I met my husband during my first week of college.  We became inseparable almost instantly and knew quickly that we had a long future ahead of us.  We have spent the past 17 years working together to build a life, a family and ourselves.  We’ve moved around the world, relocating enough long distances to total over 11,000 miles and in 12 years of marriage have added 4 more members to our family.

 

Honeybun is our eldest, a bright, independent and loves-to-be-in-charge 11 year old.  She has been homeschooling with me for 5 years and just started 7th grade. She was always my tiny dancer, but after a hard year before we moved to New Jersey, she decided to give up dancing. And now, in the midst of what I like to call her “mid childhood crisis,” she has been dabbling in ice skating, tennis, gymnastics, sewing, cooking, and golf.  She is a very compassionate girl and worries about how other people are feeling and gets easily overwhelmed by her emotions, which the pre-teen years have not helped one bit! She loves dinosaurs and fossils and thinks she might want to be a paleontologist one day.

Sugarplum is our younger daughter. She has always been our non-stop, silly, and energetic little one.  She’s 9 years old and has never been to “real” school but works hard with me at home and just started 5th grade. She is a gymnast and trains at the gym 5-6 days a week. And, despite her screamy start in the world, she has grown to be an unbelievably carefree and caring girl who loves to help and make other people feel happiness.  She loves elephants and unicorns (because her daddy teases her about the distracting unicorns prancing in her head) and thinks she wants to stay in the gymnastics world as long as possible, maybe coaching when she gets bigger.

Our first little boy, Doodle, is an energetic and strong-willed 6 year old. He started homeschooling for kindergarten this year and likes to be in charge of his schedule, often fighting me with doing schoolwork.  Doodle also does gymnastics and is set to start competing in the fall. He’s always loved trains, trucks and decided many years ago that he would like to be a fireman when he’s bigger (only 10 more years until he can volunteer in our town!)

Our last little one, Pipsqueak, is a 3 year old fireball of energy and noise. The best word to describe him is simply “ridiculous” as everything he does is over-the-top, there is no part way with him! He thinks he’s one of the big kids and loves to pretend to do school. He also started gymnastics this year, though I don’t know that it will be his thing long term. He has always been into emergency vehicles and can’t currently decide if he wants to be a firetrain driver or a motorcycle police when he grows up.

All four of our children are loving and independent and usually get along very well. We are very lucky that we’ve never had to deal with rivalry or “can’t you send the baby back?” questions as they’ve adored each other from the start!

mef