Valentine's Day?

We enjoy celebrating in our home. We find all kinds of reasons to have a party! We, of course, have the traditional holidays that most American's acknowledge but we have "edited" them to our liking. We have also created our own reasons to throw a party. Do you remember Faith's Halfway Celebration? We have also celebrated things like new shoes with a song and dance and going out to dinner because of the blessing of a pay raise. We have a special day we remember each of our children in Heaven and we have a HUGE celebration when a child turns double digits, just to name a few! But it wasn't until we have had adult children in our home being "held against their will to the expectations of the world" that we changed the name of Valentine's Day to Single's Awareness Day! (I know the story of the roots of Saint Valentine but adding chocolate to the day was surely done by a woman, right?)

Now we use this opportunity to try to consider both the hearts of the young adults choosing to wait on the Lord's timing for their Covenant Keeper and their circumstances as well as others who are single again. We have pictured it as kind of how having a Mother/Daughter Banquet leaves out mommy's with sons or sadly, wives without earthly children of their own. I dislike when circumstances simply leave someone out! So, we take flowers to my aunt that isn't married and have added another aunt to our list since the death of her husband as well as others.

Isn't it suppose to be about showing LOVE? What ideas do you have to share love on or around that day that can be so difficult for others?

18 weeks

There is a countdown going on at our house. We have done this so many times!!

My main memories of "counting down" have been when William was on deployment. The children and I would spend the first several days of him being gone cutting and connecting strips of paper and making a chain. I would try to keep it fun with the children but wow was that hard standing there looking at all...those...rings. One link represented each day and I remember silently wondering if I'd make through the whole deployment when I was barely making it through making the paper chain. The rings covered the entire floor! We hung the chain around the room in swags and then each child would take a turn each morning removing a piece of the chain. How fun when we got down to halfway. We'd celebrate!

I have also done a countdown until vacation, a countdown until my parents arrived to visit us at yet another duty station, a countdown until a special family event and many pregnancies we counted as God would choose to bless us with another child!

Well, this is a new countdown for me, one I have never had the privilege to experience before!! This is the countdown to the "due date" of my very first grandchild! My oldest son's wife, my beautiful daughter-in-love, is pregnant and today she is 18 weeks from her due date! She is past halfway!!

Two weeks ago when they were here visiting, we had a surprise Halfway Party and it was so much fun to celebrate LIFE!