John

 On September 14th, my brother John had a heart attack and passed away.  It was a shock and we are all still working through it.  I have lost a lot of people that I love and I consider myself to be someone who understands grief and knows how to work through it.  But losing a sibling is different from anything I have ever felt in my life.

No matter what was going on or what was happening, no one in this world could make me laugh like my brother John.

Losing a sibling is losing a part of your family, part of who you are.  And it is lonely.  

John, we will miss your smiles, sarcastic comments, and jokes every day.  No one will ever make me laugh like you did, ever. Love you brother. 

September Recap

 So I missed the whole month of September.  September was not the best month for us over here.  On September 14th I lost my brother John. It was sad and heartbreaking for all of us but he will get his whole own post when I am ready.

On this post I want to recap all the good stuff that happened this month!

We spent our last weekend up at the lake!

We all started school (I will do another post with our goals for the year).

Claire started 10th grade!

Oliver started 7th grade!

We snuck back out to the lake for one more beach weekend!

Mark got COVID on my birthday so we couldn't do much.

But we celebrated with some take out chinese and sushi!

And I read more books!

Claire went to homecoming!

And the girls all wore heels this year and not just sneakers!

And that was September in a really quick nutshell!

Beach Time With Friends

 It finally worked out that some of my bestest friends could come down to the beach!

It gets hard to get together with all of schedules so I was thrilled when we made this work the other day. 

As Shannon said, "New friends are great but old friends are comfy."

I love these goofballs who have been around since high school!

We have literally been soaking up every last second of summer at our favorite place!

I just love sitting at the beach chatting with this guy.  He is getting so old but he still loves to hang out and chat with Mama and I hope that he never stops. 

I am really going to miss how much time I have had to just read!  I have read like 8 books this summer and it has bee glorious!!!  

I don't ever want summer to end!!!!

BEACH WEEK!!!

Beach Week 2022 was a success!!!  Stupid Covid set us back a bit but we still had a blast!!! 

The kids loved using our flower shower!

I still can't believe that kids let us recreate this from 10 years ago!

There was a lost croc but Seal Team 7 stepped in and recovered the croc from the break wall!!!

We had a beautiful shower for Andrea!

Sportsman shenanigans!!!

Finally made it to happy hour!!!

Beach week was filled with so much fun! We had a wonderful baby shower, learned new slang so the kids could keep us hip, saved a croc with our bare hands, and just relaxed and reconnected with family.  It was perfect! I am already looking forward to next year!!!