I love a good grande finale they are loud and dramatic, showy and memorable. A good grand finale can really stick in your memory. I have seen and heard a lot of grand finales in my life from my marching band days to fire work shows. Who doesn't love a good grand finale, they may even leave you with the chilly willies! It seems I am currently in the middle of my own little grand finale.
Ever since we have had a family Jay has traveled for work. He loves his job and I love that he really enjoys what he does. It does mean that at times I am at home to hold down the fort on my own. I remember a certain trip he went on that was ten days long when Charlotte was just a couple of months old. It was memorable to say the least. This is one of the major reasons we decided to move back to Cincy. All of our family lives in Cincy and it will be really nice to be close to them especially when Jay is gone on very long trips.
We move in just a couple of short weeks and Jay saved the longest trip for last. He is gone for a total of fifteen days, stopping in twice for less than 24 hours each time to wash clothes and then he is off again. Fifteen days is a long time, but it is easier to know that this will be his last trip before we move. I had decided that I was going to do a picture a day and do a post about all the ways we kept busy while he was gone. But after much consideration I decided that this would not be an accurate way we have spent our time. That is why we have a family blog, to scrapbook and journal the adventures we go through as a family. I surely can not put up fifteen pictures like these to show how our last few weeks were spent, they are not an accurate depiction.....
It seems that like with any good grand finale this is just the cumulation of all the events that I have experienced as a young mother. We are in day number four of the fifteen day grand finale and we have already experienced so much that pictures will not do justice. Just in the past twenty four hours I have experienced a baby who refuses to nap, a jealous toddler who is tired of her momma spending so much time with the baby who doesn't sleep. A little girl whose imagination just took off and is apparently afraid of the dark. Thus why she stripped off all of her clothes and woke up from her nap extremely early yesterday and also woke up screaming her head off this morning at 4:15. I have always wanted a child with an active imagination. Pair that with a jammed swollen toe from running into the side of the couch, a swollen lip from my fearless daughter jumping off her changing table and me catching her with my mouth and stickiness that I keep discovering all over my body from a well intended ice cream run yesterday ending with a passionate toddler squeezing the cone until it exploded all over her whole family, we are really living up our grand finale in a grand fashion.
So although I could post fifteen sweet pictures of our sweet little family, that is not what I should remember. I need to remember that at times life is simply crazy and you survive. This will not be the last big trip of Jay's or the last time I could have produced a kids gone wild tape and sold it to make millions of dollars, but this is the grand finale at our current stage of our life. Although it is a little bitter sweet, I would like to remember it.
-melissa