Ten Years

In October Todd and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. We spent the weekend in Eureka Springs, hiking along the Buffalo River and spending time in downtown Eureka Springs. It was a perfect weekend, weather was beautiful and the time spent together was sweet. We came away with stories where we laughed so hard and stories of how God saw us through

Since having our kids we have never spent more than one night away. This was a very refreshing time to be just a couple again. We laughed a lot and spent time talking about our ten years. Like every marriage we have stories where we have laughed so hard it hurts and we have stories of how God saw us through difficult times. We both agreed that in our marriage this far the greatest trial we have faced together is the loss of our first daughter, Karis Rose.

Through God's grace we were able to not only survive through the loss of her, but our marriage became stronger and more dependent on God. Statistics show that 70% of marriages to do survive the loss of a child. Thank you Jesus for holding our marriage and not letting us fall into the 70%.

I am so thankful for the man God made for me. It is exciting to think about what is ahead and sometimes a little overwhelming. But I am ready.

Here are some hiking pictures of our weekend. We set out to find waterfalls with no luck. The first place we went found out after looking for it that a huge boulder had fallen and blocked it. The second place we went that was supposed to be an all season waterfall was merely a trickle down the side of the rock. I'm sure both were once very pretty. Oh well, the adventure was in finding them and we did find caves to explore.

Jadon's Birthday Pictures

Some pictures of Jadon's birthday party. He had a Star Wars party at the park and invited everyone from his class. They mostly played, but we had an asteroid hunt* and played with a catch with the Death Star**. Later that afternoon we had the family party at our house.

And here are a few pictures that Mallory took of Jadon.

I love this picture and his freckles, they show up so cute.

* For the asteroid hunt I took prizes (small toys and candy) wrapped them in aluminum foil and hid them throughout the park. The kids loved hunting them and then unwrapping to see what each other found.

**I took a balloon and put a small bouncy ball inside along with sprinkles (like you put on cupcakes) then the kids played hot potato with it. The ball and sprinkles made it feel and sound like it could "blow up" at anytime. You can also put confetti in the balloon, but being at the park I didn't want to try to clean confetti out of the grass if it popped.