Anna Joy's 1st birthday party, a week before her 2nd

In an effort to catch up, I am going to do my best to highlight some of the big moments I missed starting with Anna Joy's 1st birthday party last January.

Anna Joy was, and still is, the sweetest little girl. So when it came time to plan her first birthday party, I kept coming back to "the sweetest year".  Because it was.  2013 was a great year for our family for many reasons and that sweet baby started it off right being born 8 days into the year.

So we celebrated "The Sweetest Year" at our house with our family and sweet friend, Olivia, who graciously offered to photograph the party.  It was very, very sweet. Just as planned.

Sweetness, sweetness.  I am teary-eyed just thinking about it already being time to plan her 2nd birthday party, which will be this Saturday.

Starbucks, rain, a drive to Alabama and grace

Trey is out of town for Breakthru so the kids and I have been doing our very best to stay busy around the house. Yesterday we played with our neighbors outside and never took off our pjs. It was a good day!

But today tested my patience. It has been rainy for 24 hours and we are all going a little stir crazy.  Anna Joy is cutting some teeth, which made nap time nonexistent. Around 2:30 this afternoon after fighting naps for over an hour, I remembered my Starbucks gift card in my wallet and loaded the kids up for a much need caffeine break. As I was turning to go into our neighborhood on our way home, I looked back to see both kids had passed smooth out. So I kept driving. I hopped on the HWY and almost drive to Alabama. Anything to get the kids to sleep, right? 

January will be tough since Trey will be taking a J-term class that will require him to be gone every weekend during the month except for the first, which will be full of celebrating Anna Joy's 2nd birthday. 

It's a crazy busy season in our lives, and seems to only get busier, but I'm so thankful for where we are. 

It's still raining, but I'm praying for sun. Tomorrow is a new day with new parenting graces and hopefully more laughs (and naps) than today.

Grace upon grace upon grace. 

Jones has started taking pictures with my phone and asked to take a picture of me and Anna Joy tonight.  It speaks volumes.  You can see the exhaustion in both of us.  I kinda love it.  Motherhood is real, y'all. 

backtracking a little, and thoughts on doing.

http://skaggsfamily.blogspot.com/2010/12/so-i-wont-forget.html

It is likely because I have spent the better part of today organizing my pictures, but for whatever reason, I am feeling nostalgic.  I am reading some of my old posts tonight and re-read one of my favorites.

Hard to believe January 1, 2015 will mark 4 years since my Nana passed away.  I wrote this blog post around Christmas 2010, when she was still in the hospital.  I think things really started to stir in my heart around this time.  And those feelings and thoughts have only gotten louder, stronger, and sometimes more annoying than before.

A realization that I had a few years ago - Jesus did not come to this earth and live among sinners to make us comfortable, or that we could be "blessed" by our standards.  Jesus, I believe, sometimes calls us to be crazy uncomfortable.  When we are at our least, we need Him the most. When we say YES to something that He calls us to do, even when we have been screaming NO for years, we are forced to rely on Him, not our own circumstances or knowledge.  I have come to the conclusion that nothing is comfortable about truly following Him. Would you agree? When I am comfortable in my Christianity, I discover that I am following what I want and there is actually little to no growth or closeness to Christ whatsoever.  Just going through the motions kind of Christianity.

It's comfortable putting on pretty clothes and going to our pretty church to worship with other Christians.  It's comfortable smiling and being kind and saying a blessing before our meals.  It's comfortable for me to say I will pray for the sick, the hungry, the homeless, the fatherless, then go back to my safe, comfortable home with my safe, healthy family and eat a good meal and forget that promise I made hours earlier.  It's comfortable for me to say "I am blessed because of all I have around me".  And it is comfortable to want more, to give less, and to thank God for the easy life He has given me.

It's easy for me to get caught up in the things that the world tells me are important. I want to update our bathrooms. There are people in this world with no clean water in which to drink. I want new bedding. There are parents and their babies right this minute sleeping under bridges. My children are procrastinating bedtime again. There are babies all over without a mother to read to them. Life was so much simpler before I started thinking like this.  

I get caught up in things of this world.  Things that will fade - things that do not matter.  In 2015 I hope to get even more uncomfortable in my Christianity.  Things that keep me up at night and keep me in tears and in prayer - I hope I get out of my comfortable familiar circumstances and do something about it.  I can't un-know what I know, or un-see what I have seen. And I can't get to Heaven at the end of my life and face God and just say " I cared.  I didn't do anything because it was too uncomfortable and I didn't really have the time or money, but I cared."

I have a funny feeling that God calls us to care AND do.  And the doing is making me very uncomfortable.

Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas 2014

What a fantastic, fun-filled, family-filled holiday season.  From Thanksgiving to Christmas, it was an all-around  great time.  I am completely full in every sense of the word, and I am happily exhausted.

Here are some of my favorite pictures taken on my camera from Halloween to Christmas.

Here's to being caught up on pictures from my real camera and more blogging in 2015!

Into the candy at FUMC fall festival

Pumpkin Patch pictures

How tall this fall?

Minnie reading all about Minnie

Ready to Trick-or-treat!

The oldest 4...WILD!

All the cousins. (Poor Mack!)

Christmas Eve service

Santa came! 

"I love y'all, but seriously, y'all are exhausting. I am leaving tomorrow." - Uncle Adam

Daddy's girl

It's been a day. Or 200.

Well, hello, there!

I think about sitting down to blog all of the time.  I write blog posts in my head every day,  (there's probably medication for that),  but I never make the time to sit and write.

A couple of reasons why this is true: a 4 year old, a 2 year old, a full-time job, a husband with a full-time job and who is also in seminary full-time, just to name the big ones.  Basically I have to choose blog or sleep.  Lucky for you, I am choosing to ignore the 5 (or 7) loads of clean clothes that are pilled up in the living room. I just won't walk in there.  If I don't look at them. then they won't taunt me to fold them.   They will just leave me alone.

Maybe tomorrow will be the day my maid is hired.

Anyway, a lot has been going on. We will get to those things, but first, let's start with the cute little messes that keep me on my toes.

Anna Joy will be two in January.  I don't know how this happened, but somehow I am in the middle of planning this sweet, smiley, girly little girl's party.

Anna Joy loves a lot of things; Jones, her daddy, blocks, bows, books, purses.  But nothing is more loved than that which is on the top of her all-time loved things: Minnie Mouse and her pajamas.  She is lady of leisure.  Do not come between her and her sleep, or food for that matter.  Girl after my own heart.

So obviously we are having a Minnie Mouse pajama party for her birthday.  I see no way around not buying that 4 foot minnie balloon we pass in Wal-Mart and making pancakes in the shape of that mouse to celebrate her two years.

Her vocabulary has exploded in the past month and she blows my mind with all that she can say. Sponges, people.

She is sweet as they come and terribly slow to warm up to people.  She is my shy, cautious child. The calm to my hurricane Jones, if you will.

Jones is 4 and a half and asks almost weekly how many days until he turns 5.  There is no greater goal in his life than to be 5.

He started school in August and, be still my heart, it is the greatest thing.  He goes to the Catholic school here and it is, by far, the best place for him.  Structure and fun and warm and inviting. Help me the day we move away and Annunciation is left in my past.

There are wild children. There are those children who are busy, hyper, spirited, and loud. Then there is Jones.  He will BLOW YOUR MIND.

Bless his soul. He just loves life.  He is so sweet, so very extraordinarily smart, and so hilarious. And everything he does is big. BIG. Which is equal parts enduring and exhausting. Mainly I am just tired.

But school has been wonderful.

Also? I work there.  Thanks, God, for hooking that up.  I get to be there everyday with him, spying on him on the playground, bugging his teachers, and helping him that day he had a potty accident.  For this, I am as thankful as they come.  Couldn't have orchestrated it any better if I tried.  I eat lunch with him whenever I want, for goodness sakes, and I get to worship with him every Thursday in school Mass. Yep, I have a crush on his school.

This Methodist minister's wife has a crush on our Catholic School.  It goes up until 8th grade, but I imagine I will be lobbying that they expand to continue through college and that the Methodist conference never moves us outside of a 30 mile radius of Columbus.  

And in two years when Anna Joy can go? Just stop.  Those school uniforms are going to do me in.  I die of cuteness.

Love our town, love our friends, love our house, love our church.  There's a lot of love, friends.
I am excited to get back to blogging.  It is therapeutic.  And I have lots to say. There has been a lot going on in my heart and in my mind and in my life.  Things that keep me up at night and bring me to my knees in tears.  I can't wait to share those things with all 5 of you!

In the meantime, cute kids....

A post about my first

It's no secret- Jones is a handfull. Fromthe moment he wakes up until he goes to bed, he operates at 110%. 

I focus a lot on the "challenge" that he is. Because, well, he is. His teachers know it. I know it. Trey knows it. Our family knows it. He requires a lot. There is no downtime with him. No calm, just storm. 

But he's smart. So smart. And sweet. And he's mine. And I'm feeling emotional that he will be four in just a couple of weeks.  

For whatever reason God thinks that, with His help, I am equipped to be his mother. I doubt myself almost daily, but somehow I'm always brought back to this fact - he is a gift. A precious, priceless gift. I know this to be true all the time, but if I'm honest, I forget sometimes.  He's a handful. Yes! But, everyday he's getting older and everyday is a day closer that he will not want me to read him just one more book and he will stop saying "lay by me for just a minute" as a stalling tactic before bed. He will have friends that he will want to be with more than me. He will go to school. He will need me less and less. A girl will break his heart, and he will break a heart. He keeps growing and growing and one day I'm afraid I'll look back and regret the times I cried out of frustration with him or wished he could just be still for two seconds and not hit, yell, or run everywhere for just a day. 

I'm scared he's growing up right before me while I'm wishing away his childhood. 

So I'm going to try to stop getting angry and easily frustrated and feeling defeated at the end of everyday. He's a challenge, but he's a joy. And I want to choose to focus more on the joy. 

So I won't forget some of those funny and simple joys: 

1) I was in the laundry room recently and he walked up to me and asked why I didn't have a tinkler. (note to self- close my bathroom door) 

I responded that God made boys and girls differently, thinking that would satisfy him. He looked at me like I was an idiot then said "so Anna Joy's fell off too?". 

2) tonight I was laying in bed with him and he looked at me, touched my face and said "you're eyes are beautiful". 

3) he walked up to Anna Joy, gave her a hug, and said "I love her so much. She's my best friend ever." 

4) even if it's rainy and cold, he says almost everyday: "it's a beautiful day, isn't it?" Gotta love the optimism.