Long overdue!

Hello everyone. I guess the Horsman family is long overdue for a blog post. Emma and I have been back in Texas now for 2 1/2 weeks but we have been terribly busy and to be honest with you I just haven't wanted to try sorting through all of the pictures! For the first few days after arriving back at our little home I knew that it would not be a good idea to view the pictures anyway. It was hard enough to say goodbye to the family and I was already battling the "salty floods" :-)

It was SO good to be back in Maine and to have time with the family and our friends. It was a whirlwind trip (even though it was three weeks long you wouldn't believe how crazy it was!) but it was a good trip. I am so grateful for the way God has been blessing us during this new season of life being so far away from the family. I have to say that I am a real homebody and although I love traveling and seeing new places, I LOVE to go home! This move has been a huge challenge on many fronts, but our God is so GOOD!!!

I told my family that I feel like God has, in a sense, gone out of His way to make this move as smooth as possible. He has blessed us with a wonderful church and many precious friends. Several families have really reached out to us and made us feel so welcome. God has been using this move to challenge me to find my joy in Him FIRST, to bloom where He has planted me, to make new friends (if you know me well you know that I like the familiar and my comfort zones!), and to embrace our little family. I have dreamed of being a wife and mother ever since I was a little girl (and I am just LOVING it!) but I never really realized how hard the leaving and cleaving would be. I spent the first 23 (almost 24) years of my life being a Reed, and family = my parents and siblings. But now, even though they are still my family, they are not my primary focus anymore. God has been using this time so far away from those whom I love so dearly and whom have always been my closest family, to really shape and solidify our little family. Justin and I have both sensed it and it has been a beautiful thing to see God at work. Justin and I looked at each other today on the way home from church and commented on how much we LOVE being a family! This doesn't mean that our parents and siblings are no longer a precious, vital part of our lives because they ARE! It just means that they now play a different role in our lives and we in theirs. God has His own exciting plans for the Justin Horsman family and I for one am looking forward to being a part of those plans!

(Wow I didn't plan on that being so long :-)So anyway, here are some pictures from my time in Maine. I may have to do this in a couple different posts because there are so many pictures.

Mother/Daughter Breakfast
(We had to split up because there were so many of us. From left to right are my sister Hannah, Grammy Beck, my mom, my sister Leigha, my cousin Raychelle, and my cousin Anna.)

Here are Emma and I, my cousin Susan, my Grammy Reed-Moody, and my Aunt Debbie.

Going to the Beadin' Path to make jewelry has become one of our summer traditions when my cousins visit from New Jersey.

We also play a TON of card games...

...and a visit to Maine wouldn't be complete without some tubing on the lake!

Emma wasn't a big fan of her lifejacket, but she did enjoy her Grammy!