the ayars affairs: memories and making more

Matt preaches on, and the girls and I drove from Philadelphia to Pittsburg to visit Great-Grandma. What a sweet time with lots of family, and especially with her.

My mom's sister and my dad, my sister Lisa and her husband, five of the current 6 (soon 7!) grand girlies, and my mom's mama.

Here Lily is examining the stages of hand skin elasticity, veins and transparency :) From Lily's hand, to mine, to Aunt Patty's, to Grandmas...she found this very interesting!

Jayla is a HOOT and a half and is utterly adored by all of us, but especially Nora. "JAY-LAAAAA!" She's the busiest little thing I've ever met, climbing, wandering, jumping, examining everything, always. She keeps everybody on their toes and laughing. Love her.

Sometimes Grandma remembers that we are Lisa and Stacey. Sometimes she's sure we're her own daughters. Either way, she loves us and is happy to sit and watch all the girlies, and time with her is so precious.

This morning we spent all morning with grandma in the hall's game room. The girls were in HEAVEN. So was grandma.

I'm pretty sure we were breaking several rules. But everyone was asleep in their chairs but grandma...despite the noise.

Nora was calling Bingo,

And everyone else was taking parachute rides and having noodle-sword battles.

Grandma even got in on the noodle-battles.

So thankful to be able to share this time with her with my children, to spend some time remembering, and to have TIME with grandma. I greatly miss regular moments like this with family in Haiti, especially with the very young, like my nieces, and the very old, like grandma, with whom FaceTime just doesn't cut it.

From there, we drove a bit to meet Lori, one of God's great graces to our family...a total stranger turned family who read about us once in the paper when my Grandpa was writing the weekly "Saturday Sermon" that Matt took over when She looked us up, we got in touch, she started to pray...and to this day she (and her beautiful family, both church and blood) is a constant prayer warrior for our family...always encouraging, always asking, always supporting, always praying.

Today she met us for lunch, and for a playground in the rain, and I'm SO thankful. Yes, Lily has a clover up her nose. YES, we've been spending too much time in the car lately. Stretching our legs was SO good. But being with Aunt Lori was the best.

From there, we drove another three hours to Columbus, Ohio...staying with my dad and his wife, and spending tomorrow with dear friends, missionaries in Ecuador with their three girlies...girlies who get my girlies, girlies my girlies get, all at home everywhere and no where and loving being together wherever they are. Which is good, because I love being with Kim, and Matt loves being with Guido.

If only Matt were here :)