About 18 months ago I crashed a birthday breakfast and ended up extending an invitation for someone to move in with us. Blame it on the hormones, but it has been such a tremendous blessing. 

Keri was a nursing student at Vanderbilt, getting her Master's degree as a certified pediatric nurse practitioner. Not a bad addition to a home with a six month old and a 2 year old! The program she was in at Vandy required several internships her final semester, but with a week of classes in Nashville each month. So from January to August 2015, Keri lived with us one week each month during her scheduled classes.



She graduated in August (sadly, while we were in Park City) and started applying for jobs. In the meantime, Charlotte moved here and got a job, finding herself in urgent need of a nanny. On a whim, I texted Keri in October and proposed that she move back in with us, continue the job search from Nashville, and nanny for Charlotte while they both searched for permanent solutions. She agreed, so she came back for 6 weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday.


From the very beginning Keri has been such an incredible blessing in our home. The kids adore her. She always went out of her way to be helpful: picking up groceries on the way home, cleaning up the kitchen while Kyle and I do bedtime.

We were especially blessed by how hands on she was with our kids even after nannying all day. She'd get home right at the witching hour--5:30--and jump right in, reading to Hamish while we finished dinner, setting the table and getting drinks, helping clean up. Or meet us on her way home for a walk in the woods. 

 After the kids were in bed she was just as fun: helping me recover our dining room chairs, and fully committing to binge watching silly TV shows. 



But Hamish's favorite part, by far, was breakfast. For six weeks she skipped our room in the morning and headed straight to the kitchen to meet her breakfast buddy (which of course means before Keri went to nanny all day, she fixed breakfast for Hamish and sometimes the Manimal).





In December Keri started a real job. Hamish still asks about when Aunt Keri, her breakfast buddy, will be back and refers to the the guest room as "Aunt Keri's room." Clearly she couldn't live with us forever, but we sure did enjoy it!