Springing Forward - an Introduction

Four months ago, I hopped on a plane to check out a family situation back home in Texas. Long story short, I returned home three days later, with four more children. I'm no hero. There wasn't a choice, really. It was me, or a group home. How do you just drop a 7, 8, 9 and 15-year-old off all on their own and say, "Good luck!"?? I was a coward, so I brought them home.

This is my - no, our - turning point, but not the whole story. It's not a story about how I'm awesome and rescued 4 kids out of certain doom. These kids are my salvation, and I knew it almost immediately. It's also a story of my own three children, age 15, 16, and 19, who insisted I do this and exhibit a level of hospitality everyday that is so far beyond anything I have ever taught them. And finally, it's a story of a husband, father and accepting "Uncle" who never seems to crush under the weight of all of us.

So now, we have a household of nine. NINE. Sure it's not 19 and counting, but it's nearly double what we're used to. On the flight back home with the new kids, who had never flown before, I made a terrible mistake of joking how we would be traveling forward in time, into a new time zone. This created a havoc that the DFW airport has not likely seen before, and set the stage for a nightmarish flight to Boston. But that's another story...

It was a rough start, but that one little "stitch in time" is saving nine.