Hold On To This

Today I had to say farewell to our third child, as she is returning to college.  I cried when each of the kids left this year — just like I always did on the first day of school.  When other moms were getting together to “celebrate,” I was returning home to shed a few tears, read the Bible and mope about losing the magic of summer break.  In the same way, I hate to see the holidays end because it means our kids return to their own lives and I return to my diet, to projects that never seem to get done and to text messages from kids instead of face-to-face conversations.

We had an especially good holiday break with friends and family this year–playing games, sledding, going to movies, cooking special meals, laughing over Facebook comments and just sitting around talking.  I can’t hold our kids back from their own lives, and don’t want to, really.  But I do want to hold onto memories, so I end up taking lots of ridiculous photos, especially just when they’re leaving.  Amazingly, they’re very gracious and forgiving to their crazy mom.  I won’t show some of the senseless pics I took when they weren’t expecting it, but I will show you this one that I like a lot, and then a couple from the distant past (first days of school):

~ by Juli Jarvis on January 13, 2009.