It's Usually Nothing Special.

Just a normal day, drive home from picking up my big and mature Kindergartner, reach back and quiet Lillie by rocking her car seat and notice that today's after school snack has been crumbled deep into the carpet of my van with yesterday's. We walk into the house. Shoes, backpacks, socks, cups, books, bags, get dropped and tripped over in the entryway. I get the baby out of her seat, serve some milk to the girls with my free hand, help lovely daughter with homework while I bounce almost-four-month-old on my knee. After awhile, the rhythm of the day brings us upstairs where Grace and Ruby glue trinkets and charms atop a perfume box I received for Christmas last year. I don't think much of this photo that I quickly take in the few seconds that Lillie sits in the swing without chirping to be entertained.

But when I look, really LOOK at this photo, I realize it's pricelessness. Grace is still wearing her school uniform shirt that she insisted on. Ruby is clinging to her "suitCASE" that she keeps all of her ponies in. There is writing and drawing and colors all over their little table, despite my constant command, "Only draw on the PAPER", and arrows that Grace drew pointing to the label on the box. There is her name spelled phonetically, which phase lasted only a few days, but is evidenced here! My instinct is to scrub that table clean one of these days. But I really have to halt and ask myself why I would ever do that? The erratic evidence they leave behind is something I will crave, though time will tell when exactly that will be!

Just another day in the life. All of us struggling to be people and to find ourselves.

Jake and I did some organizing last night and he came across journals I kept since I was a very young girl. He read through them starting at my tender age of 12, all the way until I was 22 and in love with him, married to him and pregnant with my Gracie. How in love we were! How much time we spent gazing into each other's eyes and swimming in togetherness! And to think where we are now, with all these years of experience and getting to know each other.

I just have to say: keep writing all of it down. On a blog, in a journal, whatever. It changed our lives last night reading how we felt about each other, never suspecting we would forget a little of that each day until we picked up a journal 7 years later to read my words as a young newlywed, and have it come flooding back to us like a rich surge. It sank deep into our souls to remember snowy nights, him walking me in from our little car, carrying my things, kissing my face, staying up half the night talking with me only to get up early for work and school. I am simply unable to describe how it made us feel. So keep writing all of it down. Those little things will change your life (again) someday!