All About the Allens: Celebrating G

Thank you so much for all the love, support & sweet words over the past week. We had a good last week celebrating Gibson. It was exactly what we needed.

Wednesday we awoke to celebrate the day. My dad was here to be with us and the kids and I had some errands to run, a friend from church came and gave me an amazing massage (!) and we made cupcakes for the night.

Wednesday night we celebrated with friends who put together a lovely dinner. I wanted us to be with friends and knew our family wouldn't be able to make it to the mid-week get together. And like I said in the last blog I wanted us to really celebrate the year that G changed our lives. We wanted to be together with some of the friends who've really helped carry us through the last year. At one point in the night Daniel thanked everyone and said something I couldn't put into words... He said how we know as Christians and as the church we are to be the "hands & feet" of Christ, and just how much we'd learned and experienced that through those around us this year. How we've learned what that truly meant.

That is what we celebrated.

On the patio at sunset- with lots of friends {even more kids than adults running around!} & lots of food. We celebrated that with music, tears, words of encouragement, hope, strength & love.

{God's Grace}

Before we headed out for the night we gave the kids a little gift. I ordered these sweet little key necklaces from an etsy shop. They were so cute about them and Ryder's insisted on wearing his almost every day since.

After dinner we headed out to release lanterns. The kids were SO looking forward to it (and I was too)... Well, a windy Texas night and huge flames... and maybe the not so perfect suburbia location did not bode well for the lantern release! After a joint effort try we decided that was not the wise choice to release them there and then.

Carrie wrote these sweet words about the night. And I stole her pics below...

Ryder cried & cried. But we told him we'd do it another time and place. When we got home Daddy came to the rescue with some (old leftover!) sparklers! :)

It was a good night.

We went to bed with hearts {again} full of gratitude in the midst of what could have been a horribly painful day. So thank you all.

Saturday was Race day!!! :)

I talked about the 5k and the meaning in the last blog - so I figured I better have proof!

It was HOT and crazy with color! We had to take some breathers from the heat & walk a bit, but we did it. So proud to have these girls with me every step of the way. Was so amazing to see "Team Gibson" running in front of me and hear people yell "Go team Gibson," behind me!

Getting ready to go...