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20 Years of Marriage Memories

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Wedding day tradition often includes not seeing each other before the ceremony. I suppose it builds the excitement around the event and makes the couple that much more entranced when they see each other for the first time that day. On our special day, I wanted it to be different. Seeing one another for the first time needed to be an exchange that was quiet and private. So, after getting wedding ready, I waited for my guy at the front of the sanctuary all alone. He entered through one of the sanctuary doors and we spent some quick minutes alone before the busy afternoon celebrations. It was a sweet way of putting each other first before anyone else. Here we are years later, and I can't help but reflect on some of our memory moments. So, here it is...a quick year by year of our marriage memories.  2003 - The wedding, moving into our first apartment together and finishing our BA degrees. That summer, I start working at a local church's childcare program. We lived on about $1200 a...

Taking Up the Shield of Faith in Our Homeschool and Public School Journey

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      Our first homeschooling experience was in 2012 when my oldest son was in kindergarten. At the time, I was the only one among my close local friends entering this new journey. Our oldest daughter was also 2-years-old and it was hard keeping her occupied while we completed our "academics" for the day. While it was challenging, amazing and tremendous growth still occurred. Among the many things I did learn was my relationship as mom needed to be priority over my relationship as my son's teacher.          I wanted to continue homeschooling my boy but after just one year of homeschooling, our relationship was struggling. As the school year came to a close, the Lord was showing me our neighborhood public school was a perfect option for us. So, we took a leap of faith and stepped onto that campus. Little did we know, by the middle of that school year, we would have a two-year-old added to our family through foster care. Even though my heart was sad...

Should My Child Have a Phone? Things to consider before saying yes..

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          I was about 7 months pregnant with our first little one when I had this very odd dream. It was my dad and I standing with each other and I was holding a very large child on my hip. I was very concerned in my dream and I said, "dad, I just had my baby and he is so big. What's wrong with him?" I remember thinking how did I get here? I want to have a tiny baby to hold and my child is a giant. AND before I knew it the big baby was actually in my arms weighing a whopping 10lbs, 4oz. It was 14 years ago when we welcomed that sweet babe into our world and now hes basically our man child, 6'2" and 205 lbs. With that, we're also having to make decisions that go way beyond "when do we transition from a crib," or "what do we do about potty learning?" (Even though those are BIG consuming decisions at the time). One decision my parents never faced was, "when should we give our kids a cellphone?" We're now two months into our son...

Christ's Sanctifying Quarantine

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My husband and I decided our front walk-way would look fabulous lined with brick to create a matchy matchy with the brick on our house. We started by hiring professionals to lay a solid cement foundation to keep the bricks from moving. We researched how to lay brick, what mortar to use and shopped several locations before deciding on what brick would line our walkway. In s pring 2019, we marked out several weekends for working on the project. We never anticipated the projecting dragging on a year later. Yet, there we were, trying to complete the hardest home project to date in spring 2020. As we ventured into this unknown, there were mistakes made, problems to resolve and solutions to find. What seemed like a doable home project quickly became overwhelming.  As we sit here during quarantine, a time that seems to be dragging on like our brick project, I'm asking myself, "what is the Lord trying to show me during this time?" This event in our lives brought us all home, s...