One year ago today...

I know Elsa likes to sing about "the past is in the past...",

 but I have learned some life lessons from my past, so I am not going to "let it go". 

*Hey I'm cheezy like that sometimes*

A year ago today I took this picture:

While it may look like an ordinary winter picture to you, it symbolizes so much more for me.

Last year at this time, my husband was away for work.. we got to see him more than military families get to see thier loved ones. This did not make it any less difficult on our little family however. We made a choice, together, that it would be for the better of our family in the end, and it was!

Like with any good tale, there are two sides of a story...

I can not tell his, as I was not there. I know that it was not easy for him to be away from wife and kids, but I will not speak for him. I will, however, speak for myself. 

While I had an amazing support group behind me (you really do find your true friends through struggles) it was still trying at times to raise two little girls through that time. WELL, the only truly hard time was WINTER!

I mean it wasn't like Little House on the Prairie, where I had to chop wood for fire, but hey for some first world problems, I did good. As all of my friends would remind me regularly, "Of course this winter had to be one of the worst we've had in a decade".

When you are not one to regularly do push-ups (or anything else), you need to get up at 3:30 am to shovel snow, then get kids up and breakfast, and shovel snow again, then get lunches packed, then shovel snow again, and kids  re-motivated, and shovel snow again... 

you get the picture! Hence this picture above, this is one of the many pictures I took to remind myself...

You CAN do everything you put your mind to. 

You can push your Camry out of the snow by yourself with two kids inside about to be late for school. You CAN escape all the accidents by taking the country roads slow to work. The metaphors could keep rollin, but the point? You CAN make sacrifices when you know there are greater things to be had.