Right now Maverick’s biggest frustration is not being able to understand time. In his vocabulary, last week could mean last year; yesterday might mean last week; & tonight could mean tomorrow…so the way we explain things is by season. The ‘calendar’ I created for Mav when we told him about what he calls, ‘his baby’ is a list with pictures in the correct order everything will happen. He knows after the pool comes the orchard…& after the orchard it’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas…then we will have some snow & the calendar countdown ends on Valentine’s Day when his baby brother is due to arrive! So it just made sense to break our Christmas letter down by season.
WINTER:
Josh plowed a record amount of snow. I’m not sure the final totals, but I know
BLC plowed more snow than ever before so things stayed nice & busy around
here. We had a great crew of guys and made it through the whole season safely,
no accidents for customers or employees. We played out in the snow as much as
we could, exploring our acreage and playing with our puppies and kitties…we
have a decent sledding hill at the back of our property & we all had fun
shooting Maverick down on a saucer to see how fast & far he’d go. Mav went
out in the plow truck a couple of times with Josh, but got bored pretty quickly
so I had to be available to run & grab him…I think he will like riding
along with daddy a lot more this year! Josh & I snuck away to Galena for a
couple days in January during the Polar Vortex & will remember forever the
trip when we were the only people
staying in the DeSoto house...two nights in a row!
SPRING:
Josh geared up for BLC’s 20th season in business and the snow
continued…Maverick enjoyed his usual rotation of church play group, library,
CFA, play dates with buddies, & playing outside…I planned/hosted/decorated
for countless parties/showers/events & ended up designing/redecorating a
chiropractic office in Ames. We had tons of events for Aunt Jamie getting
married & most weekends involved wedding planning + prep, ending with the
Big Day in May. Josh hired his BLC crews to start rolling with spring work; one
of our trucks was rear-ended; we bought a skid loader (Josh’s favorite BLC toy
to date) to haul the four semi-loads
of mulch our customer’s requested; & we finally got around to growing grass
in our backyard! We also accidentally took two trips to Galena…one in April and
one in May.
SUMMER:
At the beginning of June we found out we were finally pregnant! Most of 2019 has been spent at the usual doctor
appointments, planning for baby, decorating baby’s room, throwing a gender
reveal party, embracing maternity fashion, & Instagramming everything along
the way (I swear this is the #1 way I remember things!). Josh spent the summer
managing his mowing crews & chemical applicator, which made BLC more
efficient + able to take on more customers because Josh actually had time to
sit at his computer & quote work. We picked up some great new accounts;
bought another white truck + plow to be able to run more crews at once; &
enjoyed lots of time on our porch with family and friends. We spent nearly
every day at the pool; took a family vacation to Galena; hit up the fair; dealt
with a flooded basement + the clean-up that followed; & tackled rescreening
the porch + adding supports to the bottom half to make it safe(r) than it was
previously…one of the last ‘big’ home renovation projects we needed to accomplish. Between his
trampoline, sandbox, play set, & Gator, Mav will spend hours outside
playing while I read/watch from the porch and this is our favorite way to enjoy
summer…acreage life is still a perfect fit for all of us.
FALL:
Maverick started preschool! We were all really excited about this new
milestone…he’s young for his grade since his fourth birthday was on September 1st,
but we knew he was ready. Mav absolutely loves his four mornings of preschool
each week (the adjustment was shockingly easy!), which is mostly because his
teachers are amazing. Josh’s chemical applicator quit without notice so we
didn’t see him for a couple months while he was finishing fall weed control,
irrigation shut-downs, & getting fall fertilizer down in record time. With
some weirdly early snow, our crews have stayed plenty busy going between fall
work & snow prep…plus we’ve finally
committed to finishing the man cave/office in the shop attic + finishing the
shop the way Josh wants it done, so we should have some pretty exciting Before
& After pictures coming soon. Mav and I made it to the orchard (our
favorite fall place) 10 times and Josh was even able to come three times! We
spent two horrible weeks ‘vehicle shopping’ and ended up buying an old Yukon
from a grandpa who had it parked & for sale down the street…so now we have more than enough room for two car seats
+ baby gear! We took our annual October trip to Galena, this time ‘vacationing’
with Adam & Jamie who are usually stuck at home house + pet sitting for us.
As most of
you probably know, we lost a sweet baby in April of 2018…last year’s Christmas
letter didn’t seem like the place to announce our news, especially because we’d
been hoping we’d have happy news to
share on the heels of the sad news. We didn’t & because baby #2 was due to
arrive on December 3rd, all the celebrating was consistently met
with sadness over what was obviously missing…a fourth stocking on the mantle,
tiny Baby’s First Christmas outfits, swaddle blankets with red trucks and trees…&
the entire year kind of played out like that. We absolutely loved making more memories with just
Maverick and our family of three, but every time we did something fun it sort
of felt like we had a family member missing.
If
anything loss has altered our eternal perspective to a more urgent hope, a
desperate longing that when Christ returns again everything will be made right. And that perspective, our hopeful
longing, is actually exactly what
Christmas is about. The Israelites waited 400
years for God to give them a King. They were faithful to wait, trusting the
words from Prophets who had come before them, that God would send a King to be
the Savior of the World…and then…a baby born in a manger in Bethlehem, the King
they’d been waiting for. We experienced a taste of desperate and hopeful
longing this past year and can relate, in a very small way, to what the
Israelites might have been feeling. When
would God answer? How would He
answer? Why won’t He answer? Cooper
Wilder Harm will be the perfect addition to our family in seven short weeks,
given to us exactly when God decided we’d waited long enough.
This
Christmas has been filled with all the usual…movies, baking, kiddo concerts,
BLC plowing, decorating, special traditions, wrapping, and one more trip to
Galena…all while remembering the true significance of the Christmas Story &
how that fits into the bigger picture of the Gospel, “In our longing in our
darkness, now the light of life has come…What a foretaste of deliverance, how
unwavering our hope…Christ the great and sure fulfillment, of the Law in Him we
stand.”
Merry
Christmas!
Josh & Mollie, Maverick & Cooper, Millie & Remy
