Our Second Anniversary
I wrote this around Thanksgiving but never got around to posting it. With today being our second anniversary, I figured that there is no better time. Two whole years of marriage seems to have flown by, but has simultaneously felt like forever – I hope it always feels that way.
Kevin – I have a million reasons to be thankful for you, but for the sake of brevity and the front page of my blog, here are 50.
- I’m thankful for the way you love me.
- I am thankful for your social knowledge and the way you lead in conversations.
- I’m thankful for the ways that you invest in our marriage.
- I am thankful for your surprises.
- I am thankful for your patience with me.
- I am thankful for your silliness – making up dances, songs, and measuring the floor at Michael’s.
- I am thankful for your leadership.
- I am thankful for your love of hosting friends and making sure we always have snacks/drinks/dessert for everyone.
- I’m thankful you will try anything I cook – even vegan tacos full of beans.
- I am thankful for the way you love on and take care of Chloe.
- I am thankful that you make me feel beautiful.
- I am thankful for your hardworking attitude and the way you provides for us.
- I am thankful for the way you serve me and your friends.
- I am thankful for your pursuit of God.
- I am thankful that you hold me accountable and challenge me.
- I am thankful for your knowledge about computers, blogs, and marketing.
- I am thankful for your humor and the way you smile.
- I am thankful that you expect and allow me to take tons of photos.
- I am thankful for the way you make me laugh.
- I am thankful for your dreams.
- I am thankful for your optimistic spirit
- I am thankful that you encourage me not to let things ruin my day.
- I am thankful for the way you pray for me.
- I am thankful for your love of fountain Diet Coke (especially before a road trip).
- I am thankful for your strength and protection.
- I am thankful that you supports my dreams and will do anything to help me achieve them.
- I am thankful for weekends and sticking together.
- I am thankful for inside jokes.
- I’m thankful that you are my best friend.
- I am thankful that family is so important to you.
- I am thankful for your family and how they love on both me and my family.
- I am thankful that you are a learner and are always interested in exploring bookstores and libraries with me.
- I am thankful that you enjoy seeing movies by yourself.
- I am thankful that you are self-motivated and creative.
- I am thankful for your ability to design beautiful websites.
- I am thankful that my memory-keeping is important to you and that you are always interested in seeing my latest project.
- I am thankful that you take out the trash and do the chores I don’t care for.
- I am thankful that you choose me everyday and always show me that I’m important.
- I am thankful for your friendships.
- I am thankful that you are our financial guru and budget master.
- I am thankful that you converted me into a wrist watch person.
- I am thankful that you always see the best in people
- I am thankful that you encourage me to be a better person and wife.
- I am thankful that you set your clock five minutes fast and believe in the phrase “if you’re on time, you’re late”.
- I am thankful for your ability to plan and be prepared. One of my favorite pictures from college was your cereal and spoon on the desk that you set out the night before.
- I am thankful that God intertwined our stories and uses it to encourage others for His Glory.
- I am thankful that we’ve been friends since fifth grade.
- I’m thankful to get to do life with you.
- I’m thankful that this list could be much, much longer.
- I am thankful that you are my husband.
Our Second Year:
Restaurants we loved: CC’s City Broiler, Medici, Addisons, Flat Branch, Chick-fil-a
Meals we made: Tacos with corn tortillas, Hamburger Casserole, Blackened Tilapia Bowls, Meatloaf, Breakfast, and Salisbury Steak
Shows we watched: House of Cards, The Young Pope, This is Us, Veep, Fixer Upper
Movies We Saw: The Nice Guys, Finding Dory, Neighbors 2, Sausage Party (I can’t believe I’m admitting to this…), It Had to Be You
Places we went: Sikeston, MO, The Lake, and lots of trips to St. Louis.
Things We Did: bought a house, celebrated a promotion, hosted plenty of dinners, changed churches, made friendships and deepened others, hosted overnight guests, purchased a computer, spent lots of Saturday mornings at the dog park.
Thanks so much for reading! You can read about our first anniversary here.
Thrive | March 2017 Goals
For Christmas this past year, I asked for Lara Casey’s Powersheets, a goal setting workbook that helps to encourage purposeful goal setting. I got to work making some big goals to work toward this year – healthy living & weight loss, balanced social media usage, focus on prayer and community, and continuing to pay down our student loan debt.
For each of these large, vague goals, I created action items to help me break these down so that working toward them would be a little less daunting. I’ve made significant progress in just two months so I’m looking forward to what I can accomplish in the next ten.
Here are my goals for March:
- Continue working through Psalms Day by Day. I started this challenge at the beginning of February when Bailey announced that she was going to be working through one Psalm a day starting on February 1st. I’ve been posting some of my entries, but I won’t be posting through March. If you’re interested or want to see some other inspiration, check out the Instagram hashtag #psalmsdaybyday or take a look through my bible journaling posts.
- Social Media Free Lent. If you were wondering why I wouldn’t be posting in March, look no further – I’m going sans social media during the 40 days of Lent! I haven’t given something up for the past couple years, but lately, I’ve really noticed that social media and absent-minded phone usage is affecting my time with Jesus and it’s definitely not doing me any favors in the community department either. Since I’m positng this a couple days into March, I can already tell you that it’s not nearly as bad as I expected.
- Cover others in prayer. Part of my goal to focus on prayer from the beginning of the year included choosing a person or group of people to pray for each month in addition to the things I’m already praying for. This has turned out to be such a fun practice and has really helped me to be intentional.
- Just keep budgeting. Kevin and I have officially been budgeting strictly for a year this month. We’ve been able to knock out a decent amount of our student loans and I’m looking forward to knocking out more. As we see those numbers decreasing, it’s easier to think about getting to the finish line.
- Celebrate two years of marriage. It’s hard to believe that we’re already coming up on two years! We’re looking forward to celebrating with a restaurant we haven’t tried before.
- Shoot my first wedding. A few months back Kevin’s Mom and her fiance asked if I would photograph their wedding – of course I was more than thrilled! Excited to be a part of their big day.
- Complete Project Life and One Little Word for March. These are staples on my list because I want to make sure they get done each month. I love making these a practice and sitting down once a month to make sure they get done. If nothing else, I know these ones will get checked off.
- Read three books. Since I’ve been focusing on being more intentional about social media, I’ve been killing it in the reading department. So far in 2017, I’ve read 10 books! Three more this month shouldn’t be too hard.
That should keep me plenty busy for the next 26 days! Just writing this gets me so pumped about all of the fun things happening this month! We just got a new internet provider, so blogging more often is definitely something I’m looking forward too as well!
What big goals are on your list to knock out this year?
2017 – The Year of Thriving
The last couple years have set me up for this word. For most of my life, things have changed around me every year or so, giving me the opportunity to form a new routine and a whole new set of habits. But as my life begins to look similar each day, it’s allowed me the space to step back and think about how I’m living my life, and how I wish I were living it.
For example – I want to love on my husband well, I want to do my job well, and I want to steward my time well. Sure I’m already doing these things, but am I doing them well? This year has come down to a page full of questions like these that have required me to ask myself if I’m thriving or just surviving.
Based on the content of this post, I trust you’ve figured out the answer.
For the first time, I made the choice to be more intentional about goal setting as opposed to making a list of things about myself that I wanted to change and then hoping to be able to check them off by the end of the year. I asked for Lara Casey’s Powersheets for Christmas and they have truly been a goal-setting game changer.
As I looked at the sheets, I realized that I’m headed in the right direction when it comes to getting where I want to be when I’m 80 – a sassy, strong-willed woman who’s complete being trusts Jesus and the hope of salvation, with a lifetime full of adventures and memories of loving others well and putting family first. I (and oftentimes, we) are making progress in so many ways – we’re chipping away at our debt, we’ve found a church we love, and we’re being intentional with each other and our friendships – so for the first new year in my life, I don’t have a list of new big goals. I have a list of intentions and action items that will act as a shovel to get me just a little bit deeper and closer to where I want to be.
It feels delightful – relaxing and powerful all at the same time.
Thrive first came to me in March of last year as I was working on my collage for a One Little Word prompt. God also whispered it in my ear again in September when I confidently agreed to a task completely out of my comfort zone at work. I have a feeling that thriving is going to have to be a little uncomfortable and leave me feeling a little uneasy, but just like that opportunity in September, I’m going to take it as it comes so I can be ready and available for the next big thing God has in store for me.
This year, I’m choosing to thrive.
Best of 2016
It’s the last day of 2016 already? Part of me is not surprised that I’m already writing this post again, but at the same time, part of me is in denial as well. There’s something about the days between Christmas and New Years that always have me in a pensive mood, reflecting on my year. This particular one has been chock-full of blessings and adventures I couldn’t even have dreamed up if I’d tried. I’m thankful to have this space and be digging back through these memories, but I have to admit i’m reluctant to waive goodbye to 2016. Here are some highlights:
Best Pup
Best Husband
Best Purchase
Best News – I got a Promotion
Best Family Photo
Best Friends
Best Lunch Date
Best Birthday
Best Feet Picture
Best Walks with Chloe
Best Girls’ Weekend
Best word choice for 2016
Only a few hours until we’ll be welcoming 2017. What’s on your highlight reel?
A Nourishing 2016
It’s hard to believe it’s the end of my one year journey with my word, nourish.
To keep track of my adventure this year, I’ve been using a traveler’s notebook Art Journal insert from Yellow Paper House that fit right inside my beloved Chic Sparrow Maverick in conjunction with Ali Edward’s One Little Word Course. I love the traveler’s notebook style (as opposed to the one Ali and many other people who take the course choose to do) because of how simple and compact it is. Because I don’t have a ton of space in the book to complete the prompts each month, I don’t have to feel like I need to have more words than I do, because I don’t and that’s stressful. It’s all stream of conscious writing, so it flows out and then I close the book for the month, putting into practice whatever the prompt was from Ali’s class. In addition, I’ve been really into watercolors this year and this journal has been a really great outlet for that.
Here’s how the journal turned out.
January
January was all about getting acquainted with nourish by writing down the definition, why I chose it, action items, and a quote. I love including the pocket with pictures to help remind me what I was doing and how I was feeling in that season. I always get super pumped about my word at the beginning of the year and as that feeling wears off, looking back and monitoring where I am in my goals is always a good tool to help me get back on track. As I completed this portion of the Ali’s class, I was also in the middle of the book The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, which encouraged me to pause and consider each of the following areas of my life: family and friends, personal development, spirituality, finances, career, marriage, fun, giving, physical environment, and health and fitness. In a one to ten fashion, I rated each one and made comments so that I could compare. This is how I chose the goals on the page above and came in really handy now that it’s the end of the year and I’m starting to think about a new word and new ways to move forward. This was by far one of the most rewarding goal setting experiences yet.
February
In February, we chose a practice to do each day for the month that would, in turn, help us create a habit. Unfortunately, I didn’t watch the prompt video until the second week at which point I decided to choose the act of journaling in my bible as my goal for the month. Since I had been dating them, I was able to go back and mark down which days I had done it. I think if I would have known ahead of time, I would have choose something a little more personal/self-care related, but it ended up working out just fine in the long run. I was still able to knock out 20/29 days – not too shabby.
March
In March, I created visual mood board for my word. This was another time that the smaller size was convenient. I’m generally not the type to have a lot of magazines or things I want to tear up laying around the house, so I was able to just grab one magazine to complete these pages which is much more manageable than the 8 ½ by 11 size that I had done in the past. I totally love how the colors played out in these two pages. Just as a sneak peak, my one little word for 2017 is on this page. It’s crazy to look back and see that march is when my next word started showing up.
April
This month, I wrote about things that make me feel nourished so that I could work on making them a more regular part of my life. Here’s what I wrote: “I feel nourished when I’ve had enough sleep. I feel nourished when my quiet time has been relaxed and slow paced. I feel nourished when I eat foods that are good for my body. I feel nourished when I’m praying. I feel nourished when I’m singing to Jesus. I fell nourished when I move my body. Yoga is my favorite. I feel nourished when I spend time on myself. I feel nourished when I’m blending watercolors. I feel nourished after spending time with family and friends. I feel nourished when I’m being creative. I’m feeling nourished when I take naps. I feel nourished when I drink plenty of water. I feel nourished by the sun. I am nourished by good books and my favorite characters. I am nourished by God.”
May
This month was all about taking some photos of things/places that described my word. This was our first month in the new house, which probably explains why all of the photos have to do with that – our bed, my office, and our roses.
June
In June, we reflected on the process and the progress. At this point, I was already feeling like my word was so fulfilling and really enhancing my growth. The highlights of this page are the three things that I had been enjoying about my word:
- The amount of grace this word encouraged me to give myself.
- The encouragement I felt to treat my body better based on how I feel as opposed to how I look.
- Treating myself with nourishment also inspires me to treat others with nourishment as well.
July
In July, I had to remind myself to slow down. After a little getaway for the long fourth of July weekend, I felt like I was in a rush to get back into the swing of real life. I just wrote myself a reminder and included that sweet picture of my family.
August
August was one of my favorite months and talked about seasons of life – where we are right now, what we are struggling with, and what we are celebrating. I waited until the end of the month to complete this one and I’m so glad that I did because a lot of what was going on revolved around my new position at work. I love that my family and real life is weaved in and out of these pages.
September
This was a big one – a prompt about contemplating rest, pace and joy as well as documenting 30 things that bring me joy. I questioned a lot this month if I really know what rest looks like. A reoccurring theme this year is my pace and how I’m either going 100% or I’m sleeping, even when I’m sick or need a break. I think my Type-A personality requires me to feel like I need to be extra productive and to-do list oriented otherwise I feel like my time is being wasted. One of my goals for the end of this year/beginning of next year is to have a binge netflix session because it’s not something I generally do. I’ll keep you posted on that one.
October
These are my favorite quotes that are related to the word Nourish. Because I always make a pinterest board for my word of the year, I had already accumulated quite a few quotes that I felt related perfectly to my word. My favorite one:
“When we nourish ourselves with good people, projects, surroundings, scenery, love, music, beauty, and self-care, we radiate light into the world and continually sharpen our vision, perception, and clarity all at once. This in turn spreads even more. Remember that one tiny drop can raise an ocean. Keep wanting. Desiring. Doing. Breathing in sweet things.
November
November was fun because I got to try a new technique with my watercolors and tissue paper as well as include one of my wedding photos of just myself. I reflected on what I believe, what I love, what I know and what I’ve learned. Conclusion? I’m pretty dang hard on myself.
December
Finally, a good ole wrap up and another picture of me. We separated out our reflection into facts and feelings and I realized that’s something that is REALLY hard to do.
Facts:
- In 2016, I improved and grew as a human.
- Nourish reminded me to consider how I felt about decisions, events, and feelings.
- Nourishing myself is hard.
- What I want nourishment to be and what it really is are different.
- I am proud of myself and what I have accomplished.
Feelings:
- The term self-care makes me want to vom – so cliché and can easily be overused as an excuse not to try hard.
- I feel great about the goals I completed – there are quite a few.
- You can be nourished and struggling at the same time.
- The act of progress and growth are so much more fulfilling than being perfect.
- Journals have presented themselves as the only outlet for me to clear my head and heart.
- Slowing down and adding time to relax into my calendar is the only way it will get done and now I know that about myself.
- All things are possible with Jesus. (Also, on a related note, I saw a quote the other day that said “All things are possible, but everything isn’t”. LOVE.)
I finished off the year by writing a note to my word and recapping my goals. I used to love crossing things off, but it feels so much more positive to highlight them instead. Even though I still have a lot of room for improvement in the nourish category, I’m so impressed with how much I’ve accomplished.
Each year, I add my word to a list of other epic words that I’ve carried with me for a year. Now nourish can join the ranks of joy (2013), rooted (2014), and adventure (2015).
I can’t wait to share with you what next year’s word will be!