hello, long time no blog.

happy almost-year-end to you!

can you believe more than six months have passed without a word from Fisher Academy?
heheh. and see? the world is still turning. :)

i bet you've had some interesting moments in this past half-year! i would have loved to have shared those with you. unfortunately, furlough kind of snuck up and held me hostage. i had no idea beforehand that six months across the US and Canada, in a van, with a family of 8, including a baby, would be so busy! HAhAHaHAHaHAhAh!

whoa, was i naïve! my expectations having been ever so slightly unrealistic, i thought writing a minimum of blog posts would be no big deal.

um... wrong.
keeping our family's loose ends together and stitches tight proved a gargantuan task! :)


i do sincerely apologize for not keeping up with communications here... it became pretty evident early on, the first week to be precise, that i would spend all my energy keeping up with our super packed itinerary alone. we were SO blessed being able to spend time with SO many people. we hardly had time to sleep!

regardless, i feel pretty bad that i just up and kind of disappeared without even a word. :(
i hope you'll forgive me.

one of the countless things that has become crystal clear to me over these past months is
that as much as we'd like to DO everything and BE everything... we can't.

we only have 24 hours in each day. likely, only 16 of those are awake hours.
we blink and 6 months happen. well, almost. life goes by very quickly. there are only 365 earth blinks times 70, give or take, in a lifetime. i know that you know this. but you may not have thought about the fact that we only get about 25-30,000 days. total.
at least half of mine are already spent.
at most, i only have 900 days left with my oldest boys in the house. i don't have time to mess around. i've got to live fully. today.

we only have time for one day at a time. the day the Lord gives.

we don't have time to do what everyone else is doing, or what everyone else might like for us to do. when it comes down to it, we don't have time to do what we'd like to do each day!
and until the day turns, we don't know what unexpected events will come around that corner demanding our immediate attention.

so just like that, six months pass.

it was about all i could do to keep up with my 100mph husband who laughs at the idea of turning down an invitation! (He makes a good missionary).


first, we drove from Texas to Northern Alberta. i know, right? there aren't enough letters in that sentence to give it the weight it deserves. let me just say it again. we drove from Texas to Northern Alberta. that is a LONG way, folks. not only that, we meandered.

from there, we traversed over mountains with glaciers and then pretty directly across to the west coast, hitting Washington, Oregon and California. after a couple of months like that, having seen our families, we drove halfway back across the continent. we stopped a handful of times along the way of course before flying the other half to the east coast of New Jersey. did you catch the latest heavyweight? coast. to. coast. let me reiterate. we drove the height, half the width, half the width again and then flew half again of North America.

and on our way, we spent a lot of moments with really neat people. i am really thankful for all of that.

i only really regret not having time for writing and posting pictures & updates.
do forgive me, and i'll love you forever. :)

phew. thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

i have a few more posts coming off the stacks VERY SOON, in which we need to talk about:

• the mislaid CM Blog Carnival,
• a great deal on living books for your kindle or other reading device, AND
• my annual ART Calendar Give-away!

be encouraged! 
live fully the today the Lord has given you! 

"Only one life, will soon be pass'd
Only what's done for Christ will last.C.T. Studd"

(read the entire poem)