Happy Birthday little joy!

Blessed to be celebrating two full years of life with our littlest joy Aggie Rae today.  It's been an unusual two years, but I think of parents who don't even have that amount of time with their little ones, and yet we've had the pleasure to rock her, see her smile, love her and hold her. What a precious gift she has been wrapped up in a very extraordinary package.

Women's Conference

I was blessed to be able to attend the 2012 Gospel Coalition Women's Conference in Orlando, FL last weekend.  It was certainly a refreshment for my soul. Though it was packed with so much good teaching I felt as if I were drinking from a fire hose.  I think they said if we had attended every session possible through the weekend there would have been 19 in all.  I think I missed 4?

I've really been struggling in my faith the last few months. I am certain it was magnified by early pregnancy hormones, which made many things difficult for me to decipher.  I often felt myself feeling overwhelmed in my life and circumstances.  And the thought that the Lord had seen fit to add another child to an already overwhelming life seemed nearly more than I could bear.  Thinking though the logistics of being married to a man with long work hours, and minimal hours at home for meals let alone help of any kind.  Thinking of grocery store trips with 4 children, and the possibility of two of them not being able to walk, at a minimum not walk well enough to zoom through the store at the rate I often do. I thought of the fact that though I have not had an uninterrupted night of rest in over 2 years, my 24 hour schedule was going to be filling up even more with another little one in the house..... but how tired I already am.  I sometimes get the "I don't know how you do it?" question from those close to me that know the fullness of the schedule we keep.  For that matter, I often get if from others as well that only know a fraction of it, and think to myself 'if you only knew'.  The answer to that question is of course, the Lord is sustaining me and giving me grace one step at a time. But I often thought in agreement with their thinking in those times,...... 'I'm not really sure how i'm doing it?'.  I've had some days where I was overcome with sadness and tears as I dealt with fear and doubt in my heart.  I began to think that the rest of my life would only be filled with an unmanageable work load, hard circumstances and sorrow.  I've been battling depression I think.  I was unable to see the good in anything, and felt the preverbal dark cloud over me all day and night.

When Mike and I went to Colorado I of course took my sin with me, it does after all dwell with in my heart.  I also took a book with me called "Surrender", knowing that my thoughts and heart were not joyfully accepting the circumstances God had willed in my life.  The book walked me through something I did not anticipate.  The surrender of sleep.....  I always thought of sleep as a basic human need, and in some ways it is, but if God is calling me to a life that does not abundantly supply me with this "need" then I should surrender it knowing that He provides for ALL my needs.

At the conference last weekend, God lovingly reminded me more about Himself and His ability to redeem.  I did not doubt His ability to redeem lost souls, after all He has been gracious to me in this. The redemption I was doubting was His ability to redeem circumstances..... my circumstances.  It is true that the rest of my life may look very much like it does presently and the only redemption I may have to gaze upon is in eternity?  But it is possible that the Lord may have some blessing for me in this life, that my present circumstances could be redeemed for good.  As we looked at different faucets of God and His ability to redeem through different attributes of His character He did a redeeming work in my heart.  He softened my hard heart and increased my faith that I certainly have a hope in heaven, but not all hope here on earth is to be lost either.  He is my redeemer.

Crawling

It official, she's on the move!!! Just short of 2 years old.

Missouri

The kids and I spent the last week in Missouri, we arrived home yesterday. I have lots of great pictures and hope to do one more post on CO soon, but we shall see.

Jeep Adventure

This will be my last Colorado post, I promise.  But it is probably the best story of the trip.  Mike and I had hoped to find the time to tell it together, but alas....... I can wait no more.

So you know how we miraculously ended up with a jeep for a rental car.  The man in Mike felt the need to capitalize upon it's capabilities at least once.  So he persuaded me to "take a really quick, short road, to do some 'off roading'."  I'll be honest the pictures do not do it justice, as far as the rough terrain goes............  So we took a road out that wasn't so bad, but Mike decided it would be fun to take another route back to town.  I'm not sure that this was included in the "really quick, short route" previously mentioned.  Don't get me wrong, i 'm a pretty adventurous woman, but 4 x 4 and early pregnancy are not friends.  To make this very long......... story short we ended up on this rocky road for about 4.5 hours, we found civilization well past dinner time and on the border of sunset.  There were many times that we both were uncertain of the outcome of certain terrain, I did lots of breath holding and eye closing and praying.  Once we were on the trail there was not really an opportunity to turn around, and it was mentioned by "the man" that if we found ourselves in an inescapable location we would in fact be calling the forest service to bail us out.  When we first started this adventure we would get out and hold branches trying not to damage the brand new jeep we were driving, by the end, we were more thinking about getting out alive and care of the jeep was a much lower priority. 

This was one of the early narrow passages ways in a valley.  We didn't capture any of the later ones as I insisted that Mike stop taking pictures. I was "all funned out". 

This was a tight turn on the side of a cliff, and to our surprise just around this corner was a large bolder that our left tire had to go over, very uncomfortable.  Hold breath, close eyes, and pray. Thank God for gravity. 

More Rocky Road

At one point I was certain we were lost, and stated that we appeared to be on more of a hiking trial and less of the road.  Then to my delight there was a sign, but it was for the people going the other direction.  So naturally grasping for some direction we pulled past it and looked back to see this. "open to hiking, horse, and bikes.  Closed to motorcycles, ATV's and motor-vehicles." My heart sank...... then I realized that we had probably just come through the worse of it.

This was early in the trip, Mike really enjoying himself.

We did see some nice views in our near death experience.  After this little adventure Mike and I both desired to stay at the cabin the rest of our time in Colorado.

The Cabin

The Cabin was an "off grid" home.  It originally served as an old miners cabin, but the couple who bought it renovated and added on.  They made it into a "straw-bale home" which is a very intersing concept.  Any way it was powered by solar panels and used gas for all the appliances.  It was like fancy camping.  The only modern convience we were with out was AC, but no need with the temperate weather.  There was a wood stove if we had needed, but we did not. 

This was my favorite reading spot, the view out this window was lovely of the mountains. 

This was the cozy kitchen.  One of our favorite rooms in the cabin.  The details built in to this home are beautiful.

An exterior shot.

A view of the cabin from the top of one of the peaks near by.  They also had a few barns on the property.  We didn't see any other civilization while we were there. 

My favorite exterior wall.

The bathroom was one of our other favorite rooms.

Thankfully there were no other people around..........they could have peeked on us in the shower.

No Roof- Day 2

This was the first amandment made to the trip in honor of the jeep.  Naturally Mike felt driving into the mountains with the roof off would be the best way to capatilze on the lovely view. 

 It was a little chilly.

 I think I'm yaning here.......... but you can see the layers of warmth.  I had on 2 pair of pants, 2 shirts, 2 jackets and hoods and my visor and shades for sun-protection. We also had the heater cranked up, and then we were quite comfortable. 

 And as a result we didn't miss out on any of the view. ;) HE he!