Why the {blog} silence?

Yes! We are still alive in case we had you worried....

It is almost September and if you have been checking back frequently over the summer you will have noticed an unusual silence in our little corner of the blog-o-sphere.  Why the silence you ask?  Several reasons:

1)  We took a vacation to Minnesota in May!  The kids and I were there for 5 weeks and had a great trip vising family, being with my youngest sister as she "officially" graduated high school, my middle sister as she graduated college and got married, meeting my brother's girlfriend, eating up my adorable nieces and nephews, seeing friends we miss dearly, visiting our favorite Church on that side of the world, getting some thrift store and Target shopping in, and eating food we can't easily get here in Korea.  There were just too many people to see and things to do to spend time blogging!

2)  We arrived back in Korea June 15 and quite literally hit the ground running - we hardly had time to get over jetlag, let alone try to blog about it!

3)  I intentionally decided to step away for a time this summer to focus on supporting Steve in his ministry.  I really enjoyed partnering with him and supporting him in ways I hadn't done in the past.  We grew together as a couple a lot, we had a lot of fun and I think we worked well together.  I love writing and blogging but it takes time and  I decided to pour more of that focus and energy into supporting one of the busiest seasons of his year:  Summer Vacation.

4)  I've also been doing a lot of soul searching and thinking and dreaming and experimenting with what I want our family to look like, our days to look like and our home to look like.  I've spent a lot more time being intentional in the home and family and thinking of what I can cut out of my life and schedule to make home and family more of a priority.  There are a LOT of things I am involved with right now (supporting Steve, nursery ministry, supporting women in our community and Church, mentoring relationships, Bible studies, hospitality ministry, welcome team ministry, adoption work, doula ministry, etc) and I have the desire to make my family come FIRST out of all of those (while also balancing them)....I have felt for a long time that blogging just adds "one more thing" to that list when I am trying to cut out all the non essentials.  So where does that leave me? I have been wanting to end the blog for a while now and I wanted to test that out.  To be honest, it has been nice. One less thing feels great.  But, in talking with Steve and others, this is also an important way we keep in touch with those "back home", share about our ministry, raise awareness, prayers and support in the various ways we need it.  So, I think I am going to add it back in - slowly - and see if we can strike a balance of blogging but also making time for the more important things first.  We will see how it goes and I can always end it in the future if we feel the need that adding it back in is just too much.

Thank you for understanding and I hope I didn't leave anyone "hanging" too long.  I hope to be doing some catch up in these next days and weeks and then regularly post our updates and life as we begin our 4th year living overseas in Asia!