thankful.

This post is coming a little late but the past couple weeks have been busy! This year we were able to travel out to Arizona for Thanksgiving to be with Jeff's side of the family. It was such a joy to see all the little cousins together ranging in age from Raegan who is 11 months to Laney who is 6. They were able to play a lot together! We went to the park, ate meals together, cooked, baked, and I read a lot of Harry Potter! Jeff and his sister Kaelyn also had surgery while we were there. Jeff on his shoulder and Kaelyn on her ankle. They spent a lot of quality time resting on the couch and watching football.

Here are some fun pictures of our time there.

Raegan and I at the park

Jeff, Laney, Noah and Caleb as Jeff was walking across the monkey bars with his arm in a sling. Scared us all just a bit!

Jeff and his Papa

Lincoln, Noah, Laney, Caleb and Raegan all in their new Christmas jammies!

There is so much I have to be thankful for. An amazing husband, beautiful daughter, wonderful family, supportive and caring friends, a great church, and a God who loves me more than I will ever know.

A Place in my Heart

Something people might not know about me is I have a huge heart for people with disabilities. I'm not sure how it came to be but I think it's a gift God gave me. There are two special people who have been in my life that I love dearly.

One is named Kelly. Unfortunately I don't have a digital picture of me and her but we met when I was in middle school. Her brother played baseball with all of the boys I went to school with. We would see each other at games and eventually started talking and became friends. She was a few years older than me and had a twin brother and sister who were my age. Kelly had muscular dystrophy and when she was 13 she got really sick and ended up having to be put on a ventilator for the rest of her life. Kelly was one of the funniest people I knew. She had such a love for life, people, and having fun. We would travel to baseball tournaments together, sit at her house and watch tv together or listen to music in her room. I loved spending time with her because she would always make me laugh. She also was super driven. She always was starting new companies and making neat videos on the computer. Kelly was so selfless. Although she was restricted and in a wheelchair for the whole time I knew her she didn't let that stop her from doing anything. She was an inspiration to me and taught me so much about loving people and not being afraid to be who I am. One of the reasons it was on my heart to post this is because in three days it will have been 1 year since Kelly went to be with Jesus. I miss her so much and love reflecting on who she was and the ways she changed my life.

My other friend is named "Coop". Coop was born with Cerebral Palsy. I met him at a Young Life camp called Windy Gap in North Carolina in the summer of 2004. I was there for a month to serve on Summer Staff and he had just ended his time on Summer Staff and was there for a week with some campers. Here is a picture of the two of us. I would always ride around on the back of his wheelchair around the camp.



Coop also inspires me. For 7 1/2 years now we have kept in touch and most of it is because of his consistency. We talk almost weekly and update each other on what is happening in our lives. Recently I have become his secretary and he calls me to help him send emails out to his Young Life leaders. :) I love his heart for the kids he leads in Young Life and for the leaders he oversees. Although he is in a wheelchair and can't do much on his own he doesn't let that stop him from serving Jesus and spreading His love. He inspires me to overcome my insecurities and not let them get in the way of loving others.

Both of these friends have a dear place in my heart and I am thankful God placed them in my life. They have taught me so much about how to love life and how to love people.

How do you not know what I want?

One of the things I love about marriage is I am constantly learning. Learning how to communicate, care for Jeff, support him, love him and many more things. There is one specific topic that continues to come up for us and that is being able to communicate what I need and want.

A great example of this would be a conversation we had about a week and a half ago. Let me set the stage...Jeff had been working all week then left on Friday morning to go on a guys camping trip through Sunday afternoon. In the middle of the week I came down with a cold and wasn't feeling super hot. Then as the weekend got closer Miss Raegan also started getting stuffed up and not feeling too well. Because of this and some other reasons we basically didn't leave the house for 48 hours which, if you know me, was quite hard. Then Saturday night she was up every couple hours because she had a fever. So by the time Jeff got home on Sunday I was ready to have a little break. :)

He got home and we visited for a while then I said, "Hey, I was thinking we could get a babysitter and maybe go grab dinner and go to church tonight." He didn't really feel up for it since he had just gotten home so I said, "Maybe at least we could get some take out for dinner because I don't really feel like cooking." We kind of went back and forth and by this point I was getting a little upset. I didn't want to make dinner and I really wanted to get out of the house. He wanted to stay home and have a salad. :) So I got a little more frustrated as time went on and decided to just make something frozen we had here. At the end of the night I realized that I never communicated exactly what I wanted and needed. I Just hinted at things I wanted and suggested different things we could do, expecting Jeff to figure it out. That wasn't fair to him. I ended up apologizing and saying I really had wanted to get out of the house and at least go to dinner and spend some time with him and that I was sorry I didn't communicate it more clearly and instead got frustrated.

Sorry for the long story but I feel like it's a great example of how I often expect Jeff to know what I want without me clearly communicating it to him. Then I get resentful and bitter when if I would have just told him in the first place what I wanted the conflict could have been avoided.

Oh the joys of marriage :) It has helped me grow and change so much.

Happy Halloween!

I'm not really the biggest fan of Halloween. I don't love to be scared and I don't really like all the scary decorations. I do like cute Halloween and fall decorations, the yummy fall recipes and most of all my sweet girl dressed up as a ladybug. Earlier this week Raegan and I went to Disneyland with our friends and took some pictures with their fall decor. I love that we can just get in the car and take a quick trip over there and am looking forward to the memories we will make there as a family.



Then on Thursday my friend Shara offered to take pictures of some of her friends' kids. It was such a great idea because I know sometimes it's stressful to get good pictures on the actual day of Halloween. She set up a backdrop in her back yard where she could take the photos and she made lots of yummy treats! She's super talented. Unfortunately Raegan fell asleep in the car on the way there so she was a little out of it and we couldn't get her wide open mouth smile. But Shara definitely got some really cute pics. Here are a couple of them...




Have a great Halloween!

Pinterest Crafting Party

I was invited to a really fun party yesterday. It was a Pinterest crafting party. Everything about it was from Pinterest, the food, decorations, and drinks. Then the hostess Ingrid asked everybody who was coming to pick a craft from Pinterest and bring the supplies to make it. She had all sorts of delicious food and set up tables in her back yard where we hung out and made our crafts.





I had a lot of different things I wanted to make but I finally decided on making a Christmas wreath. I got the idea from Keep it Simple, Sister's Blog. She made a really cute fall wreath. It took me about 2 1/2 hours to make and would have taken less time if my thread wouldn't have kept coming out of the felt! Here are some pictures of the finished product.



I also made flowers out of fabric for the first time. They are actually really easy to make and a fun little addition to the wreath.



Another really special part of the afternoon was that Ingrid asked each woman who came to bring a children's book. She later explained the books were for the Joyful Life Library, a project that was started by a sweet mom named Heather who lost her son at 6 weeks old. Their goal is to put books in as many PICU's as they possibly can so that when parents have to be there with their kids they can read to them and experience a bit of comfort. Such an amazing idea. Such a wonderful day.

new book

The other day I was reading a blog that I love called Joy's Hope and she mentioned a book she was reading called Grace for the Good Girl. It sounded like an interesting title so I looked up the book, read a chapter on the website and was super interested.

I am about eight chapters in and it has been so amazing. I think the title is a little misleading because not everybody would consider themselves a "good girl" but what the book has to say really applies to a lot of people. It talks about how the way, we as women, hide. Whether it is hiding from something, hiring behind something or just hiding something. Then it talks about the finding and the freedom of being found.

In the introduction it says, "My idea of who I should be is at war with who I am. I want to be perfect in every situation. I just do. I want to know what to do. I want to know how to do it right. And I want to do it . All. By. My. Big. Self. Not only do I want to do everything perfectly, I want to look perfect while I do it. I want to act perfect and sing perfect and have perfect teeth. I want to parent perfectly, to wife perfectly, and to have a clean house all the time." Once I read this I was like, "I think she's talking about me." It all goes back to my previous post about grace. For some reason I have in my head that I need to do everything right. Not sure where that came from...still trying to figure it out but I know it's not true and if I continue to think that way my life is going to be very difficult.

The book goes on to talk about expectations and definitions. This is a big one for me. I place so many expectations on myself that I continually fail. It eventually becomes super tiring and defeating. This is something I have been working on for a while and continue to do so. The author, Emily Freeman says, "When we believe that God expects us to try hard to become who Jesus wants us to be, we will live in that blurry, frustrating land of Should Be rather than trust in The One Who Is. We will do whatever we believe it takes to please God rather than receive the acceptance that has already been given. We will perform to live up to what we believe his expectation is of us rather than expectantly wait on him." Wow...I want to do that. I want to learn how to wait on him and not feel like I need to do everything myself. It's such a great reminder to me that God has already accepted me for who I am and that I should do the same.

I love the different ways God chooses to show us things about ourselves. This is just a small portion of what I have received from reading this book and hopefully I'll share more as I go along. I would ask you, what are the expectations you put on yourself? How can you push into Him and receive the acceptance he has given you?

Harvest Day 2011

On Sunday we went with some friends to a local pumpkin patch for their annual Harvest Day. It was such a fun time to be with everybody. We all walked through the corn maze and a couple kiddos got lost along the way. I was joking that it was nice to have a kid that couldn't walk yet so we knew where she was all the time! Here is a picture of our sweet girl playing in the hay


We were all taking tons of pictures and I think the kids started getting sick of it! They were also interested in all of the pumpkins and hay. Here's one of the attempts to get a picture of Will, Raegan, and Logan. :)


Here's our little family. We had to have sunglasses on because the sun was so bright.


Happy October!