2013 Year in Review

2013 has proven to be a great year for our family - one full of blessings, accomplishments, and surprises. I just counted my total blog posts for this year and including this one, I blogged a grand total of 8 times. Yes, eight. I think I just kind of lost the desire to sit down and write about life. Not because of a lack of things to blog about - there has been plenty.

So, to make it as easy as possible, I'm going to just recap our year as best as I can remember. :)

January 2013: The new year started off very normal - finally having a moment to rest and catch my breath after a WILD 2012 Holiday season. We were so busy the months leading up to Christmas and then I was insanely busy with Women's Ministry at FBC Lavaca in November and December that January brought a nice break from the hustle and bustle. School started back and I started back babysitting a sweet boy and life was moving along as normal.

February 2013: Mike and I celebrated 12 amazing years of marriage, Maddie turned 7 years old and we celebrated her birthday at Simple Simon's pizza with a bunch of her friends. We also welcomed a new family member this month - our little Yorkie, Rocco, joined us and we just love him!

March 2013: Macie turned 10 and we enjoyed having the party at Simple Simon's so much, that she chose to have her party there as well.

April 2013: I turned 37 (I know, I know - you all thought I was only 27. HA!), Mike and I ran with some friends in the Primal Challenge Race - 4 miles of mud, dirt and obstacles - it was fun and something I never thought I would actually do! We were enjoying spring and winding down the last several weeks of school looking forward to summer.

May 2013: Mike's family came to visit us and see our new house. We celebrated the last day of school and we were officially ready for summer!

June 2013: DESTIN!! Our favorite vacation spot - we had a wonderful time with my family and made lots of great memories. Always a blessing to be able to get away for a week and lounge at the beach and pool. This month was also a sad month as we said good-bye to our amazing Children's Pastor and his family. They moved to a new church in Virginia and while we were so excited for them - we were so sad to see them go.

July 2013: We celebrated 4th of July with some great friends, traveled to St. Louis and Illinois to see family and Macie did FASdogs (a workout/training program that her school puts on every summer) and we enjoyed the last few weeks of summer break.

August 2013: I ran in the Color Vibe 5k with a bunch of friends - in the rain and cold (was this really August in Arkansas??!), we celebrated Mike's 35th birthday, started back to school and started back to the craziness that is the fall season. Macie was cheering for Pittbull Football again and had practice 2 nights a week, the girls started in a tumbling class and we were running all over town just about every night of the week. I also started training for my first half marathon.

September 2013: Life was as busy as ever. The beginning of the month brought Mabrie's 3rd birthday! We had her party at Goody's yogurt shop and also had a fun celebration at Chuck E Cheese. So hard to believe that she's already 3! She was going to Mother's Day Out 2 days a week and loved her "school". I was the new MOPS coordinator and our meetings started back up this month, Macie was cheering every Saturday, we practiced 2 nights a week, tumbled on Monday nights, church activities on Wednesday nights leaving our only night at home as a family on Fridays. Felt like we were going non-stop.

October 2013: Continued my half marathon training, traveled to St. Louis to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday, competed in my first Crossfit competition and at the very end of the month, Sarah and I ran the half marathon. This is the month that also brought the biggest surprise of our year. The night before the half marathon, we were dropping off our girls to a friend who was keeping them overnight and Mike's cell phone rang. He stepped outside to answer it and in a few minutes was back inside. We told the girls goodbye and hopped in the car to grab dinner before driving to Russelville (about an hour away from home - close to where we were running the half marathon). Mike tells me that it's his boss offering him a job at one of their plants in Fort Wayne, IN. To say I was shocked is an understatement. It was an offer out of the clear blue sky. We knew that some day we might be offered a new position and have to move, but honestly, I thought it would be years away. As soon as Mike told me, I knew we would be moving. While we knew we needed and wanted to pray about it, I knew in my gut what the answer was. I was a bag of emotions - nervous, sad, excited, anxious all rolled up into one. For nearly 9 years, we had made Arkansas our home. We loved our lives in AR. We felt at home there. We had friends that loved us and we loved them dearly. The thought of leaving all of that was so sad, yet, Mike and I both knew that God was calling us to step out in faith, uproot our family and take this job in Indiana. We accepted the job and started the awful process of telling our friends.

November 2013: Mike started his new position and for the first time in our marriage, we were apart for more than just a few days at a time. He was working in Indiana and I was allowing the girls to finish up their semester in Greenwood. We spent every possible moment with our friends - knowing that our time together was getting more limited with each passing day. We traveled to Illinois to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with Mike's family. As always, it was a great week. We missed Mike's brother, Taylor, who was (and still is) serving a tour of duty in Afghanistan and are so proud of him and his service to our country. We came home from Thanksgiving week and had just 2 weeks left in Arkansas.

December 2013: Our first 2 weeks were literally a blur. I packed in as many moments with friends as I possibly could - we had lunch dates, dinner dates, spend the night nights with friends and then it was really time. The moving company showed up at our door on the 12th and it finally hit us. We really were moving. They packed and loaded our house in 2 days and there we were - saying goodbye to an empty house that we just moved into 20 months prior. We said some tough goodbyes to dear, dear friends and we drove to St. Louis to spend the night before we drove to our new town and new home. We moved into the new house on the 16th, spent the week feverishly unpacking and getting settled, put up our Christmas tree 5 days before Christmas, did all our Christmas shopping in one day, made cookies for Santa, and celebrated our Lord's birth here in our new home just the 5 of us. It was quiet and simple and perfect. We had a wonderful Christmas. We then left for St. Louis to celebrate for a few days with my family and enjoyed it so much. We are back home and are ringing in the New Year on the couch, watching football and thinking about what this new year might bring. Praying that God uses our family in mighty ways next year. Praying that we grow as a family, grow in our faith, serve the Lord with all we have and build our lives in this new town - always being thankful for the memories we have and looking forward to many more wonderful moments.

Happy New Year, friends. Thank you for hanging with me as I recapped our wild year. Hopefully I will be better at updating my little space here in 2014. Love and blessing to you all!

My Favorite Apps - Link Up

I'm doing something I've never done before and linking up to Kelly's Korner Blog to share my fave iphone apps!

The first and newest one that I've just recently found is called Groovebook. Y'all. It's fabulous!! Here's how it works: Download the free app, update your account information, upload up to 100 iphone pics per month and for only $2.99/month, they mail you a cute little album full of your 4x6" prints. They are perforated so that you can easily tear them out and frame, scrapbook or album them. If you are like me, you NEVER take the time to print iphone pics and this is so simple, quick and you don't even have to leave your house to pick them up! They are mailed right to you in about a week. You can even get your first Groovebook FREE - use coupon code: CASH19

I promise - you'll love it!!

Next, of course I love the Facebook app! That one really needs no reason. Don't we all love Facebook?! HAHA!

I also love Instagram - it's fun and guess what - your Instagram pics can also be uploaded/printed from Groovebook. Double YAY!

I use Coupon Sherpa A LOT! It's free and has links to tons of mobile coupons that you can use at stores, restaurants and online. It's a fave of mine - love saving money!

Those are some of my favorites - looking forward to seeing all of yours! :)

Destin 2013

First things first. Summer needs to SLOW DOWN! Is it really 1 month from the start of school? Why do I feel like we were just celebrating the last day? I enjoy summer more and more every year.

In June, we headed south to our favorite spot: Destin! And like always, it was a blast. We swam, played on the beach, ate some great food, played golf, went deep sea fishing, went go-kart riding, shopped, went to the movies and made wonderful memories with our family.

Be nice and get moving

I love to workout. I have for a long time. Several years ago, a few friends and I signed up for our first 5k and we started training. When I started, I honestly had a hard time running a half mile non-stop. I slowly built up to a mile, then two, then 3 and then I could do 3 with some ease. It was a great sense of accomplishment. Especially since I mainly did cardio style workouts prior to that (think Tae-Bo).

About a year and a half ago, I heard about this thing called Crossfit. I really knew nothing about it, but heard from several friends that it was a great workout, fun and encouraging. I was interested, but at that point, not enough to go get on board. It wasn't until about 6 weeks after Mike started it, and came home daily telling me how much he enjoyed it that I decided to sign up as well.

I started in February of 2012 and oh.my.word. I was NOT prepared for how hard it was, how insanely sore I'd be, and how much I'd love every minute of it. It was something that I really enjoyed and it wasn't long until I started seeing results. It also wasn't long until I started hearing all sorts of negative things about it - from all sorts of sources. From men and from women. Things like, "Crossfit is great, if you like looking like a man", "Crossfit girls have NO boobs!", etc, etc, etc. You can see some of the nice comments by just clicking on facebook and going to the Crossfit wall. As soon as they post a picture of a girl, the mean comments start rolling in.

So, I got to thinking about elite female athletes in general. Are the elite crossfitters really that much different looking? Do marathon runners, softball, basketball, volleyball players, gymnasts, swimmers, etc. not have defined muscles, broad shoulders, small chests, and so on? Well, let's see:



And let's see an elite crossfitter:


Now, keep in mind, these are the very best in their sport. WNBA, Olympians, top notch athletes. They train hard, eat as well as you can possibly eat, and they are all in amazing shape, have toned arms, ripped abs, big legs and from the looks of it, fairly small chests. HA!

Someone like myself, I workout hard, but I'm not elite. I have no real desire to be. I like chocolate chip cookies. And bread. And pizza. And Dr. Pepper. But, I also like being in the best shape that I can be for myself. For me, that includes doing Crossfit. For you, that might be running, cardio, the eliptical, Zumba, an at home workout video. And guess what? That's awesome! If you are getting up off the couch several times a week and trying to do what you can to live a healthier lifestyle - GOOD FOR YOU! You should be proud! Keep going - keep encouraging each other! But, let's stop tearing each other down because we don't "like" what workout someone chooses to do. I'm tired of women ripping each other apart because of these things. I want my daughters to be healthy and have a love for fitness. Whatever that is that they should choose to do. If they love softball, I want them to play with all their heart. If they want to run a marathon one day, I'll be on the side cheering for them, if they want to do Zumba, I'll shake my groove thing right along side them! I don't want them to sit around and be lazy because someone has told them that female softball are too man-ish, or Zumba is ridiculous or if they run too much, they will look emaciated. I want them to learn from their momma that taking care of their body is of the Lord and that if our bodies are healthy, we can serve him better!

So, let's just exercise, be healthy and be nice about it. :)

Soap box over. You can go about your day now.

Rocco

I forgot one big thing in my post last night! Well, he's a little thing, but big for our family! :)

We had a new family member join us in February as well. His name is Rocco and he's a Yorkie. I always said that if we ever got another dog, it would have to be able to stay inside, not shed and stay SMALL!! Mike's brother and his wife bought a Yorkie and text me a picture of him back in January and I was smitten. I asked Caitlin if the breeder had anymore and he didn't. So, Caitlin, being the amazing sister-in-law she is, went on the hunt for another breeder that had some available. She found a sweet little boy dog about an hour from their house and even worked a little deal with the breeder. She was quite the bargainer! :) I think we traded about 500 texts those couple of weeks between finding the puppy, her picking him up from the breeder and she and Luke driving to Arkansas to bring him to us. Caitlin was a total rock star and even went to pick Rocco up on Superbowl Sunday - when I'm sure she would have rather been home.

We surprised the girls - they had no clue we bought a dog and when Luke and Caitlin got to our house and walked in with the new puppy, they were shocked and SO excited.

He's a sweet dog. Like any new puppy, he can be annoying. We are still working on potty training him - which has probably been the biggest downside of having a small dog. But, overall, he does well and is getting better at letting us know he needs to go outside. I'm certain he thinks he is the size of a Great Dane. He thinks he's pretty tough, but he weighs all of about 5 lbs. and is as cute as he can be.

Long time, No blog

Oh hi there! It's Chrissy. I blog twice a year. I like keeping my 3 readers in suspense.

WHEW - where in the world did the time go?? My last post was in January and it's not because there's been a lack of great things to blog about. To be honest, I just haven't felt like it. I still love to read and follow all my favorite blogs, but to sit down, gather my thoughts and write something has just seemed like more than I wanted to do. But, I need to update this little space on the web with what we've been doing the past 4 months so that I can look back and read it some day.

So, here goes. Let's see, I started babysitting the sweetest little boy in January. He's Mabrie's age and for the most part, they play great and have a ball together. There's the occasional moments of fighting over a toy or something random - but what 2 two year olds could spend three days a week together and not have a little power struggle every now and then? They keep me on my toes and make me laugh so hard. My little buddy is moving away next month and I'll sure miss him. But I have a feeling that my little one will miss him even more. She wakes up every day asking if he's coming to our house - and on the days he's not, she's not too thrilled.

February was a BIG month! Not only did we celebrate Maddie's 7th birthday, she also asked Jesus into her heart and was baptized!! Her spiritual birthday is the 19th and her actual birthday is the 20th - so there was a lot of celebrating going on that week. We had her birthday party at Simple Simon's Pizza and it was so much fun. A lot of friends came and helped us celebrate her - she's such a joy to our family! Funny and feisty, sweet and sassy. :)



It was an extra special day when she was baptized because she was able to share the experience with her very best friend, Alyssa. Alyssa had asked Jesus into her heart a couple of months prior and ended up getting baptized in March, and Maddie was able to join her! It was a wonderful moment for both families - I pray that they remain close as they grow and always love the Lord and serve him together!



The next big event was Macie's 10th birthday on March 20th! (How do I have a 10 year old already?) She also had her party at Simple Simon's Pizza and had a great day. She loved every minute of it - she's so much like her momma. Loves being around people and having fun. She is in love with owls right now and wants everything she sees that has an owl on it, so I knew the theme had to be centered around that. Her cookie cake was SO cute and she got several gifts with owls - she was thrilled! She is a little ray of sunshine - always smiling, always laughing and has the sweetest heart. We are so blessed!



The end of March brought Easter Sunday. We were home and it was a great day. I love Easter Sunday service - such a celebration and I love seeing everyone dressed in their pretty spring colors. We always go to lunch after church at our friend's house. They are like our family down here and we've kind of adopted them as our own - we love them and are so thankful that years ago they asked us to join in on their holiday celebrations! It means so much to us to have people that we love welcome us to their family events like we are just a part of the fam!



April brought my 37th birthday and we spent it in St. Louis, which always makes me a happy girl! We shopped, ate some of my favorite things and just had a great time with my parents, brother and nephew.

This weekend Mike's family is coming here to see us and our house - they haven't been since we moved in last spring and we are excited to have them! I'm sure we will have a wonderful time and always look forward to time with family. It's Mother's Day weekend so we will get to spend it with Mike's mom - would love to get to spend it with both of our moms, but unfortunately we don't live close enough to make that work.

Life stays so busy, but I have to get better about slowing down and documenting our lives. This is my little "scrapbook" and I love to go back and see what we were doing at certain times. If no one else reads it, at least my little family will have it to look back on. :)

Have a happy weekend! I'll see you again in October. HA! Kidding. I hope.

Randomness

I've just had all sorts of thoughts buzzing through my head today and thought I'd share with all 3 of you that read this.

1. I met Michelle Duggar yesterday. So neat, so challenging. She's an amazing woman of God, a great wife and a great mother. I left the meeting thinking these few things:

A. I have a lot of work to do as a mom.
B. I have definitely dropped the ball in a lot of areas.
C. She may need to come live in our house for about a year.
D. I'm so thankful that God knows our hearts and is constantly teaching me how to be a better mom, wife, Christian.

2. I'm doing a Bible study with some girls from Crossfit. It's on Beth Moore's book, "So Long, Insecurity". Now, I'll start by saying that I never thought of myself as an insecure person. But, I thought that it would be good to read this book and make sure. Umm, I was wrong. Beth is wearing me out. There are things in my life that I never thought I was insecure over. I chalked it up to "I'm just a worrier" or whatever other excuse I could think of. If you have not read this book, do it. Now. There's so much freedom in knowing Christ and that our security is in Him and eternal things. Not our spouse. Not our friends. Not our family members. Not in our money, jobs, and the list goes on and on. It's a great book. I'm learning things about myself that I never even knew. Beth rocks.

3. I'm still coughing, still have drainage, still have scratchy ears, etc. I don't feel bad, but this is annoying. It's officially been over a month now. I'm over it. I'm ready for spring.

4. I love my husband. We are a couple weeks out from our 12 year anniversary. 12 YEARS! Our dating and engagement was 5 1/2 years. That means we have been together for a total of 17 1/2 years. WOW! I love him so much more today than the day we got married. He is faithful and trustworthy. And I'm learning those are 2 qualities that are hard to come by. I do not take them for granted. I'm so thankful for him.

5. I keep hearing stuff about a show called Downtown Abbey. I'm intrigued, but not enough to find out when it's on and what channel it's on. Am I missing the mark here? Should I be checking it out?

Ok, that is all for today. Have a great rest of the week!!

Christmas 2012

Christmas break is officially over at the Cash house. This morning we were back at the schedule and routine of school and I have to say, I think I dreaded it more than the girls. Christmas break wasn't exactly what I had hoped for this year. We spent the majority of it sick and while we had fun, it's hard to fully enjoy anything when you don't feel well.

Mike was off work for 12 straight days, all of which someone was sick. Mike started feeling bad the day before his vacation and called in sick, which is something he very, very rarely does. By that evening, I was trying to decide if we should go to the ER or not. His fever was up to 104.7 at one point and he was feeling terrible. We were able to get his fever to go down some, and he spent the majority of the next 3-4 days in bed or on the couch. During that time, both Macie and Maddie had run fevers as well, but Mabrie and I were holding out and I was so hopeful that we would somehow escape it and have everyone healthy for Christmas.

No.Such.Luck.

The Sunday before Christmas, Mabrie and I were both sick as dogs and I knew we needed to go to Promed and be checked. We waited for over 2 hours in the waiting room to be called back to a room and by the time the nurse checked Mabrie, her fever had reached 104.9. They gave her ibuprofen immediately and had me put cool towels on her face and neck. They also swabbed both of us for the flu, thinking that we certainly both had it. When both swabs came back negative, the doctor was surprised and ordered to have blood drawn (from me) to be 100% sure. The blood work came back showing negative for flu, so it was determined that it was just viral. So, after 3 hours at Promed, we left there with instructions to drink a lot of water, take Tylenol and Ibuprofen and rest.

I can honestly say that I've never felt so awful, and for so many days. Mabrie bounced back a little quicker than me, but not much, and I was sick for a full 2 weeks. It was terrible - and the part that was the worst was feeling bad when we traveled to St. Louis. We always look so forward to our time with family and it was a bummer to feel yucky while we were there, but we made the most of it and tried to enjoy our time as much as possible. It's always good to be with family, even if we didn't feel great.

We had a great Christmas nonetheless. The girls got a lot of fun gifts and loved everything. I got a new watch and perfume from Mike, we also bought new furniture for our office as a gift to each other and he got some new Crossfit stuff from me.

Christmas Eve PJ's

Opening gifts on Christmas Morning

I am thankful that if we had to be sick that it was over a break. I was able to rest and relax for the most part, which I would not have been able to do if school was in session. And I'm VERY thankful that the sickness is leaving our house. I'm praying that it doesn't return.

I hope each of you had a blessed Christmas and Happy New Year! Looking forward to 2013 and praying for a wonderful year!