Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes or Counting Blessings and Dollars, There are Way More of the Former

alright, so here's the thing. 

wait. before i tell you THE thing, i have to tell you this other thing. 

anna's feet stink now. 

and. i. love. it. 

she's a real big kid who runs in the mud and works up sweatsickles and has stinky feet. and also, with the stinky feet, come conversations and the alphabet song, which she gets SOOOO wrong and it's so funny and adorable and great. every day she sheds the baby anna and gains the big kid anna and it's fabulous. she's COOL and feisty and curious and funny. 

henry keeps learning to read but denying that he's doing it and getting mad at us when we catch him in the act. and also he's just so happy and sweet and great. and also his feet stink, too. have for a long time. 

we are hashtag so blessed. 

the real thing is, robb lost his job last week, and with it, half our income. 

so that's a real kick in the soft and danglies. 

but. we were looking for an exit strategy out of that dumb job anyway, and thinking about ways we could free up our time to better manage the house, start a new business, and be more available for the kids. 

for one thousand different reasons, this was really good timing and we are really excited about it. we're both individually in the best head space we've been in ages, and our marriage is strong like bull. 

this has been a hard year prior to this loss. if our marriage is now a strong, healthy, old tree, there was a while recently when it was wearing one of those pink tags on it indicating it had mold and needed to be razed.  

(no i am not melodramatic, YOU'RE melodramatic. i keep telling you that). 

we've worked hard to fix it, and we're better for and to each other now that we've been in years. we're the tree doctors. bam. 

anyway. that's where we are and what we're up to. we're trying to take it slow, careful, tender. one day at a time, one homemade meal at a time (woot!). it's exciting and it's scary and it's ok that it's both. 

mostly it feels liberating. we're crunching numbers so we can live lighter, and we're motivated. we discovered that last year we spent 4 million US dollars in going out to restaurants. this year we're aiming for 2 million. fingers crossed. 

and in those low moments of panic and doubt, we can count the stinky feet in the house and be glad for them. (there are now eight (#8)).