12.31.2011

What made 2011 so special?

welcoming our 2nd son
becoming a family of 4

celebrating Diddy's 50th birthday
Griffin turning 2
taking the boys to the beach
being in Jacob and Stacey's wedding
buying a minivan

 Griffin became a fisherman
4th of July at White Lake
 seeing all my best college friends!

moving to Durham

 throwing Mimi and Potts a 50th anniversary party

 10 year high school reunion

our 5th anniversary in Pigeon Forge

 dressing up these two cuties for Halloween
 Thanksgiving at the Wilderness Lodge
 watching my best friends become Moms too!

church league softball with our friends

 being in Tennessee for Christmas
 watching the boys get spoiled by their grandparents



having these two precious boys in our life!!!

Thank you Jesus for blessing us so much this year!!

12.27.2011

Merry Christmas to US!

 Instead of buying each other just to say we did and not even remember what it was by this time next year... JR and I decided to have a Christmas getaway as our present to each other! We yearn for time alone together so with grandparents always willing to have some extra time with the boys we took advantage! We found a great deal on priceline.com and headed to Pigeon Forge! We didnt have a "schedule" which was awesome! The first day we went and saw a movie and then shopped around the outlets. We both needed new watches and found a GREAT deal at Fossil! We ended the day walking around Gatlinburg and using the money a church member blessed us with for dinner!

Our 2nd day we were blessed with FREE tickets to Dollywood!!! We hadnt been since high school and neither of us had ever been for Christmas. It was beautiful with lights on every building and they also had some wonderful Christmas shows too! It was so awesome to just walk around, holding hands and enjoying adult conversation ALL day :)

SO thankful for a husband who makes it a priority to spend time with his bride!!! It was the PERFECT gift!!

12.15.2011

Managing 3 blogs!

Trying to manage 3 blogs has been a bit crazy! So although this one has been neglected lately, I have done a pretty good job at keeping our boys' updated. In case you didnt know they had their own, here they are so you can check them out!

www.griffinjonah.blogspot.com
www.carterisham.blogspot.com

Christmas pictures



I am so blessed to be the Mommy of these two handsome boys!!

12.12.2011

Prayer Requests

There seems to be an outpouring of prayers needed and I am asking that you please join me in praying for these families:


-Dr. McKinion, who was one of JR's closest professors in seminary, just learned that his 10 year old son, Harrison has leukemia. You can read his candid story about it here. Please pray for Harrison as he has beginning his treatments for cancer this week. (his picture is above)
-Another friend that has been affected by leukemia who I have asked you to pray for in the past, Jonathan and Lauren Chandlar's little 2 year old, Rebekah. She has a praise report as she will soon enter her next phase of treatments, the Maintenance phase, which will last for 2 years. You can read her update here.
-The Harrisons who lost their little girl Evie just came to the year mark of her death last Friday. I cant even begin to fathom the grieving process and I know that this anniversary has brought about all new sadness. Please continue to pray for them, Evie's precious twin sister Ramsey, and the baby their family is expecting in April. Alicia is incredibly strong and shows her unwavering faith on her blog.

12.02.2011

Refreshing..

I was encouraged, challenged, convicted and refreshed this morning and wanted to share it with anyone I could so that you too might be refreshed.

"I first put faith in Christ when I was in high school. My conversion, as far as I can tell, was sincere. I understood that Christ paid the full penalty for my sin and I surrendered to whatever God wanted me to do. I got a big list of stuff to start and stop doing for God..... I learned that real Christians tell other people about Jesus, so I set goals for how many people I would tell about Him. In college I learned that real Christians love missions so I went on mission trips. I later learned that real Christians love the poor so I sponsored a Compassion child.

By the time I was living in a way that would have met just about anybody's standard as a "real" Christian. But this religion of so-called grace often felt more to me like drudgery than delight. No matter how many rules I keps and how disciplined my life was, I wasled around with an ever-present guilt. In the deepest part of my heart, I knew-knew- God was not really pleased with me because there was always something I could do better.

I was tired, and while I never wanted to admit it, I was starting to hate God. He was the merciless taskmaster always standing over me yelling, "NOT ENOUGH! I want MORE!" His constant demands were driving me insane. The more I strived to walk in His ways, the less love I felt for Him. The more closely my feet followed Him, the more my heart ran away. Oh I had the facts down. Iknew He had taken the penalty for my sin. I also knew that He was the universe's most satisfying possession. But if my heard knew that truth, my heart didnt feel it. I was motivated to walk with God primarily by my desire to stay out of hell.

Recently, however, I discovered something that hhas changed everything. The gospel. It's not that I didnt understand or believe the gospel before, I did. But the truth of the gospel hadnt moved from my mind to my heart. There was a huge gap between my intellect and my emotions. The Puritan Jonathan Edwards likened his reawakening to the gospel to a man who had known, in his head, that honey was sweet, but for the first time had the sweetness burst alive in his mouth.

"Rediscovering" the gospel has given me a joy in God I never experienced in all my years of fervent religion. Now I sense, almost daily, a love for God growin in my heart, displacing a love for myself. I still have a long way to go but I am making "progress" in the gospel. The gospel has done in my heart what religion never could. "

All of this taken from the Introduction section of, "Gospel: Rediscovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary" by JD Greear. He, by the way, is an evangelical pastor of one of the fastest growing churched in America.

Like I said earlier,  encouraging, challenging, convicting and refreshing. More on this to come!