Harms Family News

Tim and I were married on June 27, 2003, a month and a half after my graduation from college. We spent a week in Colorado for our honeymoon, and then rushed home to Illinois for his grandfather’s funeral. His grandfather passed away while we were returning from our honeymoon. I returned to an apartment jam packed with boxes containing all of our earthly belongings, and no time at all to unpack any of it because of all of the family responsibilities surrounding the funeral. I distinctly remember sobbing as I had a can of soup to open because I was not feeling well, but I had no clue where in that mass of boxes I would find a can opener. As a young wife, I wasn’t sure what my husband, who truthfully I didn’t know all that well after dating long distance, needed while he grieved. As newlyweds, we were happy. However, I was miserably lonely. Janna was halfway across the world, and Melody was still in college. We didn’t have cable, I hadn’t discovered facebook and blogging, if they even exi

These are My Young Adult Years from Mommy's Piggy Tails. In my college years, I had the opportunity to travel internationally twice. I consider myself very blessed to have had these opportunities and to have my eyes opened to the world outside of America. Spain Our hosts, the Campos family. The summer after my Freshman year, I boarded a plane with absolutely no one I knew and flew to Olot, Spain. There I served with one other gal and some missionaries, playing piano in their church and helping with a summer camp. The language barrier made it difficult to truly communicate with the people, but the opportunity to travel allowed me to see another culture and understand the way God works outside of America. Michelle, the girl I travelled with The Missionaries we stayed with, the Campos family, were not Americans. He was a native Spaniard and had been serving as a pastor while working full time. When some American missionaries saw how stretched he was, they advised him to seek suppo

This is post number 2 in my young adult years from Mommy's Piggy Tails My college years were all about my friends. I didn’t get a boyfriend until my second senior year, although I had a couple of male interests, so my friends were my social group. It seemed that most of my friendships revolved around church. In fact, the three gals I considered my closest friends through my college experience all attended the same church as me while we were in school. I could write about Janna and our friendship, as of my college friends she’s the one I’m still the closest to and the one who I had childhood connections with, but I have already done that . Suffice it to say she was (and still is) a friend I could count on to tell it to me straight and kick me in the gut when I needed it, yet still supported me when I needed that too. My freshman and sophomore years I hung out with Edy, who I mentioned in my previous post. We attended the same church, along with Janna, Paula, and a few other people.

I was born bald. When my hair finally came in at close to three years old, it was curly. Not the tight ringlets that are oh-so-cute on little ones today, but curly nonetheless. Throughout my growing up years I fought those curls and waves, until finally as a teen I embraced them because, frankly, I had no choice. This picture of me, Janna, and Mr. Moorehead shows how my curls normally looked While many people have dreams and aspirations of grandeur, and I had my share of those, one less glamorous or spiritualized dream stood out throughout my young adult years. I wanted to know what it was like to have straight hair. I wanted to have the ability to run a comb through my hair without completely wetting it down, throw it up in a perky ponytail, and run out the door for class with moments to spare. While I never truly got that wish, as my hair is and always will be curly, I did get to experience life with straight hair for 24 hours. My freshman year my two very good friends Edy and Paula

When thinking about what to write for post high school, the answer was not as clear as you might think. I could write about God leading me to Maranatha, a small Baptist college in Wisconsin. That was, after all, pivotal in developing some of my friendships and my meeting of my husband. I could write about the spiritual journey I went on through my college years, discovering who I was and what I believed. I could write about the birth of each of my children, which was certainly life changing for me. But, I guess the most important event that has happened to me since graduation from high school was meeting my husband. Even in that story, God’s hand was clearly seen. Most people in my circles meet their significant other in college. I went off to school, honestly, with that as one of my goals. I had a date my freshman year, arranged by two good friends, and went into the summer with hopes that it would develop into something. It did not, and that was OK. I went to several formal events, w

One of my senior portraits - notice Beauty and the Beast in the background? The senior year of high school is, in many ways, a transition between childhood and adulthood. When you graduate, you enter that world of not quite grown up, but no longer a kid. It was a transition I was not excited to make. The summer before my senior year I embraced a new form of communication – e-mail! I think I was the first person in my class to use email, but we had a classmate whose parents were missionaries in Italy. She was coming back to our area for her senior year to live in the states and graduate from an American school. After writing paper letters forever back and forth, letters which took weeks to cross the ocean and end up in her hands, my dad introduced me to a way I could communicate via the computer instantly. Amazing! I still printed out each of her emails and kept them in a notebook because they were precious to me. Felicia K and I didn’t end up being incredibly close when she came back

This is one of the last posts for Mommy's Piggy Tales. To get in on the next session, click the link at the end of the post. It's been fun! My junior year marked the addition of driving to my list of talents. Unlike many newly turned 16 year olds, of which I was the last in my class, I had no desire to get my license. Part of my fear was the fact that my birthday was in the dead of winter when ice and snow regularly covered the ground, and the other part of my fear was the fact that I had never successfully driven on the freeway. I was perfectly fine with letting my parents chauffeur me around. Sadly, my dad disagreed, and he put down the ultimatum. I would get my license before summer or I would not be working. The driving test was the closest thing I ever came in my life to failing. My car was a two-toned Oldsmobile Caprice Classic station wagon in with deep blue on the topand sky blue on the bottom. That car was HUGE. I completely failed parallel parking, but I still say to

(Here I am with my unfortunate triangle haircut. I refused to have my hair layered, because my mom had her hair layered and I didn't want to look "old" like her. Sadly, this decision on my part ended me up with a mop of hair quite like a poodle, and when you cut curly hair when it's wet, it only gets even shorter when it's dry. I was not pleased with this harcut.) I'm participating in a project called Mommy's Piggy Tales, which gives women like me the chance to record their youth in 15 blog posts. It's been a lot of fun and has helped me remember how important the seemingly unimportant things in life were when I was young. If you want to read the others, you will find them here: Birth story , preschool , first grade , second grade , third grade , fourth grade , fifth grade , sixth grade , seventh grade , eight grade , and ninth grade . To participate in the project, click the button at the bottom of this post. In the summer before ninth grade, I took S

I'm participating in a project called Mommy's Piggy Tales, which gives women like me the chance to record their youth in 15 blog posts. It's been a lot of fun and has helped me remember how important the seemingly unimportant things in life were when I was young. If you want to read the others, you will find them here: Birth story , preschool , first grade , second grade , third grade , fourth grade , fifth grade , sixth grade , seventh grade , and eight grade . To participate in the project, click the button at the bottom of this post. As we sponged off after our PE class run in the basement classroom, since our school’s newly built building had no gym or showers, everyone was scrambling to make themselves look beautiful again after the hard workout. A couple of girls were looking at a list written in a notebook. All of the seniors were working on their Senior Books and filling out the “most likely to succeed,” “first to get married,” etc., lists from their class. These gi