Thoughts on Little Things and Big Things

I sat down to write our yearly Christmas "brag" letter.  I stared at the cursor blinking on the screen.  I typed a few words, erased, tried again.  I didn't know what to say.

We didn't do anything this year.  Nothing remarkable.

We didn't take any huge trips.  No new babies.  No moves.

I tried to think of a humorous way to say we did nothing.  But that isn't completely true.  We had to have done something.  After all, 365 days have passed.  We certainly didn't spend the whole time asleep.

We did plenty of little things.  We finished our first hodge-podge year of kind of preschool at home, and started our official homeschool with a kindergartner and a preschooler this fall.  I started a monthly church newsletter.  Jonah lost his first tooth. Matthew learned to sweep the floor. Hannah's vocabulary exploded, although please don't ask me to translate two-year-old speak before I've had my coffee.  I have now figured out why her favorite phrase is, "What you say?" (What did you say?)  Elizabeth learned to function, which is a lot of little things over the course of her first year of life.

In a brag letter, these things aren't that impressive.  But in real life, life made up of little ordinary things, these are the big things.  Sometimes I need that reminder.  Maybe you do too.