I had the delight of having Avi this weekend, and I do mean delight.  I have her quite a bit these days, far more than you “see” on the blog (you have no idea how hard it is not to mention her each and every single day I have her!).  I feel like I’m getting a crash course in everything that goes along with caring for a four year old — and I love it!

She’s fast asleep beside me now, but just a few minutes ago she looked up at me and — completely unprompted — said “I wuv you, Amy Beff.”  There’s something incredible about a child telling you they love you but when they do it without you saying it first?  When it’s coming straight from their heart, not as a response to something you just told them?  Unmatchable.  Absolutely unmatchable.

But now, back to the weekend.  If I can tear myself away from talking about Avi, that is.

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I got to work late on Friday night — I say “got” instead of “had” because you have no idea how thankful I am for my job.  It’s challenging, I’m surrounded by people I truly love and I’m getting to learn something new all the time.  It has been the perfect transition from Starlite, something that I’m more grateful for than you know.

I slipped out long enough to have dinner with Cara (I’m still about to burst from happiness since she’s back from Ecuador!) and one of our friends from college, Caroline.  Caroline lives in Texas and I haven’t seen her since we graduated from college.  She flew in to see Cara and they drove up to see me for a bit.

Cara and Caroline were both two of the original college girls that helped me get Starlite off the ground, so we go way back.  At one point during dinner, Caroline mentioned our first Starlite meeting and how, if the seven of us sitting around that apartment had of known what God had in store, we probably would have never believed it.  Most of those seven girls read the blog to this day so I’m sure they’re looking at their screens right now thinking “truer words have never been spoken.”  And aren’t you so glad we didn’t know, girls?  We might have choked on our sweet tea that night.

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I had such a hard time falling asleep on Friday night because I knew that, when I woke up the next morning, there would be snow on the ground.  I don’t care how old I get to be; I will always, always run to my window to see if it really did snow like the meteorologists said it would.  And run I did — you should have seen how fast I made it from my bed to my window!  I wasn’t disappointed, either — not only was the ground covered, but the snow was still falling long after the weather channel had said it should stop!

As I was standing there watching it snow, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe God let it keep snowing until I woke up just so I could see it.  That probably sounds like something a little girl would say, doesn’t it?

Good.  Let’s keep it that way.

(And, for all you northerners: I absolutely did go to the grocery store to buy bread and milk the night before it snowed.  They were calling for an inch and a half — it was a necessity!)

(Also, I’ve been trying to find some cute mittens for ages now and, no matter where I look, I cannot find adult sized mittens.  What has this world come to when a girl of 25 can’t find herself a darling pair of mittens?)

(I may have to make a pair for myself and, if I do, I’m adding a button to them just because.)

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When the snow melted, Avi and I hit the interstate to go visit our favorite newlyweds; my mother called eight times to make sure we were really on our way (and that doesn’t include the back-to-back texts she sent).  We went by my grandmother’s house first and, on our way there, I began telling Avi about how I used to go to visit her when I was four, too.  By the time we pulled into her driveway, I was holding back tears thinking about my grandmother.

She’s my step-grandmother which, if we’re just going to be truthful here, automatically lets her “off the hook” a bit in modern day society.  But she never let the fact that we have no biological connection between us stop her and, to this day, I can’t think of many people who encourage me more than she does (in fact, she’s one of the main reasons I reactivated my Facebook account — I missed my daily messages from her!).

You know, no one wants to have divorce anywhere in their family — whether it be their grandparents, parents, etc.  But I happened to get a bunch of step’s — step-grandmother, step-mother, step-father — who genuinely love me as if I was their full blown granddaughter or daughter.  To them, the word “step” means nothing and I’m the better for it.

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I can think of at least seven more things I want to tell you but it’s off to bed for this girl for now.  Sleep tight, cupcakes.