When Life Hands You Lemons, You Make Lemonade

This past weekend was one of the rare weekends that Luke had off of work.
His schedule has honestly been really difficult to deal with the last 3 years and I am excited to announce that he got accepted for a new position at work!!
No raise is included but I don't care. He will be home every other weekend and almost every evening!!! That is better than any raise after the schedule of these past 3 years.

Just attending church together again as a family is HUGE!!!
We can plan Family Nights and Date Nights again! Those have been really hard to plan when he's not home in the evening or on weekends.
We can know what is happening in our lives more than a week in advance and maybe I won't have to take trips by myself with all the kids nearly as often.
The perks are endless!!

This past Sunday, we were all geared up to pick up Precious Jewel from Grandmama's and head to church when a wrench was thrown into the plans.
The brand-new-tire that we'd just bought to replace the slashed tire that had thrown our day awry the day before, caused a few more problems. Two of the bolts sheered off when Luke was changing it and we were left stranded in the driveway. That has never happened before.

We were both frustrated. It's rare he gets to come with the kids and I to church. We both have felt disconnected. He--because he never gets to go. I--because I'm always with the kids and little kids in church are a handful to say the least.

But, but God also knew we needed a day to JUST BE. A day to be together as a family and that's what he GAVE us in the broken tire.

While Luke and I were totally frustrated, the boys in their child-faith saw this as an opportunity to take a hike together.
So we did, and the time spent enjoying, soaking in, climbing over, around, under and through His Creation was priceless.
He even provided a semi-nice day in the middle of January when it should have been freezing cold.
So off we went.
Luke. 3 Boys. 3 Dogs, and 2 Cats (Precious Jewel happily stayed stuck at Grandmama's).

Following a well-worn deer path

The cats silently stalking us

Every time we are down here, I think of the book "Girl of the Limberlost" or "Freckles."

It's Beautiful. Peaceful. Magic. Color is intense in the woods.

The dogs were in "hike heaven."

This is Junkyard...that cute little puppy from the fall. He's gotten huge.

He looks a little upset but really was just curious as to why I was shoving a camera in his face. I took his picture right before he slapped his big wet tongue all over my camera lens.

Snowball is getting big too.

Right now she's about the size of the labs even though she's a couple months younger.

She already can almost look Nater Mater in the eyes and will soon tower over him.

All the dogs LOVED the water; splashing through it like it was 100 degrees in the summer.

It was funny how the cats climbed down the ravine and all the way to the water. We spent 2 hours exploring the bottom examining animal scat, plants, bushes, and animal dens. I'd never seen them so excited over poop before. : ) But fresh deer poop is pretty exciting to little adventurers.

So next time life gives us lemons, we'll take them and make some memories.