Final days in our old home

For my extremely nostalgic personality, I won't deny that moving was very, very hard for me. It was so much more emotional than I ever anticipated. I am very grateful to all that God has given to us. I brought five babies home to our home on Duxhall Court. I started homeschooling our children there. I sat for hours watching them ride their bikes around our cul-de-sac. I knew I would miss all those things.  
I am the person that snaps photos as we are leaving the hospital after having a baby as we are leaving our room.  I try way to hard to remember everything. 

I will remember the hill in front of our house for the hours they set up shop and would sit in their lawn chairs. It was great to watch.  They would play house.  Other times, they would ride their bikes down the hill over and over and over. 

Dom's hobbit hole.  Almost every time we went outside, he would crawl through this hole and sit in his fort.  I kept waiting year after year for him to outgrow it and he never did while we lived there.

He, along with his sisters, sat for hours also in this tree conducting the world.  Every spring, we had a nest.  Every fall, we vowed to each other to take a picture every day at lunch so we could watch the leaves change each day and then look back at our pictures when the leaves had all fallen.  Wouldn't that have been fun?

I wanted to take a picture of each of them in front of the house so in 25 years when they return to look at their childhood home, they could take another picture and see how much they have changed.

Clairvaux, 3 years old

Dominic, 11 years old

Lillie, 9 years old

Zellie, 6 years old

Rose, 8 years old

Zellie, 6 years old

They also would sit and dig in this dirt pile for long periods of time.

Our view which we looked down many times waiting for John to come home.  I looked forward to him coming home every day. 

Climbing the trees was a right of passage.  They loved it.

Vianney- 4 years old

Dom's other perch.  He would conduct the world from this tree also.

One final lunch in our dining room.

I was glad we had one last day in the home to just do nothing.  Everything was moved out, but we sat around with our laptop and chess board waiting to move the next day. 

I miss that house.  I drove by every day for two weeks.  I am so grateful for our new home.  I am just so glad that all of my favorite people moved with me. 

St. Nicholas Day

 They received in their envelope a ticket to see "Little Women" at the local playhouse.

St. Nicholas party

Irish Step Dance

The older three girls started Irish Step Dance this past semester. Of course, they LOVE it and have taught Clairvaux and Vianney all the moves.

The fan club sits in awe and hope that one day "it too will be ME!"

WHAT?????????????  Am I really 13 weeks old?  Nobody told me.

He attended his first ugly sweater party this year.

The guys in their white T-shirts

All day long I compose intense blog posts in my head. I vow that when the kids are in bed I shall write it all down, but alas each day concludes, as it should, and all I am able to muster up are a few pictures. I am okay with that as I started blogging as a way to document our days together. I think in the silence of the day, even though there is a lot of noise around me, God speaks all day. If He wanted me to write it down, He would allow the time. These pictures were taken in our old house. All the guys were wearing white T-shirts.

God's playground and ice skating at Holmes Lake

This past week the weather was bitterly cold so as the temperatures crept into the 30s we couldn't decide if we should go swimming or skating. Isn't perspective funny? It felt nice out today. John took the kids out to our favorite playground. The barren forest is an open field for exploring and imagining. Dominic asks almost everyday if we can go out to God's playground, as we call it. I read on another blog once that sometimes children have to be shown what is beautiful because often they won't choose it naturally. The blogger wrote mainly about encouraging children to be and do outdoors. Some of our kids could be outside all day without any coat or hat and we have others that have to be pushed out the door. Once they are all out, we can barely bring them in and within a few minutes they get lost in childhood play.

God's evening splendor

Holmes Lake frozen over

This pictures looks as if she is coming in with the tide instead of walking on the ice.

Happy Gaudete Sunday!  I made a big pot of Corn Chowder and we watched "The Nativity" with the older children.