and a partridge in a pear tree

Twelve!


t.w.e.l.v.e.


12!


That's vaguely Sesame style meets The Twelve Days of Christmas.


Emma!  We are leaving in twelve days.  Oh, goodness gracious.  Maybe that explains why two sleeps ago  I was wide eyed at 2am with a little list of things to do marching through my mind.  Not stressed.  Not worried.  Just up.


Up organizing, pondering, remembering.  That list would not sit still, sit down or be quiet.  No paper bedside to jot it all on, so I fumbled my way downstairs for the computer and came back to bed to work.  


It is quite amazing how much one can get done from 2am to 5am.  Seriously.  Ben Franklin had it right on the early to bed, early to rise deal.  And the ambient light of a computer casts such a gentle glow in the wee hours.  In bed.  


Fast forward to 2pm, and not so much.  Ha!  Thirty minute snoozer saved the day, and now I am assured of making it until bedtime again.  At which point the day is done and we are one day closer to you!


I have this overwhelming sense of missing something.  Today as I kept looking over list after list, I realized it wasn't someTHING, it was someONE.  It is you, Emma Kate.  You are so close to here and with us, that it is starting to feel tangibly real that you are here.  After all these months of waiting and preparing and planning and hoping, praying and dreaming, the Lord is bringing to pass that which He so graciously ordained.


YOU are coming home.


Home.


Never has there been a sweeter word.


And on another note: Happy birthday to my dear mother, our beloved Gogo.  We love you so much, Mom.  May the Lord bless and keep you in this next and new year.  May His face shine upon you and bring you great and lasting peace!  Happy birthday!