Small Miracles

It's become harder and harder to update my Blog. 

As my kids get older, they don't want me to share as much. So many stories and things I want to share get tucked away.

The Blog has become my journal so I worry that so much of my life won't be remembered.

Erin and her family are in Virginia shutting up their life there. They are in TLF (military acronym for "Temporary Lodging Facility"). It reminded me of my Germany TLF. When we lived in Turkey from 2012-2014, I went into what they thought might be "early labor" and the boys, me, and Veronica (family friend helping me) were shipped off to Germany for about 3-4 months. 

So I went searching for the video, and I found this. If you watch carefully, you'll see my very pregnant self.

I write all this to say, I still want to try and included glimpses of our life, shared with permission (or at least knowing that I won't get lectured for sharing it.) I have told all the kids they can ask me at any point to change a post I wrote from "public" to "private" and I will remove it.

Today, John had off work. We went to the 9:00 service at church. I sat next to Ms. Kay whose husband had died a week ago. She hugged me and hugged me and hugged me, and after service she told me the story from start to finish. Here I am living my life, and Ms. Kay's husband isn't here with her anymore. 

Afterwards we came home. I did some work to prepare for school tomorrow. Monday is homeschool co-op, and I am teaching a language arts class which requires effort on my part. In addition, Monday is the start of my own kids and a school week. So I had to get some stuff done.

After that, I played a game of Wingspan with both Sidge and Abigail. John, the boys, and me (Gabe too) caught three rams and loaded them up to take to the processor tomorrow morning.

And the boys and I cleaned their room! Oh what an accomplishment that was. (I also figured out how to put it to music which was super fun!)

I am becoming more and more aware of how fleeting these moments are. How few years are left before they won't care at all about half of the things in their room ... I'm truly trying to enjoy each moment.

I did learn a lesson. Do not put your boys in charge of putting away the Christmas decorations in the attic. The entrance to the attic is in their room so I thought this was acceptable. Teenage boys have no concept of keeping at attic clean. Holy cow was that stuff a mess.

I fixed it.

And we fixed their room.

Tomorrow, the camper will go to the camper "shop." This feels like the end of an era. The Dunhams will return for just a few more days at the beginning of March before moving to California. Erin has truly become such a dear friend. Losing her is really hitting me hard.