So, here I am. Still alive, just very busy and with a major writing block. I'm not sure why I feel I have little to write about with all of the material that I get from the kids each day, but somehow I have let 5 months pass since my last post. And even that wasn't a real post - just pictures. So, I know all five of you who actually read this are super excited to be reading about my life again (blogs are so self-righteous aren't they?!), but beware of the following content. If you don't have a dark or inappropriate sense of humor at times, you may be offended by parts of the story below. Just fyi...

Today we decided to celebrate Eveyn's birthday a day early. She would be 3 years old tomorrow. However, tomorrow is Monday and I wanted to be able to go out to the cemetery with all of us together and knew that would be much easier on the weekend rather than during the week. So, after church we grabbed a quick lunch at Jack in the Box and then headed out to the cemetery where Eveyn is buried. Well, it was supposed to be a quick lunch, but since Elijah has to either tell a story or demonstrate something after every few bites, it was not as quick as I had hoped. But that's beside the point.

Ella of course had no idea what we were going to do, but Elijah did and he was excited about it. He talks about Eveyn all the time and tells me how much he misses her and wishes she was still here with us. I have written about this before, but I just love the things he says about her and the way he sincerely misses having his other sister with him. Now, he hasn't been out to the cemetery in a very long time, so like I said he was pretty excited. On the way there he started talking to Emerson and telling her what we were going to do (Ella was asleep at this point). He told Emerson in his happy little sing-song Elijah voice/baby talk voice, "we're going to visit Eveyn's graveyard! That's your sister, but you can't see her because she died! But we're going to her graveyard! Isn't that fun?!"

Once we arrived at the cemetery and before we got out of the car, I told Elijah that he couldn't run around and act crazy because he needed to be respectful of other people that were visiting people they loved also. He did well with this most of the time, but he was pretty happy since we were having cupcakes. As I was trying to secure a wreath that I had bought, Elijah took a break from asking when we were going to eat the cupcakes to ask a more important question. "When are we going to dig up Eveyn?" I'll just write out the rest of the conversation:

Me: "Dude, we aren't going to dig up Eveyn."
Eli: "Why not?"
Me: "Well, remember how we've talked about what happens to our bodies once we die?"
Eli: "Yeah, they decave."
Me: "Right, they decay. And Eveyn's spirit, her true self, is with Jesus in heaven. Eveyn's body is not alive anymore, so you wouldn't want it here with us now."
Eli: "Yeah, I know that mom. But we could dig up all her bones."
Me: "Why would you want to do that?"
Eli: "Well, I could give them to my dog someday."

And at this point, you just can't help but laugh. A lot. And Elijah doesn't get the joke, but he really likes that he has somehow said something funny. And sorry Pop, but he went on to tell the same "joke" about feeding Pop's bones to his dog someday too.
Once the totally inappropriate joking was over, we sat on the grass, enjoyed cupcakes together and talked about what we thought Eveyn would be like if she was still with us. Elijah became more serious and real quietly said, "yeah, I think she'd be pretty cute right now." It's hard to imagine what she would be like as a three year old, but I agree with Elijah that she'd be pretty cute.
Happy Birthday Eveyn