thank you

My Thanksgiving version of letting you know what we have been up to.

I am just sitting here. Most everyone is out the door either running errands, playing or just running. Mick is still taking his morning nap (praise the Lord). My mom and I will go grap some coffee once he wakes up. I have been just catching up on email, facebook, and blogs and I am coming across how thankful everyone is. I too am thankful. I am thankful for family and love. I am thankful for full bellies and happy faces. Thankful for my brother helping me get 2nd place in Scrabble. Thankful for cooking and baking with family. Thankful for caffeine, very thankful for caffeine. My 9:30 bedtime is really pushed back while with family, which I LOVE, but again I am very thankful for caffeine. Thankful for more game nights and time together.

Friendsgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Friends! I hope you all are having a wonderful week. This past weekend we were able to have a pre Thanksgiving dinner with some friends that we went to school with. I believe this is the 5th year, maybe. I look forward to it every year. I moved around every couple of years as a kid and did not do a great job of keeping in touch with my friends, so the fact that I am still close with the same friends after so many years is such a comforting feeling. Going through this has only made me work harder at keeping the friendships that God has given me.

Everything that we do now during the holidays or just everyday in general makes me so excited for Mick. I look forward to traditions that we have started and will start. I am always so interested in other families tradition and what brings others together. I like this tradition and hope it stays.

Sometimes I have to catch myself thinking of the future and looking forward to Mick running around with all the other kids that have joined the families. I have to stop and enjoy the moment that we are in. I dont want to find myself looking back and wishing I had stopped to breathe, stopped to take in what God had put infront of me at the moment. Because everyone was right when they said that time goes by faster once you have babies. I mean seriously when did Mick become a teenager?

We had a new guest this year. Our friend Kirsten did an amazing job of decorating the table for Friendsgiving. Some how a tiny snail jumped on one of the little pumpkins and hung out with us. I learned something new that night. You may be asking yourself what that little black spot is behind the snail. It is true what they say, everybody poops. I just could not get over it.

Thank you Jesus for grace, thank you friends for a wonderful evening and thank you tiny snail for blowing my mind.

i love love

Love.

I love love. I really do. I am a hopeless romantic, always getting swept away by my daydreams. Dont even get me started on romantic movies.

I cried through ALL the credits in The Notebook, the credits.

Anytime I see an ounce of love my heart just consumes me.

It could be anything from seeing two people in love to a moment between a child and a parent to a stranger holding a door open.

I just wish the world could be full of this, at all times.

I want my baby to grow up in a world where he is surrounded by love, even from people he will never come in contact with.

I know that the best I can do is have Kevin and I raise him in a home full of love.

I love my family with my whole heart.

And to think that we are not very good at love compared to the way Jesus loves us. Knowing this reminds me to pray, to pray that Mick loves others as Christ does.

The feeling of being wrapped in God's arms,

knowing everything is going to be okay is a constant comfort for me. I hope that I am able to share some of that loving feeling with those I come in contact with.

I will admit, some days are easier than others.

But doesn't it feel good to love on someone?

Isn't it nice when they walk away from you feeling like they just got a hug, knowing they are loved?

The answer is yes.

Baby Talk

There really is nothing like hearing your child laugh, or talk for that matter. Like everything else, I did not realize this until I had a baby of my own. Mick makes himself laugh a lot, he gets that from me. Driving in the car and hearing him have a full conversation with himself just makes me want to pull over and hug him. I dont know why, I just love to hear him. Like right now, he should be napping but instead he is talking and laughing with his blanket. It is taking everything inside of me not to sit outside his door and listen. Good thing our house is small and I can hear him from the living room.

I write this because I hope it never changes. I hope that even as he gets older and our lives get busier that I still take the time and enjoy these small moments.

Clean

"A messy home is a loved home"
-Amber

I made that up. I refuse to google it and see if it is a real phrase for fear of finding out that someone else already coined it. It is one of my better made up quotes which is why I am sure I am not the originator.

Anyway, the reason I came up with it was because I feel that our house is always a mess and I was tired of feeling bad about it. And how can anyone argue with a loving home?

A certain someone has completely taken up the living room with all of his toys, we let him, but still. We have papers everywhere. I am pretty sure we got a bigger table just so we could have more surface area to leave stuff on. Someone once told me that my room looked like a tornado had gone through it, that tornado is still with me.

So one day my love hate relationship with Pinterest turned into love when I saw a clip on keeping a clean house on just 20 minutes a day. I was all over that. I made my own schedule and am really liking it. I am only on week 2 of this and I have missed a few days here and there but I am pretty hopeful that this sticks.

Here is my schedule:
Monday: Vaccum and mop all floors
Tuesday: Dust
Wednesday: Clean bathrooms
Thursday: Clean kitchen - counters, stove...
Friday: NOTHING

Weekend: NOTHING

Laundry done when needed. I am sure I am forgetting to write some things down, these are just the main ideas.


Let me be the first to say, toys are still everywhere, the papers have not moved but underneath everything it is clean. The mess can stay but the dirt is gone and that means clean.

Worrier

I am a worrier, I always have been. I can literally make myself sick with worry. Having a baby just makes it stronger. The funny thing about my worry is that I will worry about the silliest thing one minute and not worry at all about a bigger issue the next. If it has to do with myself I tend not to worry, if anyone else is involved I am sick with worry. So when something is wrong with Mick I need action taken immediately. Which brings us to last week.

Kevin was about to leave for work and I was changing Mick out of his jammies when I noticed a rash around his mouth. What is that? So straight to Kevin we go, talking about how I need to get him in to see the doctor, did I do something wrong, is he allergic to something. So Kev and I are both looking at this rash that I am worried is spreading as we stare at it. I think that maybe if I clean it I can get a better look. Oh I got a better look, infact I cleaned it right off. It was jam from his breakfast. Jam.

Thank you Jesus!

chicken for a day

Halloween happened at Kevin's work this year. I dressed Mick up in his chicken costume and took him to see Daddy.

my little sister

My baby sister is getting married! April and Nate got engaged over the summer and I have been waiting to talk more about it until I had their engagement pictures to go with it. April's friend Kelsey took the pictures and did an amazing job. Love these two.