Fact is, I miss blogging.

Maybe I should figure out how to prettify this thing. Then maybe I'd be motivated to keep it updated. Or I could learn how to find all our pictures so I can download them. I've lost track of them since photography became mostly the kids' department : )

Christmas was balm to my spirit. Even though I didn't get everyone here for the Day, I did get to have them ALL together at Josh & Abby's a couple of nights before for a wonderful, memorable evening. I have been blessed with such intelligent & engaging children, daughters-in-law and grandbabies (indulge me, I really believe it). I LOVE being with them!

Our Christmas play was such a joy to put together, pray over, practice, perform. YES, I definitely should have started a month earlier so we could have had a more polished production. I need lots of people to remind me in October. NOT that I am promising one for next year, even if they let us do another one. I have no idea if son Ben (the music brains) and friend Cathy (the stage-and-scenery brains) and lots of other incredibly dependable, patient and helpful folks would agree to it, and I am not EVEN up to thinking about next year. Recovery time needed.... But it is such a sweet memory.

I have thoroughly enjoyed December 25 to present. Love the LACK OF STRESS. Rest, rest, rest. Ahhhh. I do not know how to tell you the feeling. A good one. I am savoring it.

I cannot wrap my brain around her being SEVENTEEN. I was 17 plus one month the day I married, so it always gives me pause to see my children approach that age. Unreal. How can she be seventeen already?

Same look she had at two, when I tried to ask her where she'd put her hearing aids (she got them at 18 months). I'd try so hard to ask her where they were, to help her retrace her steps. She'd look at me with those great big eyes, all seriousness -- and shrug. And we'd clean up, finding them at the bottom of the toy box, or on top of the outside trash can... or -- that one time -- in bits, in the wake of the lawn mower.