The Golden Years

I sit here in the living room on this Friday evening holding my little 2 month old close. The girls and I spent the day doing an abbreviated version of school and then heading out to prepare for a Galentines Party that they are putting on for their friends on the morrow. We prepped different stations like a Valentine-making station, a jewelry making station, and a bouquet arranging station. We set the table with our best fine China. We meal planned and cleaned house. Intermittently I nursed the baby and wrestled their rambunctious brother.

Days like today make me feel so aware of the range of ages that our children are in. We’ve got a baby nursing and a 6th grader, we’ve got a 3rd grader becoming more and more proficient at reading, and a rough n tumble son keeping us on our toes. We have a kindergartener learning her letters. Life is so full and so vibrant. And I love it. I love singing Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of our lungs in the car together, I love putting together puzzles together, I love playing board games together, I love busy school mornings where I can hardly catch my breath moving from one student to the next with a baby in my lap.

I am acutely aware of the fact that these are the days. The years that I will think of as the “golden years.” The days that will make me smile with a tear in my eye years from now when the house has gone quiet. 

I realized recently that next year I’ll have a 7th grader and then there will be only 5 more years of school with her. I know how fast 5 years goes by. 5 years is the amount of time we’ve been here in Kentucky… and that seems to have gone by in a blink.

At the end of 2025 I said goodbye to Instagram and I can honestly say that I have no second thoughts about that decision. I miss the community that had gathered around me over the last 8 years, and sometimes I miss the documenting/journaling I’d do through that app. But overall, I am so thankful that the distraction, pressures, comparisons, and overall pull of Instagram is behind me. It was time.

I hope to make time to blog more in the future, but for now life with a tiny baby, busy 3 year old, and 3 daughters in homeschool keeps me pretty busy!

If you’re reading this and feel any kind of pull to get off of social media too, let me just tell you that I have no regrets finally getting off. Life is flying by and I don’t want to miss a single minute!