summa, summa, summa time. :)

Ahhh...memorial day weekend....opening of the "lake season". It was soooooo needed this year, more than any year ever. Jim and I have literally been "going" since November..Ava's Birthday (10 ton weight on our heart), Holiday's (running around + 10 ton weight on our hearts), then Jim was gone from late January until April (single mom monday-saturday) at the same time, planning a 5k race with over 2000 people (with a 10 ton weight on my heart), then Aynslee's first birthday, Aynslee's dedication, mutiple birthday parties, and finally, FINALLY, memorial day weekend, we have NOTHING PLANNED except got to the lake as a family (minus one, WITH a 10 ton weight on our heart).  I think it's easy for people to forget that Jim and I are different, we are wounded, our hearts are broken in pieces, and yes, maybe with some time, those pieces may be bandaged together some, but we are forever wounded by our loss of Ava. Everything we do, we do with a broken heart...missing, yearning to hold, love, touch, and hear Ava, that is in every ounce of our existence...at every minute of every day. The lake =peace to us....for just that little bit. And no, I'm not talking about the "peace" you are thinking about, I'm talking about a peace that only the lake can bring to us lake rats. :) Sure, we miss Ava, the whole time we are on the lake we think about her, but that's nothing new. We are ALWAYS thinking about her....our darling first born. Here is little Ava, our darling lake rat....just like her mamma and dada.

Aynslee loves the lake and the water. She is FEARLESS when it comes to the water. She will jump, dive, and splash all day if we will let her. Again, reminds of another little sweetheart with the last name Bright {ava shaye}.

hugging her "ball". 

dada teaching her how to drive the boat. 

thank you Harrison family for the hat! :)

 She sticks her head out of the boat and yells "dada. dada." She knows dada is ALWAYS in the water.

again, saying "dada"....sweet girl. 

Then we went to eat...Friday nights, we like to get off of work, hit the lake and watch the sun set on a boat ride down the water...the only thing that sucks is the boat ride home (in the dark with lots of logs).

There are ducks and Aynslee went NUTS! 

Chasing the ducks. 

She decided this one was scary....I can see that Ayns. :)

yes, we are so cool, we have a pool on our boat. 

And this picture above was after the WORST storm on the lake we have ever been in. It was lightening, raining, hailing, and the trees were blowing sideways. I have never seen a storm this bad on the water. It was so bad, one of our very, very precious friends boat SANK, yes, it sank....bless his heart. It was a new Malibu boat. Poor guy..it basically took on more water than it could handle and SANK. :( It was Ava's little buddy, Mike. She loved Mike...and thought he was the absolute COOLEST thing on the water.