{"id":2303,"date":"2012-04-08T20:08:14","date_gmt":"2012-04-08T20:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/homesteademporium.wordpress.com\/?p=2303"},"modified":"2012-04-08T20:08:14","modified_gmt":"2012-04-08T20:08:14","slug":"shaylah-i-skipped-church-this-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/08\/shaylah-i-skipped-church-this-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaylah &#038; I skipped church this morning."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have a\u00a0sty\u00a0in my eye, it&#8217;s an &#8216;internal&#8217; sty, not the typical &#8216;external&#8217; kind. I guess that&#8217;s because I&#8217;m special. :p<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s painful, and it makes me look like I&#8217;ve got a wicked case of pink eye.<\/p>\n<p><em>Nice. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>NOT!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Anywho, it was a great <del><em>excuse<\/em><\/del>\u00a0reason to skip church this morning. I don&#8217;t usually look for reasons to stay home from church. Today was different.<\/p>\n<p>I let Shaylah stay home with me too. Neither of us are in good mental condition to be facing people today. Especially NOT people asking how it went with Alesia leaving this morning.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Alesia%20and%20Josh'95 by paw5kids, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/paw5kids\/2097281464\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2397\/2097281464_2073c196e0_m.jpg\" alt=\"Alesia%20and%20Josh'95\" width=\"240\" height=\"177\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Alesia, my constant companion for the past TWENTY &amp; a HALF years.<\/p>\n<p>And now she&#8217;s off to Ontario. I refuse to call it a &#8216;move&#8217;. I&#8217;m calling it a temporary change of address.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/homesteademporium.smugmug.com\/photos\/i-gwQNrMd\/0\/M\/i-gwQNrMd-M.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Shaylah is equally as distraught this morning.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s Alesia&#8217;s sidekick and I think she&#8217;s feeling a little &#8216;lost&#8217; as to what her place in this world is now that her big sister is gone.<\/p>\n<p>Not sure when my little girl grew up, but today, it feels like it happened overnight.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"aleswing(peggy) by paw5kids, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/paw5kids\/2096504931\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2209\/2096504931_8bf3d9312a_m.jpg\" alt=\"aleswing(peggy)\" width=\"176\" height=\"240\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One day I was baking a cake for her 2nd birthday.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"AlesiaRecita by paw5kids, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/paw5kids\/2096505939\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2391\/2096505939_7969177f02_m.jpg\" alt=\"AlesiaRecita\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Then she grew up and became a little girl.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"DSCN0068 by paw5kids, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/paw5kids\/2096505895\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2084\/2096505895_74fe1daf84.jpg\" alt=\"DSCN0068\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Then she got old enough to be responsible for pets and even make candy, on her own.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2284\/2097282970_022d5f276f.jpg\" alt=\"DSCN0004\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A constant &#8216;big&#8217; sister.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2184\/2097284904_a058ef9f93.jpg\" alt=\"kidsBeachjpeg\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And then suddenly&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"My girls 1 &amp; 2 by paw5kids, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/paw5kids\/258316724\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/94\/258316724_643cff2177.jpg\" alt=\"My girls 1 &amp; 2\" width=\"500\" height=\"330\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>She grew up and a woman replaced the little girl.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"alesia may 2010 by paw5kids, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/paw5kids\/4628140597\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4053\/4628140597_30e894bdd9.jpg\" alt=\"alesia may 2010\" width=\"400\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nNow she&#8217;s off to visit with family in Ontario, thousands of miles away. Visiting for two weeks, then working as a Nanny for a while. How long? We don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m kind of ok about all this, I knew it was coming, and it was even mainly my idea, with God&#8217;s <em><strong>FIRM<\/strong> <\/em>nudging on my heart (I argued with Him about this for a few weeks&#8230;) but even though I know this is how things are supposed to be right now, it still doesn&#8217;t make it any easier.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been planning and preparing for this big move our family is making in just one week, for many many years now. Throughout ALL these years I have been praying one thing.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Please God, let us move BEFORE my children are old enough to move out on their own.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Why? Because I ALWAYS felt a need to have our final home, the place hubby and I grow old in, the family farm we end up with, to be the place our <em><strong>CHILDREN<\/strong><\/em> would all call home too.<\/p>\n<p>The plan had always been to buy land, enough land for the kids to build too if they so pleased! Enough land for Alesia&#8217;s horses to run around on, for her to train horses, and maybe give riding lessons.<\/p>\n<p>The plan was never to move\u00a0separate\u00a0from any of our children. The plan was never to move so much later then we are.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re a homeschooling family. We&#8217;re <strong><em>ALWAYS<\/em><\/strong> together.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, here we are, years later,<span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\"><strong> FINALLY<\/strong><\/span> moving and Alesia has moved onto Ontario a week ahead of us, while we&#8217;ll be going to Saskatchewan without her.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n<p>I know it&#8217;ll be alright, but today&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>well&#8230;today is hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yet, here we are, years later, FINALLY moving and Alesia has moved onto Ontario a week ahead of us, while we&#8217;ll be going to Saskatchewan without her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/08\/shaylah-i-skipped-church-this-morning\/\">Read more<i class=\"fa fa-arrow-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-heart-of-this-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}