Birthdays, Surgery, and Halloween

When Jane and I came home from PA, we went into full on birthday mode. We celebrated Jake and Jane's birthdays with Jake's favorite blackout cake. It was nice and messy for a 1 year old. Jane is a cool 1 year old and Jake has a few more years under his belt.

We opened presents for both of them, but I only got pictures of Jane.

We also did a 1 year old photo shoot with the wonderful Tara Erwin and got these cute birthday pictures. There are plenty more and they all turned out so adorable.

On the 24th I had surgery to repair an umbilical hernia. It was a smooth process and everything went well, but man the recovery was no joke. Even as I am writing this 3 months later I am still healing and not quite to 100%. I am glad they performed the surgery as it could have been life threatening if the hole had gotten any tighter. And I recieved so much support and love from Jake, our friends, and community here. Meals, hours and hours of childcare, and house cleaning were all wonderful. I also found it extremely humbling as I like to think of myselt as pretty indepependent, and during this time I was so dependent. But it did give me a lot of time to slow down and spend more time reading, relaxing, and playing games. We found the game Rhino Hero and it was a hit with all of us. Kind of an elevated jenga.

And while I didn't get to enjoy the festivities as much as I wanted my kids had a blast this Halloween going around with Jake trick or treating and going to Halloween parties.

And last but not least we have a safety patrol officer in our family. Pace is keeping the school streets safe, yeah!