a real haircut.

The night before kindy and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring...

except sawyer and aidan, giggling in the hallways - definitely not being asleep before the first day of 2nd and 3rd grade.

I don't really have the words to say how I feel about tonight. First of all, it is amazing that aidan is in the 3rd grade. How did I get this old? How did time fly so quickly? Then I have sawyer, right after her, who I still picture, always as 5. But to think they are 8.5 and 7... I remember when "other people" had kids that old and I thought how far away that must be.

But it wasn't far away at all.

3 years ago, I was weeks away from sending Reese to her first day of preschool. 3 years ago, I didnt know about her brain tumor. I had no fear of anything, really.

...just shy of 3 years ago, halloween 2012, my safety net was cut away.

Not looking towards the future out of fear that your own child may not get there, is the most debilitating feeling one can have. I used to flip flop between thinking about how reese would be that first day of kindergarten, what assistance (if any) she'd need, what she'd look like. But then for a while, I stopped doing that.

Some of that is self preservation, I imagine... getting your hopes up for something. I wouldn't let myself get too far into the future for fear that I would later be at that moment without her.

This morning at church, our pastor said it best when he was asking how can we think those types of things when God has been there to show is the opposite so many times before that. When does "faith over fear" swap the other way?

I am always being shown that it is okay to plan for the future. We'll get there. Tomorrow morning I will be in the same place I had imagined so many times before - with reese. I've labeled all of the girls' things, I have made their lunches and gotten out their new dresses. We will take pics and I will watch my older girls take their little sister to her classroom and say goodbye on a new adventure.

I used to smile with a friend about how reese would probably have this amazing bob haircut going into kindergarten. I could picture her.... exactly as this... reese today looks just how I had imagined her to look, less than 3 years ago.

This is reese's first haircut. Not by a neurosurgeon, not by daddy because chemo was kicking in, but because it was time to beautify before school. Like regular kids do.

(before, during, after, then a comparison of the back)

***ALSO, do not forget to order your childhood cancer awareness tee shirt!! The deadline is coming this week!! :D www.booster.com/areyallaware

IG: theskelteseven