The Most Important of All

I hope to be able to do several things this coming year, but none are more important than this: to know Jesus Christ more deeply, to walk more closely with Him, and to learn what it means to abide in Him. My new year's prayer comes from an old hymn that I love:

Just a closer walk with Thee,
Grant it, Jesus, is my plea,
Daily walking close to Thee,
Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.

A verse that has stood out to me as I have thought about this is James 4:8 - "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." What an amazing promise! I am so looking forward to this next year. I do not know what it will hold, but I am more confident than ever that no matter what comes, I can trust in His faithfulness!

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

Challenge #2 for 2009

I have decided...I think...I'm pretty sure....I hope I can....

I'm going to run a 1/2 marathon in 2009!

13.1 Miles. All at the same time. On the same day.

Yikes! Now it is out there!

(of course this all depends on when the baby joins our family and if my knee holds out...but I'm going to try!!!)

I Love a Challenge!

I am back home after a lovely few days with my family. It seriously felt like I was at the spa or something! It is so wonderful to be able to relax without the pressures or work or feeling like I should be cleaning or doing the checkbook or whatever else....just to sit and drink a cup of tea (or seven!). We arrived home last night, unloaded the car, and went to bed! This morning I awoke to a house that looked like one massive Christmas present explosion. So the cleaning began...

Ah well, the relaxing was good while it lasted!

I wanted to share about a couple of exciting new projects I am starting for the coming year. The first is called Project 365 and I found out about it through my scrapbook magazine. I am going to take one picture a day for the next 365 days (well, I started yesterday and will go through the end of next year) and will be buying the kit that goes with this project. I thought this would be an interesting year to have a picture from every day as it is the year I turn 30, and hopefully the year I become a mom :)

What I love about this project is how easy it is! Basically, you just slip the photos into the pages, write a short journaling thing explaining the picture, and you're done! I am looking forward to being free from the overwhelmed feeling of having to scrap all my pictures, and to having time to get caught up scrapping last year's pictures! It is perfect for me and I am so excited to see how it turns out. (If you are interested you can check out Becky Higgin's blog for more info).

I started yesterday and here are my pictures so far:

Sunday: Family picture - I am so blessed!


Monday: This is what Brad is up to today while I catch up on the essentials of laundry and blogging :) He is putting a new door on the bedroom that we hope to make into the nursery. So glad I vacuumed before he started this project...woops!

Tomorrow I will write about another big challenge that I am hoping to work towards in 2009. Notice I do not call them New Year's Resolutions...too much pressure if I call them that!

From Our Family...

Christmas Eve Eve Post :)

Hello! It's been such a busy week - shopping, wrapping gifts, visiting with friends, finishing up at work so that I can be off until next Friday (yey!), spending time with Brad's family, and fighting some kind of head cold thing (yuck!)...the days have flown by and suddenly it is Christmas Eve Eve! Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I will be turning 29! I am not (as of yet) having any kind of "age meltdown" even though I am now ridiculously close to the big 3-0. I am actually looking forward to this last year of my twenties...I think it's going to be a good one :)

Lord willing, we are heading to Canada tomorrow to celebrate Christmas with my family. Brad and I were both feeling pretty crummy today but hope to wake up ready to face the icy and snowy roads...

As the song says, "There's no place like home for the holidays..."

So true!

Merry Christmas! I am thanking God more than ever before as I have spent time thinking about Christ's birth and death, and the hope that we can have in life because of Him. How grateful I am that He came - what an amazing gift!

It's a Hard Time of Year to Have Such Short Legs...

Four Month Celebration!

As of today, Brad and I have been on the waiting list to adopt from Korea for four months! In order to celebrate, Brad and I did some very fun shopping last night :)

It's a little hard to pick out clothes, since we don't know if we will have a girl or a boy, and we don't know exactly what age they will be when they come home...so we bought a few things that are very big and could be worn by either a girl or a boy.

Brad picked these out all by himself! Anyone who knows Brad knows how much he loves to wear sweatpants...so of course, Baby Hunt will have to have sweatpants that match his!

The most exciting find came by accident! We have been talking about starting to do the nursery, and had discussed painting the room over Christmas break while Brad is off work. We've been looking around a bit for bedding, because I wanted to get that first so we could pick out a color for paint from it. Look what we found last night:

It is a Noah's Ark theme and I just love it! I love the colors and we are going to paint either a teal color or yellow on the walls. One of my favorite things about it is that my mom had given me a painting she did and it goes so well with the bedding:

I love what it says at the bottom:

Texting on Cell Phones and Lots of Scrapbooking...

*Good job to everyone who guessed "Favorite Things" was the tune for my title! You were right! *

Now, I know I am not the only person who names their posts after song titles...can you guess which song tune my title goes with? I'm not going to tell you - you have to guess!

Today I got a new cell phone! I am usually not too excited about phones...but this one is very cute and has a full keyboard :) Now I can be a texter! And it has a schedule thing so maybe I won't forget everything I'm supposed to do. Maybe.


I have also been doing some scrapbooking lately and thought I'd share a few pages. They're not all embellished or anything, but I think that simple is more me so I'm sticking with that instead of stressing myself out and taking hours on each page. This is much more enjoyable and I have been finishing a page in an hour or under, which is nice. I am still so far behind though!

(Above) These are pictures of Brad's brother's wedding. I love how this one turned out!

(Above) This is about my first 5k race a couple of summers ago. I may have posted this before - I can't remember. Thankfully, now I have a phone that will remind me about everything and I will never forget anything ever again!

I just did this page last night. These are pictures from September when we went to the beach with our friends (one of whom is Rachel from Unexpected Blessings). I am so glad she is my real life friend as well as my bloggy friend :) She's pretty great in real life!

So what do you think - any guesses on the song title?

Favorite Pictures from the Last Few Weeks

My neice, Abbey

Neice Emma

Sweet Daisie

Ferocious Daisie!

Honesty...It Really Is the Best Policy!

Thank you, Wendi, for thinking I am honest on my blog! I try to be :) So now I am supposed to share 10 honest things about myself...this may be more than you ever wanted to know about me!

1. I ate that entire 1 pound chocolate bar by myself in just over a week.

2. For the last three years I have struggled with insomnia. I used to be very afraid of going to bed (I know that sounds crazy but it's true!) because I knew I would just lie there awake for hours. It's starting to get better and usually I can sleep before 1am now.

3. I get sick almost every time I travel. Which is funny because I love to travel! I think I just get all worked up and anxious. Anyway, when she found out we were adopting, my little sister Sarah commented that I had to travel to Korea to pick up our child so that I could throw up in another country! My list to date includes Canada, America, Guatemala, Uganda, England, and almost Mexico but not quite :)

4. My biggest heart-wound ever came from a boy who asked me to marry him and then changed his mind six months later. Ouch! However...the biggest blessing in my life also came from this (also known as Brad!). So I guess I can say...it was worth it :)

5. I am exceedingly hard on myself about anything and everything. I am learning to LET IT GO!

6. I spend way too much time worrying what people think of me.

7. I hate saying no when people ask me to do something for them (because of number 6).

8. I find it hard to trust people (because of number 4) but I am blessed to have found several friends in the last few years who are helping me to get over this fear.

9. Sometimes when I laugh really hard, I snort.

10. Out of my whole life, I am the most content right now with where I am and who I am. Not that I want to stay where I am or who I am...but I'm finally at peace with both :) Most of the time!

I am supposed to pass this award along to 7-10 people, but to be honest, most of the people who's blogs I read have already done this or been tagged! So I'm going to tag my buddy Angela...because I know she'll be honest!

A Completed Project!

Before...

And after!

Empty Containers...

Empty boxes...

I am so glad that is done and I hope I never have to do it again!

It Shouldn't Be This Difficult!

This year I decided to be a grown up and send out some Christmas cards. I have a lot of family in England and Wales as well as friends and family in Canada so I thought I'd write a nice little letter and send a photo card.

Sounds easy enough, right?

That's what I thought too!

My mother-in-law had recently given me a copy of a picture of me and Brad (or is it Brad and I? Please don't judge me because I am bad with grammar!) and it was very nice so I thought that I would use that picture. She emailed it to me, I saved it and went online where I uploaded it to Walmart and ordered 20 copies.

I was pretty disappointed when I picked them up the next day, because they were all blurry! It looked like I had lego blocks for teeth! This would not do. This is probably the only picture of me that some of my relatives have seen in years. I cannot have lego block teeth!

Now I had 20 blurry pictures of me and Brad.

I figured it was because I zoomed in on the picture, so I decided to try again without zooming. This time I ordered from Walgreens (just in case Walmart was the culprit).

An hour later (I was starting to have a time crunch now because these things needed to be in the mail soon to make it to England by Christmas) I rushed to Walgreens to pick them up.

Lego blocks again! What in the world?!?!?!

Now I have 40 blurry pictures of me and Brad.

I decided to try one last time, and this time had my mother-in-law order them from me. I wondered if it had to do with the fact that the picture had been emailed.

This time it turned out fine! My Christmas cards are ready to go and I am sick to death of this picture of me and Brad:



Would anybody like these 40 copies of me with lego block teeth? Maybe I should have a contest and they could be the prize....

Too Long!

I while ago, I was over at a friend’s house for a meal (this friend is also a bloggy friend so she will soon know this story is about her family!). This friend has three darling children who were quite talkative this evening. Our friend came up with a great idea – why don’t we play the quiet game? You know the one – who can go the longest without talking! A favorite of parents everywhere I am sure!

So the game started, and all was quiet. Minutes went by, and suddenly my friend’s eldest daughter burst into tears! We were all kind of surprised, because it was obvious that nothing bad had happened – we’d all been sitting there not talking!

Her dad asked her what happened and why she was crying.

Her response: “It’s been too long!”

I was thinking about this the other day, because it almost perfectly parallels something that happened in my life a week ago. No, I was not making Brad play the quiet game! But I did have my own “It’s been too long!” moment.

For whatever reason, the holiday season has seemed to be particularly difficult for me as I’ve walked this path of infertility. It is a time when more than ever the longing in my heart seems to kick in full strength and my arms just feel especially empty. It is also hard because this time of year is a marker for me – we just reached the three year mark. Overall, these last few months have been so good, my heart has been at peace, I have learned to trust in the Lord and have not struggled too much with the sadness I used to feel.

And then all of a sudden, that was gone. In a moment, the pain was back as fresh as ever, and I found myself crying out to the Lord, “It’s been too long! I can’t wait anymore! When is this going to come to an end?”

How thankful I am that He is the God of all comfort, that I can come to Him with my hurts and find a place of refuge and strength. It has been a difficult week, but it’s good because it has caused me to grasp the hand of my God more tightly. He is good and has given me some very special people in my life who have held me as I’ve cried and who have reminded me of the amazing things God is doing in our lives because of this pain. It is not for nothing – He is using it to change me, and He is leading us down an incredible path to a child who will be our very own!

One last thought – on this difficult day when I was wondering if the Lord knew of the pain in my heart or heard me crying out to Him, a verse stood out to me very clearly as I read:

“The Lord is near.” Phil 4:5

A short verse, but oh so sweet!