Life has changed a lot since that time. We now have a teenager in the house, who is busy running to sporting, church and social events, doing math we don't understand and writing essays in a class called Language Arts that we used to call English class. I spend a lot of my time driving her to activities and events, spending long hours at track meets and golf tournaments - and working and studying, while waiting to pick her up from activities, in parking lots around town. I try to make that time really productive since there are a lot of small clusters of time spent that way. It's amazing what I can get done with my phone and a notebook.
We now live in a house on a large lot that requires upkeep...no more depending on the apartment manager to take care of issues and tend all the landscaping. Keeping things in good order, watered and clean takes up an amazing amount of time, but it usually is a labor of love when you see how nice the house looks afterwards.
We live in a state I never expected to live in. New Mexico. It's strange to adjust to being closer to states like Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado when I've been so used to being on the left coast most of my adult life. Living closer to "the middle" always throws me. And just like living in any other state, city or town, there are things we love and things we don't always love so much about our new state. But we try to see the best and contribute our best and enjoy every good thing. Sunsets are definitely one of those. This image is from our street. It's dreamy sunsets here just about every night.
Creatively most of my focus has been spent on the house. Reimaging and redecorating, repairing and reorganizing as we go along, trying to learn who we are in the house and how it will best work for us. It's interesting how after three years you can go back and wonder why you ever did things the way you did in the beginning and to see how much some things just haven't worked for the family. I took over our never utilized family room for my office and have absolutely loved having the open space, a big work area/counter and lots of storage for supplies and tools. Plus it has a lot of windows facing out the front of our house, so there is lots of natural light and nature to watch outside.
We have settled into a wonderful social circle here in New Mexico and that is probably the thing I am most grateful for. When you don't have family support nearby, having a strong network of friends who are family is priceless. We have been so blessed and I hope we are blessing others and helping and supporting as well as we are receiving. I'm looking forward to doing more blogging. I have a long list of things to talk about with you.
