if you want

i guess it is officially spring. and i officially have cabin fever. it's not very easy for kahree and i to find places to play outside but that doesn't stop me from wanting to be out there every day it isn't raining. which i guess isn't that many days here in oregon. touche.

i've been wondering a lot about what maters. really matters. family, obviously. i know that much. but what else? money and things, probably not. but don't experiences matter? memories? the time you spend with your family? it seems like you need money and things to make those happen. and what about extended family? grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. does the time spent with those family members matter more or less than the things that kinda matter to your immediate family, like living comforts and clothing? should your priority as a parent be to provide comfort, or opportunities, or inspiration, or education, or adventures, or challenges, or fields to run in and mud to play in, or good schools to learn in, or safe houses to sleep in, or family to grow with, or friends to play with? what about your priorities as a spouse? time together matters. i know that much. but does it matter less or more than providing for your children? do we just barely scrape by and cover all the bases the best we can leaving us giving only a little attetion to each area? is that life? or do we pick a couple things that we do really well and scarafice the rest? is THAT life? if family matters most how much family do you need? does the risk of leaving my living child outweigh the benefits of trying to have more living children? i know there's a plan. but i don't know what that plan is so i have to make choices. and those choices are hard. and trying to stay the same is impossible. and some days are just so, so good. what makes those days good? is it the lack of those things that makes a bad day bad? but if family matters most, and i always have my family, why are there times when everything seems so much harder? why is it that some times we feel perfectly content and other times we feel like we're barely holding on and like the rest of life is a huge unknown? so what's the problem? what's the answer?

where do we go from here?