part 2

though it has seemed liked a hard year it has only served to remind me once again that we are but a breath of air created from the dust of the earth. life is only what we choose to make of it. we can crap it away on useless things or we can use every second of breath that we have to praise God for that very second of breath. In the book of Job after Job faced his difficult circumstances. he sought the Lord and when God did finally speak to Job all he said was this "who are you to question my ways" Job's perspective was to expect good and bad from God, and i am sure mine should be that of the same. as much i have wanted to be angry or mad at God for all these things i simply am not able because i have experienced the fullness of his love. and everyday he reminds me that no matter where i go, what bad choice i have made, that Christ's death on the cross was enough, and that he has suffered with me as well.

even still i have been in the midst of wrestling with all the why's & hows? and i find myself in a storm of emotions, yet my heart is still calm and relaxed waiting for my savior wondering what is next............

to be cont'd

when life Sucks

this is CHRIS BLOGGIN
any way as most of you know it has been one hell of a year for Jenny and i, from finding out mom has cancer,to joshua getting MRSA,to losing mom, and then losing dad, but what has been imprinted on my mind so much is that none this started inti ll we decided to move to SC to be part of a church plant. most logic,and new agers would say bad carma,or that maybe we should have stayed and those thing wouldn't happened. that is B.S it was a likely product of us being faithful to Gods call on our life. am i blaming God no! i am just stating the facts. part of the reason for leaving was that jenny and i had put a lot of time, prayer and thought into this process. whispered into my heart mths previous to all this was a passage of scripture that states if a man loves his mother & father house or land more than me
(me being Jesus) than he is not worth of me. SO WE WENT :)since then God has humble more than i could imagine. part of being a follower of Christ is knowing that often persecution and heartache as well strife will come....to be cont..more to follow at later date

"Hut" eye mommy

Well Joshua has been, shall we say, clumsy to say the least these days. Right before leaving from KY back to SC he tripped up the stairs banged his chin on his cars and bit his tongue on both sides. After nursing it with some fun blue ice from Nanny's house all was well. The very next night, however, back in SC he was running through the kitchen, wiped out and hit his eye on a plastic storage container. No big deal you say? Well let's just say that with everything else that has gone on and my hormonal, emotional roller coaster when I got Joshua up the next morning and he tried to look up at me with his one swollen eye and said "hut" eye mommy, I couldn't keep the river from flowing. I took a picture to prove the need for sympathy and of course just a couple days later his eye has perfectly healed and all is well.

Christmas at Nanny's and the Mattingly's

Christmas was marked with many ups and downs and bittersweet memories this year. Due to pregnancy Chris and I were not going to be able to go to KY to celebrate Christmas with family so we had planned a couple of new "traditions" and had dreamed up a couple of ways to incorporate Christ's birth in our holiday. Unfortunately, on December 18th we received a call that Chris's dad had died and our plans went out the window. We drove to KY anyway and got to spend Christmas with family afterall but with the looming reality that both of Chris's parents have died in the same year just a few months from one another. So to say the least Christmas was filled with a number of ups and downs this year and it was difficult to focus on the reason that we celebrate Christmas in the first place. I feel guilty for not doing more to focus Christmas for Joshua's sake but hopefully we will be able to do more of that next year.

Anyway, here are a few photos

Spaghetti "Noodnles"

I think every mom on the planet has a picture of their child(ren) making a mess with spaghetti...I am no exception!

Joshua's birthday

Yesterday was Joshua's 2nd birthday if you can believe it--we can't. We took him to the park and invited some of his friends (because it was 85 degrees here yesterday). We were all sweating but we ate some funfetti birthday "pantake" as Joshua calls it and played on the slide and swings. It was a lot of fun. Then Joshua sang "Happy Birthday to me" literally on the way home from the park. ..

Picking out the perfect tree

This is the first year without our normal Christmas traditions so we decided to come up with a few of our own--one of which is getting a real tree. Chris didn't want to just go to Wal-mart and pick one up though (he'd rather hop someone's fence and sneak one out of the woods) so we compromised and went to a Christmas tree farm right down the road from our house. It might seem silly but we had a lot of fun. It was a little strange though because it was pretty warm and very sunny....we are having a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit around here. Here are some pictures.