Two Handed Counting Vol. 2

My baby will be adding another finger to the number count of her age tomorrow.

6 has had its ups and downs and twists and turns but we made it through and are staring in the face of 7.

i think i say something like this every year but 7 doesnt seems like a baby anymore. with 6, i was still so close to touching 5, she was in school but 7 just ssmes so far away from that small age where she could count her age all on one hand.

at the bottom of this post you can see the last day of when she counted on only one hand. 

#momentsmatter2017

I came across this site on Facebook and wanted to participate in their # momentsmatter2017 challenge

you can visit the website here. to check it out or just join in on your own.

let me know if you do.

check back on the 1st for my first photo. 

i will be posting as much as i can but we have a family vacation in a week so i will add the pictures i talk for the challenge on those days when we get back.

15 Years

15 years

15 years of adventures

15 years to fun

15 years spent with one of my favorite people

i feel like i say it every year.....i feel like we just got married yesterday but at the same time have spent our whole life together

thankful to go through life with this man

thankful we have had 15 years together and prayers for many, many more

even though as the years go by we find more and more ways we are completely different.............thankful that we are the same were it counts.

I love you!

i have been blogging since 2005 but i guess didn't start anniversary posts until 2008 and still missed a few years

here are my anniversary posts through the years.

i have loved going back and reading what was going on in our lives during these years.

2012 particularly has me laughing.

great memories......even when they can be rotten.

2015

2014

2012

2010

2009

2008

Maps, Planning, Adventures

This summer we have been planning a EPIC (as my son would say) trip

we plan to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway to Washington DC and then to travel the East Coast back home.

we are in the planning stage of the first part of the trip, the Blue Ridge Parkway

I took to Facebook asking for suggestions on where to stop along the way and got a ton of great ideas.

here is the list that we were given. we will pull from these suggestions when we decide what and were we want to do and go off of the parkway.

In North Carolina:

Chimney Rock

Biltmore

 Linville (Gorge Falls Caverns)

 Great Smoky Mt Railroad

 Tweetsie Railroad

 Mt. Mitchell

-The Land of Oz in Beech Mountain

In Virginia:

Floyd,VA the Floyd Country Store

Roanoke-museums for kids

Catawba dinner at the Home Placer

  hiking up to McAfee Knob

  the Peaks of Otter

  hike up Sharp Top mountain

  Skyline Drive, hike Humpback Rock

such great suggestions

how to narrow it down is beyond me but i am sure we will be able to

planning on where to stay and then i will tackle Washington DC

Last day of School

i love seeing how much they grow over the 10 months that they are in school.

it always amazed me 

First day of school

last "FULL" day of school

 first day of school

last "FULL" day of school

i am so proud of these two. they both had their own struggles throughout this year but have overcome and done so great. we are super excited for the amazing summer we have ahead of us. i now have a 4th and 2nd grader. that seems nearly impossible.

here are a few other lasts celebrated through the years

2015

2014

Book Launch post 3

there is so much in this book that I have already underlined and probably so much more that I can. but today when I was reading I came across this quote: "Talking goes to the head; 'being' goes to the heart and inspires." -Gary Morland

I don't just want to talk at them or to them. sure I want to talk with them and there are things that I hope they learn from things we talk about, but I want to "BE"

I want them to see me....

be still

be quiet

be caring

be patient

be loving

be kind

be a servant

be compassionate

be gentle

be a good friend

be a wife

be their mom

I want them to catch the "BEING" that I am doing and be inspired by that not just what I tell them.

I want them to see me " 'BE' this kind of person"

"Be humble, patient, bearing with one another in love. Don't be consumed by anger. Let your words build up and give grace. Avoid bitterness, wrath, and malice. Be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving." Ephesians 4

Mother's Day

I got to have another blessed year being a mom to these two

I love that there is a special day that we get to celebrated the amazing women that shaped our lives and that we call come version of Mother.

Honey and Little girl

A group picture before my parents took the kids on a Honey and Bear mini vacation and the Hubby and I got to celebrate our anniversary

mother day though the years (or at least the ones i posted about)

2015

2014 (a separate post about mothers here)

2012

2009

2008

a post on motherhood not on mother's day, but in may

Struggle and Book launch post 2

life can be such a struggle

family can be such a struggle

kids can be such a struggle

I can be such a struggle

today I am struggling. maybe because it is the end of a long week

maybe because a mini vacation is on the horizon and I am ready to taste it

maybe because I am putting to much on myself

maybe it is because I am huffing about a cancelled appointment we had for my son today

for sure I am not giving myself or the people I love grace

then I sit down to read the book "A Family Shaped by Grace" by Gary Morland

the book launch starts up in just a few days.

I am about half way through

I have already struggled with some of the book and had some good encouragement on it too.

I learned his use today for the word huffing (a word we use to use in reference to my daughter when she was a baby) I didn't realize how much of a huffer I was.

here is something he wrote in our Facebook group today:

"Growth in grace stops the moment I get huffed. I get huffed because I have a peculiar person to live with." O. Chambers

I will leave it just at this quote, because the other stuff he shared is personal to the page, but you get the drift right? "Growing in Grace is growing in un-huffiness."

Man how I needed to read that this morning after the cancelled appointment for Golden boy

and I sure could have read it again this afternoon after the HUGE mommy fail in dealing with my family.

Back to reading the book.......I came across this section that I will share and then the four words that almost brought me to tears:

"You were not made to live a frustrated, disappointed, estranged family life. You were made for love, acceptance, grace, connection, generosity, and forgiveness. You have been specially wired and gifted to cover your specific assignment, your course on the river. Your family is your course on the river. ..........You fit what you were made for. You were made to fit in your unique family for their good, your good and the good of the world influenced by your family now and in generations to come. ............YOU'RE FITTED FOR THIS."

Those four words: "YOU'RE FITTED FOR THIS"

just about brought me to tears. There is so much going on that I can never really convey in blog posts and there are times when I think why and how but to read this, to know that he does not give me more than I am able to handle. He fit me for THIS.

This life.

In Him I am plenty capable.

Belonging

oh my goodness this book

it has been such a good one

i have really enjoyed the process

and then i get the the end and while there is so much knowing in my head about what it said, daily living it out, putting it forward and remembering to turn my children over to the Father who knows and loves them so much more than i ever could it a hard one.

1 Samuel 1:28 "so now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord."

"Hannah was focused on her son serving God for a lifetime."

may that be what my goal for my children and their life be and that i will daily, their whole life give them over to the Lord. Because He loves them way more than i ever can and more than i can ever imagine.

Chewie

not the Chewie you may be thinking about

although there is lots of Star Wars talk in our house so you may think that

the Chewie i am talk about is actually a blanket

this blanket was a gift from a coworker of mine and early on became on of Little girls favorite items.

at some point she started chewing on the edges of it.

i feel like that happened before this picture but this seems to be the first picture i have of her chewing on it.

once the chewing started i was afraid that she was going to destroy it.

but even more than that i knew that i needed to wash it way more and she hated to be with out it.

i was able to find two more at T.J.Maxx or Marshalls (i can't remember which one)

they were the same texture but not the same print.

when she asked for the blanket she was really fine with any of the three as long as there was one clean.

for some reason i can't seem to find photos of her with either of the other two blankets (just the original)

it was probably around this phase that she started calling it Chewie. 

this picture is from September of 2013

This is the last picture that i have come across with her and Chewie. but let it be said that she is 6 and a half and it was just this January that she stopped asking for it.

There were times when we never thought we would break her from chewing on it. We were fine that she wanted to sleep with it but she just refused to stop chewing on it. now, let me say that there was very little that we had to break her from. she never really took a bottle or pacifier. she nursed but pretty much weened herself. it was just this blanket that she was so attached to.

I don't know if it was that our whole routine changed this January after the kitchen flooded and her room flooded and we relocated her bed to Golden boys room but there were times that she asked for Chewie and then there were times that she wouldn't.

i found two of them under the bed and i think the other one was packed away somewhere.

once she was back in her room i washed them and put them up on a shelf in her closet.

she has finally grown out of needing it but i don't want to get rid of them either.

her new love is Beanie Boos