Beginnings

Every year our family has a family meeting and blessings for the coming school year.

To say it was wonderful feels limiting, really I have no words to describe it, only the desire to tell you it was special for our family.

School is fully underway and I am so relieved to know that everything for our family is in God's hands. By the sounds of things our year will be full of adventures in learning and growth... just what our family needs.

This year is strange too, for me it is time for me to prepare to watch James leave home, and Rannon become a man. I can't tell those of you still changing diapers how firmly I remember those days with my two oldest. Jaden is another matter altogether but I know you understand :)

I remember much of my own beginnings as a child, the days of summer felt like they would never end, the sun on my back the embrace of my parents when I fell and scraped my knee. Even becoming a parent for the first time, to think of James as anything but a baby was unthinkable for the first couple years, slowly, steadily he crept up tall and strong.

All the others came one at a time (thanks for that) and each one distracted me from the fact that James got taller and older until one day he was taller than me, and it felt like it was over night. Looking back I know it wasn't. My beginnings with my children are nearly over, their discoveries are opening to the world around them and they are each beginning to explore and grow on their own, like great strong trees. I planted them, tended them and nurtured them and now they are all getting taller than me, their branches spread over all I see.

Soon my little orchard will be grown, but I will always walk among them and think of them as seedlings... that is my nature, and my joy.

I can't wait to see the world through their eyes, to explore the traditions they carry with them into their own families, and to watch over their seedlings on occasion. :)

Warm thoughts sent to you all, thanks for your time, and you friendship. Stacey