a happy, happy birthday to my oldest son

My sweet oldest son turns 6 today :) We started off the day with pancakes, juice, and cupcakes ready to go to school. My hubby and I blew up 70 (yes, seventy) balloons last night and put them in the hall and kitchen to surprise him when he came downstairs this morning. It was SO fun :) He loved it. We have a fun day and weekend planned :) So excited to celebrate this kid :)

Lots and lots (and lots) of balloons :)

Happy Birthday Jimmy! We love you so, so much. 

What a blessing you are :)

where I've been...

The past two weeks have been a little... crazy ;) Our sweet girl came into the world four weeks early -- she was born last Tuesday, August 14 at 9:33 am :) I was having some serious complications and it was decided she needed to come early, for her health and for mine.

Since she was early, her lungs needed help to finish developing, so she was placed in the NICU immediately after birth. The doctors were confident about her prognosis of being able to fully develop and to be able to come home within a couple weeks. She had a few minor setbacks the first day after birth (which was expected), but made incredible progress each day after and we are grateful to God that she was able to come home yesterday!! After one week! 

We are absolutely grateful for the incredible team of nurses and our neonatologist, who were always very understanding, very patient, and very kind -- when we were asking tons of questions, when I was crying and anxious, or when I was calling in the middle of the night to check on her. 

We are incredibly grateful for an amazing group of friends and family who blessed us, encouraged us, checked on us, prayed for us, and helped us so much during this (relatively short, but also long) time. 

I am beyond blessed to have an incredible husband who calmly, lovingly and strongly led us through this. Who would stop everything and pray with me as I became nervous and anxious about what was happening. Who was patient and comforting. Who was, of course, also hurting and concerned and wasn't afraid to say it, but was quick to remind me that this was all in God's hands. And that God is our ultimate peace and comfort.

Most of all, we praise God for His graciousness to us and our sweet Hannah. For His peace, comfort, and abundant mercy during this time.

graduation

Rob graduated with his Master's of Divinity this past weekend. Yay! There were definitely (lots) of tears shed :) We are absolutely grateful to God for sustaining us as we walked through a very challenging four years of school :) We have been here in Wake Forest, North Carolina as he has been attending school for half of our marriage. Our little family has increased from 3 to 5 (Hannah Jane will be here in September! :)). We have had lots of joys, lots of tears, lots of laughs, lots of incredibly hard days, lots of incredibly wonderful days, lots of late nights, lots of early mornings. And God has sustained and grown us tremendously through it all. We praise God that we have met amazing people, developed lifelong friendships, and been blessed with an amazing support system through our church and small group. I can only express here in words how thankful to the Lord and how proud of my husband I am - how he maintained A's and B's in a 90-hour Master's degree program, worked as many as 5 part-time jobs at one time so I could stay home with our children, and still been a wonderful husband and loving daddy through it all. And he will be the first to say that it is all by God's grace and that the joy of the Lord was and is his strength!

I'm so proud of you, my Rob! I love you! :)

a birthday day

A very happy birthday to our sweet, sweet oldest son, Jimmy. We cannot believe he is 5 years old today! :) What a blessing and joy from the Lord he is. So grateful for the gift to be his parents, so grateful for how God teaches us and grows us through our precious son each and every day.

an announcement

yep, we are having a sweet baby girl in september :) so very excited about this new little one. excited for her to have 2 big brothers, and especially excited about how excited her brothers are :)

a day off.

enjoying an unexpected day off with my hubby today :) thankful for a man who works so hard and thankful that he rearranged his super full schedule to be able to have a whole day with our sweet family today. enjoying lunch out and then a trip to the park. have a fabulous day! :)

just stopping in to say hi

Catching up (lots to do), cleaning house (my house is a mess and in need of a good clean, and I've got a couple little helpers who love to "help" ;)), making a grocery list (the refrig is in need of a refill), loving the little things (like playing Lightning McQueen) and getting ready to enjoy some warmer weather with my sweet little ones today. Be back tomorrow :)

christmas snapshots

Happy Tuesday! I hope you and yours had a great Christmas weekend :) We had a fabulous Christmas weekend, complete with traveling to Virginia to see my parents, and all of my sisters and their families. Lots of yummy food, lots of laughs, lots of catching up. We were home for Christmas eve and enjoyed a Christmas eve service at our church and Jimmy got to dress up like a shepherd and sing. It was adorable :) A relaxed and great Christmas morning, spending time together, opening presents, playing with toys, eating a fabulous quiche lorraine and cinnamon rolls and then going to church to celebrate! My sweet in-laws came for a visit yesterday and it was great to spend time with them as well :)

For now, getting the house put back together, making to-do lists, and of course, playing with my sweet boys. Lots to share here over the next couple weeks. Lots of ideas and thoughts, news and inspiration to come :)

8 years

Celebrating 8 years of marriage with this amazing man today. We've shared lots and lots of laughs, lots of tears, joyful seasons, difficult seasons, ups and downs, good days, not-so-good days, and been blessed with 2 precious boys. Grateful for things that have always remained constant in our marriage: our love for Jesus and for each other. And our commitment to serving Him together, side by side. 

I love you babe. You're my best friend and the love of my life. Thank you for always loving me, always encouraging me and always believing in me. Thank you for how you love me and our sweet boys, and for working so hard to provide for us. I'm so glad to be in this life together. I love you. Happy Anniversary :)

and it's friday.

+ I'm not one to rush through the days and to wish time to pass more quickly. But this week I've been doing just that. My hubby has been in Haiti for the past week, and I'm so excited for him to get home late tonight. I have had tons of fun with my sweet boys, my wonderful friends and my sis and her hubby. But I'm also ready for my other half to come home. I'm ready to hear stories. I'm ready to see pictures and video of the sweet people in Haiti. I'm ready for him to be here :) I've been able to talk with him briefly each evening and have a glimpse of their days. He has had a wonderful time there and can't wait to be home as well. I cannot wait to hear more! :)

+ My sweet Jimmy has his first "school program" for Christmas this morning. My heart is giddy thinking about watching him sing and saying his line "All the people were amazed at what the shepherds told them." I cannot wait. I have a tissue in my purse just in case there's a tear (or two or three) :)

+ My house is a wreck, haha ;) My wood floors look like they have not been swept in ages (they haven't). The carpet in the living room is covered in bits and pieces of cereal, Ritz crackers, peach puffs and Christmas tree pine needles. Laundry is piled up, waiting to be folded (at least it's clean?!). My brand new camera lens is now in 2 pieces, waiting to go to the repair shop after my adorable little toothy-grin 10 month roly-poly learned how to climb the stairs (where my camera was briefly sitting). My office looks like it exploded with leftover Christmas cards, paper trimmings, Christmas gifts, and matchbox cars. But it's been a good week. A hard week, but a good week. A week with lots of giggles, lots of matchbox car traffic jams, lots of running around the house, lots of coloring, drawing and working on Christmas presents and projects together, and lots of fun mama-and-her-sons time. And I'm thankful. Thankful for my boys. Thankful for my family. Thankful for my friends who have texted or called me each day to check in, to see how I'm really doing. Thankful for my man who is willing and excited to go help and love on others around the globe. Thankful for my man who loves our little family so, so much. Thankful for my man who loves me and supports me unconditionally and spurs me on towards Christ!

+ As we draw closer to Christmas, I'm excited. Excited for the rest of this season. Excited to celebrate with family and friends. Excited.

weekend wrap up and a new look for the blog

Happy Monday! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend :) Ours was spent with friends, family and eachother. Lots of laughs, lots of food, lots of pictures, lots of family time and lots of snuggles. And we got our Christmas pictures taken by my sweet sis. We finally have a great family photo of the 4 of us :) I won't share it here until after we send our Christmas cards out, but she also took some of my hubby and I (see below), and some solo shots of me to use here (my new header and side bar). Great to have some current pictures of my family :)

I also (finally) was able to switch over to a new blog layout- a goal I have had for myself this year. Yay! After tons of sketches, brainstorming, and finding inspiration on some of my fave blogs, I'm super excited with how it turned out. My apologies if you visited this space last night, there were some crazy layout issues going on ;) Please bear with me as I have to resize photos in each post to fit in the now smaller blog post space. For now, most of them bleed into the right column. Working hard to fix as many as I can as fast as possible.

I am excited to announce that The Creative Place blog will begin having sponsors soon. More on this in the near future. I will also be sharing blog stats, sponsor info and a promotion related to sponsor space :)

Below are some pictures from our Thanksgiving weekend.

So glad.

My hubby is in the Ukraine for the next several days helping a church with some of their sound and technology. Just got to video chat with him- my first time ever using video chat. After about a half hour of finally getting it to work (all on my end, I didn't have him to fix it for me ;)), we were able to chat for a little bit and catch up. He is loving his time and the people there. So grateful he could go, but missing him, of course :) Definitely can't wait to hear more about it and see pictures :) Yay for technology!

currently: at the beach

Currently enjoying a wonderful family vacation in the Outer Banks, NC. After a rainy start this weekend (with lots of games played, books read, donuts eaten, and an aquarium visited), we had a fabulously warm day today and visited a lighthouse and hung out at the beach all afternoon.  

Excited for the remainder of the week. Excited to continue having great family time. Excited to complete my travel journal to remember our trip :)

Heading out of town.

We are headed out of town today to the Outer Banks for a family vacation. Our first one in a long time, and our first one as a family of four. Excited to soak up time (and sun) with our little family. I threw together this little mini as a travel journal. It's not my typical journal-style I have used in the past, but I wanted to try something different.

Basically, I made a cover (inspiration found here) from kraft paper (and a transparency sheet) with paper squares- vintage sewing pattern paper, a beach scene from a vintage dictionary, graph paper, a vintage map of the Outer Banks (from an atlas), and a paper round with the title. I adhered the squares, sewed a couple lines, and called it finished. Inside, I included white blank sketchbook pages, lined pages, some sewn vellum and paper pages, kraft pages and an envelope or two. I plan on journaling while we are there, maybe putting some momentos in here and there, and then adding pictures after we return. My goal is to keep it simple and clean.

Be on the lookout for some update posts next week as well as a book review and a giveaway :) Have a fabulous weekend!

Happy Birthday to My Love.

A very Happy Birthday to my Love - my awesome, most amazing, wonderful, dreamy, husband. Celebrating this man today :) I am so blessed and so thankful to God to call him my husband, my best friend and the daddy to our sweet babies. Thankful for his example, his support, his love of the Lord, our family and others, his never-ending encouragement to me, his providing for and leading of our family! 

I love you, babe! Happy Birthday :)