“Dance. Smile. Giggle. Marvel. TRUST. HOPE. LOVE. WISH. BELIEVE. Most of all, enjoy every moment of the journey, and appreciate where you are at this moment instead of always focusing on how far you have to go.” ~ Mary Hale

Today was about family, new life, joy, peace, happiness and looking forward to the future.

Family — sometimes, even tho we’re in the same house, we’re each doing our own thing. Today started with a scavenger hunt for the kids to find candy. Each one got their clues on a particular color sticky note and the candy was hidden inside and outside the house (luckily before the storms hit).

New Life — after a yummy dinner of Pot Toast and vegetables, we played the game ‘Vertellis’ which is the Dutch word for “tell me more.” It has been advertised on FB for the last couple of years and I finally ordered it. Folks, it is well worth it! I was amazed at the kids answers to some of the questions. To hear their hopes for the future, their reactions to things from the past year — it gave me hope that they will be okay. When Sam got the question, “Looking back at the past year, who is someone you would thank?” and he answered, “Savannah, for taking good care of me when Dad and Shelly wouldn’t.” — let’s just say it was an emotional moment for all of us.

Joy, Peace. Happiness — after dinner was over and the game had been put away, we talked about how some people celebrate the New Year on Jan 1 but for us it will now always be celebrated on January 5 as that was the day the kids came home for good. We also broke open a bottle of sparkling Caramel Apple cider to toast to New Life and New Beginnings.

Future — we discussed our goals for the next year, short-term and long-term. Dream vacations. How we like to travel and where we would go. Whether this house is “home” now — they said yes because we’re all together, I say it will be more so when we have OUR paint colors and furnishings in place. We still have a ways to go but today’s focus was looking at how far we’ve come.

As the winds picked up later in the evening, the rain poured, the thunder rolled, the lightning flashed and the power flickered, we were huddled together in the kitchen. Over hot chocolate, we quietly laughed as we waited out the worst of the storm and eventually wound down and went to bed.

And peace resigned over the night.