Medical Miracle: No baby + the hatred of Halloween =

"My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours… it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually."

-Frederick Buechner (Telling Secrets)

Thank You, God, for

My husband, clean sheets, spray paint, warm baths, ice cream, naps, doggies, Kinder writing, fire pits, hair tutorials on YouTube, candles, baking, Subway oatmeal cookies, books, triathlons, camping, my girlfriends, singing, the pool, dancing, the tropics, my ratty girls, musicals, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen videos, church, Burgerville, strawberries, camping, baby names, Pottery barn duvet covers, wake boarding, freshly washed babies, my family, Etsy, Christmas, manatees, summer, vacations, democracy, movie nights, Bushwackers, the environment, luscious fabric, documentaries, rice crispy treats, and the freedom and resources to blog my life away...

Things My Dogs Have Eaten and Lived to Tell the Tail (get it? Tail/tale - hahahaha)

Children's Books YOU HAVE TO HAVE. Period.

Ain't Gonna Paint No More; Mrs. McBloom, Clean Up Your Classroom!; The Recess Queen; Warthogs Paint; Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse; The Jolly Postman; The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear; Elbert's Bad Word; Caps For Sale; Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?; The Mitten; Amazing Grace; the Rainbow Fish; One (BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME); Zero; The Napping House; The Little Engine That Could; Chicka Chicka Boom Boom; Skin Again; The Kissing Hand; I'll Love You Forever; all the Magic School Bus books; American Girl series;