My parents came for a visit from Wyoming. We hit the aquarium and the zoo and had a blast! We've been loving our Texas spring weather with lots of bike rides and picnics.
We spent an amazing spring break camping with awesome friends.
One of our recent awesome highlights was Grace's 9th birthday. My baby girl is so not a baby anymore. I get emotional on all of my kids birthday's, but this was such a fun day for Grace our whole family that I didn't cry once. We started the day with a family breakfast at Waffle House. I played hooky from school to spend the day with my sweet baby.
After breakfast I took Grace for a special treat haircut and one of those obnoxious little girl spa places. It was early on a Wednesday, so we had the whole place to ourselves.
Before!
After!!!
After her haircut, we came home and played until dinner. She choose Chinese takeout as her special birthday dinner treat and a cookie cake for desert. Then presents and more play. After she had opened all the gifts from her brothers, sisters, grandparents, and aunts, she turned to me with a brilliant little lit up face and said, "Thank you so much for the wonderful birthday. I loved everyone of my presents!" Music to a Mama's ears!!!
Then the very next day this happened...
Someone stole our travel trailer. Our brand new to us, only owned since November, present from Brian's parents, our beloved family travel trailer was stolen in the middle of the night from the storage facility, just a few miles from our house. Someone broke into the area, cut through a back gate and through an alarm cable. They took someone else's trailer first and then when no police arrived (because it turns out the alarm system was not turned on) they came back and stole ours, too.
It has been over a week now since it was taken. No, it hasn't been recovered. Yes, we have insurance. Yes, we will get back some kind of settlement. No, we don't have any idea if it will be enough to get as nice a trailer as we had before.
We are all understandably very blue about this event. It's, of course, just a thing, just a piece of property. But even in the short time we owned it, we filled it with a million lovely family memories. We also filled it with a lot of personal items and sentimental things. The pink fleece blanket from Grace's first big girl bed is in that trailer. The Spider-man sleeping bag that JoJo got for Christmas is there. Five brand new pairs of kids hiking boots in all different colors of the rainbow are tucked in a storage bin under the couch. Our hammock that held all my kids for hours and hours of swinging.
They all just drove away in the night with a mean spirited stranger.
But it's just a thing. And we'll get new things. And we'll go camping again and make new memories. JoJo is already scouring the Craigslist pages for the perfect new trailer. Say a little prayer for our trailer search, that we can find just the right fit for our just right sized family. Sleeps 8 and doesn't weigh too much for our van are sort of hard to find.
And hopefully sooner than later. I just read an article that hiking is good for your brain and that it improves the symptoms of kids with ADHD. I'm a believer. I need to get my kiddos back to the woods and quick!!!