One Little Word

For the past several years I've followed a blog by Ali Edwards, a scrapbooking "professional" who designs supplies related to memory keeping.  Each January she talks about a project she embarks on called "One Little Word" (known as OLW in her blogging community).  The idea is to pick oneword for the year that will be your underlying "theme."  Sort of a resolution, but more just a direction you want to follow in achieving the goals you set out for yourself.  I've never really thought much about it, but for some reason this year it caught my attention, and I decided to bring the whole family along on my OLW trip.  In late December I explained the concept to them (this was met with snickers and eye rolling from the kids), and I told them that one night before New Year's we were going to sit down and share our one little words.  I pondered and pondered what mine would be, and Lawrence said he was thinking too, but we weren't going to share any of our ideas until New Year's.  

After dinner on December 30th I had each of us write down and share our OLW.  Again, some snickering and eye rolling, but I would not be deterred!  We are going to set and achieve some intentional goals this year or die trying!  I gave everyone a Project Life card to write their word on with a brief sound byte about what it meant to them.  

Our Little Words

Here are the words we chose:

Jill:  My OLW for 2014 is CHOOSE.  I thought and thought about what I wanted my word to be, but what I really want at the end of each day is to have chosen well.  Many things in life are out of my control, but I make many choices each day that impact my life both here and for eternity, and I want to be more intentional this year about what those choices are. 

Lawrence:  His OLW for 2014 is PEACE.  He had a somewhat stressful year last year, and he wasn't always happy about how he managed it.  This year he is striving for peace among the chaos of a busy life.

Sarah:  Her OLW for this year is POSITIVITY.  We are on Sarah a lot about complaining and being negative.  We all need to sound off sometimes, and of course you need a safe place to let your guard down and vent, but negativity can become a lifelong habit that's hard to break.  She wants to work this year on seeing and responding to things in a different light (or maybe she just knew I would like this word??).

John:  His word made us all laugh.  He chose THINK.  He says he thinks a lot of his day to day problems are caused by not thinking before he acts and speaks (that's actually a problem for the entire human race!).  He wants to think this year before he acts.  

The next day I went onto Etsy and ordered some trinkets to help us each remember our OLW.  I ordered bracelets for John, Sarah and I, and a keychain for Lawrence (I knew he wouldn't wear a bracelet, but I wanted it to be something he might still see every day).  They arrived this week, and I put them on everyone's plate before dinner.  

OLW Swag

 Will the OLW project make a difference in our lives this year?  Only time will tell.  If anything, the exercise of picking our OLWs caused us each to reflect on where we would like to have some personal growth, which is always a good thing.  Only God knows what is in store for us this year, and we all know that life is something that happens while we're making other plans, but I hope we value our days and spend them well.  Happy New Year!

Nueva Vida

This past fall Sarah joined the Spanish National Honor Society, and one of her membership requirements is that she complete ten hours of service within the local Hispanic community per semester.  Because she has volunteered in our church's children's ministry for several years we thought it would be a good fit to find a Hispanic church community where she could help out with childcare needs during their services.  I did a Google search, and the first church that came up was Nueva Vida, which is affiliated with New Life Christian Church on Goosecreek Road.  I emailed the pastor and he immediately got back in touch with me and invited us to come to one of their services so that he could meet Sarah and introduce her to the kids in their community.  This has been such a perfect fit!  The first Sunday of every month the children meet for "children's church" during the adult lesson, so the past two months we have gone, and she has helped out with the kiddos while I've gotten to enjoy some great sermons (thank God for the headphones they give me so I can hear the translator!).  The worship service at Nueva Vida is much different from what I'm used to at Southeast...much more intimate and expressive, with a full hour of singing, prayer and communion, followed by another hour of teaching and prayer.  And while I don't understand the words during the worship hour, I find myself just using that time to pray and meditate on my own, which has been lovely.  The kids are such cuties, and Sarah has enjoyed meeting them all, and finds it interesting that most of them speak English as their first language.  I've loved seeing a glimpse of another culture and have been blessed by how warm and welcoming they all are.  So glad we've been put a bit out of our comfort zone and are getting to make new friends in the process.

At the end of the service Pastor Ramirez and his wife Shani 
prayed for anyone who came forward with requests.
I love how open and authentic the entire community is.

Hello 2014!

Happy New Year!  Last year I took quite a long break from the blog and enjoyed archiving our family memories in a Project Life album, but this year I'm back to the world of digital memory keeping and hope to use our family blog as a way to preserve and share the good, bad and ugly of our crazy, beautiful lives.  We just wrapped up a fun 24 hours of ringing in the new year with our good friends, the Buntings and the Psimers.  We've celebrated New Year's Eve with them several times, and after taking last year off it was so good to back at the Buntings for a relaxed evening of fun and friends, complete with a sleepover.  Our kids only see each other about once a year, but they always pick right back up where they left off, and the same goes for us grown ups.  The Buntings' neighbors, the Theinemens, also joined us, and it was the perfect way to welcome 2014.

The kids played games the ENTIRE night...every time you turned around they were playing poker (for Twizzlers!), chess, ping pong, Apples to Apples or whatever else they could come up with.  This year we had three sixth graders, a seventh grader and two eighth graders.  Much to the middle schoolers' chagrin, Sarah no longer considered herself part of the "kids" group, and was happy to hang with the grown ups. 

Card sharks 

Sarah chats up the dads after dinner

Late night (or should I say early morning) Rummikube -
our group's favorite game!

Uh oh...John got pranked in the middle of
the night by Jackson 

Lazy football afternoon 

More games!

The time absolutely flies when we're with this crew.  I loved welcoming the new year with both my family of four and some of our oldest and dearest friends.  Looking forward to a new year of memories!

Virginia Beach

Whew!  What a busy week it's been catching up from vacation.  We spent the week before last in Virginia Beach with the Young clan, and we haven't stopped since the minute we arrived home.  City swim meet, working extra hours to make up for last week and the start of both football and field hockey  (not to mention the laundry from the beach!) has meant a full schedule...all good, but busy!  It's nice to sit down and look back at the relaxing week we had in Virginia...

We stopped along the way for a visit to Washington & Lee University, and it was fun to see where Dick went to school and hear some of his stories from his time there.  Loved this beautiful campus, but I told the kids the ride to get there through the mountains of West Virginia could be a deal breaker if this school ever ends up on their short list! 

I think they could pass for students 

Had to make a stop at the bookstore for some W&L swag!

From there we headed over to Appomattox for some Civil War history.  This was a neat place to see, but before too long the kids were ready to get to the beach!

Pretty afternoon in Appomattox

A few hours later we arrived in Virginia Beach where we spent a great week with family on the beach.  Rich, Lori, Tanner, Taylor and his friend Ashley beat us there and had the house opened up and ready for us.  Dick rented a beautiful beach home with four floors of beach views, and everyone had a wonderful week relaxing and having fun...

Sand castle building...

Beach time

Our beautiful home for the week

Posing in the silly T-shirts John bought for everyone

The girls swimming with the dolphins - look how close they got!!

Celebrating Rich's birthday

Family beach pictures...MT's branch of the tree...

Lawrence's branch...

Rich's branch...

The whole gang...blessed to all be together  

Cousins

Boogie boarding - so fun! 

Lots of playing (and pranking!)

A day in Williamburg -ready to tour the village
(the black bandanas are for a game there called
RevQuest - which Sydney, Tonyand MT won!)

Family time 

Dick and his kiddos

Chill time at the surf

The week went by fast and before long it was time to pack up and had home.  Tanner left on Thursday to attend the Manning Passing Academy in New Orleans...Lawrence, the kids  and I headed out on Friday morning to get home in time for City Meet, and the rest of the gang said good bye on Saturday.  We had a great week together, and we are so blessed and grateful to Badoo for giving us such a nice trip.  

John's 12th Birthday Party

After a looooooooong break from posting, I'm going to attempt to get back to documenting our life on the blog!  Instead of trying to catch up, I'm just going to jump in where we are today, which is celebrating John's 12th birthday.  His actual birthday is this upcoming Saturday, July 6th, but since we will be on the road to our Young family vacation in Virginia Beach we had his family party this past Tuesday night.  He requested to have his party that night because he wanted to go the "midnight" showing of the Lone Ranger, which opened that night (I guess that's not too late for a 12 year old, huh?).  The first showing that night was actually at 10:30, which felt "midnight-ish" enough to me!  It's been raining at some point practically every day these last few weeks, so I was glad we had a nice evening to hang out on the deck and celebrate my not-so-little man turning 12.

That afternoon I made his annual jersey birthday cake.  This year he requested a Kentucky jersey, which I'm sort of surprised we hadn't already done.  He didn't love having the number 12 on it, because that was Kentucky's not so great point guard last year, Ryan Harrow, but it was also worn by former Wildcat and NBA player Brandon Knight, so that made it a bit better!  

May be my best yet (easy letters to cut out!)

Check it out

Like I said, the weather was perfect so we spent most of the evening playing in the back yard.  My parents were in Bowling Green for my second cousin Eric Wallace's funeral visitation, so they were missed, but the rest of us enjoyed hanging out and catching up.

Super Syd playing some whiffle ball

Uncle Tony schooling the kids in basketball

Tanner with a three!

Recovering from basketball!  Uncle Tone is hard
to keep up with!

Of course Sarah and Claire were playing field hockey

Time to open presents

A HUGE bag of candy (thanks, Hamiltons!)

Lots of "green" gifts this year - always fits!

Lots of visiting...

...and laughing

Time for cake

Making a wish 

Back to Blogging

Why hello there, Blog!  Long time no write!  I've been thinking of you often, but for some reason never get around to stopping by, but I think now is the time to catch you up on what's been going on in 2013. Since it's already March there have been lots of fun happenings, so I'll just start with this last weekend, which was the celebration of Shannon's 50th birthday.  

I can't believe my big sis turned 50 this weekend!  That must mean I'm not far behind!  But, I'll have to say that if I'm half as full of life as she is as 50, I'll be just fine.  She looks better than ever and is loving her busy life as a wife, mom, attorney, daughter, sister, friend and all around diva!  We celebrated with a big dinner at one of her and Joe's favorite restaurants, Corbett's.  Joe put together a delicious five course meal in a private room for 18 of us, and we had a fantastic night celebrating.  Good conversation, lots of laughter, fabulous food and wine...again, if this is what 50 looks like, I'll take it!

Happy Birthday Big Sister!  Love you!

The birthday girl

Let Shannon-Fest begin! 

Joe raises a toast to his lovely bride

Of course there's a UofL shout out in the group shot!  Birds of a
feather! 

Love my family! Hope we get to celebrate lots
more milestones together!