a letter to my boys...

dear owen & ben, writing you both regular letters has been something i’ve thought about doing for a long time, but until now, i never actually sat down and wrote one. since i just started my blog, i thought this was the perfect opportunity to start writing and capturing some images to document the month. i’m not writing these letters or posting the pictures to embarrass you when you’re older (and i certainly hope that’s not the case!), but rather i want you to have something to remember all of our amazing, crazy, fun (and sometimes not so much fun) moments together and to have something you can keep forever.

this month i chose a photo taken by daddy on his iphone. it’s certainly not the best photo technically, nor is it the best photo of any one of us, but I love it because it’s me with my boys out celebrating mother’s day, and every time i see it, it makes me smile! it's also a reminder to me to get out from behind the camera sometimes so we can have more photos together!

i’ve thought a lot about family this month. in april, we spent an amazing month in england and the states and visited with a lot of our family and friends. you both had so much fun and it was wonderful seeing you develop relationships with your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, our close friends and their children. leaving everyone and coming back to oz was hard. this month everything seemed quiet, especially when daddy was at work and it was just the three of us at home. after all the fun and excitement and chaos of staying with family and so many visitors, it was hard not to feel a bit homesick and a bit lonely. it’s made me question taking you away from everyone we love when we made the decision to move back to australia. did we make the right decision? the honest answer to this question is, i don’t know.

coming here meant we could offer you an amazing lifestyle. we live in the land of outdoor living (and you two LOVE being outside, it’s impossible to get you inside some days!), in a safe community with beaches on one side of town and farms on the other, yet only an hour from all the culture and activity of the city. there’s great schools here and all sorts of activities for you to be involved in, and we can afford for mommy to stay home with you here. we’re about to start building our dream home, and the house you’ll grow up in and its far more than i would’ve thought we would ever have. in the nearly two years since we’ve lived here, we’ve met some absolutely wonderful people and have made some great friendships. so no, we don’t have family on our doorstep, and that is really hard and sad sometimes. but we have a lot of other amazing things going for us, and with technology now, family doesn’t always seem as far away as they actually are.

it’s been a month since we’ve been back and the homesickness has gone and we’ve gotten back into the swing of things and have settled back into our own routine, and life feels pretty good right now. so who knows if we made the ‘right’ decision, but for now, i can safely say that we made a good decision for our family and i can only hope that you’ll both be happy here!

i love you both, more than you’ll ever know, and I’m looking forward to sharing these letters with you when you’re older. Owen, you've been 3 for a month and Ben you're 18 months already...time is flying by and it won't be long before you're reading the letters on your own!

lots of love, xx mommy