"Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig"

Increasingly often, I get this feeling that my life is speeding by and I have yet to do anything. How is it the end of another year? Let alone the end of the decade? Ten years ago, our family had just moved into a new house two months previous, and to a new town only a few months before that. It was our first holiday season away from our family, and I was bitterly bitter about it. Ten years ago I was my second younger sister's age, almost-fourteen. Ten years ago I only had five siblings instead of seven. Ten years ago I had no idea my family would still be here; ten years ago I would have never dreamed in a million years that I'd be who I am today. Ten years ago, if I'd bothered to think about it, I'd probably have thought I'd be married with a kid or have one on the way. I never could have guessed that I'd be sitting in my living room, listening to Korean indie rock music and typing a blog post on my very own Macbook, very much not married, with no kid (but wanting one), a Korean-speaking return missionary on the way to my third college in six years. Isn't it funny how life happens to you?

It's wonderful to be home. Every time I come home, though, it gets slightly more unreal. I'm home, but this house isn't really my home anymore. It's my parents'. But at the same time, I don't have a home anywhere else, either. I'm homeless in a non-homeless way, if that makes sense. It's rather disorienting at times. But all that being said, it is wonderful to be home. For the first time in a long time, my whole family was at the same church at the same time last Sunday. I'm looking forward to Christmas coming up in a few days, and more family-togetherness time. We'll open our stockings, have ice cream on our waffles for breakfast, open the presents slowly (and one at a time -- my dad insists), oh and ah over everyone's new stuff, sit around doing nothing much of anything, make perogies, eat those yummy perogies. Traditions involving food are always the best traditions.