A Life of Gratitude

Today we dropped our biggest boy, Dylan, off at Cub Scout camp for the first time. I've gotta admit, it was much harder for me than it was for him! There may have been a few tears...all mine. Pack 16 Rules! Dylan has been super excited about camp for months! He has anxiously awaited this day for weeks. This is the first time he has been away from home without Bryan and I for more than a day or two. Please pray for me, as I miss my boy terribly already! Please also pray for a safe, fun, memorable time for Dylan!  Today I am grateful that my biggest boy is able to be a part of such a wonderful Cub Scout Pack. I am thankful that he gets to spend nearly a week learning and playing in the outdoors, sleeping in tents, swimming in the lake, shooting BB guns, and making memories with his friends. It may be a hard week for me, his momma, but I pray it will be a good one for him!

Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him. Psalm 127:3 Three weeks ago we became a family of six! I still can't believe we have four children! And honestly, no one else can believe it either. Everywhere we go people are so amazed to see a family with four children! We've been asked if they're all ours, if we're "done" now, if they were all planned, etc. It's amazing what people will say! We had the photo above made when Allison was just 4 days old. When Elizabeth, the photographer, showed me this final product, I literally cried. All I could see when I looked at that photo was gifts....gifts from our Heavenly Father. The Bible says that children are a gift from the Lord, a reward from Him and I know that to be true! We don't deserve these babies. We aren't the most qualified parents. We don't even know what we're doing most of the time, but God has blessed us abundantly with these little lives!  I kn...

A couple of days ago I was looking through some boxes in the attic, searching for photos of me as a baby. I wanted to see if Allison looks like I did as a baby. It turns out, she doesn't really look like me but that's okay, she is gorgeous! As I was driving in the car yesterday afternoon, I heard an old song on the radio by Josh Wilson. Part of the song says, " That was then, this is now.  You’re bought by the blood,                         saved by the Son the saints all sing about                                   That was lost, this is found And it’s time to say goodbye to the old you now So go ahead, put the past in the past Box it up like an old photograph You don’t have to go back ‘Cause that was then and this is now" As I listened to that song, God brought to my mind the scene from the night ...

13 years ago today I married the love of my life. It was the the most perfect day. We were young, in love, and excited to spend the rest of our lives together. The wedding was gorgeous, the honeymoon was incredible, and our life together was starting. I cannot believe its been 13 years since that amazing day!  If you had asked me on my wedding day what I thought our life would look like in 13 years, I would have never said that we would have 4 children, that I would be homeschooling our children, or that my greatest desire would be to raise godly children who know how loved they are. It's amazing to look back and see all that God has done in my life, Bryan's life, and our marriage over these years. We may physically resemble those twenty something kids in the picture above but I barely recognize them in almost every other way. Bryan and I have grown so much. God has been molding us into the wife and husband He created us to be. He has been shaping us into the parents H...

About 10 months ago my best friend, Valerie, and I began praying for something very specific. She had recently had a miscarriage and I had recently found healing and freedom from the abortion I had when I was 16 years old. We were both desiring daughters and since the Bible tells us to ask God for the desires of heart, we did. We spent time in my sunroom, praying together, asking our God to give us daughters. We hoped that He had heard our prayers but honestly, we were both surprised when we found out in October that we would both be having babies!  A few months later we both found out that we would be having little girls!!! We had asked God for daughters and He had blessed us both with girls! We have been so thrilled. Since we both have three little boys already, the thought of us  having girls was super excited for our families! As we approached the end of our pregnancies, we were ready to have these girls!!! It felt like they would never be born. On May 30t...