2007 In Review - Follow Up

This post is almost a week late. What can I say...I have sat down to write it at least a half dozen times since last Monday. Various things have happened in that time frame. I have been delayed by visits, household chores and even the loss of electricity which cleared out the beginnings of my follow up post last Wednesday night. Hope this isn't too much of a let down!

What one word would I use to describe 2007 in the Goode household? Without a doubt it would have to be the word CHANGE. Honestly, Jim and I long ago stopped wasting time wishing for 'normal' to return. We have accepted the fact that change is not only inevitable but a necessary fact of life. However, in 2007, we seem to have taken it to a whole new plane!

In 2007 we moved from our home of 12 years and our neighborhood of 19 years. We moved away from all the familiar faces and familiar places to start again in a new school district, a new county and a new home. We left a four bedroom home to move into a two bedroom mobile home with bungalow and ended up in a four bedroom mobile home that has more square footage than our former house. We had two additions to the family, a handsome grandson born in July and a beautiful granddaughter born in October. As we have watched our two oldest become parents, the two teenagers have learned to drive and the youngest son has taken up the sport of football.

I looked up the word 'change' in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary to see if perhaps there was a more appropriate word to use. Everyone can use the word 'change'...we have all experienced some sort of change in the span of a year. I found a great synonym...'alter'. According to the dictionary it means, 'to make different without changing into something else'. I think that sums up our year. Everything seems different..but we haven't changed into something else. We no longer live in the city, but Jim and I both grew up in the country. Some people may see our move from a house to a mobile home as strange, but we both spent a good deal of our childhoods in mobile homes. We may be grandparents now, but that didn't change us from being parents to five of the most amazing children in the world. We now spend the majority of our time cheering from bleachers instead of from an auditorium seat (the girls were more into fine arts than athletics), but it is still our children that we encourage. Yes, things are different but we are still the same people we have always been. I just couldn't make 'alter' into a proper title for 2007.