Easter

We had a wonderful Easter today, my heart overflowing with love and gratitude for our amazing Savior. So thankful he rose from the grave. Without it, his death would be meaningless and we would yet be without hope!

We got a few family pictures while we were at church today, and then I got some of Logan at Nanny and Papa’s, opening his “Spring Basket”. I love the traditions for little kids that are typically associated with Easter, but I want my children growing up knowing the true meaning of this holiday, and to not be focusing on the fun, candy, gifts, etc. that often come along with it. So what we’ve decided to do, is to continue the traditional Easter celebrations, but instead of using them to celebrate Easter, we will use them to celebrate Spring. Anyone who lives in Alaska knows that Spring is certainly something to be celebrated. ;o) I can’t wait until next Spring when we can do an egg hunt with him and everything. I’m so glad that we have found a way (a lot of Christian families do this modified form of celebrating. Haha I don’t take credit for coming up with this on my own) to still incorporate these fun things into our children’s lives. I always loved doing egg hunts and such. :o)

Anyways, picture time!

Logan thought he was being SO funny and kept lifting up his shirt, showing off his belly during pictures. Haha, apparently he takes family pictures as seriously as his daddy. ;o)

Logan loved his “Spring Eggs” :o)

I Can Breathe Again!

My house has been quite the sad, embarrassing disaster here lately. Downstairs has probably been the worst, since all of the junk that was in our under-the-stairs-closet is now scattered all over the dining room, due to our remodel project. It’s hard to keep that from looking like anything but a disaster. Tools, wires, parts, etc. are scattered everywhere, not helping matters at all.

Now, while downstairs has been the worst, upstairs really hasn’t been much better. And in that area… I have no excuse. And it’s been bad. See?

Yeah… that’s embarrassing. But you see those plastic stacks of drawers in the last two pictures? They are what initially led me on this quest to clean my room. Those things used to be in Logan’s room. But Mike kept getting frustrated when he needed something out of them, and couldn’t go in there because Logan was sleeping, so he moved them into our room. The one room that wasn’t tainted by the clutter of our small home (ya know, clutter besides my laundry laying everywhere *ahem*). And I so badly wanted to keep it that way. Every tiny little spot of storage space we have is taken up by something. We have no more room. (And I have gotten rid of a TON of stuff, trust me! It’s not so much that we have too much junk, we just have a really small house, with almost zero storage space) So when the clutter overflowed to my “no junk” zone, I began to feel even more overwhelmed by it all. And I knew there was no changing Mike’s mind about having those things in our room, so I had to find a way to hide them. I got the project done, and the room completely cleaned up a few days ago. And here’s what it looks like right now… because I have kept it clean so far, which may be more of a miracle than the initial cleaning itself. ;o)

I moved one of the drawer things over to my side of the bed, so I would finally have something to put my stuff on besides the floor. I think that covering this up will be my next project. ;o)

This is what I did to cover up the two tall, and the one shorter drawer things though. Isn’t it pretty? And not cluttered at all anymore. :o) They’re just two curtains hung on that lowest shelf by circles of sticky-backed Velcro. I love that they hide something ugly, while adding color and pretty decoration to the bedroom. :o)

I used my old Olympus camera for these next pictures, so you’ll have to excuse the horrid picture quality. Man I hate that camera. Maybe it’s just the lens that’s the problem, but regardless, I LOVE my Canon. :o) I only used my Olympus because the lens I bought for my Canon has a really narrow angle, and doesn’t zoom, so it crops things in pretty tight (which is why you only see tight shots of the messy room above, instead of the room as whole). The lens on my Olympus has a wider angle, so I used it so that you could have a better feel for the room as a whole. ;o) Crummy pictures like these will have to do until I have money saved up to buy another lens for my camera that better suits this type of photography. :o)

I tell you, it’s amazing. I can breathe again. Even in the dark, a clean room feels incredible. :o)

I spent most of today finishing up Logan’s room. I had it all clean a week or so ago, but then had the bright idea to drag out all of his clothes, so I could get out his 9 month clothes, and put away his 6 month stuff (yep, he’s still a tiny little peanut!). Well, in the middle of me doing this, he got tired and needed a nap, and it’s been a mess all over again ever since. Until today. Today I got his room completely clean, so now, my WHOLE upstairs is clean! Which is amazing. :o) Anyways, here are a few shots of Logan’s room. Again, with the Olympus and in much worse lighting than the pictures of my room. Don’t judge me by these terrible pictures. Haha. ;o) My husband says I’m too picky when it comes to my photography!

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!!! :o)

Trying to win a pair of Agoo leg warmers :o)

A blog called "Just Add Cloth" is doing a giveaway for a pair of baby leg warmers here.

I get an extra two entries for posting on my blog about it. ;o)

Baby leg warmers are SO cute (although I don't know that the Daddy would agree so much, haha) and are GREAT to use with cloth diapers, which is what I'm about to start using since we're getting a washer and dryer installed in our condo this week. We've been working on this project for about a month now, and I am SOOO excited to have my own washer and dryer! No more buying diapers, or withdrawing at least $50 a month in quarters to pay for laundry. Yes, our electric bill will go up a little, but even with that, we will still be saving money every month! This is very exciting since we've been working our tushies off to pay down some debt (we almost have a pretty good sized loan paid off, yay!!!) and so now we will be able to throw a little more each month towards that endeavor. AND I can do laundry any time I want, and not have to wait for someone else to come get their stuff out of the washer/dryer. It's gonna be SO great. :o)

Anyways, I guess I'll let you know if I win the leg warmers! :o) Check them out here, they've got some cute stuff! :o)

Twice the Blessings

Most of the people who read here already know this but… we found out about 9 weeks ago that we are expecting Baby #2. :o)

(I’ll share more pictures from this photo shoot later!)

I will be 14 weeks this coming Saturday, and couldn’t be more excited. The nausea and fatigue of the first trimester (which is not easy to deal with when you have a needy one-year-old. But, I survived!) is slowly ebbing away. I still get tired easily, but the nausea isn’t as bad. I only get nauseas if I haven’t eaten, or if there’s not enough light in the house in the evenings. (weird!) Daylight savings has helped a TON with that! I can’t really tell if the nausea has been worse or not this go-round. It first hit around 6 weeks, and that first week was definitely the toughest. I could not function in the evenings (which is when I would start feeling sick, just like with Logan! Whoever came up with this “morning” sickness stuff is crazy!) and it would feel like the whole world was coming down around me. Everything felt like a MUCH bigger deal than it was, and I had a hard time coping with life at night. But then… I’d wake up feeling normal for the most part, and life was good again. Haha until that evening. ;o) But that only lasted for the first week, then it let up a little. I’m hoping within the next week or so, the nausea will be completely gone. But the good thing is, I haven’t thrown up at all this time! I have come REALLY close several times, but I managed to fight the gag reflex hard enough to win. ;o) By about 11 weeks with Logan, I had thrown up about 15 times. SO thankful that didn’t happen this time!

Anyways, we went to our first appointment about 3 weeks ago, and we got an ultrasound! They burned a copy of the ultrasound onto a DVD for us, so I have a little video to share with you! It’s about 5 minutes long (it was 7, I reduced it down!) and I put some words in there, to help clarify what’s going on for those who haven’t seen a ton of ultrasounds. ;o) It gets good towards the end, so watch the whole thing!

I’m so excited to have another baby. Some days, (haha, like when Logan is being especially needy, or won’t go down for a nap) I get kinda scared about having two. But then the good moments come back around, as they always do, and I know that things will be fine. That they will be good. That they will be GREAT. How could they not with twice the amount of cheeks to kiss, toes to tickle, and bellies to blow raspberries on? :o) I’m excited to become a mommy of 2. Twice the work, but more importantly… twice the blessings! It’s going to be a wild ride, and I can’t wait!

Moments To Cherish

Yesterday was my baby boy’s first birthday. It’s tempting to take on the traditional attitude of mothers whose babies are growing up, and talk about how I needed a box of tissues to get me through the day. But in all honesty… I wasn’t sad. I knew this day was coming from the day he was born, obviously. And so, instead of desperately grasping at every passing second over the course of this last year, trying to hold time in my hands, I enjoyed every moment. I took the time to stop and cuddle my boy, to lay kisses on him so thick that it would take a bulldozer to find him again.

I cherished those moments.

And you know what? While on one hand it truly is hard to believe that a full year has gone by,  it hasn’t felt that fast. It feels like it’s gone at just the speed that it should have. I didn’t try to rush through the hard phases that he’s gone through so far. I just took each day for what it was, knowing that at some point in time, I was going to miss whatever was going on at that particular moment. Now, that’s not to say that I’ve been the perfect mother, and have never gotten completely, out-of-my-mind-frustrated with my kiddo, because I certainly have! But really, he has been such a good baby. The super frustrating moments haven’t been all that often.

I haven’t spent this past year willing time to stand still. No, I’ve spent it enjoying being a mother to it’s fullest, knowing that time would indeed keep moving on. I was standing in the card aisle the other day, trying to pick out my baby’s first birthday card, lost in thought as to what I was going to write in it, and suddenly the tears were there, threatening to spill over. As I blinked them quickly away, I realized that they were not tears of sadness over my baby getting older, and moving into a phase where he’s really not much of a baby anymore. They were tears of joy. Joy over this extraordinary gift I have been given. Motherhood has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I love it more than almost anything in this world.

It’s not sunshine and roses every day. In fact there are more hard days than easy ones. Being a mother is difficult and challenging. But then again, most character-building things in this life are just that. They’re hard. And being a mother? Yeah, it’s a character-building experience for sure. But the rewards far outweigh the challenges. The good days make up for the ten bad ones you had before it.

And as for the Birthday Boy himself? Well, he spent most of yesterday doing what he does best…

He had grilled cheese dipped in tomato soup for the first time, and loved it!

                      

 

That and resisting a nap for 3 hours, which made him extremely cranky. I told you it wasn’t always a walk in the park. ;o)

My Christmas Tree

I ordered a new camera a couple of weeks ago, and I finally got the final pieces today (memory cards) to be able to use it. I’m so excited about my new camera. It’s a Canon Rebel T2i, and it’s AMAZING. I played with it a bit tonight, and took a few pictures of my Christmas tree. :o)

 

 

A few of my favorite ornaments:

 

From our first year of marriage.

now we have a “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament! :o) Time flies, things change in the blink of an eye. And God blesses when we don’t deserve it. The current state of my life is owed all to Him. He gets all the Glory.

Rising Early

I set about to write this post at eight o’clock in the morning. A time when, about two months ago, I would have most certainly still been in bed. For another two hours, I’m afraid.

You see, I’m not a morning person. At all. I hate mornings with a passion. I am and always have been a night owl. I wish I could just stay up all night, and sleep half the day away. But God didn’t create the world like that. He created Night and Day, and our bodies naturally fall into a rhythm where we sleep when it’s dark, and we are awake when it’s light. Which is why, even when I used to stay up all night, and sleep half the day away  and still get the same amount of sleep that I would have had I gone to bed earlier,  I was dead tired. When we fight the natural order of things, and try to change our internal clocks, it doesn’t really work out so smoothly.

Not only was I dead tired, but I felt like I was getting nothing done in my home. By the time I woke up, I only had two hours until Mike would be home for lunch. Two hours isn’t very long. It was just long enough for me to really get going for the day, and when my husband would walk in the door on his lunch break, I had gotten absolutely nothing accomplished. I was starting to feel really guilty, and it was all starting to take a huge toll on me. I was getting really stressed out, and feeling very overwhelmed. I don’t have a lot of things that I have to do. In reality, my life isn’t that busy. But I felt like I was drowning. I could not keep up.

So, I started to try to wake up earlier. Yeah, it just didn’t work. I couldn’t make myself get out of bed. It was ridiculous, and I was getting more frustrated by the day. Frustrated with myself, my laziness, my procrastinator tendencies. Things that I hate about myself, but that are so deeply rooted within me (because I have let them become so) that it’s a slow and painful process to change.

I was at a loss as to what to do, how to make myself get up in the mornings when I came across this post. I had recently started reading this blog, Passionate Homemaking and was loving it. The ladies who write it truly have a heart to serve God and to be the best wives and mothers that they can possibly be. They truly are Passionate about what they do, and it’s inspiring. 

So this post, it wasn’t anything spectacular in itself about getting up early. In fact it was about something entirely different. Except one little link, where the author referenced “re-committing to rising early”. I thought, “What is she talking about?". So I clicked over, and it lead me to this post. And this post is the one that began shaping my new attitude about getting up early in the mornings. It wasn’t any type of earth-shattering news that I had never heard before. It wasn’t some magic key that suddenly turned me into an Early Bird. No, it was simply the hand of the Lord, placing in my path a little bit of inspiration. Something that made sense, that convicted me, and gave me the motivation to start trying harder.

Not very far into this second post, there was a link to yet another post, on a different blog. It was for a free, short e-book called, Maximize Your Mornings. So of course I signed up to receive the book in my email, and began reading it as well. It was a good read that again, gave the the inspiration and motivation that I had been looking for to change the way I spent my mornings.

Now, of course all of this wonderful information had to come along just a few days before we left for Texas. But I had a ton of things that I needed to get done that week, so I decided to go ahead and start implementing the principles I had learned. I began waking up 10-15 minutes earlier each day. By the time we left, I was getting up at 8:00, which was a huge improvement from my recent 10:00 wake-up time (I know, I know. that was SO bad!!!). And you know what? They’re right. The mornings really are our most productive time of the day. I get SO much more accomplished in a day when I wake up early.

The early rising actually continued on when we got to Texas. We stayed with Chris and Lauren, and their kids automatically get up a little bit before 8:00 every day. So, even though it was only 5:00 am in my brain, Logan and I were usually up by 8:00 every morning. We were in Texas for 4 weeks, and my Commitment to Rising Early got pushed to the back of my mind.

We’ve been home for two weeks now, and… I’m working on it. I had a few days this week where I didn’t get up until 8:30, and I was annoyed and discouraged with myself. Yesterday I got up at 7:35 though, and today I was up by 7:40. Even though that wasn’t entirely my choice. I was dead tired from not being able to fall asleep at a decent hour last night, and I did not want to wake up this morning. But as I lay awake last night, trying to will my mind to be quiet so my body could drift off into sleep, I prayed. I asked the Lord to please help me continue to rise early. I asked him to help me wake up this morning and get my day going. Well, he answered my prayer in the form of a sweet little 9 month old baby boy who did not want to go back to sleep after I fed him at 7:15. I put him back in bed (where he made me think he was going back to sleep), shut the door, and crawled back under my covers, with the intention of sleeping later than I had planned. No sooner had I gotten all warm and snuggly did I hear his sweet little voice on the monitor. Just talking away. I dozed in and out for the next 25 minutes, but I knew he would grow tired of talking to himself and start fussing. So when he did, I grudgingly drug myself out of bed to go get him. You see, this was entirely the Lord answering my prayer from last night, because Logan does not normally wake up this early. If he does, I feed him and he goes back to sleep until 8:30. He’s been pretty consistent about that lately. I had to smile as I walked to his room though, as I knew my prayers were being answered. Haha, be careful what you pray for, right? It was good though. I needed it. And He knew that.

My goal for right now is to get to where I’m consistently waking up at 7:00. I’d like to be waking up early enough to make my husband breakfast every morning, instead of us eating cereal all the time. We need to start having healthier breakfasts.

Right now my mornings look like this:

• Wake up
• Go downstairs and exercise for at least 30 minutes on the Wii Fit (hehe, today I’m blogging instead of exercising!)
• Eat Breakfast
• Read one chapter in the New Testament, and spend time in prayer
• Shower
• Get started on Daily Chores

As I mentioned above, I would like to start adding a real breakfast to that list. And I’ve been thinking about renewing my gym membership lately. But that means that I’ll have to wake up even earlier, so I can go before Mike goes to work, and while Logan is still sleeping. I’m still contemplating that one.

I’m proud of myself for this slow, and gradual change I’m making in my life. But I can only attribute it to the Lord. He’s the One who is helping me do this. Making me into a better wife, a better mother, a better servant for him. And I’m thankful.