Saturday, July 15, 2017

Tap, tap, tap...hello? Anyone here?

Hello!  Can you hear me tapping on your screen?  Can you see me waving from afar, like a long lost friend?  I've missed you!  I've missed this blog, so very much!  I have a million excuses for not visiting or sharing more often here.  It's been a whole year!  In some ways it feels much longer than a year ago!  So many things have been happening around here!  We still live in Southeast Kansas, we still have three kiddos (four if you count Walter, and 12 if you count the hermit crab, fish, and tadpoles!) Kris is still working for Walmart.  We are still incredibly blessed and so very thankful for our sweet family and life!

Everyone keeps growing---too quickly!  Katie is going to be a senior this year! It's just the craziest thing!  One minute she's being born, and the next she's driving everywhere, working at the ball fields, and graduating from high school!  She has been such a great teenager.  I'm not sure we could of asked or prayed for a better girl.  She has hung on to her morals, gives Jesus praise and glory, and thinks of others before herself.  She has spent a lot of time with her sweet friends, Adam, Taylor, Brooke, Cassidy and Cortlan this summer. She is still a carefree, silly, energetic girl, with plenty of humor and antics to keep everyone laughing (or in the case of her siblings, sometimes crying!)  She loves music, loves playing her ukelele, and her bff, Walty.


Asher is going to be a 4th grader this next school year and is still our amazingly wonderful boy buffer in the middle of his wildly sweet sisters!  He has become obsessed with Minecraft, and still loves Legos!  He loves the KC Royals, the KC Chiefs, collecting sports cards, hunting and fishing!  He is reading chapter books and graphic novels, and keeps getting better at reading as the days go by.


Our sweet baby Claire is going to be in the first grade!  She loved kindergarten and cannot wait to go back to school in August!  She is the sweetest thing, she is still the most affectionate, most loving and snuggly girl!  She's also very smart and can be super curious and ornery because of this!  She loves My Little Pony, Barbies, playing on her kindle, and reading books!  She also loves LalaLoopsy, and I don't think she'll ever get tired of Disney princesses!  She and Asher are very close, and don't fight {too} often.

I have recently started something brand new!  I am going back to school for a second bachelor's degree in elementary education.  This past school year I worked as a special ed early childhood paraeducator and I really enjoyed it!  After working as a para, I knew that I had the ability to teach, I just wasn't sure about going back to school.  I found out about a program through Wichita State University that helps paras become teachers!  I've been taking two classes this summer, and will take classes for one more year before I can receive a provisional license to teach!  Then I'll continue through one more year of school while I teach!  I'm really excited about it, but have felt overwhelmed at times with the amount of work it's going to take!  I know it will all be worth it!  I'm hoping to teach 3rd or 4th grade. When I was a substitute teacher, those were my favorite grades!


I sometimes think life is going by faster than I can soak it all in! Every day goes by in a whisper, and the weeks and months go by even faster than that!  I want to savor every moment, but I find myself taking things for granted at the same time! I feel so blessed to have this life that I live.  I have an amazing husband, who loves me without question, we have a safe happy little home, and those beautiful kids...they are more incredible than anything I could have ever imagined for my future. We have an amazing church family, great friends, and a Heavenly Father who loves us beyond all comprehension.  I need to remember how incredibly blessed I am every day!

I always say this, but I really want to visit here more often.  I love this ol' blog!  I started it in June, 2005, I believe, so it's about 12 years old!  It's absolutely amazing to look back through the pages of our story and see how God has worked and moved and moulded us.  I am blessed beyond measure.