5 year Anniversary and PTC Sprint

It has been a busy weekend here in PTC. We started out on Friday celebrating our 5 year wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe it has been 5 years. How time flies- it seems like yesterday when we had our first "date" on the tennis court and I beat his booty (according to Mark he let me win- yeah right) and then we walked to Panera. Competitive from the start :) So I guess it was fitting that we did a triathlon together to celebrate the big day. Jenny and Rebecca came down to join the fun as well. Mamaw and Pawpaw were excellent troopers and watched the boys while we did our thing. It was great to all complete it together! It was picture perfect weather and afterwards we went for BBQ and swam and relaxed in the afternoon. We are so blessed to be able to all get together and enjoy each other. I so treasure and appreciate these times more and more as I get older. Life can be so busy and hectic, and everyone has so much going on- it can be hard to focus on what is important- but family is what it is all about.

Lots of Babies

Yesterday we had a pool play date with 2 tennis friends. They have little ones around Noah's age and it was so cute having them all together. Nothing more precious than a bunch of babies in nothing but diapers (very hard to get them all looking at the camera). Noah is getting so close to crawling. He wants to follow around Jacob so bad and manages to move around eventually to where he wants to go, but is getting more and more coordinated each day. Wow- I can't believe he is 6 months old!!! This week has made me realize how tough is is being a parent. Especially as Jacob gets older, I feel the weight of how much responsibility it is to parent a child and discipline them and teach them all you want them to know. They are like little sponges and soak up all that is going on around them. You just want to protect them and expose them only to good things and always be a positive role model for them - but it is hard! It is hard to be the parent you want to be everyday all day. All you can do is the best you can. I pray that God helps me make good decisions as a parent and guides me in how He want me to raise them. And also that God will give me a sense of peace that it is ok to feel like you can't do it all as a parent and that being there for your child and loving them is most important.

Soaking Up the Last Weeks of Summer

It has been a good couple of weeks for the Hossler boys + mommy. Mark heads back to work on Tuesday so we really tried to take advantage of his time off. We headed down to Destin and had a very good time. Both boys went in the ocean and played in the waves which was exciting to see. The water was crystal clear and very nice temperature ( and I am a wimp). The boys slept much better than they usually do when out of town so that was amazing. Jacob loved staying busy and going from the beach to the pool to the bookstore to play trains :) Jacob especially loved the porch and constantly wanted to go out and play and look at the ocean. When we got back daddy had a surprise waiting- a fish tank (donated by Pop). So it has been a work in progress but we now have goldfish. Yes we decided on the 13 cent fish to start out with. It ended up being a good decision as we already had one casualty, who was "swimming on the carpet" (Jacob's words) thanks to Fatty the cat's assistance. So now the fish is "swimming in the toilet" too. But it looks very good now thanks to Pawpaw donating some beautiful coral from his past salt water fish tank hobby. Mark now wants "real fish" and is contemplating buying some semi aggressive ones to weed out the weaker goldfish ( a great display of natural selection he says :) This past weekend we went to the lake with Mamaw and Pawpaw and had a great time. Jacob loved driving the boat and fishing with worms. We even caught some 3 fish which made it exciting for sure. Emma was the best fisher dog and waited patiently for the fish to arrive. It has been a great couple of weeks and we are blessed to be able to enjoy family and relax.