2006

That may be a bit too much to cover here. I'll probably only have a couple minutes anyway and who can say anything decent about an entire year in a couple of minutes. That leads me to the Christmas letters we've been getting. It's wonderful to see that all the friends I only keep in touch with around December are doing well. Personally, I wish some of the letters would cover more of their struggles along with the triumphs. It's impossible that life coasts along without incident, for anyone. Our year sure was gut-wrenching. It has been a time of quick growth for my husband and I. We are 37, and in many ways as average and thirty-something as they come. We haven't grown in stature. I'm still 5'4" and he's still 6'0". We have, however, been wrestling with the facts of our lives, and have changed a lot since this time last year. January 2006 found us caring for a five day old precious daughter, worrying for her health and trying to keep germs away. The winter and early spring passed in a blur of getting by, and just surviving. In May, D started to come to grips with issues that have been with him his entire life. Anyone who has been through a process like that knows that it gets worse before it gets better. At it did. On June first, I had the gall bladder attack, and so my physical stress was added to D's emotional stress. That was rough. At the end of July, we also decided to sell our first home and move after 9 years. The stress was nearly too much for D - and I was the one at home with 5 children trying to keep things clean and "show-able". The first contract on our home failed at the closing table, it was a Thursday. We found out after we had signed all of our papers that the buyer's loan had been declined in underwriting. It was now mid-September. We had already moved out of the house, and as luck would have it, my parents were also moving that weekend. We had made plans for the harboring of our large family from Thursday until Monday. Thankfully, even though my parents were in the midst of unpacking boxes themselves, they had enough extra space for the 7 of us to descend upon them for a very indefinite amount of time. We did our best to go on with life and give the children a sense of normalcy. The three oldest started at a new school less than a week after we landed at my parents' home. Thankfully, they made new friends and loved their teachers. Within a month of that first failed closing date, we were completely finished and ready to start the process of moving into our new home. It seemed like forever but it was literally a miracle in the real estate world. We finally had a place to call our own again. We moved in just in time for Halloween and spent all of the holidays here. It is starting to feel like home. In the end, even though this blog version of our year contains more than our Christmas letter did, it still keeps to itself the most painful and private agonies of the year. I suppose that is why the letters we receive tend to touch on the highest of the low points and spare the truly painful. This year, however, I feel like getting back in touch right away to find out the "real scoop". I'm fairly sure that there are some story lines in the lives of my friends that I don't want to miss. At the very least, there are some events in my life that I really do want them to know about. This year's letter mostly related the challenges of raising children, which is honest enough, I guess. I'm hoping that 2007 will have some really relaxed and happy stories to add to our tales of "young family maelstrom".