These photos portray much of what the kids and I have been doing with our days lately: making lots of new friends and developing relationships with the people we know, going outside (parks, pools, beach, or woods), enjoying the beautiful sunny weather, and sometimes playing on and under giant trees like these.  I’ve been really enjoying connecting with the other homeschooling and Navy women I’ve been meeting, and though we haven’t had much luck with finding girls for Ashton to play with, Cedar is having endless fun whipping around with the multitude of little boys we seem to find all around us.

This is one area in which I feel thankful for this Navy journey we are on– through it I am learning about being comfortable in my skin, being just who I am without “trying” to be liked, opening up to a variety of different kinds of people and being surprised to find that we have more in common than I would have expected, being forward with my want for relationships rather than holding myself back from people, and basically putting myself, as I am, out into the world to care and be cared for, connect and be connected with.  Although I miss having family around terribly, I’m finding that I’m really not “alone” as I have so often believed.