Laughter

Believe it or not, we laugh...a lot...like..a lot LOT in this house.

Between the antics of Spider-man, the innocence and newness of life being discovered by "the tod", the hilarity of our teenager's personality, the out-of-the-box-gross-boy-humor of J-bob, and Mermaid's random explosion of loud giggles (that leave everyone jaw-dropped because she's so usually so guarded and typically does NOTHING to draw ANY attention to herself, laughter is found around every corner. 

Laughter has saved lives "up in here".  It's taken us from I'm-a-gonna-kill-this-kid to snot-bubble-snort-out-loud-only-you.

It's definitely not all hard.   And the good moments far outweigh the negative (most weeks).  And the beauty of joy in the storm of family is indescribable.  And learning how to be a family---a large family, a medium family, a small family, a "middle" family, a biological family, a permanent family, a group of sinners living under the same roof, loved by the same God, and working towards the same goal: figuring out how to live a life poured out in sacrifice and love---isn't easy---but it is the single most rewarding thing we have ever done.  And we get to do it together.  {I cannot wait until the day I can share more pics AND figure out how to edit the above really long run-on sentence}