God is so good

I woke up this morning to the growing baby in my belly doing her morning gymnastics routine and the toddler in the next room singing at the top of his lungs. My sweet husband happened to be home (which is usually not the case by the time I wake up) so I was surrounded by the voices and touch of the people I get to call my family. Such sweet sounds and feelings to wake up to. Such a sweet reminder of the blessings I have. 

"God is so good". I hear my little 2-year-old's voice singing it so often. But it is so true isn't it? He knew that on this morning, especially, I needed a cheerful little boy's singing and a growing, healthy girl's kicks and the strength of my husband still there beside me. 

One year ago today we heard the heartbreaking news that our tiny baby had gone on to meet Jesus. Although it is an emotional day for us and quite a few tears have been shed, the wiggling in my belly is a constant reminder that God is Faithful. 

Our faith was not always big enough and all too often we were confused and afraid. But HE was faithful. He knew the lessons we needed to learn and the areas that needed strengthening. It was not the path we would have chosen for ourselves but our Father knows what we need. 

I think we can look back at this year as one of the most intense growing seasons in both of our spiritual lives. And for that we are thankful. 

"...and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith" - Hebrews 12:1-2

Another song I sing with my toddler (yes, these are the songs stuck in my head all day) comes straight from Proverbs 3:5-6 and has been playing in my head today. 

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding."

Can I trust Him with my whole heart? My own understanding was not enough to get me through this year. I didn't understand or know what was going on. But I am learning to trust. To trust Him with my whole heart. Even the parts of my heart that are hurting from the events of this year. And the parts of my heart that are overflowing with gratitude for the two little blessings that I do have. 

The refining fire is not a pain-free experience. But I pray that we would long to keep on being refined into the image of our Savior Jesus Christ. 

Remembering 2013

I believe I started a new family tradition this year. Well, technically I started it last year but this year I really stepped up my game and I am so so happy with the results! And by "the results" I mean this little package that showed up on our doorstep a few days ago and made me jump up and down in our living room (maybe). 

Yep, that's right! A photo book. And it. is. awesome! It contains nearly every picture from the entire year of 2013. I mean not including the 15 pictures that Elias took as he walked down the hallway and things like that. Obviously some editing went into this book but at nearly 100 pages with an average of about 6 pictures per page…well you get the idea. Lots of pictures!!

I used My Publisher this year which I'd never used before (I've always been a pretty loyal Shutterfly customer) and I have to say I am really impressed with the quality of this book. You do pay a bit more but to me paying for a good quality book once a year that can hold all of your pictures from the year is worth it.

I started it with a highlights page just outlining the major events that took place during the year. (Sorry these are iPhone pictures of pictures so the quality isn't great but in person it looks awesome!)

And then got to include page after page of pictures from our whole year! Like this one from Elias' first birthday party.

And this one from our ski trip last March.

And this one from our trip to Carlsbad.

I also included all of the random pictures of our day to day life: Elias' cuteness, date nights, things we did with friends and family.

For the cover I just used our favorite family picture from last year. Which is even more special because it includes the new bean who we found out about during 2013! Even though she won't be here till summer 2014, I thought it was fitting for this picture to be the cover.

The other great thing about this book is how thin it is. Over 600 pictures stored in such a thin album is a huge space-saver.

We are beginning to have quite the collection of photo books!. That is the 2013 album there on the end with the teal spine. That is a regular size traditional photo album next to it just to get an idea of width. These things are tiny!

I honestly couldn't be happier with how this book turned out! I did an album last year of 2012 and it was good but because I went with a much smaller, cheaper, Shutterfly book that was more "scrapbook-y" it only included maybe 75 pictures from the whole year. This year's book might have 10 times that! And even though it feels like an investment when you finally click "place order" on one of these (this one came to about $60) I keep trying to remind my hubby myself of how much it would cost to print that many pictures and buy albums for all of them. I would think at least that much if not more. Of course now I'm really tempted to go back and make albums just like this one from 2011 and 2012. Wouldn't it be so fun to have them all lined up in a row?! We'll see what my hubby (and the budget) say about that…

So for now I am just admiring this one like crazy! And if you come to my house I will probably show it to you…just be forewarned ;) 

And I might already be planning the book for 2014...

House Tour Before and After: The guest room

Haven't updated the blog with one of these in a while but our snow day activities made me realize how far this room has come! So before I share nursery progress in there I thought I should do the good ol' before and after. 

This room is at the end of the hallway past Elias' room and the laundry nook. It is almost identical to E's room (just a couple feet bigger). It was actually the only room in the house that we left the carpet in when we moved in so this is the room that we lived out of for the first few months we lived in the house. On a mattress. On the floor. Oh yeah…forgot about those days...

Here it is in all it's blue metallic-y glory…

And this is the shot looking down the hallway.

Pretty right? Well during the major remodel we did all the basic stuff: patched holes, painted walls, trim, and window seat, replaced the outlet covers and doors, replaced the carpet, etc. We chose to paint it the same neutral beige color that we painted all the other main living spaces and hallways of the house. The only rooms we actually painted different colors were the master, E's room and the bathrooms. This was partly for resale purposes and partly because my newlywed, pregnant, crazy brain couldn't handle that many decisions ;) So then it looked like this.

Then we got some hand-me-down furniture and new bedding and I put (very little) effort into making it look like an actual guest room. This room has had lots of various stages and arrangements and I wish I had taken pictures of all of them just to laugh. But basically it has looked like some version of this. 

Pretty recently I moved the bed over and hung that little birdcage so the view down the hall has been looking like this (yes most of the time there is a mess included). 

I also hung a little bit of stuff on the wall as you can see in this pic. All of that will get reused in the nursery. It's just felt like this room has never really had a defined layout or purpose except when we actually have guests in there. It's hard to keep clean because we don't have good systems in place for the stuff that goes in there. And even though I had made attempts to "decorate", this room just never really came together very well. Hopefully, all that will change soon!

This room also functions as our extra-stuff-that's-waiting-for-a-real-home room so lots of the time the other half of the room looks like this. Keepin' it real guys…

But aren't those closet doors pretty?! I love love love the doors that we chose to replace all the interior doors in the house. They were a good choice!

Well, that's where I'll leave it for now. The snow days have been filled with trying to clean out this room to turn it into a nursery so I can't wait to update on that! Happy snow days!