When does your baby stop being a baby?
I know it's officially way back in the toddler period, but seriously. It's hard to let go of the "little" mentality you have when it's your last child. Because you love having him little.
This week, my "baby" will graduate Kindergarten.
And while my husband says Kindergarten graduation is ridiculous, because they're only moving across the hallway, it still holds some sentimentality. After all, this is the last graduation until probably high school. And I'm definitely not ready to go there yet.

Can you remember the last romantic gesture you received? How about the one before that? In all honesty, a lot of us probably can't go back too far in remembering. And yet, the romance is still there, even if it's not in the forefronts of our mind. So what makes our love lasting? Guest author, Iola Goulton, is chatting today about her relationship with her husband, and what takes it from the red-hot romances to lasting love. Read on!

​I am an avid reader, and romance is my favourite genre. Yet ask me my what my favourite book is, and my answer is likely to be the Bible (always a good choice). Why? Because every novel I’ve ever read mysteriously vanishes from my memory the minute I’m asked the fateful question.
 
I have the same difficulty with romance, romantic moments, and romantic memories.
 
Despite reading one hundred or more romance novels a year and being married for almost thirty years, ask me to write a blog post about something in real life that I found romantic, and thirty years of chocolates and flowers and fun days with my husband vanish from my memory. It’s not that he never does anything romantic, and it’s not that I have a bad memory (honest!). 

If you've followed me for long, you know I've moved quite a bit. Honestly? I've never lived anywhere longer than six years. Ever. Once we pass July here, it will be the longest I've lived anywhere because we'll start our seventh year. It's exciting. But it also comes with a twist I wasn't thinking about.
We moved here with the expectation of staying. Seriously putting down roots, digging in, finding a church family to grow with and let our children grow up in, you get the idea. And we really do feel we've done that, for the most part. But you see that picture above? The one with my daughter and one of her friends? It probably won't ever happen again.
Why?
Because that friend is moving away this summer.

Even on the other side of a painful situation, the pains of the ordeal can linger.
It's been eight and a half years since my daughter was born. In some ways it feels like forever and in others, only moments. I'm sure it's that way for most parents. 
But that also means it's been over nine years since I dealt with infertility problems. Almost a decade. So what brought them to my mind again now?
Bills.
No, I'm not still getting bills from way back then, although it wouldn't necessarily surprise me, considering how long it sometimes takes doctors to bill for things. I found some bills buried in old tax paperwork.

I adore musicals. But I had never seen "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat" until after I married my husband. It's his favorite, by the way.
He grew to love it by watching the Donnie Osmond version on VHS growing up. (Did I just age us?)
Since we've been married, we've seen it live several times. Once at the Orpheum in Memphis. Once in Tyler, Texas by a local group.
And last weekend.
​Which might have been the most fun of all.

See that picture? I definitely felt like that several times over the last month.
It was my first time to work tax season. And I survived. Although I think my house almost didn't. It was pretty rough by the time everything was said and done.
I'm definitely grateful for a husband who stepped in and did dishes and laundry several times while I sat at my computer, entering information into the tax program and trying to make sure everyone signed in time for us to get them filed. Whew!
On this side of it, the twitch in my eye has calmed down. And I feel a bit more like I can breathe. Sure, there's still more work to do. We filed tons of extensions, after all. But it's not quite as urgent for the moment.

If you've known me for more than a year, you've probably figured out I have a weakness for wanting a new dress for Easter each year. I just can't resist more often than not.
Well, I didn't think it was going to happen this year. No time to shop. No time to sew. I was doing well to get my daughter's dress made before the holiday.
And then, I got a few things done faster than expected. And this gorgeous fabric I bought several years ago was just sitting there ... mocking me. Begging me to do something with it.
And so was a jumper pattern.
​And so I jumped in.
And there were several moments when I still wasn't sure I could get it done, but as you can see in the picture, I did! And I'm mostly happy with it. (I need to adjust the strap length to be shorter, but that's for another day.)

How did you fall in love with your significant other? Better question: how do you keep falling in love? That's what guest author, Jessica Wakefield is chatting about today. I think you're going to agree with a lot of her sentiments. Read on.

​Real life romances are always unique. Recently I had three of my nieces for a sleepover. Add to my own two girls, I had five girls ranging from ages six to twelve in my house. It was noisy to say the least, fun watching the girls laugh and play together, but noisy. In the morning it was just me and the girls. My husband had gone to work when we saw a cockroach (it was one of the biggest I’ve seen in years), and not a single one of us could kill it. There was lots of screaming. I told me eldest to run across the road and ask our neighbour if he’d help. He’s a grandfather and I figured he’d be a good source of assistance. Sure enough, he came over and dispatched the cockroach. I told him he could tease me about this for the rest of my life. He laughed and said it wasn’t a worry. In fact, he said, that’s how his daughter met her husband. She had knocked on the door across the road, needing help with a spider, and he came over and the rest is history.

For the last several years, I have been dealing with headaches ... and trying to get to the source of them. We started with allergies and sinus as the probably culprit, so about a year and a half ago, I met with an allergist. The allergist confirmed I live with my top two allergens (cats and dust), tweaked my over-the-counter meds I was on, and gave a few other suggestions. Then, he suggested a CT Scan and a visit to the ENT.
The CT Scan went okay. It showed the ENT that I could benefit from sinus surgery. However, she was also perplexed by my complaints about my hearing loss in my left ear. She suggested the surgery to help relieve the sinus pressure headaches. But she wondered if my hearing loss might be caused by a tumor.

My children are "church babies." It means they're growing up where the church building and the people in are another home. There are no strangers in church. Even if it's somewhere we're visiting.
For instance, a few weeks ago, when we were in West Virginia, we attended a Wednesday night Bible study where I spoke that Saturday. There were a few other kids there, though none of them exactly the same age as my children. And no other girls. My friend introduced my kids to their Bible teacher and they went. No questions asked. No worried clinging to my husband or me. They went to class.
It does a mama's heart good to see that. Especially since when they were younger, we did go through the phase where they clung and cried and didn't want to leave me.