Pieces Of Our Lives

I am so glad I blog. I spent the night reading back through old blog posts from years ago. None of it seems that far away and yet, so much was different. The kids were so much smaller. Xury was just a baby. The 5 of us did most things together. Now, my big kids have lives of their own and interests of their own and we rarely do things all together.  Sigh. 

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the big people my kids have become. Tanner is all grown up now and one of my favorite people. She has a few semesters of college under her belt. She has a job at our church as an assistant and worship leader for the youth which ahe loves. She fills our home with singing and so much laughter. She's mature, responsible, fun and just generally awesome but I still miss the days that she sat at the dining room table making fairy houses and Barbie furniture. 

And, of course, as soon as I finished writing that she sat down at the craft table to finger paint with Xury.

She also decorated Aravis. 

Dominick has been building Xury a play table with some left over boards. We switched our play room and living room a few months ago and I took her play table to use as a coffee table so I've been meaning to replace it. 

Xury helped with the sanding and painting. 

Then I sanded it some more, primed it and painted it with paint we had left over from another project. We could've (should've) used nicer wood for the top but we were trying to use up what we already had. I'm still really happy with how it turned out. It's nice and big to accommodate lots of toys and playing. 

He's also been building himself a cajon, a drum box that you sit on to play.

Aravis, meanwhile, made a lovely tea party for Xury. 

Complete with a princess make over 

Then they took the ferrets for a walk. 

And built an awesome castle out of blocks.

In the past month we've added two ferrets and two mice to our household because we just can't have enough pets,  apparently. Most of the pets belong to Aravis and she does a great job taking responsibility for them. She feeds them, cleans their cages and takes them for walks - the ferrets bring her the leash when they want to go for a walk because they are the cutest things ever. 

There's nothing particularly special about any of the things I've written about, except that they're all pieces of our lives, glimpses of who we are at this moment in time. The whole of our lives is made up of these moments and one day, when we're all a bit older, I'll be able to look back and be glad I documented these little pieces of our lives.