Happy Trails!

Dear Friends: Five and a half years ago, I started "Mommy Monsters" as an online journal, to record the ins and outs of raising an "extraordinary family" -- a sibling group that we first fostered, then adopted.

As it turns out, five years can be a lifetime. Each week, each day even, brings new joys, new challenges. Above all, they've brought changes: changes in our children, and especially changes in ourselves.

Chris is now ten, and Sarah is eight. They are happy, healthy, well-adjusted little balls of energy, and I love them more today than the first time I set eyes upon them. It's a little secret of parenthood.

But once more, one chapter of our lives is closing and another is cracking open slowly. Tomorrow I take the MTTC, in order to start the teacher certification program at EMU. Craig and I have talked about it, and we've decided that it's time for me to move away from my writing endeavors to begin to prepare for a second career in teaching. If all goes well, I will be teaching Language Arts/ESL in a couple of years.

In some ways, this new chapter makes me a little nervous. I've been out of school for twenty years, and the thought of going back to college while trying to help my own kids through their schooling is a tall order. I'm hoping, though, that the kids will see me doing my homework while they are doing theirs, and realize that a person is never too old to love to learn.

Having said that, a forty-something year old brain is not a twenty-something year old brain. And so, I need to simplify some of my other activities. "Mommy Monsters" is going to be going on hiatus indefinitely. I'll still post to "Extraordinary Moms Network," and write the occasional article for Catholic Exchange and CatholicMom.com, as well as AnnArbor.com.

At some point I may need to "simplify" further, but for now I wanted to thank you for letting me share my life with you these past few years. Let's stay in touch, and continue to pray for each other ...

God bless you!

Heidi