BREEZY FIELDS

Ellyn's Golden Birthday was truly exciting for all of us.  This was the first year that WE, as a family, could tell that Ellyn knew it was HER day.  Perhaps she has known every year, but in the past the cake and ice cream seemed to be all that mattered.  This year both her YW class, and her Sunday School class, dropped off treats and heart attacked our front door.  When Ellyn walked outside to get on her bus the morning of her birthday she paused, without any prompting.  Ellyn looked at the hearts, smiled, pointed to one, then turned and walked to her bus. At school, Ellyn's teacher had programed, "Happy Birthday, Ellyn!" into every child's speaking device.  I took in Valentine's donuts from Krispy Kreme (one of Ellyn's very favorite foods on Earth), and all through treat time the boys were pushing their birthday buttons.  Ellyn also started singing "Happy Birthday to You!" all on her own. She also said "Ellyn....

For almost three years I have been thinking how very sad it is that I hadn't continued to keep a journal of our family activities.  No more deployment letters and emails to Mike, no more family blog to keep grandparents and aunts and uncles connected to our family.  Nothing but printed off monthly calendars saved in a file somewhere.  I guess our family blog died a slow death when we lived in Washington and we were seeing everyone all of the time.  It just was not important to keep everyone informed.  They were right there with us.  I did not stop, in all the chaos, to think how very important the blog might be to me, or to my children.  I have often thought of the cute pictures and quotes we had saved on our family blog.  I thought of the interviews I did with the kiddos, and how grateful I was that, somewhere, on a dusty webpage, those beautiful faces, those funny antics, still existed.  I have checked to make sure the blog still existed fr...