Here we are again, staring down the end of another year. It's been a great year! Here's the highlights from the Letkeman house:
January- Aviannah learned how to count to 10
-John's birthday. I honestly can't remember what we did to celebrate!
February- Leesa and I road-tripped to Canmore for Jill's bachelorette weekend! I got to try cross country skiing for the first time and it was so fun!
March- Aviannah turned 3 on the 12th
- Cassidy turned 6 on the 30th
- We had a joint birthday party for the girls with both sides of our families. The house was packed and the girls were very well loved on
- I got to go along on Cassidy's field trip to a gymnastics center
April- Cassidy had a birthday party with friends.
- Cassidy lost her first tooth!
- The girls started swimming lessons and both loved them
May- Cassidy started soccer for the second year and did awesome! She improved so much from last year
- I planted my garden, also the second year. Unfortunately it did not do as well as last year
- Highlight of the year- I celebrated my upcoming 30th birthday in Disneyland with Leesa, Jill and Pam. We had the best time! Good weather, good company, good food and lots of walking!
June- We attended Cassidy's kindergarten graduation.
- Cassidy had her last day of kindergarten and was declared ready for Grade 1!
- Aviannah got accepted into the Pre-Kindergarten program at the new elementary school.
- We took a weekend trip to Swift Current to visit my grandparents in their new place. Not quite as long of a trek as it took to visit them in Texas!
July- Cassidy learned how to ride a bike without training wheels! She had a great summer speeding around and getting more and more confident.
- I hosted a 5 day club at my house for a week. We had a great turnout!
- Another highlight- Eric and Jill's wedding in Sylvan Lake! This was our big holiday of the summer and it was so wonderful! The girls loved being flower girls!
August- My birthday. The May celebration was my big party and John and I just had a low key date night
- We went camping for the weekend in Waskesiu. We had great weather!
- Aviannah FINALLY learned how to use the potty
September- Cassidy started Grade 1 and loves going to school every day
- Aviannah started Pre-Kindergarten and also loves school!
- I took in 2 new day care kids, first only part time and then full time. They have been an awesome fit and I've loved getting to know them!
October- Our park got a new makeover which was very exciting!
- The girls were super heroes for Halloween
November- John and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary with a quick overnight getaway.
- We had an early Christmas with my mom's side of the family before my grandparents left for Texas
- Aviannah learned her ABC's and learned how to write her name
- I was involved in a drama with our church
December- We decorated for Christmas!
- The girls performed in the Sunday School Christmas program. Cassidy was Mary and Avi was a sheep!
- Cassidy also performed in her school Christmas program.
- We are excited to celebrate Christmas with both our families!
This is such broad summary of our year. I could easily go into more details but I don't want to turn a blog post into a novel! Of course, in between all these "big" moments of 2017 were all the little, ordinary, everyday, arguably more important stuff. I'm just enjoying these days so much. Our life is busy, very very busy, but we've gotten pretty good at enjoying the moments as they happen. The girls are growing so, so fast. We are so in love with them and with this life!
We are looking ahead to 2018 with anticipation and excitement! God has, as always, been so faithful and good to us. Merry Christmas and God's blessings on you and yours this Christmas!
Last year we entered into a new stage of life with Cassidy off to Kindergarten and this year brings with it another new stage- both my girls are going to school!
Today was Cassidy's first day of Grade 1. We got to go meet her teacher last night and see her classroom and get all her school supplies unpacked so this morning, even though I wanted to take her, she got on the bus and off she went! I'm pretty certain she will love going to school every day though I'm expecting a very tired girl for the first couple of weeks.
Aviannah is very excited because she gets to go to school this year too! Last year she found it hard watching her big sister get on the bus and not getting to go herself. She won't get to ride a bus this year but she does get the special privilege of going to the brand new school in Warman. We registered her for the Pre-K program. She starts next Wednesday and goes four afternoons a week for 3 hours. That's a lot of school for such a little girl but I am positive she will love it! We got to see her classroom and meet her teacher last week and Avi ran right up to her teacher and gave her a big hug. The other exciting part is that Levi is in her class! I'll still be babysitting him and so that works well all around! They are going to be quite the pair and I hope they won't get into too much mischief together!
With Avi and Levi in school together, that gave me four afternoons of no children in my house, and so I decided to look for another daycare kid. There are so many ladies that do daycare in Warman and I felt it was going to be next to impossible to find someone. A teacher I used to work with recommended me to her friend who was looking for daycare and we met and on both ends we felt like it was a perfect fit! I will have a new little guy who is 2.5 coming 3 days a week and his sister who starts Kindergarten this year will come every other Friday. It could not be a more perfect arrangement! They have come one day already and they have fit in perfectly with everybody and I have very high hopes that we will have a great year!
I'm also still teaching piano two evening a week, so life is definitely going to be busy but I am so incredibly thankful to have found jobs that allow me to stay at home with my girls. In 2 years Avi will be in Kindergarten and then I plan to go back to work as an E.A, and I know those years are going to fly by! I've been home with my kids (well, it started out as just one kid) since the beginning of 2012 and I can't believe that this stay-at-home mom gig is soon coming to an end. I know I will always look back on these years as being the hardest, busiest, yet most fulfilling years of my life. The opportunity to spend every day being present with my kids, playing and learning and snuggling and crying and laughing and yelling and singing... these are just priceless times!
I often hear moms of older kids saying they can't believe how fast the time has gone and I pay close attention whenever I hear those words. They remind me to stop and savor the moment, even if someone just peed on the floor for the 5th time or someone else drew on the walls, one day I will look back and maybe wish for smudged fingerprints on the window or to be picking up toys for the millionth time. It's so hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that Cassidy's days at home with just me are done. I get her on the weekends, and evenings, and that's it. And while I'm so thrilled for this next new stage and thrilled for her because she loves school, part of me just wants to pull out all her baby pictures and spend hours looking at them and crying because wasn't that just yesterday?
I suppose that's just motherhood in a nutshell. Having your heart being tugged in two different directions all the time. It's amazing watching them grow up and it's terrible watching them grow up, all at the same time. I am #blessed (sorry, couldn't help it!)
Yes, my blog is still here, dusty cobwebs and all. There's been something on my heart that God has been teaching me lately and I feel like I need to get it down into words.
One thing that I have always struggled with is living in the moment. I love to have something to look forward to. The anticipation, the planning, the dreaming about what it will be like- I'm obsessed with all of it. My personality is such that I get ridiculously excited about little things, like birthdays and Christmas and trips. I went to Disneyland a couple weeks ago and for two weeks leading up to it I had trouble sleeping because I was so excited, which was super annoying but that's just how I am! I love looking ahead to the next thing, or looking back on what just happened and reliving it in my mind over and over. In doing so, I often forget to notice what is happening now.
When Cassidy came along, I found myself doing this with her childhood. Looking ahead to when she would start crawling, start walking, start talking, put sentences together, be potty trained, etc. I didn't realize I was doing it then, but I was pushing her to do all these things sooner. I think that's pretty normal for a first time mom. We want to see them hit the milestones and we don't realize until after they've hit them that 'oh, that was actually a lot easier when they weren't mobile' or 'now that they're talking they ask so many questions!' I don't have any regrets about her baby years, but sometimes I wonder if I wished them away too quickly.
I feel like I did a better job cherishing Avi's baby stage. Granted, Avi was brand new when she came to us and Cassidy was 9 months, but I remember her sleeping on my chest and trying my hardest to soak in that moment because I was more aware of how fast time went and I knew I'd blink and she'd be walking, talking, no longer a baby. And yet again, it went even faster then I thought it would.
Since 2017 started God has really been impressing on me to live in the moment. It's so interesting the different methods he uses to teach us. Unintentionally I have been picking up books to read that are about someone losing somebody or something, and I've found myself watching TV shows and movies along that same line. I usually don't let myself watch or read those kinds of things and I honestly think God had everything to do with the fact that I have been lately. Because I really do feel like I am finally learning how to live in the moment. It's just been so impressed on me lately that these people in my life that I love; my husband, my children, my parents and siblings, my friends...they are not promised to me forever. Only God knows how much time I'll get with them and they belong to Him, not me. They are a great gift bestowed upon me and I will not take them for granted.
The other day the girls were sitting on the couch watching a show and I just found myself staring at them, studying their faces and trying to soak up each little detail- the smattering of freckles around Cassidy's nose, Avi's tiny little nose, the way their hair fell. I feel as though they've always looked exactly like this, and yet pictures tell me that they were once babies, but I don't remember that very well anymore. And one day I'll look back on pictures of this day and think "It's hard to remember them like that, they are so grown up now!" These days are some of the hardest, yet most precious days of my life. Cassidy starts Grade 1 in a few short months and just like that, my days at home with her will be over. I can't believe it. And I can't help but think of how many days I willed the day to go faster, for bedtime to come quicker, because I was tired of little people hanging off of me and asking me endless questions. And here I am, staring down the end of these days and I want the ride to stop. I want to freeze time and keep my babies home with me forever. Slow down.
So I'm living in the moment. Because looking ahead may be fun and exciting, and looking back is a good reminder of how far we've come, but this moment now is beautiful, and it's fleeting. Tomorrow it's gone. I want to remember lazy mornings in the kitchen, as I empty the dishwasher and make plans for the day in my head and the girls sit at the table in bedhead and pajamas eating their cereal. I want to remember taking them to the park and watching them run and laugh. I want to remember dance parties in the living room as they shout "Play another song, Mommy!" and then spin with all their might. I want to remember reading stories to them, and them fighting about who gets to sit on Daddy's lap, never Mommy's lap, only Daddy's. I want to remember John walking in the door after a day at work and shouts of "Daddy's home!" and giggles and hugs and kisses for all. I even want to remember tantrums and slammed doors and time outs because one day those will be all gone too. I really do feel like I have learned how to live in the moment. I'll never get it perfect, but I am getting it better.
