Guest post by David...

This is David, doing a guest post on the blog again.  Kristi has been busy helping put together picture books and designing journals with the kids for the beginning of school assignments, so I get to take on writing the blog this week.  This week was both great and crazy!  Abigail and Andrew had their first week of elementary school and they loved it!  Grace had her first full week of school at Rise and by the end of the week she was going into class with no more tears, waves by to us, blows us kisses, and then happily walks away with her teacher into class.  Both Kristi and I stand outside of the classroom and are captivated with watching Grace interact with her classmates, do circle time, sing songs, and do motions.  It is difficult to walk away every day, but I'm thrilled to return early every afternoon and watch her in the classroom for a little bit before actually picking her up.  Thank you for everyone's prayers for the first week of school!

In case you can't read the little writing on the easel, Abby wants to be a teacher at the Rise School when she grows up.

Andrew wants to be a doctor at Grace's hospital.

Abby wanted to match Andrew the first day of school and the rest of the week.  

Another moment of praise this week came with celebrating Grace's 2nd birthday on Wednesday, the 27th.  It is difficult to put into words the joy that her birthday brought to our family.  It was certainly a joyous occasion, as it would be with any of our kids, but with all that Grace has been through in the past year (which is hard to believe that it has almost been a full year since Grace crashed and we weren't given very much hope for her life) our whole family was thankful for Grace's big day.  At night, all five of us were laying in Andrew's bed and saying prayers together and both Abigail and Andrew's prayers were awesome and raw and reasons for Kristi and I to praise God.  Abigail prayed: Lord, thank you for giving us the past two years with Grace and we hope that we have many more years with her, but we know that if you call her home we know that it is right.  Andrew prayed: Thank you, God, for the time we have had with Gracie and we pray that she accepts You, God, just like the rest of the family.  Those might not seem like such amazing prayers, but as parents, we were blessed to hear the kids hearts as they talked to God.

Kristi's mom (Sandria) flew into town this past week for Grace's birthday party, which just happened to be when the Niners were town, so Kristi and her mom got to go a Niners and Texans pre-season game.  Niners won!

On Saturday, we had Grace's birthday party and celebrated with a small pool party at Kristi's parents house. Thankfully, the thunderstorms held off for the morning and we were able to celebrate outside and in the pool.  Thank you to Karen and Keith for all the hard work you put in with hosting the party at your house, we greatly appreciate it!  Morgan's Cakery, generously donated a beautiful cake via the organization Icing Smiles (an organization that finds local bakers to bless a special needs/medically fragile child with a special birthday cake).  If you can believe it, this cake tasted even better than it looked.  I'm not a big cake guy, but this cake was exceptional.  You can learn more about Morgan's Cakery at www.morganscakery.com.

To finish off the weekend, we had a great Labor day at my parent's house in The Woodlands, celebrating with my sisters and their families.  

Thank you for continuing to be a part of our lives, Village!