Twelve Years

This is James Edward Cannan, my wonderful husband, my one true love.

He barely gets a mention here and yet he is the most important person in my life. He is my best friend, a sensitive, passionate, emotional man who I love with all my heart. I do not know what I would do without him, he is half of me.

It has been well over a week since we celebrated twelve years of marriage. It has most certainly been a journey. I have no doubts that we were brought together by God, that He made us for each other. There are times when I wonder how and why in our extreme differences we work together, but the truth is, that with such extremes, without an equal and opposite force to pull us back towards the center the imbalance would bring us crashing to the ground.

He can make me laugh (and at the periodic propositions of moving to Thailand has many times made me cry). He is fun and crazy, he is a place of safety and comfort. He is the most wonderful father who adores his children and is not afraid to hug and kiss his them and show them his love.

He challenges me to be a better, more generous person.

He makes sacrifice for his family.

He loves God with all of his heart.

I look forward to many more years, to growing old together, to seeing our own children fall in love and get married. I only wish for our daughters that they find men as fine as their father and they will be blessed.

I love you James.

Here are a few images from January 18th, 1997; the day it all began. (This was pre-digital so the images were scanned in).

Life's Dilemmas

It has been a busy season and I feel like life is finally returning to normal, as normal as it can be. At last I am getting back into the swing of play dates, James and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary (which deserves a separate post), and I'm looking at schools for Arran, which is weighing on me as a huge responsibility.

Arran is bright and sweet and sensitive, a little over-sensitive at times, and I want the very best for him, as all parents should for their children. He loves to learn and I want him to have a great experience of school. When he was about to turn four, he was so excited about the prospect of being able to start preschool, but finances have not allowed for that, and now with school on the visible horizon he has started to ask to stay home and for me to be his teacher. It is a dilemma.

That he would even ask or want to do that blesses me and yet I sense that he asks not only from his desire to be with me because he loves me, but also from a place of fear; fear of the unknown, at least that is my speculation. I realise that one of my responsibilities as a parent it to prepare him to enter the world outside of the safe haven of home and family. The question is, should I be like a mother bird and push him out of the nest? Is he ready to find his wings and fly? Or does he, in fact, need a little longer? Would he be better served staying home to learn for a while? Do all parents go through this? I don't feel that this will be an issue for Bryttain, for example...she has always been independent and ready for any adventure.

Would it be fair on my two girls if I had to devote so much time to teaching their brother, when he has had the advantage already of a full-time parent? Would I be spreading myself too thin? Would I be up to the task?

I have a few more schools to schedule tours with and I hope that at least one will really feel like it will be the perfect match and will have room for our little boy. I really hope that we do not have to make the hard decision of whether or not to homeschool. At this point it is not something that I am realistically considering but I suppose that I do need to remain open to the possibility.

Apologies

I am SO behind, but promise to get back into the swing of things in the next few days.

Watch this space :)

Pretty handy dandy

It's a good thing that we have a handle on each side of our head! :)

Wife or.....

Arran has two little girls in his life that he totally adores. He has grown up with them and they are very different, so from day to day, or week to week, he changes his mind as to which of them he is going to marry.

Yesterday he was just on a roll, talking non-stop about all sorts of things. His hair is getting rather long again, creeping down below his eyebrows (even though I only cut it a few weeks back) and I jokingly asked him if he would just like to grow his hair long. Without missing a beat he responded

"No, because when I marry Moriah, she might not like it!"

I told him that when somebody really loves you, it's not based on how you look. Then I asked him why he thought he was going to marry Moriah and not Gracie. To which, his answer was

"Well, Moriah is my best friend and Grace is my next best friend, so I'm going to marry Moriah..."

He paused...

"But Gracie can be my Grandma!"