For the last several years we have not managed to get out an annual New Year's letter. And yet I have had so much enjoyment hearing from family and friends scattered throughout the country (and the world!) this year that I determined to get a letter of some kind done! Facebook status updates do not really replace a Christmas letter!! Pondering our lives over the past year I really could not contemplate a better framework for a summary than that of answered prayers. God has truly been so gracious to us, allowing us to fulfill many dreams and goals.
The most salient feature of 2010 was an opportunity to travel with our family. Jeff and I have both felt that the priority our families put on seeing and experiencing new places contributed significantly to forming our intellectual curiosity and shaping our worldview. It has always been our hope to share that love of adventure with our children. Easier said than done with both the financial strain of the last several years and the proliferation of offspring! However this year, by God's grace, the pieces finally came together for several very important trips. In the spring we took a South by Southwest tour. We retraced the steps that Jeff and I had taken when we moved to Texas in 1998, driving down the Natchez Trace Parkway. This was a land route used by settlers and traders to return north, after navigating down the Mississippi River to Natchez, Mississippi and New Orleans. We then visited New Orleans and Jeff's corporate headquarters in Austin, TX. After that we headed north through Oklahoma, to Kansas City and St. Louis. Jeff's mom gamely joined us for days of loading kids in and out of car seats, trying to settle high-energy kids into hotel beds at the end of the day and all sort of food adventures.
Later in the summer we undertook an even more ambitious cross country train trip from Chicago to Seattle for my youngest brother's wedding. Thanks to some very ingenious planning on Jeff's part we succeeded in seeing my cousins in California, the Columbia River Gorge, and Glacier National Park, in addition to attending the wedding and surrounding festivities. A highlight of that wedding for me was to have all but one of our Toth cousins together for the first time ever. Our youngest two children were, of course, adorable as ring bearer and flower girl in the wedding and we are thrilled to add a wonderful new sister-in-law to our family.
On a much more somber note I travelled to Cape Cod twice in 2010. Aunt Mary, who has long been a part of every Thanksgiving celebration at my grandparents' and who has often hosted us at Cape Cod was fighting a long and difficult battle with pancreatic cancer. Although her illness was a tragedy, it was a huge answered prayer that in February my sister and I were able to spend two days at Cape Cod to visit her. Eastham is not an easy travel destination to reach from the Midwest, requiring nearly two hours of driving even after arriving in Boston. The fact that my sister and I, travelling from different cities, subject to winter storms and the demands of 8 children between the two us were able to converge on Cape Cod for a weekend was nothing short of a miracle and I treasure those last few precious days we shared with Aunt Mary. She passed away in early August and we returned to Cape Cod as a family for a memorial service in October. The memorial service was a great celebration of her life. It was sweet to celebrate her life and give our children a new experience of her world on the Cape.
All in all we visited and travelled through 28 states in 2010 and were able to build many wonderful memories as a family.
In addition to the travel God has given us another exciting way to expanding our childrens' horizons even planted here in the Midwest. Our home church has continued an involvement with a large family of refugees from Bhutan, which we have helped to resettle and orient to the United States. Our hope when we started our family integrated homechurch was to find a way for families to get involved together in service and this opportunity has answered that prayer. The family our homechurch has befriended is a large extended family: a patriarch with 9 children and more grandchildren and great grandchildren than we can accurately count (not all of whom are settled in Columbus). We have attended weddings and festivals in their apartments and we in turn have taught them baseball and Christmas carols and how to sled in the snow. Our children have done less well at enjoying foreign cuisine at their many festivals, but Jeff absolutely loves the food and helps the kids remove enough from their plates to be polite.
Another answered prayer this year has been that I have been able to continue homeschooling all children, now spanning from preschool to middle school. I guess I assumed that homeschooling without an infant would be so much easier and more relaxed. While there are certainly less interruptions, the coordination required to teach so many levels has definitely been a challenge, but a challenge that I wouldn't trade for all the world! Watching the oldest ones expand into more challenging academic territory while watching Bute5 learn how to read is an incomparable thrill.
Bute1 is very social and I have long worried that as he grew older that I would not be able to provide enough social interaction for him and still continue homeschooling.. Fortunately God has provided several ideal contexts for Brent to form some friendships and gain some independence without undermining what we are trying to accomplish at home. We continue to host our family integrated home church and there is a family in our home church with boys the same ages as Bute1 and Bute2. Week after week, when our time of prayer and Bible study are done, the kids spend hours playing flashlight tag, four square and kickball in our back yard. Thus we are able to achieve the goal of a family integrated church meeting and still have a great social opportunity for our kids.
Another huge activity that provides lots of opportunities for our children to build relational skills is scouting. Bute1 crossed over to Boy Scouts last winter and has already reached the rank of Second Class and earned three merit badges. Since Jeff and I know many of the scouting families well (including the family from our church with Bute1 and Bute2’s best friends) we feel like this is a very positive environment for Bute1 to begin to gain some more independence. I have seen a quantum leap forward in Bute1 this year in his confidence and independence. Last March, when he attended his first overnight activity with the Boy Scouts I was supposed to drop him off and Jeff was supposed to meet him there. As soon as we arrived Brent was quiet, standing close to me and said in a panicky voice "You're not leaving before Dad gets here are you?" Fast forward six months. In August Bute1 had an opportunity to earn the sailing merit badge. However Jeff was out of town until Saturday evening and Bute1's closest friend was unavailable, so he would need to spend the first 24 hours of the weekend in an unfamiliar campground without anyone he knew from his troop. Remembering Bute1's fears in March the thought of leaving him in such an unfamiliar situation caused me untold hours of stress. However, as we pulled up to the campground on Friday afternoon, Bute1 confidently dumped his equipment out of the car, refused even my offer to help him pitch his tent and firmly sent me on my way with a the reassurance "I'll be fine!". And indeed he was. When Jeff caught up with him 24 hours later he appeared none the worse for the wear, had slept WAY better than his mother and had learned a lot about sailing!
While Bute1 is launching into Boy Scouting (to be followed by Bute2 next month), the rest of our family is deeply involved in Cub Scouting. Jeff is in his third year as the Cubmaster of our Pack, although he is quaking at the thought of losing some of his most able assistants and committee members in the next year. I have been leading Bute3 and 4's den for the last three years and finding it to be a lot of fun, although a big time commitment.
And of course I haven't even begun to mention our sports, but most of you know the drill. Again as an answer to prayer we have been able to keep our kids for the most part involved in the same sports all of which take place within a mile or two or our house. Soccer in spring and fall, swimming, baseball and tennis in the summer. A glaring exception is our winter sport, wrestling, which requires a fair amount of logistics to commute to two practices in a neighboring suburb. On my prayer list for 2011 is a wrestling team closer to home! Another challenge we face in the years ahead is trying to navigate the fine line between choosing activities that maximize our synergy as a family and still allowing each of the children to develop as individuals. Butes3 and 4 enjoy all the same sports as their brothers, but haven’t necessarily shown a lot of focus or skill in some of them. They also struggle much more academically. It is a constant question in my mind to know if certain things are just much more difficult for them and require more time and practice, or if they really just do not have an aptitude for something and we should turn our attention to other activities.
Jeff’s job continues to be an answered prayer. His company took a hit during the recession, and Jeff had to burn some vacation time and (temporarily) took a small pay cut, but things are back on track now and his career continues to progress. While Jeff continues to manage National Instruments’ Ohio & Kentucky operations, he has been taking on larger roles with some major accounts throughout the Midwest. While this role is still being defined, he could eventually take on some national or global responsibility for these accounts. These are new and exciting challenges: selling business impact rather than products and features, working primarily with managers rather than engineers, and collaborating and strategizing with team members around the world.
Overall though we feel like this year has been one of exceptional blessing on our family: “the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places (Ps. 16:6)
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