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My Life Right Now

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It’s been years since I’ve taken such a long blogging break. It’s nice to be back! Y’all, I’ve hardly written anything since September. I had a handful of posts, but they were few and far between.

I’ve been anxious to get back to writing here and for the last few weeks I’ve wanted to sit down and catch everyone up on what’s been going on with the Ringstaffs. But then, every time I think I want to sit down and write, my kids want to play a game or I have an appointment I have to keep or need to cut music for ice skating or I need to clean my house. In other words, life has been very full and I have felt spread too thin and like I needed to spend as much time with my family as possible when I’m home.

It really all started last fall when we made the decision to let Hannah participate in the 2016 production of the Nutcracker at our ice rink. She’s been skating for three years and we had skipped the Nutcracker each year because we live so far from the ice rink and having a role meant extra time at the rink and lots of practice. For those of you who know me or have been reading here at A Virtuous Woman the last few years, you know that Hannah love ice skating and it’s become a big part of our lives.

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Five years ago if you had told me I would have a daughter who was an advanced skater and that I would be spending countless hours in a freezing ice rink each week, I wouldn’t have believed it. I never saw that coming! And yet, I love every minute of it.

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The truth is though, I can’t do everything and do it all really well. I can’t be everything to everybody all of the time and I have definitely felt the pinch of divided time the last few months.

In October we bought Laura her very own horse. We’ve had horses for about eight years now. But Laura had dreamed of owning “her own horse” for a long time and it really was a dream come true.

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Hannah and Laura are my two youngest kids. Hannah is 16 years old now and Laura is 13. That means I have just a few more years before the last of my children are grown and living their own lives apart from me. 2016 really hit me hard upside the head when Laura turned 13 and I suddenly felt like I was in countdown mode until the day she turns 18. Hannah already talks about moving out – all the time – and living by the ice rink and living out her dream of coaching. Laura wants to own her own horse ranch one day. And I’m trying really hard to do everything I can to make these last few years I have with my girls the best they can be.

Laura owning her own horse really is a dream come true. I’m so very happy for her. She is so smart and such a hard worker and she deserved to own a horse. She named him Legend Has It.

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He’s a beautiful, well trained quarter horse and while she’s still getting to know him and learning to work with him – and he’s still getting used to her and learning to listen to her – she’s done so well with him. Her love for that horse is so apparent when she’s with him.

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She’s even started an equine YouTube channel in addition to her other channel and her subscribers have really grown over the last two months. She plans out her videos, writes out the scripts, thinks about the different video cuts she needs and does all of her own editing. She’s a great teacher and explains things well. I’m SO proud of her hard work!

Since we live 2 1/2 hours from the ice rink, that means we are in the car a lot. In November, Hannah passed her Freestyle 4 test and she’s finally started working on her Axel Jump. This is a huge milestone in her ice skating career and for a lot of skaters, the Axel Jump proves to be elusive and can take months or years to master. In October of last year I started asking other skaters how long it took them to get their Axel Jump and many of them said it took a year – and these were kids who practice several days – if not every day – on the ice. Hannah has spent the last three years skating one day a week. I felt like she needed more days of practice so we made a huge decision to stay in Knoxville three to four days each week so she could get more practice time on the ice. I will not say it’s been easy. I believe it’s been worth it, but it’s been hard. And some days I’m not sure how we will continue at this pace.

So, I spend three days a week at the rink and then three afternoons each week at the horses and I’m trying hard to juggle all of my family life in those few days each week that I’m home. So, blogging just kind of fell by the way side.

Sundays I clean the house. We play family board/ card games on home nights and Mondays and Tuesdays are homeschool/ doctor/ dentist days and Tuesdays are for music lessons and we wash laundry and pack for our weekly trip to Knoxbville. Wednesday mornings we wake up at 3 am to leave for Knoxville where Hannah has early morning private lessons on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and then she skates off an on all day each day. The girls work on their homeschool studies in the afternoons between ice time. And we shoot a lot of YouTube videos and vlogs while in Knoxville and Laura spends her downtime editing videos.

We spend two {or three nights if we head down on Tuesday afternoon} in Knoxville and head home on Friday afternoon. After church each week I usually take a nap because I’m exhausted from all of the super early mornings and all of the late nights and then I take the girls to see the wild horses or on a hike or up to see our horses.

All of that to say that I feel ready to start blogging again and I’m excited about it! We’re getting into a better rhythm with our weekly schedule and I’m learning to cope with the changes. So, blogging will once again fall into place and I’ll find a way to regularly post each week.

When I first started blogging at A Virtuous Woman I wrote a lot of personal journal type posts – kind of the way bloggers used to blog. I miss that. I want to start sharing more personal posts about my life and family and things we are doing. I’m just not sure if you all want to read those type posts? If so, let me know in the comments below.

You can keep up with all of our horse and ice skating adventures on Instagram!

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2 Comments

  1. Melissa, so good to see you back. Wow, have you been been busy. I love hearing about your daily life. Linda
  2. I really appreciate your honesty. You really inspire me to see my blog as a ministry. As a new "empty nester", I've been struggling with how to use my time. Sometimes I think I should go get a "real " job, but I love the flexibility of blogging. I also believe that we have to put our family before blogging. I hope you continue because I love reading your posts, As for my blogging life, I've decided to continue with it, hopefully to help and inspire others as much as God allows me. Aimee

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