End of Year: Best and Worst of 2016

Here are a few more random happenings from Christmas break.  It was way too short this year it seemed!

My favorite little reader.  This girl just devours books!  It's incredible.

 I got to spend a delightful afternoon with some of my favorite So Jo girls!  I will love them forever.

 Ava drew this wanted poster of the spitting Kase.  Haha...I'm afraid he was guilty as charged.

 Here are the kids singing and talking to sweet grandma Dorothy.  We sure love her.

Now as far as 2016 is concerned, it definitely had its worsts.  I think if you talked to any American they would all tell you how bad 2016 was.  Our own family certainly had a few worsts this year.  But this post is about celebrating the bests with the worsts, for they simply cannot exist without each other.  So we will be grateful for the good and the bad both, for they make our life what it is.  Joyful.

Since this is late in posting anyways, I'm going to say that overall as a whole the worst things for our family last year was moving!  We were not planning on moving at the start of the year.  I loved where we lived and I wanted to stay there forever!  In fact, we asked the owners of the house we were renting multiple times to sell it to us!  But they kept insisting that they wanted to move back in to it when they got back from Japan.  Darn.  Couldn't blame them though it really is a great house in an even greater location with a fabulous neighborhood.  When we started casually looking at houses in the spring, just for fun, really, I still wasn't in the mind set that we would actually put an offer in on any.  I didn't want to move.  So I didn't really take some of the houses we looked at seriously.  We looked at a house that was pretty dated and would have needed some work, in a neighborhood that had the best vibes.  I was tempted by that one, but once again, I wasn't ready to move.  When we looked at the 115 year old fixer upper that charmed me off my feet, we were swept away by the spirit that said, buy this house and we put an offer in the next day.  It is small, and needs a full on whole house renovation, and has oh so many problems, but I still know to this day it was the place Heavenly Father wanted our family.  There is so much we have learned and so much more to be learned.  It's not always fun to pick the choice that will make you stretch and grow more than you want to but it is for the best.  God cares far more about our growth than our comfort and ease.  Still knowing all this didn't make it any easier to move.  My kids were heartbroken, and so was I.  It was hard to say goodbye to our friends, school and neighborhood.  Even though we'd only been there 2 years, it felt like some of those people had been my friends since eternity.  So that was our worst of 2016.  (And the election cycle, but who wants to talk about that anymore...certainly not me!)

 Saying goodbye.  It was hard to leave this beautiful home and yard.

 It really was a little slice of heaven on earth.

 While packing everything up we stacked all the mattresses.

So our best of 2016 was buying our charming old fixer upper and all the new learning experiences we had!  We tried our hand at being chicken farmers, which the kids love.  It certainly was a lot of fun.  We're still going strong on being chicken farmers and are feeling the benefits of being a little more self sufficient.  We also tried our had at fruit preserving.  With cherry trees, grape vines, apple trees and a pear tree we had plenty to try and preserve.  I was not very good at it this time around, but I am determined to get better.  I made some pretty good jams, and fruit roll ups and the dried apples are to die for!  So yummy!  But the canned pears could use some help...(more sugar perhaps, or just harvesting them at the right time next year!)  But I'm grateful for the experiences and look forward to lots more.  And as for the renovations, they can seem so slow going sometimes because I have such a beautiful vision for what this home could look like and what I want it to look like, and I want it all now!!!  But there that stretching and growing experience again.  Patience, patience. And when I think about all that we have done in such a short amount of time, it is pretty amazing.  And the journey is the fun part anyways, right????  I also got to relearn that sometimes what we want, although good, is not what God wants for us.  And what God wants for us is ultimately better, even if we can't see it at the time.  I look forward to many more "best" learning experiences here at our 115 year old farmhouse in 2017.  :)

One more absolute best for me personally last year was that my whole family, all my 7 siblings who I grew up with and my parents finally got reunited for the first time in 8 years in October.  :)  It certainly was a joyous occasion.  I love each of my siblings and my parents so much. I'm so grateful for what they all do for me.  I cannot even say how amazing it was to reconnect and even healing in some ways.  I'm so grateful for that best of 2016.