This is difficult for me to write, because I don't want to be negative. I don't want to be the kind of person who dwells on the bad or feels that grass is always greener elsewhere. I want to believe I can find happiness anywhere. I don't want to be the kind of person who thinks life will be better when... I don't want to live hoping for a future or clinging to a past.

However, I am so homesick. I miss my friends and my family. I miss walking my kids to school and sitting on the porch waiting for them to come home. I miss the some what calm life we used to have, that somehow in my memories has this soft cast to it like an instagram pic. I miss cool evenings and water filtration. I miss grass and rain, flower and vegetable gardens. I miss planting bulbs & mums and canning tomatoes. I miss kids jumping on the trampoline and swinging in the swings, and playing outside without heat stroke or swollen limbs from mosquito bites the size of golf balls.

Its difficult to leave the things you love behind and whether it was last week or coming up on a year it doesn't seem to get easier. Sadie is struggling too. She is living in a future time, a time when we will be back in our old house and she will have her own room and it will look the way she wants it to. She tells anyone who will listen about this future. I feel like I have done this to her, that I have supported this discontent and I watch her close off a little. I know that some of that is her age. The quiet, withdrawn, occasionally moody child is just a sign of things to come, but it is still tough to see.

I worry about Maisy. Her stamina seems to be decreasing. She seems tired more than she used to and her reluctance to leave the computer concerns me. She has been acting out as well. All behaviors that are uncharacteristic.

I worry about Evan, Jack, and Ella. I worry about what is yet to come and how to get to where we want to be. And I worry that the days are drifting by faster and faster and part of me is grateful for that.