Our First visit Home..

As most of you know, we moved across the state over last Christmas. Since then we have been extremely busy unpacking, adjusting, and trying to make new friends. A couple of weeks ago, I took the boys with me for a couple of days during the week and went back home to visit my mom and her family. Well this past weekend, we were suppose to go back. It started with a canoe trip, that I desperately wanted to go on. The problem is that I can not, at 6 1/2 months preggo, sit in a canoe for 8 hours. My hips and back would not like me for awhile after that. So it was decided that Caroline (she didn't want to go canoeing), Ayden (he is too small),and I would travel home while Jeremy, Kylie, and Thatch went camping and canoeing over the weekend. That was the plan anyway, until Tuesday of last week when Kylie woke up with a horrible stomach virus that lasted 2 almost 3 days. We then decided that the canoe trip would be cancelled and Kylie and Caroline would come home with me. Being in a canoe all day, would have been too hot for Kylie after a week of being so sick. Jeremy would stay in Mandeville with the boys. Somehow, when our car left on Friday at 4pm, my whole family was in the car.

Our weekend was such a good one. Caroline was able to meet with her old school friends for lunch. We hung out with my mom and sisters and other close family friends. On the trip over there, when we got into Jennings (the town where the girls attended school), it was like they were at Disney World pointing out all of the sites that interested them. They squeeled when they saw thier old school. I overheard Kylie telling Caroline "Sissy, Mandeville is our fake home but Roanoke is our real home!".

It is so hard as a parent to hear things like that. My kids did a wonderful job adjusting to thier new school and home, but I know if they had a choice, they would jump at moving back. In my heart, I know that God's plan is for us to live here. I know that having thier Daddy home every afternoon means the world to my children. I just wish there was a way I could save them from the heartbreak. I wish I could save them from the tears and cries as we pull out the driveway to head back to Mandeville. I guess as a mother, I just want to shelter them from any hurt or ache. The reality of it is that all I can do is show them that sometimes we don't understand why God puts us in places until much later in life, sometimes we never know. But no matter what, He is there holding our hands and helping us through every step.