Outnumbered

It has been OVER SIX YEARS since I last published a blog post. Six years, oh my! I didn’t know if my website was even still active. (Lucky for you, it is!) I have truly missed writing, and was recently reminded just how much I enjoyed putting my thoughts “on paper” and sharing my voice through journaling.

Not that I think anyone still checks my blog regularly (that would be cray-cray!), but some of you may be subscribed and it might pop up in your email, so here’s a long update on our family. As it was in the past, this blog is mainly for me to keep and reflect back on, so if you don’t feel like reading a novel today, you might want to stop reading now. 🙂

Dan is still in the same school, same classroom even. He has been teaching 5th grade for 11+ years now. That pretty much consumes most of his time, as you would expect. During the summer he looks forward to planning the next epic road trip. We have been out West twice and went to New York & New England last summer. I missed one of the trips out West because it was too long for me to miss that much work. Dan also enjoys spending his little bit of free time planning our retirement (so far the plans are to have houses in Italy, Ireland, Faroe Islands, & underground in the US somewhere). We’ve also stayed in a couple of really cool Airbnb houses together for weekend getaways, and may do another one this spring. Another hobby that he would prefer to keep a secret is interior decorating; and he has taken the primary role in choosing colors and decorations for the house we moved into January 2015. He thinks my style is too mish-mashed … all I was doing in our last house was working with the limited resources we had and being creative to find things secondhand – but whatever! LOL

Nathan is a cross country star! He started freshman year and surprised everyone with his endurance; he moved up to Varsity within a few races. He is also running indoor and spring track – hasn’t excelled in any of the shorter long distances during those seasons yet, but he’s only a sophomore, so who knows. He did run with a 4×800 relay team which placed second at the State meet for 3A schools! He is also currently earning a 4.0 GPA and working a few hours each week in our parks & recreation dept. He loves to sing; he joined the men’s ensemble at school this year and is planning to try out for Chamber Ensemble for next year – I LOVE that he loves to sing! I’ve always loved our church’s four-part harmony and it’s even better when sitting next to Nathan and hearing him too. He has led our community group in singing a few times and just did it in front of a larger group at church this past Sunday night. Oh, and he has a girlfriend – very adorable, faithful Christian, nice family, also a runner. So far, our first girlfriend experience hasn’t been too scary. 🙂

Jeremy has hung up the soccer cleats & shinguards in favor of running as well! He ran his first season with spring track 2016, then joined cross country this past fall. As a middle schooler he wasn’t allowed to do indoor track, but I’m pretty sure he’ll try it next year. He has been playing the trombone for 3 years now, has been on Jazz Band even as a sixth grader, and earned a spot in the all-district band the last two years. Middle school years are kinda funny for Jeremy – he’s lost some common sense and most of his hearing, but still has his wit and is managing straight As. If we can survive through the next year or so, I think he’s going to be a fine young man.

Nathan, Jeremy and I are traveling with a church group to Honduras this June! We are so excited for that – we are going to help out in a clinic that fits prosthetics for amputees. Right now they use a storage building, and we’re going to help restructure it better to be a clinic. We’re also going to coordinate a VBS for a local church and we’re staying at Baxter Institute, which our church has helped to support for a long time. I can’t wait!

Derek took one season off from soccer but is back this spring with a new team. I missed soccer, so I’m glad even though that adds 2 nights of practice and games on Saturday! He is earning straight As like his brothers before him. He was officially welcomed to the church’s youth group this year and now they are all pretty busy with those activities. I used to tell so many funny stories about Derek. Partly because he was at just the right age during the period of time I blogged, and also because he’s very clever and funny. I don’t really have funny stories to tell about him anymore; and to be honest, we struggle quite a bit with how to “handle” Derek. He is just different than the other two … but I recognize it’s not necessarily a bad different. We’re just still figuring out exactly how to tailor our parenting style to his differences. I feel confident that the characteristics in him that most frustrate us now can be turned around to develop a very successful, Christ-loving man in the future, but we’re going to need some patience to help him get there. His stubbornness is going to yield amazing results when he puts his mind and efforts toward a good cause. His destructiveness now will help him learn how to fix things in the future and be extra careful not to break things in the first place. His impulsiveness will be a blessing when he doesn’t freeze up at the first sign of obstacles, but instead plows on through difficult times without stopping to think too hard about them. (And maybe we’ll also be able to help him stop and think when it’s really important to do so.) His intense emotions now can be hard to deal with, but there’s no question about where anyone stands with him, and we know exactly what he’s feeling. Obviously, his high energy, natural born leadership, and competitiveness are all qualities that will help him get through life, even though they cause us to butt heads quite a bit now. (Thanks to Brooke McGlothin of the MOB Society “Tribe” for a lot of these descriptions.)

I don’t want future Derek to read this and be discouraged. I want him to know that it’s at the forefront of my mind all the time to try and learn how to best parent him as an individual. And I want him to look back and acknowledge our struggles but realize how much we must have truly loved him, since we didn’t just throw our hands in the air and give up ever figuring him out. We are constantly learning more and adapting to his differences. We’ll get there, and then the world better watch out when we set him loose. 🙂

So that’s what Dan and the boys have been up to lately, in a nutshell. I have a lot to say about the journey I personally am currently embarked on, so I will save that for another post. I would love to make blogging a more regular occurrence again, but I’m not making any promises!

This is what everyone currently looks like!