Amy Beth

January 23, 2015

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It feels like Christmas was a million years ago by now, but I wanted to take a minute to share ours because I think it might go down as my favorite Christmas yet. I have three reasons for this:

1. This girl

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Penelope was born a week before Christmas. So rather than spending Christmas in the hospital, or spending Christmas sitting around hugely pregnant, I got to spend Christmas cuddling a brand new baby. That was definitely the best scenario.

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2. This boy

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At two and a half, this was the first year that Charlie really seemed to recognize Christmas as a special time and participate in some family traditions. Christmas traditions form a huge part of my childhood memories, so it is exciting to get to share some of those experiences with Charlie. And then his big gift on Christmas morning (Duplo train set!) was a smashing success. Chris had it all set up the night before so Charlie could walk out to a living room full of train tracks. Needless to say he immediately started playing with it. And then he wouldn’t stop. It took a good hour before we were able to persuade him to open any of his other presents.

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3. This guy

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Chris and I have been married 7 years. We’ve been together for more than a decade. And I think this was the first year that I actually surprised him for Christmas. Normally he’s the kind of guy who only wants a few very specific items. So much so that it’s usually easier to just give him money to go buy the thing himself. It means he gets what he wants, but it’s a super boring way to give a Christmas gift. But this year I got him a Wii U, a gift I knew he would love, but one he hadn’t considered putting on any sort of wish list. When you can make your husband’s face light up like a little kid’s you know you’ve done a good job. And now he and Charlie can bond over Mario Kart.

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Most of all, I spent this Christmas enjoying my little family and feeling oh so grateful to the One who put them in my life.

December 2, 2014

Project Life: A Day at the Zoo

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I’ve been wanting to take Charlie to the zoo for at least a year. Somehow it never happened. But as we started to near the due date for baby number two I realized that if we didn’t do it soon it could be another couple of years before we’d be able to try again.

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So we made it a priority. Chris and I picked out a couple of possible weekends and watched the weather and finally landed on our day.

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It was perfect. It was early November so it was a little chilly in the morning, but the sky was clear, the wind was calm, and it warmed up by the afternoon. It turned out to be one of the last warmish days of fall before the temperatures plunged and it turned to winter.

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Charlie had a great time. We didn’t take a ton of pictures – we spent our time just enjoying our day together. But we got a few cute ones and I was so excited about our fun day that I really wanted to make sure I captured it before I forgot some of the little details. So I went ahead and printed some pictures for my ProjectLife album and wrote down a few of my favorite moments. I’m so glad I’ve started this album and have a nice way to remember such days.


Free Printable!

Perfect day cards

I made a few of my own 3×4 inch journaling cards for this project and thought I’d make them available to others. They are pretty multi-purpose and use some fun bright colors. If you’d like to use them for your own projects just download the pdf and print them out!

Download the cards here

May 7, 2013

Adjusting Expectations

I’ve always struggled with unrealistic expectations. I’ll wake up on a Saturday convinced that I will get the whole house clean AND cook a healthy dinner from scratch AND do that craft I’ve been wanting to try AND take my baby to the park. A perfect Saturday.

But then it takes longer to get through breakfast than I had planned, and there are dishes I forgot about that need to be cleaned and then it’s already lunch time and I haven’t even taken a shower yet! Then my baby takes forever to take a nap and by the time he wakes up it’s time to think about dinner which we end up ordering and we’ve missed our chance to go to the park. My perfect Saturday has turned into a waste of a day.

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