The Luckiest No Matter What!

I have anxiety.  Back when I was little, I was known in my family as the 'worry wart,' but now that I know more about myself and anxiety, I know that incessant worrying was anxiety.  I do not hide my feelings well at all, so when I wasn't in a good mental space- everyone in my family knew about it.  My sisters, brother, and parents were patient, they were kind, and I can't tell you how many times they (especially my mother, who is an ANGEL), allowed me to verbally process my worrying thoughts out loud to make sense of them.    My mom said this quote to me constantly-   "Stop worrying. The bridges you cross before you come to them are almost always over rivers that aren't there." I also had this quote from Matthew 6:34 posted all over-  "So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." It's MY CRAZY , people- you all have been reading about it for YEARS. I am aware of it,...

Taking pictures of the people and places I love the most is one of my absolute favorite things. I have a camera with me everywhere searching for a moment to capture like a football player waiting for the word 'hike.' This picture is a beautiful moment between my three sons- my favorite kind of moment to trap in time. It was unseasonably warm today, November 29th, so we took our ball pit maze into the three seasons room to have at it! There is an interesting connection between picture taking and parenting- how fleeting moments are. In photography, if you miss a perfect photo by a fraction of a second it can be, for lack of a better word, ruined- sudden movement can make a picture blurry, smiles turn into frowns, people look away or step out of the shot, a person walks in front of a building, and the sun disappears into the horizon. I have an infinite amount of almost perfect pictures :) In parenting, time can seem to pass by as quickly as that tiny window for a perf...

I was sitting home relaxing for about four minutes one Saturday after a long day with the boys. It was a rare night when Kristin was out of town, and I randomly thought back to a cold, dark December 25 th evening when I was a child. I can remember myself reviewing all the gifts I received, lining them up neatly (some things don’t change), and maybe playing with them for a bit. It was a day full of gifts from Santa, a huge breakfast at my house, two donuts after breakfast, time with my cousins and siblings at my grandma’s house, and my parents letting me have a can of coke with my dinner because it’s very hard to say no to a kid on Christmas. Basically, it was me just thinking about how Christmas day was (still is) always just the most perfect day in the world. Then my thinking fast forwarded  many years to reminisce about a recent day in our life filled with dirty diapers, a trip to the garbage dump to drop off leaves with the men (one of our favorite fall activities), readin...

I have been politically quiet on social media outlets for many years - like since I had an 'away' message in AOL Instant Messenger.  It's not my thing to post about that.  I consider myself a knowledgeable voter and am certainly passionate about many political topics.  I don't need you to try to change my opinions over a screen and I certainly don't need to change yours that way either.    Election day is in a couple of days and I find myself more and more disappointed... I know many of you are too. When looking up 'endorse' on Google, it is defined as to " declare one's public approval or support of." That word is thrown around a lot during political elections- people giving endorsements, taking away endorsements, and my favorite, people who refused to endorse a candidate at one time then choose to endorse them later.  My vote in the booth is my endorsement of that person and I take that word very seriously. For many  reasons, I will n...

On November 1st, 2015 our family stayed our first night in our new house in Okemos.  Looking back, I feel so at peace with how things worked out and our decision to buy the house we did.  We are loving the subdivision, our neighbors are fantastic, and going from a ranch to having an upstairs has been a GAME CHANGER for our family.  When we bought the house, there was something about it that felt right, but it didn't look right... yet. Little by little, over time, we have been transforming it into really feeling like ours.  Here is some of the work we've done. KITCHEN: Thankfully, we were able to own this house for one month while still living in our old house so because of that, we were able to do the bulk of the kitchen work when five people (including three kids 2.5 and under) were living there.  We re-faced the cabinets and painted them, took out the drop down ceiling and fluorescent lighting, got several new slate appliances and rearranged them, ...

We've been trying to get the bottom of Judah's skin issues for a long while now.  We've seen his pediatrician, a dermatologist, and an allergist several times over the last year JUST to talk about Judah's skin (that's a lot of $30 co-pays).  We've always been told he has baby eczema and that it will pass.  When he was a very little baby, that answer was fine for me because he would go through ebbs and flows with it; sometimes his skin would be totally clear and then he'd have a flair up for a couple of weeks. The winters were worse because it was drier out and in the summer, his skin was usually completely clear.  But for the last year, he's had bad skin the entire time, no ebb and flow. So I started to get more frustrated and asking questions.  He got his allergies tested a year ago, I probably told you, and they tested for all the regular most common allergies and he came back totally clear, but his skin still wasn't.  So after several appointment...

First of all, if you haven't been to Toronto yet- GO! GO NOW!  Stop reading this and get in your car :) Before I gush  about the awesome 43ish hours we had in one of our favorite cities, Toronto, I have to go back to the early summer of 2015, over a year ago. Carter was only a month or two old and we were adjusting to life as a family of five, which included three kids under two. Josh let me know that summer that he wanted to take a trip for our nine year anniversary, just the two of us, and that he thought we should go to Toronto. I answered, "mmmhmmm okay." yeah right.  I thought. We have three kids!  Next year Nolan and Judah will likely be in preschool!  We both work!  Carter won't even be 18 months old yet!  That's so far away! I essentially put the idea out of my mind.  I may have even laughed at him when he brought it up. Fast forward to about 15 months later... Somehow we pulled off squaring away child care (GOD BLES...