Pool days with "crazy" daddy

Sunflower in our garden

Every step of life seems so bittersweet. The bitterness in the sweetest of moments is the painful knowing that the moment is passing by all too quickly. I have these bittersweet pains daily. I already miss who the girls were at every single age--0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10...at every age they are there own special individual person, who I will never hold again--those chubby baby arms, the sleepy toddler nights with a nose pressed squarely against mine, breathing deeply while enjoying the flux of her own hot breath against my face...in truth she is using the feel of her own breath reverbearting off my face as a baramoter to see if I am still lying there or not...such determinaton to keep me snuggling with her all night long. They now put that determantion into other areas. And, during these precious days of discovery, books, friends, questions about God, I know I'm going to miss them here at this stage with just as much of an ache in my heart, as I do all of the years past.

The girls are dealing with similar aches as I have about their growing up. They are now fully immersed in their lives here, and are loving it, while at the same time they have deep feelings of homesickness. They have fears of leaving here in June...of leaving their friends (above in the pics you can see the "friends are forever club" they made under our stairs), the house, the neighborhood, the snack shack down the street, the language they have come to love. And, yet, they are excited to go back home to their friends, the house, the neighborhood, and the English language that they miss hearing (unfortunatley there is no snack shack down the street in Carbon Cliff). Beautifully bittersweet--this is life.