Pink Umbrellas

Yesterday evening as I cooked dinner I could see out my kitchen window pink Barbie umbrellas floating through the yard. Rob was on the back porch reading. It was temporarily 80 degrees because it has just stormed and was still lightly raining. The girls were on an adventure to find worms and "save" them from the rain. I watched them dance around the yard and I marveled at how sweet and innocent they were. How happy they were to look for worms to rescue and to pick flowers and then run to the back door to give it to me. What joy in these simple things. I went outside to join them and was completely overcome with emotion. Before I could get the words out Rob looked at me and said "I don't want to forget these moments....let's not forget these moments" and then he went and got the camera. They are special moments indeed. Our girls are growing so fast. They are at an age that constantly reminds us of Ryan and Jess. Jess was 6 and Rye was 3 when Rob and I met.  I can hardly believe they are 23 and 20. It sometimes doesn't seem possible. Sometimes it doesn't seem fair that they are grown and gone already. Izzy told me today "Momma, I don't want to ever get married". When I asked her why, she said to me "well, I want to always live with you Momma so I'm not getting married, ok?" Sounds good to me : )  What I realized was that Ryan and Jessi at some point in their lives said "I'm never leaving home" too.  I know now how quickly your children go from never leaving home to can't wait to get out of the house. What I didn't know then was how quickly that transition would happen. I didn't know then to soak up every ounce of time with them because in a blink of your eye they are gone. These moments with our younger children are so precious to us. We've learned a lot from parenting our older children. We've made lots of mistakes. I would love a do over in many instances. I know I'll make mistakes again. They will just be different mistakes.  I'm trying to do it better this time around. When you know better you do better. This time around I let dinner wait and I go outside and watch the pink umbrellas dance around my yard.