New Year Letter

Well, like most of you, a lot has happened this year.
First and foremost, we moved into a larger house in town. This was a huge deal as the house on Elk Park was our first home. We had some great memories there, but it was time to move on. We went from a 1400 sqft hobby farm 20 miles outside of town to a 3400 sqft house right smack in the middle of town. Life is different, but still very much the same.
We have a lot more room to run around the house and I still yell at the boys to stop running. The boys have their own rooms but still beg to sleep together. I decided to take my time decorating the house to get it ‘just right’ and have been on a mad painting binge since the day we moved in (I blame the paint fumes for the fact that I actually tasted the sample that reminded me of a Hershey bar).
We still have ½ an acre and were able to bring some of our chickens over from the other house. After 10 years of complaining about chickens, goats and gardens, I’m rather enjoying the chickens, had a great time in our new garden and sort of wish we had a goat or two (please take a moment of silence to pray for Brett).
Brett made Seargent this year and is doing great in his new position. With leadership comes many advantages as well as trials, but he’s braved it all well and is enjoying the challenges it brings.
We live close to a river and Brett and the boys spent quite a bit of time down by the water. As we all love boating and fishing, we did a little shopping for a small boat to putz around in and do some fishing. In the absence of finding ‘the one’, Brett has decided to build his own boat in our garage this winter (please take a moment of silence to pray for Andrea).
We now live close to a great Christian school and the temptation to quit homeschooling was too big to resist. I called the school to get registration information, then got the tuition information and promptly ordered our next year of homeschool curriculum. We changed up some of our subjects and learning styles and have been having a much funner (yep, I’m the teacher!) homeschool experience.
Josh turned 10 this past year and in the excitement, failed to realize the reason his mother was sobbing in the corner was because she could not only remember, with detail, his first smile, but also knows that over half his time with us was over. “Oh, most kids don’t leave home at 20 anymore”. Er, mine will.
Will, Ben and Sam all celebrated their birthdays within a month of Christmas turning 9, 6 and 4 respectively. As this is a very expensive time of year for us, we tried to convince the boys how much fun it would be to just go to a movie and out for ice cream for their birthday and save the gifts for Christmas. We thought them gullible to agree until we realized that, along with a pizza, it cost over $100 bucks for our family of 6 to go to a movie and out for ice cream!! (Curse you 3-D!) I fear next year they will be too smart to agree to a Redbox movie and microwave popcorn, so we’ve taken money out of their ‘future therapy’ fund (we thought the therapy they would certainly need outweighed the need for college or a career) to pad the way for next birthday/Christmas season.
Speaking of which, the boys were in their first Christmas play. When Sam realized that his brothers all got to wear shepherds costumes, he decided he wanted to go to ‘Someday School’ (translation: Sunday School) so he could be a shepherd too. Instead, he struggled in my lap while I proudly video taped all three of my boys picking their noses next to baby Jesus in front of the entire church. Since I’ve had to give up caring about other’s opinions of me 2 kids ago, I decided to cheer them on as any other proud mom would.
Now as we are coming up on 2011, I know that we will have many changes to deal with this next year, but all in all, I’m sure so many things will stay the same. Josh will still love Legos and tornadoes with a passion. Will is still going to be the super sweet, compassionate young man that makes all my friends who have little girls claim him to marry their daughters. Ben will still be able to look at me with his big blue eyes and bottom lip sticking out and turn me (and anyone else in the vicinity) to a puddle and get anything he wants, and then there’s Sam. Precious, precocious, Sam. I’m sure that Sam will still be able to take a hit that would drop a grown man and make all 3 of his older brothers cry out of sheer frustration. I’m also sure that he will learn to ride a bike, shovel snow, learn Latin and drive a car.
Brett will continue to be a strong, compassionate, honest and just police officer as well as father. He will dream up 77 complicated, expensive and time consuming projects to do, start 23 of them, get frustrated that he only finished 2 then realize that all he really wants to do is hang out with his wife and boys and be content that he took the boys sledding, played board games, went camping and fished off the bridge instead of building that boat in the garage. (Right Brett? You’re not REALLY going to build a boat in our garage, right?)
Me? I’ll just spend another year keeping it real. I’ll stay in my pajamas with the breakfast dishes out until someone calls at 1pm to say they are going to stop by, then take the fastest shower on earth, throw my dishes in the trash and water board my boys into cleaning up all the toys so that when the random acquaintance that just dropped something off on my front porch will believe that I’m the get up early, bake from scratch, cleans the house for fun, patient homeschooling Pilates mom.
Yeah, I’ll be keepin it real.
We hope the Lord will bless you all in this next year and that no matter what changes 2011 brings, we can have peace in the one thing that will NEVER change, is the love the Lord has for each and every one of us.
God Bless,
The Corbetts