Sydney left on one of the biggest adventures of her life at the end of July. She went to Texas to nanny for my brother, Deej and his wife for 3 whole weeks! Her responsibility was to care for and love her two cousins, who are the same ages as Rachel and Hash.
This was the first fraying of my apron strings. The first time that Sydney would be away from home for more than 5 days. And holy smokes, was it a learning experience for all of us.
Sydney's absence was felt immediately and deeply. We missed her a lot and there wasn't a day that went by without someone talking about her. You know, its hard as a mother to see your child go out into the world and have the occasional bump in the road or down day. But its also wonderful to see them learn and grow and overcome and come out on top.
While she was gone, we tried to keep ourselves busy.
We did some art projects. You can't tell in this picture but this was coloring on tinfoil with sharpie markers. It looked really cool.
We played Chicken Foot (with dominos) a lot!
We played games outside.
We watched the humming birds visiting our porch.
Sydney taught us how to make this awesome beads (by texting pictures).
We went to the zoo.
We went to the Sandy amphitheater production of "Shrek."
We played with a lot of legos. In fact, this little display was left deliberately for an unsuspecting sibling. The perpetrators were hoping that their victim would come running through the door without looking down and would get caught in their lego land-mine.
We also found a bat at the top of the outside of our garage one morning. Check out some zoomed in pictures of this little bugger!
We had to leave for the afternoon and when we came home, it was gone.
We also got new carpet in all the upstairs rooms. Its beautiful and comfortable and I love it. I said to Parker, "Let's get your room put back together." He responded with, "It IS put together!" What do you think?
Although we had fun with these activities and many others, we still missed Sydney like crazy. Thank heaven for FaceTime and texting. It was nice to be able to see her cute face and talk with her during the long three weeks.
Sydney came home on Monday, Aug 17 and jumped right back into real life. Freshman volleyball tryouts started Tuesday, 18-20 and school started Wednesday, 19th. And off we go to the races!
I am so proud of her for being up to this challenge. It wasn't easy and there were definitely some challenging days, for her and for me. But she came through a champion, strong, better and with a wider perspective. And now, we are just eating her up here at home!
