December 18th was a big day this year for several reasons. First, it was Levi’s Golden birthday, second, Levi and Liberty’s Christmas choir concert and third, Cade came home from his mission. I’ll cover Levi’s birthday and the concert in my next post, but this post will just be Cade’s homecoming.

After serving for 2 years as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he said a tearful goodbye to his mission presidents and the Fort Collins Mission and flew home. Well, not without a 3 hour layover in Salt Lake. At 10:00 that night, he finally arrived in Boise. I was SO excited to see him and give him a huge hug! I was a teary mess all day long. It was wonderful to be reunited. Here’s the hug video. 🙂

The ride home from the airport was unreal. The kids were SOOO excited with everyone talking at once. For that one night no one was annoyed or angry and they just reveled in being in one another’s company again. There are a few of those magical moments of pure joy in life and this was one of those.

Cade’s homecoming talk was a few days after Christmas and he did a wonderful job. It has been so fun to see how much he’s grown and to watch him put the lessons he learned into practice in our home. It’s been really cool to see his maturity and the ways in which he leads out in our family and with his siblings now. And speaking of changes, this picture was taken the day of Cade’s farewell. These are two of his closest friends.

But this was taken the day of Cade’s homecoming. Big changes!

It has been wonderful to have Caderade home. But he’s off to college again and leaves on January 5th to BYUI where he’ll room with 5 other missionaries from his mission. He’s super excited and we are excited for him!