Beginning the "lasts"...

This was Tymber on the way home from church yesterday.

Sound asleep.

Nothing would wake her.

Even as her siblings poured out of the hot car making dibs on the microwave for a quick lunch to fill their bellies...she slept.

Life has been a lot like this lately.

Living every minute to the fullest and then not being able to keep my eyes open.

It was an amazing summer full of memories that will keep, moments I never want to forget and the beginning of the "last" times we will be all together under one roof.

I don't want to miss a thing, and I don't want to forget either, so I am going to try my best to put it all here.  The good and the bad.  The setbacks and the triumphs.

I have played all summer and not gotten the pics up and the feelings documented, so here is to balance.

Living this amazing life with a family I am blessed to lead and love, and taking the time to get it all down, so they will never forget this time.

18 years ago it was a hot August, John and I were playing in a co-ed softball game and we were anticipating becoming parents.

I would never have imagined then, under the lights at the Castle Rock ballfields, that years later I would be planning and living that boy's last year in our home.

I would never have been able to imagine the prayers that would be poured out on my knees for that boy in my belly.  The prayers that he would be able to see what he could become.  The prayers that he would not become distracted with things that would take him away, even for a minute, from the path he was born to pursue.

I am so blessed to be a mother to this crew of 7.  I can do this.  We tell the kids all the time that "we do hard things."  But this may be the hardest...letting go.

Off to embrace the present.