Beyond Bringing Up Boys

Zachary is almost 16. I look at his baby pictures and want to reach in and pick him up one.more.time. These 16 years have been such a blessing! He's been so easy to parent and such a delight! He wanted to have his friends from the youth group over for a bonfire. We decided that presented a great opportunity to turn it into a surprise birthday party--and give him a dream gift. Zachary has wanted a Taylor acoustic guitar for a long time. David found one on Craigslist that seemed to be a great one-- for a reasonable price--as Taylor's go. He contacted a friend from church, who's a guitar enthusiast,and asked him to go with us to look it over. It was in nearly perfect shape and had the beautiful, full Taylor sound. Trey took it home, changed the strings, added some ebony bridge pins and shined it up. Zach couldn't believe that it was a Taylor and a 200 series . He beamed! In the quiet of the night after everyone left, he came into our room last night and played

The boys and David were shopping for me at Bath and Body Works on a very busy Christmas Eve. Samuel, in his innocence, read from the label on a body lotion "fresh bosom." His much older and wiser :-) brother quickly corrected him, "that's fresh BALSAM." David said he couldn't tell if anyone laughed, he was looking for the nearest exit. NEVER a dull moment, I tell you.

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David and I anticipated his mom's arrival for a couple of weeks but held our tongues.  It was so difficult! We left the boys about an hour before her flight was due to arrive. They didn't think anything was unusual about that since we occasionally leave alone (one of the many lovely benefits of having a teenager!). Before we arrived with her I called the house and asked them to go to the screen porch because I had something that I wanted to get to our room.  Again, with Christmas so close, it didn't arouse any suspicion. Here's what happened. Sorry about the crazy viewing.  User error with my new camera. We had a wonderful visit. It was rather sad to see the effects of cancer and chemo on her body. She has a CT this week and we should know more then.