Blogging is a way for me to clear my head sometimes really.  I love to kinda catalog our lives too and get it all jotted down, well bits and pieces of our lives.  Definitely can’t get it all in here but a handful of things and lessons along the way that God brings to mind.  I love when I can get a few minutes of QUIET (like right now during nap time) to just think and write.

One thing is for certain and that is our time on earth is pretty short.  I think I’ve come to more and more realizing this with the death of my dad in May.  Honestly some days it feels like he died yesterday.  Its all still so new.  Just the thought of him not being here on this earth anymore can be so overwhelmingly hard to take in on some days.  I miss him dearly! However, in all reality, life is short when you compare to eternity.  I get to see my dad again and I can’t wait.

With this Season that we are in, Brian and I are seeing how fast the time with our kids GO! Just looking at Gregory and how he is in 10th grade already, Adam in 6th, Luke just started kindergarten, Gideon preschool, Titus 2 and Annie Mae already 7 months.  We have been given this awesome responsiblity to LOVE them and raise them up in Him.  So often we go through our life from day to day and just keep on going and aren’t looking at what is RIGHT IN FRONT of us! We don’t stop and take in the moment as we ought.  We keep accepting more and more other responsibilities or obligations, and we keep adding to our to do list, which keeps growing and we can never possibly check it all off.

I want to STOP this.  I want to live in the here and NOW more than I ever have before.  I want to live more simply.  How I’ve often thought, how cool it would be to be like the Wilderness Family (you know that old 80’s movie).  Obviously that isn’t something that CAN happen but why can’t we simplify and live a more simple slower pace life? WE CAN!

For our family I think doing some of the things (or not doing) in the previous post is going to help so much! We have 4 kids that are 5 years old and younger.  It’s a busy Season for us.  The past two days have been really nice.  I’ve decided to make dinner a bit later in the evening than having it ready at 4.  Brian came home.  We all hung out.  I started preparing dinner (and easier dinner, less time consuming, easier to prep and do when he’s home too), ate closer to 5:00, all the boys pitched in to help clean after dinner while I got to shower, then we all went outside for some football throwing and some spread on a quilt to play with balloons.  After some nice outside time we all came in to get in PJS and play quietly, then we all read stories, prayed and some headed to bed and the older ones got to stay up and work on some homework and visit with us.  We had no distractions with our phones (checking things, games etc…), no TV, no outside commitments, and nothing really to do but focus on our family.  I think for us, more/most evenings need to be just like this! Total family time.  Oh, and at dinner we all chatted about our favorite ride at disneyland and we shared what our favorite quality of the person to our RIGHT was.  We love this game that Auntie Laura & family gave us, which gives us fun topics to chat about at dinner time.

It isn’t that we NEVER did any of this stuff before because quite frankly a lot of our nights are just like this.  I think it is our MINDSET and looking at things differently in life and making more of a CONSCIOUS effort to make the most of what is RIGHT IN FRONT of us.

For us, its not just the quality and quantity of time with our kids and EACH other.  It is the whole picture.  We really want to strive to THINK through extra hard in how we spend money and what we spend it on.  Always to ask the question “is this something I really need right now?”  It carries over in my home too in cleaning out STUFF.  Right now my drive way is half full of STUFF that I do not need that will soon have a new home.  I can probably gut way more too.  It is my goal to continue on this process of cleaning out my house and having less.  I don’t think I can ever become a complete “minimalist” and I don’t think I have to be.  However, it is nice and freeing to clean out junk, organize and make more of a stress-free enviornment for our family! So for the past few months,  weekly I choose something to organize/go through/ clean out.  I have to make sure I don’t get caught up in this and that I can still keep what is right in front of me my main focus!

I think putting God FIRST in my life is helping tremendously.  While I am in a Season of life that makes LONG stretches with my Bible hard to do.  I am striving to put him first by starting my day off with him in prayer and a short devotion.  I can’t begin to say how much that has been of benefit in my day! Just giving my day to Him.  Sure that doesn’t mean every morning is perfect! By no means.  It just makes things go smoother.  My attitude starts off right.  This can be helpful! I still long for MORE time with God and TRY to get that in during nap time (especially with our new Women’s Study starting back up).

I’m beyond thankful that Brian has seen this! I think I’ve been praying for things to be a bit different for a while and honestly, I wasn’t sure what that “different” was.  I love to see God work.  God has been working on me for a while in this area and I’m thankful.  When Brian shared with me the other day,  I realized….. it is in one word ….


Simplify.  We were just longing for a more simple less stress life.