Would You Believe...

… that it’s still Saturday.

Funny, I think I said something similar on Monday.

So I started off the day by welcoming my friend, Ang, who was willing to wake up at an unreasonable hour on Saturday morning and haul her toddler and preschooler over to my house to watch Caleb, Ian, and Miah for a few hours until another friend, Brandi, could arrive.  I think these people must be saints, because Ang send me a text, thanking me for asking her to watch the kids, and she sent me a couple of wonderful messages about the fun they had, as well.  She wouldn’t take anything for watching them.  Then… the deal with Brandi (& Lawrence, too) was that they would watch our kids for pretty much the rest of the day, and then we would hang out this evening, and we would buy them pizza.  After putting up with our munchkins for a little over seven hours, we arrived on the scene only to find that they had ordered pizza for us.  Who has friends like this?  I am blessed.

As many of you know, today was our last quiz on NEI.  It was a really good day.  Seth struggled in early rounds but managed to quiz out in the last three rounds in the morning, finishing 13th, overall.  And he was sick.  I’ll take that.  Grace had a perfect day, averaging 90 with no errors… clearly 1^st place.  I’ll take that, too.  As a team, they were undefeated in the morning and pulled off a first place finish in the tournament!  

Bon Voyage, Illuminate Peru:

This is not a great picture.  The lighting is terrible, and it’s a little bit blurry.  Whatever.  This picture represents my favorite moment of the day, and you might be surprised to learn that it’s not because of what was in front of the lens… not really.  It was, instead, what was happening behind me.  They had already been announced as the top team.  Everyone had clapped.  The “official” picture had been taken.  But I quickly stepped up and said, “Stay there,” because I wanted to take this shot.  And you know what?  Somebody started clapping again.  And it rose just a little bit louder and lasted just a little bit longer than it needed to, and quite honestly it got me all choked up, because I just love it when people show love to my kids.  And that’s exactly what that was.

This picture, I kinda like:

L.