Thoughts on the Eve of my Birthday

It is late on a Sunday, and with little else to do... I am contemplating how to catch up the blog. There has been so much going on, life just seems to fly by. Little Miss had her 5th birthday, I had knee surgery, and we took 15 people camping for 3 days.
So, here are some of my favorite moments from the past few weeks.
* Hailey's birthday party. We had 12 kids from all walks of our life. We had her party at McDonalds, which was the easiest thing in the world. But my favorite part of the night was twofold. One was that we got to see many of our adoption friends all together, foster and natural children alike. Second, Daddy was the child monitor. He helped kids on the slide, opened all the nugget sauce packets, took pictures, and cleaned up kids messes. Love you Daddy!
* My knee surgery was no big deal. Just a little cleanup from a domestic accident last October that wouldnt go away... but my very very over active life was not conducive to being out of commission. Little Miss was very attentive, my round the clock nurse. She brought me reading material, drinks, snacks, and asked me every 30 seconds if I needed something. I am now 2 months post surgery and starting to do things normally. Still no softball or hiking or fun things like that, but my range of motion is back, if only the strength would return.
* Camping. What a fiasco. Can I just say that every time we go camping with other people that it turns into drama? We were taking Papa, the Spice family and Child family camping. We ended up with the Child family, Papa, the Naked Boys, and a friend of a friend. We left 3 hours and $900 later than we were supposed to... but ... we had a FANTASTIC Time. There were 5 kids all 5 and under. Daddy caught 5 fish, the kids caught 1 million crawdads, we all sat around the campfire telling stories, and the kids all got so dirty it was hard to tell who was Little Miss and the Naked boys and who was PigPen.
** I was fidgeting in my sleeping bag, trying to get comfortable because I knew the day was soon beginning. I slept alright, but needed just a few more minutes of wake up time. I love that time in the morning, camping especially. You can hear the rustle of the forest. The sun starts to illuminate the tent. You smell a little campfire smoke, a little grass, a little rain and a little dirt all mixed in. The glorious thought that I always have at this moment is "There is nothing to do today but whatever I want. Thank you God for this beautiful moment". But this Saturday morning, I get a 5 year old freezing cold nose pushed to my nose. A barely audible "Mom", "Mom". I peak open one eye barely a sliver to see Little Miss in all of my view. "Mom - I LOVE sleeping in a tent!" she says. "That is great" I reply, "try doing it some more" ha hahahaha. Yeah. We didnt. We got up. But I just love that my pink pink princess pink daughter has the love of camping that her Dad and I do.

And when I find my camera... I will post some pictures!