Sunday Journaling

This is our family blog but somehow lately I've been writing more about my own life than the life of our entire family. I read an article yesterday about Sunday journaling or using Sunday as a day to reflect on the past week and record in some way the events of the previous week. It immediately brought to mind this little corner of the internet where I share the events of our life. When I first started writing here, almost exactly eight years ago, my plan was to write each Sunday about what had happened in our life that week. For a little while, I was consistent but there have definitely been times when I've not posted for weeks and weeks.

I've found that during those times when the blog goes silent my thoughts are still here, I miss writing, and I'm sometimes even formulating posts in my head. Anyway, after reading about it I want to try to get back to the original intent of this blog, which was to keep our family and friends up to date with our lives. Since we live so far away and see each other infrequently it's a way to feel connected. I'll still share sewing projects and, my newest thing, art of homemaking posts as well but I want to make sure this remains primarily a blog about our family life. With that in mind, I thought I'd do a quick rundown of what's up in the Moran family person by person.

Jared is working hard as the Security Forces Manager for the 48th SFS here at RAF Lakenheath. I don't really know what that means and I often stumble through trying to explain what exactly Jared does. Well, he's a cop still but he's not out in a patrol car or checking ID cards at the gate. Mostly it seems like he's in his office working on paperwork or talking with people about things they should be doing but aren't. Maybe we should have a separate post about what Jared does all day at work? He's my example of fitness as he's up early every day so he can have time to workout before his workday begins. Yesterday he was sustained and set apart as the Young Men's President in our ward so that will add another responsibility to his life.

Madison is a mystery to me. Not really, but since she's so far away I don't know everything about her life that I used to. She's working 20 hours a week, taking classes, having fun with her roommates, and basically being the awesome person she's always been. We miss having her around but love seeing how well she's doing out in the real world on her own.

Emily took the SAT on Saturday, dog sat for her Calculus teacher over the long weekend, and is almost always doing homework. I think she's slowly finding friends here? The high school has an open campus at lunch so students can eat in the cafeteria or go anywhere on base for lunch instead. Her calculus teacher (the one with the dog) has been trying to convince her to befriend his son and over the last couple of weeks Emily and Joe (the son, not the dog) have gone on a couple of lunch dates together. Jared and I both embarrassed her last week by mentioning in front of other people how much she wants to go to prom and hopes someone will ask her soon.

Abigail is a quiet one lately. Not volume quiet because she's still as loud as ever, but she just doesn't have a lot to say. She does hum all the time though - she's definitely a musical kid. She auditioned for the DODDS-Europe Honor Band this week for French Horn. I don't know what her chances are as a freshman so we'll just wait and see. It was semester exams last week at school so she took a lot of tests and we're still waiting to see how all those went. Freshman year is hard and Abigail is just beginning to realize that she's going to have to put forth more effort than she did in middle school to do well.

Samantha enjoyed that last week at school was only two and a half days but she was busy with tests as well. Her school is on an entirely different base from the other girl's schools so it's like she's just out on her own every day. One of her friends from school invited her to come to a Winter Wonderland activity on base this past Saturday and it was nice to see that she's making friends here. She doesn't talk about her friends much at home so I was kind of surprised to see her running around with four or five other sixth graders!

Natalie spent almost her entire week building a boat in her room. We finally furnished the sun room/family room and thanks to IKEA we had some large boxes floating around. Natalie requisitioned one and made a pretty sweet boat complete with oars she fashioned from markers and duct tape. I'm not usually okay with projects like this because of the mess, but I just kept the door shut and pretended it wasn't a total disaster in her room. Today we restored order and it only took an hour.

So that's it! Nothing spectacular, just another week in the life of us.