Welcome

Welcome to my new blog! I am very excited to share with you all of life's adventures. I really hope you will comment and share yours, too!

A little background on why I have chosen "The Autumn of Life" for my blogs name. I recently spent some time in a ladies class at church studying the different times of our lives and what all of those times entail. I was quite surprised to discover that I was entering the autumn of my life. This was described as the time that our children are completing high school and venturing out on their own. It is also a time where we as women really become comfortable in our skin. The time of raising children is waining, and we face re-discovering ourselves. While there are several shades of gray during this time, depending on each of our own situations, we all face this time. We have finished the spring (childhood), are completing summer (child rearing age), and have yet to see the winter. Since I am entering the autumn of life, I should hopefully have years to blog about before winter sets in.

I find this definition to be very accurate to my life, currently. Others around me didn't think I could be in the autumn of my life, and thought I was jumping the gun. I will say they were the ones that are coming on the latter years of autumn in their lives. As I stated earlier, where we fall at what age depends on our own situations. My husband and I like to say we cheated. We chose to adopt older children early in our marriage. We have been married for 17 years, and have been parents for 15 years. D, K, A, J, and C are now 21, 19, 17, 17, and 15. I was a stay-at-home mom for the majority of those years, returning to work when our youngest entered middle school. The plentiful volunteer jobs dry up when they begin higher level schools and I found myself with more time on my hands. And thus began the changing of the colors in my leaves. Areas of my life that I was quite content with became mundane. Many of my thoughts on life and how I thought I would spend the next 20 years began to change.

All this brings me to my new blog. I hope to share this time with all of you. From experience, I know I cannot be the only one going through similiar changes. No doubt, we will face different facets of life. But, I also know we will share many as well. By the nature of tackeling life, there will be many things covered as I write to you. I would like to share with you my experiences in child rearing, raising children that have been adopted through the foster care system, and helping them transition to adulthood. As some of them hopefully go off to college, I am finishing my first degree and will undoubtedly speak of that, too. I love to read, scrapbook, and take photographs and hope to share some of my passions with you.

I hope that you will join me as we face this new phase of life together!