Well folks, Sarah went and done it.  She went and became a   teenager this week.  THIRTEEN YEARS OLD!!! 

Here she is with her Grandma Gazdik.  She loves us all so much, we always get birthday parties at her house!  We had great fun Monday night celebrating Sarah’s upcoming big arrival into the teen years!

No matter how old she gets, I still see this whenever she laughs:Is that not the sweetest smile, EVER????  Thirteen or three, I sure love that little girl, even though the calendar says she is now thirteen!  I am not sure how that happened!

We celebrated Sarah’s birthday on Monday because Grandma and Grandpa were leaving on Wednesday to head east and see the Gazdik cousins in Ohio!  (It’s only fair that we share every once in a while, I suppose!)  Also, Kevin had to go to Atlanta this weekend for the AAMFT conference.  (This is funny, because that is exactly where he was thirteen years ago, too!  My mom came and stayed with me while he was gone and Sarah was nice enough to wait to be born until he got back.  That’s Sarah for you, though!  Always thinking of others!)

Before Kevin left, we had two soccer games and various and sundry music lessons and church activities.  On Tuesday afternoon, I even made it out to Spanish Fork to see Sarah play in one of her tennis matches!  She lost.  :(  But it was fun to see her play!  Her friends who don’t play on the team think it is pretty fun, too, as they seem to always find a way to tag along and come watch! 

Kevin left Thursday morning.  No sprained ankle this time, though, and the kids helped a lot.  I took Ben to the doctor for his four-month shots this week.  That’s only a month and a half late!  Not bad, really.  It was kind of funny, though, because the doctor and nurses kept saying, “He is so strong for a four-month old!”  I had to keep reminding them, “Well, he’s really not four months anymore . . .”  As long as I know what is going on, I suppose all is well.

Things went fairly smoothly while Kevin was gone, I even got to go to a game night on Friday night with some very fun women in the neighborhood.  How nice it was to get some time with adults since I was missing my main man!

Saturday was Sarah’s birthday for real, so we got some shopping done in the morning and then I took her and her friend, Allison, to the theatre so they could see a movie.  Allison stayed the rest of the day at our house and even had French toast with us that night.  Fun times!  I think it worked out to be a pretty fun birthday afterall!

Kevin seems to have had a good time in Atlanta, as well.  He returned to us safe and sound this afternoon (Sunday) and was even happy to be surrounded by all our noise and chaos once again.  Wow!  That’s homesickness!  He reunited with a lot of old friends and colleagues and he and his young graduate-student friend were a smashing hit with their poster board presentation.  Kevin has gathered a lot of data on the effects of pornography from his website and Michael, the grad student, analyzed the data and created the poster presentation in lieu of a Master’s Thesis.  The poster title was “Assessing Trauma When Pornography Enters the Marriage.”  They had 100 handouts and they were all gone in the first 10 minutes.  Kevin said they had a constant crowd around their booth, some people returned more than once, and many people expressed their gratitude for their work.  Wow.  AAMFT wouldn’t let him present, but it sounds like they should have . . .