More often than not though I try to bring myself back to the simple reminder that, Brittyn isn't here. And no matter how much I think those things above should be going on, that was not in His plan for my life. It's so hard. I wanted that to be His plan for my life. I want so badly to be about to have my sweet baby girl. Instead of marking the 3 month anniversary of her being gone. Instead of welcoming her into this world like I want to be, I am still mourning the fact that she is gone.

It is a daily decision. I can talk about all the should have beens, or I can choose life. I can choose to live my life in a way that glorifies God, and rejoice in all of my beautiful blessings that I do have, or I can constantly moan and say "well today I should be having a doctor's appointment" or "today I should be 36 weeks pregnant". He doesn't want me to live that way. It doesn't bring Him glory.

I want to bring Him glory.

So even though "this is the time"...

Even though I am still going to have some sad days...

I have to choose life. I have to choose to bring Him glory, even in the midst of this time.