Joy

This May we did a thing. The day after Eli finished his AP Testing, we pulled him and Annika out of school for the rest of the year and headed to Spain. We wanted to experience Brooklyn's mission area before Talia began her mission on June 3rd. Mostly, I was so excited to spend time as an entire family before heading our separate ways again.

As anticipated, Jason and I took a bazillion photos. I really don't know how to pare them down into a shareable quantity. While browsing through some of them today, I came across a series and thought--This.  This is why we traveled so far and invested so many resources to make it happen.  The moments of connection. I feel such joy to be a family--silly and imperfect and crazy and complete.

We don't have to travel to Barcelona to experience this connection. It does, however, require intentional presence and prioritization. Having come so close to losing Annika, having said good-bye to Brooklyn for 18 months, preparing to say good-bye to Talia in a few days, I no longer take these moments for granted. This summer, I hope to look beyond my messy house and piles of paperwork and soak up the joy of family instead.

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Side note: 

A few months back I pulled aside some of the posts about Annika's heart journey into a separate blog: annikasheart.blogspot.com.  I decided I needed a separate place to process some of the feelings surrounding transplant without bringing the heaviness here quite as often. If you want to see a slightly edited version of this post that includes some of my thoughts about Annika nearing 18 months post-transplant, you can read it here.