A letter a very sweet woman wrote last week has had me thinking.  She recently found this space and had been reading through the archives.  She asked if I ever wrote about homeschooling or life in a very large family with a wide age spread.  What is that really like, she asks?  I have begun to explain several times.  I sit at this keyboard and type and type and then hit delete and go to bed. : )   Increasingly, what is in my heart is easier to show in images than to try to sum up in a few words. 

I can point to this day was a pretty good example.  It was beautiful.  It was messy. It was loud. It was full of gritty sandwiches and soggy socks. And smiles. Probably a couple of tears. Handholding. Running ahead, falling behind.  A lift when needed.  Exhilarating and exhausting. Worth every minute.  It ended like so many other nights, squished together on couches, covered with blankets, debating who is going to be in charge of the remote. 

It was good.  Very good.  

Simple and not easy.