I cannot believe that you are 8 years old. I remember so much the fear I felt when I found out that you were growing inside of me. I did not know if I could do it again so soon. Could I love you the same way that I loved your brother? And then I laid eyes on you on the grainy ultrasound screen. I melted right there, head over heels. And then I held you for the very first time and I melted all over again. I learned something about the magic of mommy love the day that you were born. How instead of dividing love between more, it gets multiplied instead.


You were the most content newborn, who turned into THE happiest baby, the funnest most active toddler, and the most confident loving little boy. You are not so little anymore, in fact you are growing and maturing right before my eyes. You have turned into an amazing boy. You love with everything you are. You do not hesitate to meet any need that you see.


You are so driven. That can be a blessing and a curse:) You set a goal and then work to pass it. You are super motivated. This is a huge blessing to me, but it is also something I worry about. You are so determined to to be your best, that the times you are not your best, you are SO hard on yourself. Much harder than your Abba and I would ever be. I pray every single day that you would understand that our love, and God's love, is not connected to how happy you make us or how disappointed we are. You were loved before you did a thing and you will be loved no matter what you do. I pray every single day, multiple times a day, that that truth will sink in. Being so driven is a wonderful thing, but my hope is that you know that you are loved completely no matter what you accomplish.


The day you were born, I fell in love with the little dimple just off center under your little eye. Still to this day, your sweet smile and off center dimple light up the room. You find joy in every single day and I absolutely love that about you! You are also excited to share that joy. I have long been amazed by the radar that you seem to have for the ones that most need a smile. You see those that I miss in my busyness and you take a moment to recognize them and give them a smile and a greeting.


You started climbing before you could walk. You have not stopped, you've only gone higher! On the days that the skies clear, you can be found in the tree in the backyard. You climb light posts in parking lots, pillars in Walmart, and the halls and doorways in our house. Nothing is safe if I don't deem it off limits. You LOVE the rock climbing gym (and so do I because my walls are footprint free)! When you are not helping someone or climbing something, you are wrestling with someone or carrying them through the house on your shoulders. Your strength baffles me. I call you my little ant boy sometimes:)


I have watched you become the person you are today and I cannot believe how fast it has all happened. I knew the moment that I laid eyes on you that you were amazing. I was right! The more you develop and the bigger you grow, the more I realize how right I was. I cannot wait to see what comes next! I love you, my sweet Samurai!

I tucked my Samuel Joseph into his bed tonight for the last time as a 7 year old. When he wakes in the morning, he will be 8. He has reminded me of this with every thing he has done today. The last breakfast as a 7 year old, the last lunch, the last dinner he'll eat as a 7 year old, the last time he'll brush his 7 year old teeth...you get the picture! All day long, he has reminded me that he is growing up!!!! He delights in it. And so do I...at least most of me! I have loved every single day of the last 7 years with my incredible Samurai!

I am aware that I am a couple of days late on this post. My sweet Sarah gave me the gift of her cold for Valentine's Day. It knocked me for a loop, but I think we are on the upswing. I better write this down before we move on to the big birthday posts this weekend! Exciting times! Since my Valentine was thousands of miles away, I focused this year on my mini valentines! I made each of them a card the night before. I put them at their spots at the table so they'd find them at breakfast time. I woke up with a pile of excited kids who had made cards for me as well. We laid in my bed and cuddled for a bit and then got up. We did school as usual and then we went to the store to find some goodies for our after dinner party. Pink cupcakes were the biggest hit! By that point, the bug had hit me and it came hard.

I cannot give the dates that Marvin will be detached from his ship and headed home, but I can say we are less than a month from welcoming my love home!!!!! When he left in December, it seemed that it would be forever. And let me just say now, there have been days that I truly have thought seemed more like years! But here we are, on the countdown to the other side! This homecoming brings with it a time of stability for our family (at least once the dust of chaos settles). At least 3 years of togetherness for us. I know this sounds funny to you who live together under one roof everyday, but I am anxious about it. I miss Marvin so so much when he is away, but it is the normal for us. I would be naive to say that we are just gonna flow seamlessly into life together on a daily basis. It is a huge transition when he comes home from long separations. Both in his relationship with the kids and in our marriage. As hard as it is to say goodbye, it is also hard to come back together. Would you begin praying for all of us. This hello is going to be very quickly followed by yet another cross country move, this will be 5 moves in the last 4 years if you are not keeping track. It is difficult to continue to have to switch living separately and then coming together over and over. It is VERY hard for me to give up the complete running of the family because logistically it just has to be that way while Marvin is away. I LIKE it. It is very hard to hand over something I like. Or at least it is hard to not constantly take it back! If you are praying for us, I would appreciate prayers that we will surrender and allow God to bring us together again with our eyes focused on Him. It is so so much easier to reunite when we are standing on the Rock instead of on shifting sand. I am so excited to be on the great countdown! The kids wake me every morning with the new number of days until Abba gets home! I love that!!!

Last month I received an email from our state homeschool organization. They were spreading word about a special discount that Great Wolf Lodge was offering homeschool families. We have passed Great Wolf Lodge during our travels and the kids always talk about how fun it would be to go, but we just could not justify the cost. The great discount made it doable for us and I jumped at the chance to reserve a room. It just so happens to fall in February, which is also Sam and Josh's birthday month. So, I wrote on the calendar for Monday "Surprise birthday trip". They noticed it almost immediately and it was very fun to listen to their guesses as to what on earth we could possibly be doing. Michael and Sam guessed right near the time of the trip, but I'm pretty sure it was a shot in the dark. I just smiled in response and said we'd have to see :) So fun! The kids woke up Monday morning ready to go! They tried really hard to help get the house ready, but they were just a mess of excitement! We dropped Harley off with wonderful friends who love our dog as much as we do! Leaving him is so much easier knowing that he is in a good place!!! And then we were off! It is about 2 hours from our house. I listened to the kids practice this week's AWANA verses. Let me tell you, Sam is SO motivated. He learns way over what is required of him each week and he then works with Josh and the girls on their's. He amazes me! It makes this mama heart so proud to listen to my kids recite Bible verses and to encourage and cheer each other on. It does not get much better for me! When we pulled into the parking lot, the squeals and cheers proceeded us :) I've got to say that 1 me taking 5 kids to a water park was an intimidating thought. I would not have done it last year. But this year, I feel like we have crossed a new threshold. The kids have grown and matured a lot. I can count on obedience, most of the time. We have come to the place where I can have fun WITH my kids. It is a very good place to be, you know, before I become embarrassing instead of cool. We checked in early and found our room ready for us. I am pretty sure they spent the first hour or so in shock, but we got settled and they snapped out of it when I unpacked the swimsuits! Their eyes were HUGE as they walked through the doors into the water park. It was PRICELESS! After all of the kids were life jacketed (Is that a word?), we made a round of EVERYTHING. We jumped waves and rode big slides out of the fort that we explored. It was so fun to see my bitty girls without fear going down those big slides. It was not so fun watching helplessly as Abby got tossed around under water at the bottom of one. Thankful for the alert lifeguard who pulled her back up before I could get there. She was fine once she caught her breath and coughed up a ton of water. It scared the bejibbers out of her mother, but she was ready to run (or walk quickly) to the next thing. I was proud, usually she is my timid one, so the fact that she was able to shake it off so quickly was great. We went back to the room to make dinner for the crew in the microwave. Sam came to me and asked if he and Josh could get magic wands since it was their birthday trip. They have a game that runs the entire first several floors of the resort. It is like a scavenger hunt and all through the resort there are little things that come to life when you wave a wand at them. I agreed to get two wands with two games IF they agreed to share them and take turns. They agreed and so we joined everyone else in the tiny wand shop to get our wands. Then we proceeded to run up and down and all around finding all the cool things. I really thought it was pretty silly until we actually started our quest. We had so much fun! After many hours of pure fun, the kids changed into pajamas and we headed to pajama story time. The show and story time were both very good. After that, it was time for bed. The kids crashed hard and were asleep and snoring within 2 minutes at most. The next morning, after breakfast in our room, we finished out the magiquest games and waited for the water park to open. We packed up everything but the swim bag and a change of clothes and checked out of the room. We spent a few more hours playing, until it was apparent that the kids (and their mama) had had enough. We changed and then headed for home. So much fun! I honestly didn't get many pictures. I was busy living the memories with my children. Memories I will cherish for always as I watched Michael overcome fear and venture farther and farther from my side to attack the waves, Josh share with pleasure as he passed the wand so his sisters could experience the magic, and pure laughter as we skipped together down forgotten hall.

I wanted to update and let everyone know that the Lincoln made it through the Straight of Hormuz earlier today. It was said to be a normal, scheduled passage. What is that, exactly? It was tense but uneventful.



As you can see from this satellite picture of the Straight, it is not easy to navigate an aircraft carrier through. It has 2 traffic lanes, one for incoming and one for outgoing ships. Each of the lanes is 3 miles wide, with 2 miles separating them. (Wikipedia has been my friend lately!). That is not much wiggle room for a floating airport! The incoming travel lane is on the coast of Iran. Even in the most peaceful of times, traveling on a US carrier through the narrow straight is very tense.  You can read about the USS Abraham Lincoln's travel through the Straight into the Persian Gulf here. I am sure more news will follow, but in case you don't follow me on facebook and have been praying, I wanted to let you know that they are through and safe. Thank you for the prayers both for the ship's travel, and for my family and the many others who have been holding our breath this week. The danger is not completely gone, this is a fairly unstable place right now, but the imminent threat seems to have passed. Please do continue to pray. Thank you for being faithful to pray and for your sweet words of encouragement.

Marvin is underway and deployed a LOT. We have dealt with long and short separations since the very beginning of our relationship. It is a part of who we are as a couple and a family. It is hard to watch the ship pull away, we miss him while he is gone, but we have never feared that he would not come home. I have said often, that Marvin being on an aircraft carrier is the absolute safest place for anyone in any branch of the military. No one would dare to threaten a US aircraft carrier. The problem is that someone has. Iran has issued a threat and the USS Abraham Lincoln, with my husband and many others aboard, will soon face it. Two carriers are in the Arabian Sea right now. This will most likely lead to the first test of the threat issued by a very unstable, very desperate Iran as they pass through a very small area called the Straight of Hormuz and into the Persian Gulf. Most think the threats issued were simply empty threats, which is probably the case. The fact that they are most likely empty threats does not seem to ease the fear that settles in during the quiet moments before I pray my heart out. I know without a doubt that my God is in control, and I know without a doubt that whatever happens, He will use it. But this fear is new to me and threatens to strangle the promises that I know to be true. Would you please pray for our brave men and women? Would you pray with me that our carrier passes both in and out of the Straight of Hormuz safely? Would you pray that our carrier will be safe during the time it spends in the Persian Gulf? Would you also pray that the families waiting for the return of our loved ones will have peace, that fear will not overcome our hope?