We then felt a nudge towards Redding, as we started to look at what might be next for us. One factor that definitely drew us was that my brother and his family were here, and we were so excited at the thought of being around family!
We now get to live close to our family (literally - we're within a five minute walk of their house) and have dinners together, go away for weekends together and see them multiple times a week. I have been especially blessed to get to see my nieces lots. After spending three years or more away from our nieces and nephews, we have definitely missed being part of their growing-up and seeing their little personalities develop. It has been a pleasure to be around Emma and Adi. They light up my world when they see us coming over and run out and give us big hugs. Or choose to sit next to me and snuggle when we watch a movie. We are so lucky to be able to get to connect with them and we are taking as much advantage of that fact as we can, as we don't know when we might be moved onto the next thing, the next location.
I snapped a few shots of them the other night as we went over for dinner. They were playing outside making a cake out of mud, leaves, grass and berries, and happily let me snap some pictures. They have very patiently been willing to let me practice my photography on them and it has been happy to take gorgeous photos as they are so cute and smiley! Here are some of the photos: