Thanking God For...

{Gifts 27-43}

- A very helpful husband... Bobby volunteering to do the dishes and clean the bathroom...without me asking! I'm still beside myself and SO thankful for how this spurs me on to keep going.
- A steady income and being able to buy food and pay our bills
- Church History
- Starting the Heidelberg Catechism: "I am not my own, but belong body and soul to my faithful savior Jesus Christ..."
- Bible reading plans and new resolve to follow through with them
-Hope and assurance of grace when I fail
- A clean kitchen
- Peace and patience despite a desperate desire to have my body back
-The realization of how foolish it is to be anxious when all things are going to happen in His timing anyway
- A better attitude about being pregnant
- Baby Norah's pending arrival
- God using my children as a mirror, often to show me my need of Him
- Rowan's sweetness
- Rowan's interest in books
- God showing me my parenting failures through Bobby's insights and example
- Having friends over for dinner
- Rowan's 2nd birthday !!!! 

Thanking God For...

gifts (17-26)

-"Read it to you?", "thanks", "wash hands i-saurs (dinosaurs)?", "mung-on toys" (come on toys), "suggle Daddy? (snuggle Daddy) , "I tiderd" (tired),
-Age appropriate toys from Grandma, Meemaw and PawPaw, and a FREE play kitchen from Bobby's co-worker that keep little hands and busy for hours.
-The incarnate Word who came to save us
-nap time
- Rowan's responsiveness to discipline and sweet disposition
-a husband who loves theology and is always wanting to share good blogposts and new insights
- Bobby cleaning up the living room when I started cleaning the kitchen without me saying a word
- discipline to get going and wash the kitchen floor despite discomfort, pain, and lack of motivation
- signs of impending labor
- new dental insurance for the family

Thanking God For...

So a few of my friends have this habit of thanking God for stuff on their blogs and numbering all of the gifts. Pretty sure they got this idea from Ann Voskamp's book, One Thousand Gifts, which I have not read.  I intend to read it someday but I don't want to wait until then to start my lists.  So here is the first one.

Gifts 1-16
- friends
-a new baby coming soon
-my sweet, fun, rebellious little girl
-Bobby's job
-the day shift
-dinner at the Meeks (again)
-dinner with the Adams tomorrow 
-a washer and dryer to put my laundry in
-being able to borrow a Christmas tree
-candy canes only at the top so little hands can't reach them
-more verbal skills: "Yes, Mamma", "Don't want it.", "Takes off.", "Open pease.", "Read it.", "I'll find it sippy.", "Oliver zoo.", "Don't hit.", "More salad.", "Daddy home soon.", "Daddy work.", "Bible book.", "Pray. Amen." 
-Church family who pray for stuff even when you didn't ask them to
-friends I trust to take care of Rowan when I go into labor
-midwives 
-wisdom to let things go when I need to and hope for more wisdom

I think that's good for my first list. I could go on. 

Blogging

Inspired by a friend who chronicles her family life in blog-land and the fact that my daughter is now almost two and I feel like our life together is just a big blur in my memory, I've decided to start a blog about us!  I'm not a great writer mainly because I'm terrible with punctuation, but that's not what this is about. I just want to thank God for and make reminders of this short but sweet time we have with our kids.  These are actually hard times in many ways because parenting and trying to run a household isn't for wimps, but they are definitely sweet and I want to be able to look back through all of this someday.  Seems like yesterday I was 18. Today I'm 28. Tomorrow I will be 38.  The days are busy and full and in the hustle and bustle its so easy to forget why we are even here. So I hope this will help me stop, reflect, appreciate, and thank God for all He has done and all He is doing.