Bringing in the new year/updates!

I finally have time to sit down and write, it's been a busy 4 days into the year already! Where do I begin? Goals for this year? My current frustrations? Prayer list? Current book I'm reading to bring in the new year? What is making me happy tonight? Let's go!

Goals.

-Inspections done & out of the way.

-Small spring garden.

-Summer vacation to Lake Lure.

-Lose some baby weight, and of course give birth to a healthy, sweet baby boy!

-Cook! As in, all the time! I've been a total slacker the past few months with cooking and I am motivated to get back into it. I have my crock pot, kitchen aid, and lovely new le crueset wear ready to be used!

-Simplify our life-rid of unnecessary, wasteful excess.
-Organized, successful first half of big sister's Kindergarten year in the fall.

-Complete my one year through the bible reading plan (I love the youversion app!)

-Learn more, love more, give more, be more.

Current frustrations are also my prayer requests! Those two children we were told were coming to live with us, then a week later told maybe, then a few days later told no...still need prayer.

We were able to meet them this weekend- and it made me all the more frustrated and all the more confused as to what God is up too. We found out they rode here, from two states away, in the trunk of a small suv. Sigh, this was only one of the concerns and frustrations I have/had during our meet. I updated our private blog about it- if you are a reader, click on "our private blog" at the top and log in with your email address.

Along with the one year bible plan, I am reading 7 by Jen Hatmaker and already starting to cut down on areas of excess in our life. Once I get through the book, I will be able to decide better which areas/things that will be, if we will be doing the same thing this family did or something different, logistics etc. For instance- they cut down their spending to only 7 key locations. In our town, 7 locations to spend money is a big shopping day! We can easily cut down our spending locations to 3 places- the gas station, grocery store, and our large chain retail store for the items we cannot get at the grocery store.

What made me happy tonight? Besides my first four loaves of homemade bread (ever!) baked and sitting on my counter?! My husband! He has an interview for a job he has been trying to get into since the spring. For the past few months his supervisor and bosses have been "hinting" to him that he was going to get it, and his sup. even said "he has it" but he couldn't "officially" tell him that- and they told him today that he is a great candidate for it and they want to interview him! (finally!) I'm so proud of how far he has come with this company since starting there just 3 years ago (this will be his second promotion!). I love, love how hard he works to better himself at whatever job he is doing, and love how he will not settle for anything less than he knows he is capable of! I'm so thankful for him- he makes me smile :)

And for some random photos-

The girls are bikeaholics.

They have each had one scrapped knee.

Such a middle sister look

And, I made pot roast for the first time ever (this has already been a year of firsts!) on New years day, it was so yummy! I also got to try my new lens on potatoes (of all things :)