Remembering 2016

Like many others, I would not list 2016 as my favorite year. Our family and our country experienced tough times the past 12 months. However, we do not have to remember 2016 this way. Cade's language arts teacher taught her 3rd grade class about "Christmas letters" that were included in Christmas cards before everyone stayed caught up on social media. Of course, this made me feel old, because I still look forward to receiving Christmas letters and actually feel guilty for not penning one myself. After learning about this "old tradition", the students each wrote their own Christmas letter as a reflection on 2016. At first, I was nervous about reading Cade's paper. Would he write about the car driving into our house? Health scares for family members? His sister's behavior challenges? An exciting but super-stressful fall? But our eternal optimist wrote about the joyous things he remembered from the past year - going on vacation to Mississippi, the Cougars beating the Vikings for the first time, and playing in the Cougar weight room with Daddy. All of these events seem pretty small compared to some of the other experiences of the past year, but this is what he chose to write about. Thank goodness for his positive focus! And I am proud to say that the lesson we learned about "small moments" from his kindergarten teacher has stuck with us and we celebrate the big, small, and all the moments in between.

Several years ago, Pastor Jamison encouraged us to list 5 blessings at the end of each day. We've been doing this at bedtime since then, so I'm closing out 2016 with our 5 biggest blessings of the year. Despite the difficulties of the year, it was quite hard to narrow it down to 5!

1. Our home.
We learned not to take this for granted when we were briefly uprooted in January, but family and friends made the transition as smooth as possible.



2. Our pets.
Holly turned 12 this year and we are still waiting for her to calm down! It was hard to say goodbye to Sarge in July, but we joyously welcomed Cougar right before Christmas.



3. Our families.
We are so happy that our kids get to have such fun memories with all of their grandparents. We could not lead the busy lives we do without their help! It is not an accident that all of these pictures are from football season. Grandparents are especially necessary during this time of year!



4. Our friends.
Socializing is sometimes hard for us - half of the family are introverts, three-fourths of the family are early-to-bed people, and the social director of the family is more than a little overwhelmed at most times. But looking through our pictures has shown that when we do spend time with friends, we love it!



5. God's healing touch.
While the bumps, bruises, and bad moods we endure sometimes are pretty minor when compared to others' suffering, we are thankful that God brings us through everything stronger than we were before and with smiles (almost) always on our faces.



These blessings will hopefully apply every single year of our lives. We're all set for '17!