Today’s my 38th birthday. I’m not much of a birthday person. I really just want a special dinner with my family and some flowers. That’s really all I need. I’ve always been a smaller, more intimate gathering is preferred over any big party or to-do made over something.
So today I’m gifting myself a prenatal massage. Heading to dinner with guy. And enjoying some dessert!
Hope you guys have a great Friday!
Last year was the very first year that I picked a word of the year. Do you do this? I liked it so much more than resolutions for myself because I actually remembered it all year long. It was chiming in the back of my head so often, particularly in the midst of an argument. My word last year was “Listen.” And I truly found myself being more conscious to listen to my friends, coworkers, kids, and husband.
Back at the beginning of December I started thinking about a word I’d like to choose the upcoming year. And the one I kept coming back to was “Trust.”
The reason I picked “trust” was because I found myself often looking for other people’s validation of my choices. I found myself second-guessing my own thoughts a lot. I wanted to focus myself when I started to find myself swayed by other’s opinions and thoughts, or seeking out other’s approval, for the voice in the back of my head to whisper to me “trust.” Trust yourself.
Recently, given the path that we’re walking on this pregnancy and the ultrasounds we’ve had for this little one, my word that I picked for the year has taken on another meaning. Trust in our guts. Trust in God that he will walk us through what is before us. Trust that it will all be made good in His perfect timing.
How strange that the word came to me before it hit me like a ton of bricks of needing it? I love when it feels like there’s a reminder in everyday life that God’s walking with you already. Right there, walking with you through life.
I wanted to say first of all, thank you for the kind words on Friday’s post. I went back and read your comments, and gosh. You guys. They really lifted my spirits, and just meant so much to me.
I do my best to post my authentic self here, good and bad. But how raw and scary these last few weeks have been for me, I considered keeping those words in Friday’s post to myself. I’m mentally in a much better place than when I wrote those words. Writing, prayer, and working through a plan are the ways I work through things, and I feel at least at peace with where we are right now. As Nathan reminds me often, we will get through it. Whatever it ends up being, we will figure it out. What’s that saying about how your batting average of getting through hard things so far is 100%?
Now, onto the lighter side of life. I missed Let’s Look last week for Shay and Erika’s monthly link-up! They looked at scheduling and organizing the family, which is truly something I kind of enjoy. I love figuring out the pieces of how to make things work. (I may regret saying that when the kids are older and have many activities, school events, etc.!). Right now, it’s truthfully pretty simple for us. But I love a schedule and order to things.
Harrison is involved in at most two activities in a season, and Jonathan will likely start a couple of activities in the spring. But in the scheme of juggling schedules and organizing families, we’re still in the minor leagues. :). But I’m going to share what works for me to try to organize our family.
I Live by my Calendar. If it’s not on my calendar, I will not remember it. It does not exist. And you do not have priority for doing that activity or event. It rules everything. I went on a journey loooong ago attempting to find the perfect family calendar. I’ve asked so many friends what they do for their “shared” calendar, and I usually get one of two options and I don’t like either. They use the Cozi app family calendar. Or they have a shared Apple calendar on their iPhones/iPads that they add all family events to.
You guys, I didn’t like either. I wanted one master calendar of ALL MY THINGS, including work. My job uses Microsoft Outlook for their calendar, and Microsoft Outlook does not sync with any of those options, so you’re left with adding things multiple times to calendars – once to your Outlook calendar and once to your family calendar, if you want a whole picture of your day/week/month. Or flipping between two calendars to determine what’s going on in your life.
I would love for someone to make a feature that would allow me to select in Outlook if an event should be transferred to a family calendar, and then it would magically show up on a joint calendar, but I could still have everything on my one personal calendar. PLEASE SOMEONE MAKE THIS or tell me it if already exists!
What worked for us, since both my work and Nathan’s work uses Outlook is that we send each other event invites from our work calendars for any family events, date nights, or even personal social events that we have that the other will have to cover on little boy duty. That way we each have our own calendars with everything on it for our day.
Is mine color coded by family member for each person’s event? Yes. Of course. What kind of Type A organizer do you think I am? 🙂
I use Apple Reminders a lot on my phone. I set reminders on my phone to help make sure I have all the boxes checked for myself and the kids. I set recurring weekly reminders to wash the kids’ waterbottles from school and switch our their lovies to clean ones. I set reminders for myself if there are appointments I need to schedule, or check in on a friend that has a big doctor appointment or event coming up.
I set YEARLY reminders to check my smoke detector batteries, schedule the dog’s annual well visit. I even have reminders set for things like dealing with a particular garden pest that comes out at certain of year, so I know when to start looking for the bug and dealing with it.
I Meal Plan + Grocery Shop once a week. I know so many of you meal plan. I put on my calendar every single week thirty minutes every Thursday to sit down and meal plan for the next week. I look at our upcoming week’s calendar, nights that we have events, and then I plan accordingly. A super busy week at work for me looks like leaning more heavily on easy meals. Pulling meals I’ve stored in the freezer. Opting for pasta and meat sauce from a can. Crockpot meals, etc.
I Purge Things Often. I am constantly editing our house. By that, I mean, I often times open a drawer and get rid of all of the things that we don’t use anymore. I hold on to very little that I don’t use. I go through the boys’ backpacks weekly and pitch most of the things that come home. And the playroom in particular is edited often. Mostly to rid it of what seems to be a never-ending pit of broken toys.
Those are the things that come to mind when I think about organizing our family!
<<Current update: I’m choosing to share these very raw feelings and words I wrote down after we had a second ultrasound a few weeks ago to look at an area of our baby that didn’t seem quite right. There is still the possibility that our baby is completely healthy. Ultrasound technology and what they can see and determine while a baby is in utero has come a long ways, but it isn’t a complete picture. While we don’t have answers, and we may have no answers until this little one is born, the news that there may be something wrong with your baby is always jarring. No matter the severity. No matter the consequence. No matter past experience, modern medicine, and so many other things. I share these thoughts unaltered in their rawest form as a way of helping myself process, seeking prayers and community as there is strength in drawing support from others that we do not walk through this life alone, and in an attempt to be honest about real life. Our real life. Real life isn’t a straight line of perfect sequences after another. I would love for life to be pretty all of the time. But we all know that’s not the case. I started this space as a way of documenting our journey through life. Sharing the things that bring me joy, but also, the flip side of the same coin.
I won’t be sharing exact details of what they were looking at or what could potentially be wrong. We’re working with our doctors and specialists to determine what, if anything, we should do now. At the same time, we are spending time praying that despite all of the doctors’ best efforts to give us a more accurate picture of what is going on, that they truly just don’t know for sure, and there may be nothing wrong at all.>>
I spent yesterday crying. Crying, breaking down, crumbling. I swirled in a sea of google searches trying to make sense of what little they could tell on the ultrasound that something didn’t look quite right with our baby. I didn’t function yesterday. I looked at my two healthy boys and couldn’t push from my mind from that unknown of what was wrong with their younger sibling. And so I laid in bed. And on the bathroom floor. And crumbled.
I feel like I searched desperately for someone to tell me that what was seen on the ultrasound was potentially nothing. Clinging to a hope that there will be nothing wrong once they can finally examine the baby after delivery. Clinging to potentially a false hope that everything will be fine.
But that’s what we do sometimes to protect our heart. We waffle between trying to make sense and coming to grips of two extremes. Whether nothing will be wrong to potentially a lifelong condition that will change everything we had envisioned as the future of this family.
I don’t have any answers. No profound wisdom. I feel raw and exposed. Hope cracking. And so I trudge on. Trying to be kind to myself and my mind. Three more months seems infinite to live with unknowns. And yet not long enough to try to enjoy the last of potentially ordinary, easy days.
I’d appreciate prayers for me and the baby.
Specifically, for our doctors that are trying to guide us on next steps.
Please pray that there is nothing wrong.
For my strength and resilience to keep going for the baby and all of my boys.
For Nathan as he shoulders the emotional weight of a wife struggling.
For I the Lord God hold your right hand. It is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” -Isaiah 41:13
Every Christmas, I look forward to the Christmas cards that flood our otherwise junk mail and bill filled mailbox. The smiling faces and life updates from families that have impacted our lives some since childhood and otherwise more recently just bring me an immense amount of joy. I started years back, though, my very favorite tradition of all around the New Year.
As I pack up Christmas, I take the Christmas cards off of our walls and put them in a stack. Then one quiet morning, I take my stack of cards with a cup of coffee and go through and hold each one in my hands again. I read the card. Look at the smiling faces. And I pray for each family one by one.
Usually my prayer consists of thanking God for bringing them into our lives and the way they have enriched and impacted our lives. I pray for their upcoming year that it might be filled with joy, good health, and wonder. I pray for the struggles they have shared with us and those that they have carried silently by themselves. And I end the prayer asking that God help us with helping to remind them how important they are in this world and our lives. That they might know they are loved today and evermore.
It usually takes me a couple of mornings to get through all of the cards. And I’ll admit, as I pour myself a coffee to start on this year’s stack, I’m a little farther behind this year than I was in year’s past. But it’s a wonderful habit to add to your new year. And I find that it just lifts my soul in ways that new year’s resolutions, word of the year, and intentions ever do.
It feels like we’re well into 2023, and here I am recapping my 2022 year in books. I always have an intention to read more books in the upcoming year than I did in the previous one. I’m constantly updating my Goodreads account to add books I want to read to my shelf. In fact, I read the reviews on Goodreads more religiously than on Amazon or any other platform to decide whether I should give a book a go.
I went back through all of the books I read in 2022 and picked out my three favorite books of the year. If you haven’t read these yet, I’d strongly recommend adding them to your “Want to Read” shelf!
My third favorite book of 2022 was…
Too Perfect: When Being In Control Gets Out of Control. Sometimes you read a book, and you keep saying “wow. I do that.” And “Oh man. That’s me, too.” That was me the entire time I read this book. It was eye opening, and gave me tools to work on some of the things that drive me (and my spouse) crazy about constant seeking of perfectionism.
The first Friday of the new year! I hope everyone survived back to work/back to school/back to reality this week. We muddled our way through it. Mostly my 5:00 am alarm was the most shocking after giving myself two weeks to sleep in and lounge around. :). I have a few favorites from the past couple of weeks to share with you!
A few weeks ago I hosted my annual Christmas book club. We had so much fun doing a white elephant gift exchange of our favorite thing from 2022.
I gifted Half Baked Harvest’s latest cookbook “Everyday.”
I’m sitting at my kitchen counter with a bar of dark chocolate while one of our little boys naps upstairs after being sent home from daycare with a fever yesterday. Looking back through these pictures makes me eternally grateful. With little ones, I find myself treasuring any holiday we get without sickness and spent with family.
Here’s a look at how our winter break went…
Our annual making of our Chex Mix with the boys. I love a “recipe” that is so easy for kids this little, and they can snack while we make it.
And yes, we make it on the floor of the kitchen every year. It works for us.
Hi friends! And happy 2023! We had a really wonderful holiday and winter break. I feel like I say it every year, but Christmas with a four and two year old may be my favorite yet. I’m going to share some favorite pictures from the break tomorrow, but today I’m finally getting around to sharing my winter outside containers this year.
In fairness, I put together my winter containers before the holidays, but I love making them easily non-Christmas-y, so they look beautiful all winter long.
In the front, I anchored the container with a spruce top picked up at my local garden nursery. I bought the white berry, pine cone, and birch wood accents last year, so they cost me zero dollars this year. 🙂
It’s my very last post of the year! I’ve loved sharing this space with you all this year. Inviting you into our home and family life has been a joy. I hope it’s a wonderful holiday season for you all.