Givensmeabreak....

I'm going to get this another shot.  It is such a great outlet to let our family see pics of my kids and share our lives.  So...here goes. Here is just a snapshot of what you can expect as I kick this back up.... I don't think I have posted since 2015....so we had another kid.  My parent's bought a family farm so we are all out living on the Holland Homestead that I have so named it.  We have chickens!  The Lord has worked so many things out so I look forward to sharing with you those answered prayers.  I got a new job which I love.  Kraig's job has shifted.  We love our youth group and church.  Ya know....God is just so good and He provides beyond our wildest dreams. Life can still be messy and I look forward to sharing those stories with you too but here we are...just a family of 4 living life and loving Jesus through it. I look forward to sharing our lives with you and all the bumps and bruises along the way.

I've started this blog for days now and keep running around in circles of how or what I want to say. Bottom line... God is GOOD.  That's what I keep going back too.  Let's praise Him for a minute.... We have had a great news from our cousins that are battling horrible diseases!  There is still much fight to be had but God is good. We got great news from a friend this morning....their adoption is a GO!  God is good! We have seen God work in our kids lives and our church family in huge ways the past few weeks!  God is good! It's so easy to be in a slump especially with this gloomy weather that we have had.  But God still works.  He works in the small things and even the big things!!!   After the beauty of last week's snow, I found myself loving the parts that were untouched.  I loved looking at everyone's pictures and the beauty of it.  But then...it would get messed up.  People would walk on it, drive throu...

Over Valentine's weekend, Kraig and I took a group of our youth along with our friends at First Baptist Lakeview down to Atlanta to the International Village for a mission trip/retreat. I have to confess....I was beyond stressed out.  I was imagining anything and everything to go wrong. This was the first trip that we completely did ourselves.  Usually, we go along with others and go to some big retreat where we have to plan NOTHING!  But with this, we had to plan EVERYTHING.  So, I was scared of forgetting things, how everything would work out, and what things could go wrong. Well, GOD IS GOOD...ALL THE TIME, GOD IS GOOD!  We arrived late Friday night and had a great start off to the weekend.  Mitchell and Kraig did a great job all weekend with the main talks.  And the music was wonderful.  But the main part of the days were doing the missions. Both Saturday and Sunday we went to different apartment complexes and played with kids and shared...

So, as many of you all might know....I started an awesome new nutritional product a couple of months ago. At first, it was to lose weight, which to be honest, I still haven't reached my goal but I am closer than I was. But it has evolved.  Now, I want to continue to lose weight but we have some more things on the horizon and I want to be able to pay for those things without going further in debt or having to use money that we already have designated for other places.  So, I want to do this business and make some money. Here are some of those reasons WHY I want to continue on with this program...           1.  To get out of debt.  Isn't  that always the thing!  We went through the Dave Ramsey plan before Kraig and I got married and have done OK with sticking with the plan but we have had some unforeseen things come up and we were forced to get into some debt to pay for some home repairs.  Because I stay home, and would l...

My cousin, Anna is a dear soul.  She is a beautiful and caring person.  I love being able to spend time with her.  When my sister and I were little, we would go to Atlanta to spend time with her, her brother Brad and her parents.  Then, they moved to Germany and well, life happened.  We all lost touch and would only see each other on those rare occasions they came back to the states.  Now we are all adults, Anna moved back to the states, we get to talk and see each other more often.  A few weeks ago, she posted a comment and tagged me in it.  I have been really trying to come up with an answer to her questions.  So here goes....this is her post... Please list the top 3 best things that happened for/to you in 2014, whether it be professionally, personally or whatever. You can put down more or less or whatever.  I would also like to hear the 3 worst things about your 2014.  Then finally the 3 most significant things that happened ...

Well, I don't know about you but we need a vacation.  Kraig has one more week off before he returns to normal schedule.  We had Gigi and Papa come for a visit!  We had our youth Christmas party! We have a sickly baby boy (just sinus stuff) and we are pooped for all the craziness of the last two weeks.  Although, we wouldn't trade it for anything...well...the sickness but everything else was great! Last year, for our youth Christmas party, we just had a dinner and played games at the church.  This year, we wanted to do something special and off of the church campus.  So, we got the idea to go skiing.  Well, it was supposed to rain and it never got cold enough so we had to change our plans.  We racked our brains and came up with a Christmas Scavenger Hunt at the mall.  We split the groups up into 3 teams and let them loose (with a chaperone, of course) in the mall.  They had to talk to strangers, find trash, get an autograph, sing a C...