Noelle got to be the honorary flower girl at the reception of our friends, Bill and Lisa!  It was a special night to remember and one we’ve looked forward to for a long long time!  Lots more on our special night to come!

Since this is technically a “mommy blog,” I’ll throw my mommy two cents in here!  Every little girl should have a magical night out on the town with their Mommy and Daddy all to themselves, so you know our other two beauties will get a special turn when they are 8!  It’s so fun to start family traditions as life plays out.  Anna Kate is getting the craziest surprise of her life when school starts (speaking of traditions… we make so good on our promises), and we can’t wait to surprise her with something that will make her scream at the top of her lungs.  Stay tuned for that one!

I always tell them fair does not mean the same, but it means equal.  Anna Kate always hated naps and thought it wasn’t fair that Noelle got to stay up.  I would tell Anna Kate, “When you’re Noelle’s age, you won’t have to take naps and when Noelle was 4 (when Anna Kate was still napping), she had to take naps too!”  It works in the reverse too.  When the littles went to the water park and got snow cones while Noelle was at school one day this spring, of course Noelle heard about it and got super sad.  I told Noelle, “When you were 5, you got to go to water parks and have snow cones with Mommy too and when Anna Kate is 8, she will be in school while Rose goes to water parks and gets snow cones.”  Everyone gets a turn, whether you’re too big or too small to do something fun or get a privilege, it all evens out… that’s the small stuff!  Mike is a little more philosophical about it all.  He says, “Define fair?” and “It’s a paradox, nothing is fair and everything is fair.” or even “There is no such thing as fair.” Things are pretty fair when you have parents that adore you and try their best to give you every opportunity in the world they possibly can, but nothing is fair in bigger picture problems that are way less trivial, like poverty or the 27 million people that are trapped in present-day slavery (20% women, 50% kids, 200,000 in the US).  Those things are truly not fair.  For us, fair means doing the right thing in each situation. We try our very best, because at the end of the day, we love each one as if they are the only one.  Forever and ever!