The Perfect Gift

Thanks to these wonderful kids of ours, I enjoyed a full day (and I mean a full day - 12 hours to be exact) of scrapbooking. The kids chipped in and signed me up for Scrapfest today for my 38th birthday present. For those of you unfamiliar with Scrapfest and all its glory, it's a 12 hour day (10:30 am - 10:30 pm) of open forum scrapbooking down at Scrapbooks, Etc. (my favorite store). We each have a table to work at and access to all of the machines and die cutters and fun new tools and such. Plus you can shop anytime you want during the class and add it to your tab, paying at the end with a 10% discount on the total. There's typically about 30 of us crazy women in a class, and I have grown to love my scrapbooking friends. There is a group of six of us that have all met over the past couple of years through this fun hobby of ours and we so look forward to getting together every so often to reconnect and spend a fun filled day together. All of us are moms and madly in love with our husbands. We all think we have the greatest families in the world. And we're probably all right.

Of course we scrapbook pictures of our terrific families and journal our memories for posterity sake, but it's so much more than that. We visit, laugh, eat, shop, laugh, laugh, laugh...Such a fun day. And I come home with so many pages done for my kids' books. Pages we have all come to love and cherish as we look through albums and remember...

My kids and sweet husband know that I rarely ever take the time to scrapbook at home (there's way too many other things that take priority in the home, so scrapbooking is always near the bottom of the list.) They also know it's one of the things I love to do. So signing me up for classes for birthdays, Christmas, anniversary, and other such holidays is always my favorite gift. The gift of time!

The PERFECT GIFT!

While I was away playing today, my kiddos spent the day with daddy, hanging out, having fun, playing with friends, and doing some good Saturday chores. (The house looks great, by the way. Thanks guys. And thanks, Ryan, for making that happen!) Coming home to a clean house made my super fun day of scrapbooking all the more enjoyable!

What a blessing it was to come home and see my sweet babes sleeping so soundly and perfectly. I snuck quietly into each bedroom, knelt over each one, gave each a soft kiss on the forehead, and whispered "I love you" in each of their ears. None of them budged. They're all out like a light. They'll never even know I came in.

But I'll know.

I'll always know how lucky I am to be a mom to these four amazing little souls. Truly, they are the loves of my life. Ryan and I couldn't really be any more blessed!