Monday, April 13,2020, thirteen years ago today, I began the laboring process that would ultimately bring us our sweet Madeson three days later.  It did not happen quickly or smoothly, as with all aspects of that pregnancy but then again her life has not been the perfect experience that all of us wish for our children.  She has had many challenges and becomes stronger daily because of that, just as we did with all we went through over a decade ago.  It felt fitting to launch a blog that shares the same laboring process for so many years I do not even want to admit, on the same day our life began to forever change thirteen years ago.

     Originally I had hoped to launch it on February 2, which is the day we lost our first child, McKenna, in utero during that fateful pregnancy but God had a different plan and the Super Bowl fell on that day so we were busy getting ready to celebrate our 1^st Annual Super Bowl party in our new amazing space!  I pushed it off until February 20 because 2-20-2020 seemed like a great date to launch but then February 3 happened; Landon and I got in a very terrifying road incident, thankfully we are completely fine but that shook our life up for several weeks.  Then it has pretty much been a whirlwind of figuring this new life out so I quickly put off launching this blog because in a world of no control, this was the one thing I could control. 

     Early Saturday morning I started a new/redo of a bible study of Jeremiah.  The opening day was all about not putting off things that we are called to do-out of fear, lack of confidence, or any of the multitude of other reasons that I come up with daily to procrastinate that which I know I am supposed to be doing-writing.  I had all the intentions in the world, I was going to write and get this going, then Matt came downstairs and said “It’s Saturday, don’t you want to come back to bed?”  I wrestled with staying up in the cold kitchen and writing or climbing back into my warm, comfy bed and going back to sleep for a few minutes.  It is 1:30pm so I guess you all know what I chose.  I cannot resist sleep and my bed, I have made it too comfortable, that is the problem…

     I am still not entirely clear on the goal of this blog. The one hope is to share some thoughts, ideas, stories, inspirations and connect with all of our friends and family without being on social media.  We are not experts on any subject but we have made a lot of mistakes in our life and paid a lot of “dumb tax” so we will share some of the learnings in order to maybe save others from paying that same tax. The big take away for today is, do not procrastinate something that you know without a doubt you are called/supposed to be doing. “Get up and prepare for action. Go out and tell them everything I tell you to say. Do not be afraid of them, or I will make you look foolish in front of them.” Jeremiah 1:17 NLT. I clearly do not want to look foolish so I am getting moving and I hope you will too. As a people pleaser through and through my goals in life are to never upset anyone on purpose and to follow the rules, this seems pretty clear cut, do it or look foolish, so here we go….

There will be some fashion ideas because one day we will all be back to leaving our homes and engaging in activities with other humans outside of our genetic line. If we can have some cute outfit ideas to put together now, that might help pass the time.  I love cooking, not baking so much but drastic times like these can change a person so we will share some fun food ideas we enjoy.  You probably will not find any teaching ideas, that is an area I am only doing because by state law as the legal guardian I am required to take an active role in educating my children. I may have read that directly from a district website…We can share some funny stories of our experiences of attempting to teach though.  Because of my absolute LOVE of organizing and the extra time we now have, I will include some ideas on that topic, if organizing is your worst nightmare, feel free to skip those posts.  Days we are feeling particularly brave we will even share some marriage thoughts and ideas from our days in marriage ministry. Mostly that will be Matt’s insight written by me to make it sound a little less intense, we can only handle being told we all suck at something in marriage so many times before we get a little defensive! Of course there will be a sprinkling of home design ideas, that design degree can’t just go to waste during this season of life that I am not currently working in that field.

Can’t wait to share life with you and hear your thoughts.