More thankfulness

6. A beautiful drive into West Virginia with my family

7. Ellie's first fishing experience (no success but cute to watch)

8. At-home date night with my husband

9. Ellie's wild and curly hair

10. Open mouth kisses from Piper, slobber and all

11. Witnessing a family working on their farm (that just does something to my soul)

12. A nice dinner out with a friend

13. Started packing boxes yesterday!

14. The peace and quiet of nap time 

15. When things get too crazy, it usually just becomes funny and we can laugh it off

Give Thanks

I have been in a weird place emotionally for the past 6 months or so.  I have started so many posts for this blog and ended up deleting them, because I didn't like the rawness of them.  I wondered, "What would someone think if they read that?  Would they question my belief in God?  Would someone think I was depressed?" And it goes on.  So here I am.  I'm not really ready to talk about all these things publicly.  But it's doing no good sitting inside me, staying bottled up.  God is telling me to share, at least a little, if for no other reason than to get it out of me.

I can't really pinpoint what's going on in my heart.  There are a myriad of circumstances that are contributing, none of which are that huge in and of themselves, but it's more like a stacking, one on top of the other on my back that is getting to me.  My relationship with God is dry right now.  I believe, but at the same time I have some hurts that I just don't understand.  Sometimes I can't reconcile the God I know with the world I live in.  I know that it's just life.  How can I have hope when some days I just feel so much anger and despair over the world I'm a part of?

A friend recommended the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  I started reading it this week, thinking, "How can I have thankfulness in my heart when I'm not thankful for the bad stuff going on?" I don't know that I have the answer to that yet, but I'm working on it.  I wanted to share a passage from this book that is getting to me right now:

"I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks...Why would the world need more anger, more outrage?  How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us?  Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering.  The converse does.  The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.  When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows.  How can this not be the best thing for the world?  For us?  The clouds open when we mouth thanks."  (Voskamp 58)

Give thanks.  Is that where my heart needs to be in order to heal?  I'm willing to try.  Lately I've neglected my efforts at thankfulness.  Sure, I'm generally thankful.  I have breath in my lungs, a husband who loves me, healthy children, a house and food and any other worldly thing I think I should have.  But I don't name them.  I don't tell God specifically what I'm thankful for.  We pray with Ellie at night and she's picked up from us the phrase, "Dear God, thank you for today."  What does that even mean?  Thank you for today.  There are a million events, moments, memories in one day and all I can come up with is "thank you for today?"

So...in an effort to work through some of these things, I'm going to list some specific things I'm thankful for right now.  I'm not poetic like Ann Voskamp, so my list will likely sound kind of dull (at least to me), but just know that my heart is in these things.  And as a side note, I love that as I start writing this list my dog starts barking and wakes up the girls.  Such is life.

1. Walking outside in the warmth with the girls
2. My sweet Piper covered in peanut butter after eating a big lunch
3. Ellie saying, "Pretty snow!" when the petals blow off the trees during our walk
4. Time to read while the girls nap
5. The softness of our bed, and that Billy's side smells like him

Five things.  Better than nothing.  God, please use this to heal my heart a little.  Help me see joy and thankfulness all the time, not just when things are good.  

"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose."  Philippians 2:12-13

Piper Turns One!

My sweet little Piper is turning one on Saturday.  It seems that every time a birthday for one of my girls rolls around I get sentimental and start lamenting their growing up.  In reality, I don't want them to stay little forever...it gives me a lot of joy to see my girls grow up and change into the little people God created them to be.  But it does hurt just a little to think that this crawling, almost-walking little girl in front of me was in my belly a year ago, totally dependent on me to care for her.

I have to say that the last year has been a whirlwind.  Definitely full of surprises and joy, but also a fair amount of frustration and tears.  My pregnancy with Piper was as close to perfect as it gets.  I felt more healthy at 40 weeks pregnant with her than I think I've ever felt in my life.  Her birth was also uncomplicated and went so well.  My recovery was very quick and relatively pain free, which was a huge difference compared to my experience with Ellie.  I wrongly assumed that being a mom would be easier the second time around...

I never thought of Ellie as an "easy baby" until Piper came along.  From the beginning, Piper didn't sleep well.  She would toss and turn through her naps and cry out frequently.  There was one point when she was about a week and a half old that she literally didn't sleep for 8 hours (which is extremely abnormal for a newborn).  She just screamed and cried...her little belly felt so tight and nursing on demand didn't help at all.  Over time she got better about sleeping, but it was still about 8 months before she finally started sleeping through the night consistently.  Her reflux was so much worse than Ellie's to manage, and it ended up taking two different reflux medications given simultaneously for her to eat and act normally.

Becoming a mom to two little girls under two was so hard at first.  I remember many days just crying a lot and sleeping on the floor of Ellie's room while she played with toys and Piper cried in her bed.  It was harder than I could have imagined...but now that it's one year later, it is seriously the greatest joy to have these two little girls as my daughters.

I am so blessed to have seen these two become sisters.  Of course, they are already sisters by birth and blood, but they have really grown into their sisterhood and relationship with each other.  They love each other so much and spend much of their time making each other laugh.  Ellie has mastered the art of getting a good giggle out of Piper (who is sometimes a tough audience and doesn't laugh nearly as easily as Ellie).  Piper LOVES Ellie's affections and watches her sister's every move (which also means that Piper wants to play with whatever Ellie is playing with, which leads to my next thought).  They also fight fiercely...complete with hair pulling, pushing, shoving, kicking, screaming, scratching, etc.  We don't have full out brawls on a regular basis, but they do fuss at each other quite a bit at this age.  It is a constant battle for me with intervening between them.  I'm really trying to learn to just let them fight it out sometimes.  I let myself think that I have to protect Piper from Ellie because she's the baby, but she's really not so much anymore and can usually hold her own pretty well.

Anyway, here are some facts about Piper at one year old:

• Stats: She hasn't had her one year check up yet, but she was at the doctor's office a couple weeks ago and was about 21 pounds I think.  
• Favorite foods: EVERYTHING.  This child eats more than Ellie at every meal.  Right now, she loves bananas, strawberries, peanut butter sandwiches, broccoli, spaghetti, milk, and pretty much anything else I put in front of her.  Her only dislikes that I've noticed right now would be plain cheese and eggs.
• Favorite games: She loves Pat-a-Cake, chasing Ellie, and playing peekaboo.
• Vocabulary: Piper's verbal vocabulary includes dog, dada, mama, sissy, uh-oh, hi, and we think she's said Ellie a few times.  She also waves and uses sign language for more, all done, and thank you.
• Favorite things: food, touch and feel books, small books with real pictures, music and songs, dancing to music, bathtime, and dogs.
• Things she's good at: cruising (holding furniture or my hand while walking), finding the tiniest hidden objects in the carpet and eating them (such as small pebbles, grass, mulch, dirt, trash, old food, etc. haha), dancing (which Ellie never did as a baby), crawling up the stairs, eating, blowing kisses and charming everyone she meets =)
• Things she's not so good at: She doesn't have the confidence to walk by herself yet, she is very emotional about not getting her way, and can be a bit clingy when grouchy
• Physical accomplishments: Cruising all the time, has 8 teeth, and crawling up the stairs by herself (I turned my back and she disappeared...we found her in the upstairs bathroom going through the trash!)
• Sleep: She sleeps about 12 hours at night (sharing a room with Ellie) and takes two naps (in a separate room) per day (morning and evening, each about 2 hours).

She has turned into such a little girl.  When she's happy, she is so happy.  When she's sad, it's like the world has ended.  She has the most beautiful smile, and her hair is starting to curl a little.  It makes me wonder if it's just because of it being warm outside lately and the sweat is curling her hair, or if she's going to end up like Ellie with a head full of curls.  Her eyes are still in transition mode.  They're definitely not blue, but right now more like a hazel/blue/green/brown mix, so I'm not sure yet if they're just going to end up brown or if they'll be hazel (Billy's eyes are a light brown/hazel color so maybe she'll have the same eyes).  She is quite olive-skinned....we call her our beautiful Jew baby haha =) (before someone takes offense to that, just know that Billy has Jewish ancestry!).  She is a little chub right now, with a fat little belly and sweet chubby legs.  She loves giving and receiving kisses and being held.  She is my sweet girl...it is my joy to be her mom!

Piper at one week old

Piper at 4 months, Ellie right before she turned 2

My big girl a month before her birthday

What we've been up to

Whew, life is busy.  I know that it will never get less busy, but I'm okay with that.  Thankfully, most of our "busyness" consists of good things, like going to the library, doing planned play activities, hitting up the grocery store.  You know, just normal life stuff.  I wanted to give a little update about where we are right now and what new things have come up recently.

Let's see...first of all, I have decided to start doing more planned learning activities with Ellie.  She is now officially 2 1/2 years old and it's high time we start some intentional instruction.  Ellie is a smart girl and has picked up A LOT of information just from random playtime and conversations with us (which, in my opinion, is the best way to learn!).  I'm certainly not stressing about her knowing a bunch of things, but I've noticed that she loves guided activities in addition to free playtime, so why not take that opportunity to guide her in learning some important things?  I'm calling it "homeschooling," but really we're just playing together and I'm being a bit more thoughtful about our conversation while playing.  Last week was our first official week of preschool at home.  I started a little binder where I just keep my simple lesson plans, any random thoughts and ideas I might come up with, examples of her work, and assessments.  I actually used some printable forms from 1+1+1=1, a blog dedicated to home education.  These printable forms are just a way for me to stay semi-organized and keep track of what Ellie already knows, as well as some of our goals, and of course any lessons we might do.

Just to give you an idea of how we do our schooling, I'll explain a little about how last week went.  I decided we would do an apple theme for the week and focus on the letter A.  In addition to that, we concentrated on circles and the color red.  Ellie already recognizes the letter A and knows what a circle is, but I thought it would be best to just go into this introducing new information as well as reviewing what she already knows, which also gives me the opportunity to specifically assess her (and have a tangible date to write down..."this day she explicitly demonstrated knowledge of the short a sound").  So we basically just did some fun activities that incorporated those goals.  Our very first "lesson" included reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar (one of her favorite books) and playing with an apple play set that Piper received for Christmas.  We used the apple play set (pictured below) to act out the story and also identified the various foods, their colors, etc.

We also played with red Play-Doh and cookie cutters.  She really loved this and stayed engaged in the Play-Doh for at least an hour.  Other activities we did last week included tracing and rewriting the letter A (with a lot of help from me, obviously), practicing the short /a/ sound, several color matching and sorting activities, singing nursery rhymes (not really going with the theme, but still fun), and dancing.  Before we started last week, I made a long list of areas that I want to focus on in our homeschooling efforts.  These, I guess, would kind of be our standards of learning (but not nearly as evil as--and definitely way cooler than--the Virginia SOLs, haha).  We have all of the typical areas of study (literacy activities, science, mathematical concepts) but I also threw in some of the things I think are important (spiritual learning, physical development, the arts).  I don't want to be overbearing or obsessive about these things with Ellie...I don't want it to frustrate or overwhelm her.  I want to keep this fun and make it an opportunity for us to grow in our relationship as mommy and daughter, while also intentionally discussing and playing with things that will show her how to be a lifelong learner.  I have already noticed that she's asking a lot more questions lately, and I'm also learning to be more attentive to her when she plays rather than just using that as my mental break time.

On a completely different note, the girls are now sharing a bedroom.  When we moved to Harrisonburg, I knew that the girls would end up sharing a bedroom at some point because we live in a two bedroom house (plus, I also think that it's just better for them to grow up sharing a room anyway).  So before Piper was born, we set up a second crib in Ellie's room with the intention of putting Piper in there as soon as she started sleeping through the night.  In my mind, that meant probably by the time she was 3 months old....which did NOT happen haha.  Piper's sleeping habits have been so different from Ellie's.  Every time she would start sleeping like a normal person, something would happen to upset that (sickness, reflux, teething, growth spurt, etc.).  She's finally been sleeping through the night consistently for a couple months now, so we decided it was time.  It's been almost a week since they started sharing a room and it's actually gone pretty well.  It's taking longer for them to fall asleep now, since they have each other to talk to, and they've been getting up earlier in the morning, but if that's all I can complain about it's not that bad =).  Ellie has become quite attached to having Piper in her room...she literally cried for Piper yesterday when I put them down in separate rooms for the afternoon nap.  I'm still letting Piper sleep in the closet in our bedroom for afternoon naps because I want some guaranteed quiet time.  At least when it's bedtime I know that they will eventually go to sleep...but at naps it can get kinda iffy with how long they each sleep.  So anyway, I feel like my girls are bonding a lot now that they share a room, and it's so sweet to watch.

Other than the busy life of being parents to two ever-changing little girls, Billy and I don't have any new stuff happening.  Billy is up to his eyeballs in work and school.  Thankfully, his work doesn't come home with him and he's able to get most of his homework done on the weekends.  I am almost to the point of counting down the days until graduation (just 11 weeks left!) and I think I might be more excited about it than he is =).  His job is going well and definitely keeps him on his toes at work.  He's a supervisor for the components shop, so he stays busy with designating their work, keeping up with/creating procedures, managing the staff, etc.  I wish I knew more about his work, but they have a very secure facility at Dynamic so I've never even been inside a building there (the furthest I've been is the parking lot!).  When Billy worked at LifeWay, I visited him very regularly and kind of kept up with the day-to-day happenings that way, but that would be pretty hard now with the girls in tow.  

As for me, I'm remaining pretty predictable in my daily routine.  I'm spending most of my free time reading, which means lots of interesting thoughts going through my head throughout the day until I can get back to my current book.  I'm not sure why, but I've been compelled to read some amazing non-fiction books lately.  Just in the past couple of weeks, I've read Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot, The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, and I'm currently reading A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael (an Irish missionary to India in the first half of the 20th century).  Next, I'll be reading End of the Spear by Steve Saint (written by a son of one of the missionaries in Through Gates of Splendor).  I've never really had an interest in becoming a full-time foreign missionary, but I feel like these books are all about that subject, with maybe the exception of The Hiding Place, but even that was all about Corrie and her sister ministering the Gospel to the folks who suffered with them in the concentration camps.  I'm not sure what purpose God has for bringing these books to my attention, whether it's just for my own education and understanding about missions, or if He's trying to soften my heart for supporting missionaries and foreign ministries.  I know that there's some other-worldly purpose for me reading these books that goes beyond a good read.  I am learning a lot, praying differently, and straining to hear what God is telling me through these books.  Right now, I'm really focusing on what Jesus' love is doing in me and through me.  I think the underlying current in all of these books is love.  The love of God, the love of Jesus in His life, death, and resurrection, how His love should change us and spur us to live differently from what the world accepts as normal.  For me, this would mean loving people outside of my bubble...how am I loving the lost, the broken, the downtrodden?  How am I loving those I initially perceive as enemies, or what about those people I don't want to love?  It's hard stuff.  And very convicting.  Because my flesh doesn't want to love certain people.  I think it's easier to think about loving the hurt and the broken, because they need love.  But what about those people who have everything, or who are mean and hurtful?  They need it, too, even if they don't want it or throw it back at you.  Jesus still asks me to love them.  If you don't mind, please pray for me as I try to figure out what God is telling me specifically through all of this.  And please pray for our family as we try to live unselfishly, because that is so, so hard.

And as a random side note, please forgive the lack of pictures.  I have used up all of my free photo storage space through Google and it takes too much time for me to resize all of my pictures so that they qualify for the free upload on this blog haha.  With that, I leave you until next time =).

Setting Goals...and Setting Myself Free

Sorry my posts are few and far between.  I feel like right now (meaning this season of life) I'm in an "evaluating" mood. By that, I mean that I've been reflecting a lot on what my goals are and how I'm living my life, maybe trying to be a little more intentional about my thoughts and actions. I recently read this book, which has given me a lot to think about:

Basically, this book is about managing your time in relation to your life goals. If an activity doesn't somehow contribute to your goals, then you just don't do it. Period. That doesn't mean that life is all work and no play, because part of your goals should include things that make you a better/happier person (for me, that would be getting enough sleep, having quiet time to read, going out on dates with Billy, etc.). So it's not necessarily about getting lots of things done, but rather accomplishing goals that make me a better person, wife, mom, friend, etc. This book has various tasks that you should complete at the end of each chapter to take those steps toward managing time effectively. I didn't complete all of the assigned tasks, mostly because I'm not typically a goal setter in the first place, so it was a big step for me to just figure out what my life goals really are. Maybe somewhere down the road I'll take the time to be more scheduled, but for now I'm pretty happy to just have an idea of what I want to do with my life.

Reading this book really made me realize and accept the fact that I'm not a Type A personality...this kinda made me go through an identity crisis of sorts, because I have lived most of my life believing that I am this perfectionistic, regimented, slightly OCD person, when in fact I'm really not. I think most people who know me from high school and college would disagree (with the exception of a few of my closest friends), but really I spent most of that time just putting on a show, believing that in order to be successful, liked, intelligent, etc. that I had to be that way. So anyway, I've come to realize that I hate schedules, and I hate being a perfectionist. I am a huge procrastinator (not a surprise to anyone who knows me haha) and I would much rather go through my day just doing things that need to be done, rather than making a big list and schedule and trying to make every detail conform to my idea of a perfect day. I certainly know that not all Type A people are like that, but that was the mental picture I had of the person I was "supposed" to be. Sad, isn't it?

I bought into the lies that told me that I had to be a certain way in order to be important, successful, and good. These lies aren't spoken out loud, but rather are hidden messages that we all pick up, whether it be from books, media, teachers, friends, you name it. Sometimes people unintentionally tell you these things, thinking they're doing you a favor. Sometimes people are just mean and want to change you into someone else who is more acceptable. For me, I think I was my own worst enemy. As a perfectionistic student, I always felt that I was a disappointment if I didn't maintain my image: straight A's, honors classes, studious, hard working, blah blah blah. I disappointed myself if I fell below those standards, and I thought everyone else in my life was disappointed, too. Now I realize that most people (the ones who matter) don't give a rat's tail about any of that stuff. Not that any of those things are actually bad....I'm talking more about what my motives were. It basically comes down to selfishness, pride, and letting myself be a people pleaser, and I am so done with living that way.

So, long story short, I made some goals for myself. These are lifetime goals and certainly won't be accomplished in a day. These are things that I want to slowly work toward...a rubric of sorts that I want to use to evaluate the activities, thoughts, and people in my life. This will give me a more discriminating focus on what things really matter in my life, and hopefully will give me the strength to say no to the things that aren't worth my time.

• Self: I want to be a person who lives with kindness, humility, and optimism. I want to reflect Jesus in everything I do, and not allow external circumstances, people, or things get in the way of living the life God has called me to live.
• Wife: I want to be a loving, passionate, and attentive wife. I want my husband to know he is loved and respected by me, and that he has my full support for his dreams and ambitions. I want to treat my husband with kindness, giving him the best of me. I want to be his girlfriend, rather than a maid or a mother.
• Mother: I want to be a mom who is present, gentle, instructive, and supportive. I want my children to feel secure in their relationship with me and know that they are loved unconditionally. I want to show my children grace and mercy, living out the Christian life rather than just talking about it. I want to give them the freedom to explore and learn about the world, while also teaching them biblical discernment. 
• Homemaker: I want to be a purposeful homemaker. I want to keep a relatively clean and functioning household where my family feels comfortable to relax and enjoy time together. I do not want to be distracted by having a perfectly clean or orderly house...just good enough.
• Dreamer: I want to live a life of adventure. I want to have a rural homestead where our family can work together to become semi-self sufficient. I want to live in the country where our family isn't as tempted by modern conveniences, and I want our children to grow up knowing the value of hard work. I want to live a life of valuable experiences.

These goals aren't very specific, so the next step would be for me to list all the important activities that would help me work toward these goals, but I'm just not quite ready to do that. And I know the dreamer goal seems a little random, but it's something the author suggests doing.  I have a lot of thoughts about my homestead dreams, and maybe someday I'll get around to sharing what I mean by that, but for now I'm going to focus on what I'm trying to say in this post. Right now, I'm kinda working through my "identity crisis" and learning to let go of a lot of things. I am a sensitive person, so I find that I am easily affected by other people and their choices even if it has nothing to do with me. I am really working on that right now, realizing that I'm responsible for myself, not anyone else (minus Ellie and Piper!). It's been challenging for me, but I'm slowly learning to let go of those things and not dwell on them. They don't line up with my goals and they make me unhappy, trickling into my relationships with Billy and the girls and that is so not worth it.

I think through all of this I am learning that I can't live life on my own strength or efforts. I have so many faults, flaws, and weaknesses. I can slowly attend to each of them, but this is a lifelong process. I can't be perfect. That's a hard pill for me to swallow, because inside I desperately want to be perfect. I want to be proud of my perfection and have everyone look at me and say, "Wow, she's got it all together!" But that won't ever happen...it's not supposed to. I think of this passage from Paul and how he talks about boasting of his weaknesses and what God says: “'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Anyway, I just wanted to share where my heart is right now. I will hopefully get around to posting a little more regularly, just so I can brag on my little ones more frequently :)

Christmas Preparations and Milestones

We are getting ready for Christmas here at our house.  It is such a wonderful thing to have a decorated house this year.  Last year, we were in the process of moving to Harrisonburg (and actually, Monday the 17th will mark exactly one year since we moved!).  Since we moved in the week before Christmas, there was no point in going to all the trouble to decorate and get a tree.  So I'm especially glad that we have lots of decorations up this time.  We got our tree on Black Friday this year, which is definitely the earliest we've ever gone tree shopping, but I was so eager to decorate =).  Of course, as always, we got a tree that is too large for our living room and we had to cut some off the top, but it still looks good haha.

One thing I really appreciated doing this year was putting the ornaments on the tree.  I literally haven't seen these ornaments in two years (because of skipping the decorating thing last year), so it was really fun to pull out all of our Christmas boxes and go through all of the ornaments.  The thing I love about our tree is that we have some unique (maybe crazy and tacky) ornaments and every single one has a story behind it.  

This is an ornament I received as a gift from my Sunday School teacher in middle school (my first Christmas as a Christian).  It has always been very special to me.

Our Disney World honeymoon Christmas ornament!

Piper's first Christmas ornament.  Ellie has a similar one from 2010.

Our Chick-fil-A Christmas ornament from the Wards Road location in Lynchburg (our very favorite Chick-fil-A...and I'm realizing it's kinda sad that we have a favorite haha).

A vintage elf, given to us by my mom.  We have two others that are also cute in a creepy sort of way =)

Our Smoky Mountains ornament

Ellie's favorite ornament, a gingerbread house that lights up when you connect it to the Christmas lights on the tree.

Gotta represent our doggie!

We have also done some Christmas events this year, which we haven't really done in years past.  We went to Dynamic Aviation's Christmas dinner party this year which was a lot of fun.  It was held at and catered by JMU, so it was kinda fancy and formal but still fun for the girls.  There were tons of kids there and the girls enjoyed receiving gifts from Dynamic.

Helping the girls open their gifts

Piper was enamored with her very own baby doll

Ellie also got a baby doll, complete with feeding accessories.  This girl loves to be a little mommy.

Last Friday, we went to the Harrisonburg Christmas parade (our first Christmas parade since we've been married, I think!).  I wasn't sure how it was going to go...my fear was that the girls would be scared because of all the people and the loud music, but they actually had a great time.  Ellie sat on Billy's shoulders and got candy (Billy and I got coupons for free Chocolate Peppermint milkshakes from Chick-fil-A!) and Piper rode in the baby carrier (strapped to me).  The weather was perfect....it was cool, but not cold, and the girls especially enjoyed the marching bands.  Every time a drumline passed us, Piper would kick her feet and bounce and Ellie would yell, "Drums!"  I definitely overdressed the girls, thinking it would be colder, so we shed the hats and gloves pretty quickly.  I got a couple pictures of the girls before we left for the parade...

Piper is not happy about wearing a hat...

Ellie is so ready to get out of the house

Lastly, I wanted to update a little on milestones.  Piper is growing and changing constantly.  Within the last month or so she's started feeding herself snacks (a great Christmas gift for me, because it gives me a chance to get a couple things done and she's content to snack away!).  She is also crawling (in her own special way) and is getting into things, including getting trapped under chairs and the Christmas tree.  Pretty soon we'll be doing the baby gate thing again.  She is really enjoying playing with her baby toys, which I keep in a separate box for her.  That way, I can just set her on the floor with her box and she's good to go.  It was also one of Ellie's favorite things to do when she was a baby, and would often keep her busy for a long time.

Piper having a frozen banana...not her favorite (I think because of the temperature...she likes regular, room temp bananas just fine haha).

Snacking away!

Ellie is growing into a little lady.  She is very much the girly-girl and loves shoes, purses, dressing up, and being a little mommy.  We've also noticed that she's very musical and loves to sing.  She sings along to the radio, and also has her personal favorite songs which include "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," the ABC song, and "Jesus Loves Me."  Just the other day she was playing with the little toy piano, making music and singing "Jesus Loves Me" at the same time.  She is very observant and likes to repeat words and phrases that she hears from other people.  We're struggling a little with sharing with Piper right now (she says "That's mine!" a lot, which is kind of a no-no in this house).  However, she's also very loving toward Piper and likes to tickle and talk to her.

This one loves peanut butter =)

Wearing Mommy's scarf

"Driving" the car while Billy and I clean it out

I love this picture, because someday she'll be 16 and she'll really be driving away =(

Anyway, I don't know if I'll get around to blogging again before Christmas, but Merry Christmas from us!

Eight Years

Eight years ago today, Billy and I started dating (officially).  I feel like, on one hand, it was just yesterday, and on the other I feel like we've been together a lifetime.  Funny how that works, right?

The past eight years have been a whirlwind....the time has seriously flown by.  Back in 2004 (so long ago haha) we were in our junior year of high school, and now we're married and have two kids.  We've experienced so many life changes together, which is truly a blessing (although it gets a little overwhelming when I think about it too much).  We graduated high school, went off to college, got married, went through multiple family dramas, job loss, had two "unplanned" pregnancies, one traumatic birth and hospitalization, moved to a new city...all of those experiences we did together.  We've made dreams together, and seen some of those come to fruition while others have been set aside for something else.

We've also changed a lot.  When we started dating, Billy was what I would describe as a goofy-class clown type.  He was always cracking jokes, making people laugh, and was very extroverted and self-confident.  He could make friends with anyone, and was also pretty involved in high school sports.  Me, on the other hand...definitely a shy, introverted nerd.  I had VERY few friends outside of my classes, and even those were mostly through church youth group.  I rarely talked to people I didn't know and never did anything spontaneous, and I was very self-conscious of everything I did.  Basically, back then we were opposites.  I'm still kind of surprised that we ended up together.  Anyway, I would say our personalities have really blended now.  Billy is more reserved than he used to be, and I'm more outgoing.  I have become less nerdy (especially since I'm not in school anymore!) and Billy is the studious one now.  I would also say that Billy has helped me overcome some of my shy tendencies.  Because of his encouragement, I am now more outspoken and less of a people pleaser (although I still really struggle with that).  He has helped me become more assertive and confident, when before I was VERY passive and lacked self confidence.  Obviously a lot of prayer went into those things, too, but Billy really helped motivate me to work past those issues and I think I'm a better person for it.

I am so grateful that eight years ago I had a momentary burst of spontaneity and showed Billy that I was interested in him.  I had just gotten out of another relationship, and one Saturday night I just decided to go to the movie theater...by myself.  Who does that?  I probably seemed kinda lame going alone, but I had an ulterior motive, because Billy just happened to work at the movie theater.  So I went, on the off chance that he was working (which he was!) and got in his line at the concession stand (even though I didn't need to buy any food, since I snuck in some juice and cookies from my Nana's house haha).  Anyway, I talked to him for a few minutes (which was out of character for me anyway, since I was so shy) and went on to my movie.  After the movie was over, I saw Billy as I was leaving and hollered bye to him and walked out.  Billy says that he knew I was interested in him because I made the effort to say goodbye to him on my way out.  How random is that?  And a couple weeks after that (and after we had our first couple of dates) we decided to be together.  And the rest is history...