Home.

We spent this past weekend at my home visiting my parents and family. We were celebrating my mom's 60th birthday and my 29th birthday, we share the same birthday which is pretty extraordinary because my husband and his mother share the same birthday too! We threw her a surprise party ( which she knew about because we can't surprise her) and it was such a great time. I really love spending time with my family and friends because we don't get to do it that often. I think it makes me appreciate home and family so much more.

 I always begin to feel nostalgic driving around my old town and seeing places that evoke important memories but I also see so much that is different it makes me forget that things there haven't stopped changing just because I am gone. So, as we said our good-byes on Tuesday morning and loaded up the van and headed south I couldn't help but feel a little sad. But the farther we drove south the more comfortable I became because I was going to my new "home".

Home is such a relative term, it doesn't have to be any one place but it can be several places. I have a childhood hometown where I spend most my life until I met James and we made a new home in the Navy. Now, in full disclosure we have never left the southeastern United States while we have been married and when we first moved south-- I hated it. I'd always be a "Yankee", the weather was too hot, too many bugs, and everything was slower. But over the past 6 years, I've lost my "Yankee-ness", I don't miss the cold, and I have fallen in love with this place we call home. ( The bugs are still terrible) Both my children were born in the south, we bought a home in the south, and we live in the south. So, I think that that makes me a born again Southerner and the prospect of spending our days here raising our children and letting our family grow is just fine with me.

Where do you call home?

 Mom and little Ce Ce

Be-Bo and Ce-Ce in the little red wagon

Mighty Dog enjoying a romp

Brotherly Love

We can't help but be goofy sometimes...