Morning of Andrew's Graduation Day.

10 am Sunday morning...

Ziggy on the back patio hunting swallows... I'm at the kitchen table with the computer, opera on NPR, Howie and Micah still asleep, Andrew in Bozeman after a day and night of graduation parties. I'm prepping breakfast, drinking coffee, and blogging...

Text at 6:30 am this morning. Tracy heading to the hospital. Time to give birth to Brody. Jackie on her way...

I stayed in bed till about 8:30am, cleaned up another mess of Murray's, then walked the dogs, took Buddy for a long walk around the neighborhood. Murray always hangs out somewhere and waits for us to get back, poor girl, has intermittent incontinence plus very bad back hips, has trouble getting up, but once she's up she gets around pretty well...

Yesterday was Andrew's Graduation party. We shared the party with his 3 best friends, Henry, Sawyer and Fletcher and their families. Party was in Bozeman at Sawyer's house. The weather was unbelievably beautiful, the sun shined on us once again. We all feel so blessed, it's hard for me to describe how blessed I feel except by the tears in my eyes...

I guess it's hitting me this morning as I sit here alone. Andrew is 18, graduating from high school and moving on to college. He's not the little boy who used to sleep on my chest, he's a grown man. Yesterday he was in rare form, very funny, confident, mature, when asked by my friend Alex, "what was the most asked question of the day?" He immediately answered, "what's your phone number?"

When I took a picture of Alexandra and Andrew, they are practically cousins, knowing each other since the day Alexandra moved here when she was I think 3 years old, they talked about a day at the beach when they decided to dig to China. I asked them, "Did you make it to China?" They laughed and said, "no we stopped after a couple of minutes." "Really?" I asked. "Well, Andrew gave up, oh not really..." Alexandra laughed.

And right now as I am writing these memories from yesterday. Little Brody Jacobsen is crying and squirming in the nursery, playing with his father Scott, only minutes old... Tracy is in recovery with her mom and Jackie is taking it all in... Andrew's graduation ceremony is at 2 pm so I need to get moving, need to check on Grandpa and get the kids up and fed, and get to town and load a few more photos... will load more later...