Beach love

In an effort to fight back against the crazy, frantic spinning aforementioned, I will post about our most recent travels. Our dearest E, who has been family, friend, sister, mother to our girls, and more, and her husband Troy and their baby Jack took us to their family beach house for 5 days. We have spent such precious times there these past 5 years, and have such wonderful memories of being there with them. This was our grand hurrah there for a while...and we did it right. Lots of boat rides to our own little private islands, and catching jellyfish and hermitcrabs with the girls, walking out long sandbars to other islands and teaching the girls about tides and such, staying up late with E and Troy, opening and crying over precious gifts from E to the girls that she has made over months of time in anticipation of our move, loving on baby Jack, eating fresh shrimp and crawfish, we did it all.

I can't do justice to what this sweet family means to us , but something compels me to try. I kept thinking the whole time we were there - "what on earth would our lives in Jackson have looked like without them?" We will miss them horribly, although the stamp on our lives from our relationship with them is so clear. The girls are as much reflections of E as they are of me, they really have internalized so much of her curiosity about life and kindness for others, her thoughtful consideration of things and her love of adventure...I love it every time they say or do something that is so clearly learned from her. Her friendship to me has been priceless as well - I can't even try to put words on that, except to say that I'm not sure I know someone else so much like me in so many ways. I mean, we live 10 minutes apart, and my cell phone bill says we talk about 600 minutes a month just to each other. We have loved Troy, too, as if he has been part of us from the beginning and are so pleased that he loves our E almost as much as we do. Baby Jack, well, I'm quite certain that Lucy and Annie would rather have him for a sibling than each other these days - so far we are quite taken by him.

I'll wrap this up b/c I'm afraid I'll just ramble all night about how much we love this crew and how precious they are to us. As our lives part ways, I know we will remain close and visit much and swap kids during the summer and try to get back to the beach at least once a year . . . we will just miss them desperately in our day-to-day life that will be so far away.