It was good to take a little break and get away for a night but there’s nothing I love more than being home.

The kids had fun. They collected shells and we got to show them where we lived when they were babies.

Those were the tiniest apartments. They were sooo old. They’re being renovated now. Looking back at how far we’ve come is pretty incredible though. What a crazy journey.

Watching both my Mom and brother battle cancer while having two very small babies was hard at times. Not feeling like I could pour enough of myself into all the people that needed me.

I was talking to my sister-in-law Jessica a couple days ago and she has a one year-old and is pregnant again in about to have a baby in April. I think it worries her because she saw what a hard time that was for me in the beginning when I had 2 kids in diapers, but I keep trying to remind her that there were so many other moving parts in my life during that time my babies were just a small piece of it.

But I wouldn’t change it for the world. The lack of sleep, the burning myself at both ends constantly. Trying to be everything for everyone, including my husband, sometimes it was a lot but so worth it.

Moving to Florida is the best thing we ever did. In the beginning to always thought that after my Mom passed away, we would probably move back to Mississippi or Louisiana, but I’m so thankful that we didn’t. Moving to Florida really gave us an opportunity to spread our wings and fly so to speak.

My mom has been gone 5 years and my brother has been gone 2 1/2, and it’s been really weird to live in a world without them, but I think they’d be so proud of how far we’ve come. I know my mom will be so tickled with how precious my kids are. They’re really, really good kids.

Anyway, I guess being back in Ocean Springs resurfaces a lot of memories for me, but it’s a place I fell in love, and started a family. It will always to some degree feel like home for me, regardless of how hard those times were they were also really precious and really important. It was the foundation of everything else that would come after.

For that, I will always be grateful.