It was a beautiful day on Friday, so we headed off to the zoo.  Again, Kendall fed the giraffes and laughed at the silly kangaroos.

On Saturday, Derek had to ref a tournament in Pueblo, so we stayed home and played.  One of our friend's little ones came over in the afternoon to play.   Kendall always likes playing with other kids.

Sawyer is just a happy little boy and began sucking his fingers within the last week, so I am not sure if he is just experimenting or if he has some teeth that are trying to poke through :)

Today we ran some errands and picked out some flowers to plant, so that will be our project tomorrow at home.  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Kendall's little admirer :)

A little shout out to Derek's little brother, Nathan for giving Kendall this dog for Christmas.  Thanks to him, we get to listen to "Santa Claus is 'Comin to Town" year round!!!

Apparently, we have a new little girl, Hildagaard!!

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!!

We got the kiddie pool all set up today, Kendall was all excited to wear her swimsuit yet another day.  (A few weeks ago, she wore her swimsuit five days in a row.)  This morning, the water was too cold to enter, so I told Kendall that it would be nice and warm for her when she woke up from her nap....WRONG thing to say!  The water was not warm and the clouds began to roll in, so needless to say the pool is going to have to wait another day.  Surprisingly, Kendall was not too disappointed.  We did manage to have a picnic lunch outside before the clouds started.

Yesterday, Derek shaved off Kraemer's winter coat!  Lots of hair EVERYWHERE!!  His short hair makes him look so young (even though we did discover a bunch of gray hairs underneath!)

Before the haircut

And after!

I AM a working mommy of two beautiful children.  Although I only work three days a week, those days are long and both mentally and emotionally challenging.  We're always busy looking for new and fun things to do, but in the midst of all that we're doing, what really matters most?

MY family.

Family makes my life matter.  Five qualities that matter most to me in my family are love, fun, loyalty, growth, and faith.  Alone, these are just plain words and are part of our family life already.  But they do seem invisible at times in the reality of our life.  Where is the love on a rainy Sunday afternoon when the whining eats away at my ears?  Who cares about fun when I can hardly keep up with the daily necessities of feeding, wiping, laundering, and cleaning?

But then, I see Kendall offering her hand to help another kid at the playground.  Or hearing her say "thank you daddy for getting my milk", without even being told.  In moments like this, invisible becomes visible and everything I've strived for within my family becomes reality.

Children change everything.  They suddenly fill our world with burp cloths and car seats and passionate new fears about safety and germs.  They give us a whole new context from which to live out God's purpose for us in life.  They create a whole new circle of roles and relationships.  They turn us into parents, our parents into grandparents, our siblings into aunts and uncles.  They continue to shape those relationships as we keep discovering what it means to be a family with all the fun and sacrifices and new experiences and messy challenges.

But what do children bring most of all, (the number one quality that matters most to me in my family)....LOVE.  That unconditional love that children have for us and we in return have for them, is like no other.  With love,  we thrive.  Without it, we can die.  And when we reach the end of our lives, we won't care about what we've accomplished; we'll care about how well we've loved and been loved by those closest to us.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there and especially to my own mommy, who was the first one to teach me about unconditional love.