golden ticket

On Monday when we visited Jason at work, one of his fellow officers asked if we were "done" having kids...this is a funny question for me because when I'm with Jason, I always hesitate and see if he answers first. This time he said something I hadn't heard before - he said " yeah, we are - I mean, we got our Golden Ticket." I looked at him slightly confused..."our golden ticket?" And he explained himself: "Violet is our Golden Ticket. She's our girl." I laughed, but thought a lot about it later. Yes, Violet is our Golden Ticket. Though we would have been thrilled with a 3rd boy (I have to say that!! :))...it is so cool to us that our 3rd is a girl. And she is such a delight to all of us. It's hard to put this into words, and I guess everyone thinks the same thing about their own children, but Violet is in her own category (to us anyways!). She is such an easy baby and when she is awake she is happy, smiling, laughing, content and easily pacified. It is very rare that she is fussy and she is never inconsolable. Jason is definitely different with her than he was with the boys - and Violet truly lights up when she sees Jason. She immediately smiles and starts cooing to get his attention. She is a daddy's girl already. We never knew how much different it would be to have a girl...but we are so thankful that now we do.

Updates....

*Potty-training day 3...Ezekiel is doing great! Only 1 accident today (not counting pooping in the undies - I totally expect that for awhile) and he's loving no more diapers

*SO grateful we have a talented photographer friend - Becky Fisher took our pictures today and I'm so excited to see them. The kids all did great(including jason).

*For a lot of reasons that I'm not going to list, we(and by "we" I mean me) are going to "home school" Gavin for preschool at least for the first 1/2 of the year. I'm excited about it. I'm going to plan out my days with him and really focus on teaching him (and Ezekiel some) about other cultures, exposing him to different parts of the world and stuff like that. He's excited to do science experiments with me too:)

*I'm excited to be resurrecting the co-op with Becky, with some slight changes while the babies are still young.

*Some of you knew I was training for a marathon with Sally in Oct. We have decided not to do the race. I have done a lot of thinking lately about my life and what my priorities are and what I want my life focus to be. I am making some changes in my life and one of the things I decided was to put marathon training on hold for a few years. It was an added stress on me, plus it took time away from the kids and Jason - and we have limited time together as it is. I'm happy with our decision and feel very freed up since I'm not under pressure to run 5-6 days a week anymore and maintain a certain mileage at that. I'm enjoying running much more now.

*I can't believe its almost Sept. Wow. That means Violet is almost 6 months old!!!