Russell Family Blessings

I can hardly believe our baby is 10! It seems just like yesterday that Wayne and I were calling our family telling them that I would be induced the next morning. Now here we are with a ten year old! Do you realize that in eight short years I will be sending my sweet Eli off to college? That is so wrong!!! Where has the time gone? Eli has had a great time celebrating his birthday. To start it off, he had a joint birthday party with his friend, Cutter (whose birthday is 9 days after Eli's). Friday, Cutter's mom, Wayne and I were very brave souls. We picked up 17 children from school to attend the party which was held at Aunt Missy and Uncle T's pool. The boys enjoyed swimming "Olympic" relays, shooting each other with water guns, and eating pizza and brownies. The birthday boys, Eli and Cutter Saturday, Wayne took the boys to the Gun and Knife show in Andalusia so that Eli could buy a knife with some of his birthday money. He ended up buying two! One for himself a...

It's now time to get back to reality. The Russell family has had two very abnormal weeks! First, Wayne was in Venezuela on a mission trip for a week. He returned last Saturday evening. He spent Saturday night at home, we attended Homecoming at Ino on Sunday and we left for the beach Sunday afternoon. As I reported in my earlier post, we spent the week in Destin with my sisters and their families. We were blessed to be able to stay in an amazing and beautiful, but noisy house across the road from the beach. The weather wasn't the best and the water was dirty, but it was nice to spend time with my family and just be away for a while. Eli and Max absolutely love playing in the water. I'm still not sure if the skim boards that we bought for them were a good idea or not! Despite the jellyfish, seaweed and the rainy/cloudy weather, we still enjoyed the beach. The children all enjoyed catching jellyfish and crabs, looking for sea shells and just playing in the sand and surf. Beach...