Givensmeabreak....

I recently became a shampoo girl... I wasn't looking for anything different.  I started a new job over the summer at Lighthouse Foster Care which I absolutely love.  I love the flexibility of it.  I love the atmosphere.  I love learning the ins and outs of foster care and eventually adoption.  I love serving the families and helping the agency grow because I truly believe it is the best in the area.  I love it. BUT.... As much as I love it and love serving in that capacity....THE LORD kept tugging at my heart... "Ashleigh, you need to get out more...Ashleigh, you have a gift....Ashleigh, are you loving people the best way you know how?" While none of these things have to do with shampoo or foster care, it does have to do with getting outside of my bubble.  I really struggle with being around people and a lot of people for that matter.  I have to do it in spurts and I have to prepare myself for it.  But THE LORD kept saying..."Ashlei...

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...

 We had a blast yesterday with our first annual Youthsgiving.  We took all the kids to Superfly out by the mall.  Its a new jump park in the area and it was SUPER fun! Then, we came back to our house for our feast!  I made a turkey and by "I," I mean, Kraig because I couldn't bring myself to touch the bird!  So, Kraig did a great job!!!  It was super tasty.  We made other wonderful treats!  It was such a fun time to just hang out with the kids and relax!   We had so much fun and are so thankful for these kids.  We always question (really more me than Kraig) if we are doing what we should be doing and after yesterday....it was once again confirmed we are right where the Lord wants us.  We love seeing these kids grow in Christ and in times like yesterday...we love seeing them relax and have fun.  We look forward to the tradition every year and can't wait to make more fun times with ...

For the past year, I have struggled horribly with fatigue, bad self esteem, weight gain and some days just not wanting to get out of bed. I think I attributed the bulk of that to having a toddler and not being able to lose the "baby bump." So, I would work out, try to eat better, try to take naps and I was still so exhausted.  I just couldn't catch up.  I would pretty much run an IV of Dr. Pepper through my body most days and still couldn't make it through the day.  I just struggled. I finally said "I AM SICK OF NO ENERGY, FATIGUE, and THE EXTRA WEIGHT!!!" and so  I started a boot camp.  Well, that worked great as far as the extra energy and gaining muscle and I could tell a difference in my sleep and just my attitude seemed to be better but I still couldn't cut the weight.  I had a friend in my college days that worked at a summer camp with me and I kept seeing her wonderful posts of her post baby health and how great she was feeling and how she w...

Let's get real for a minute.  I have put on some weight. Kraig told me once that he read an article in some sports magazine (I think, I'm not real sure)  that people who play one sport growing up are more likely to gain more weight and keep it on when they get older.  I was always a pretty active kid, however I only played one sport.  I don't know how true that article or information he read really is but it is true for me and it has stuck with me.   After having Rett, I would read blogs, magazines and books that would tell me that the weight would just fall off after giving birth especially if you nurse.  Well, I nursed and the weight never JUST FELL OFF.  In fact, it stayed.  and STAYED even a little bit more.  So, although I don't think I am overweight, I am the most unhealthy I have ever been in my life.  And being so unhealthy plays with my psyche.  Which has played a role in other aspects in my life.   SO.......

My sister recently had a baby.  He's precious.  His name is Case Holland Pryor and although I have multiple pictures of him, she's very limited with what she puts on the Internet so I'll respect her and keep him off of here.  I'm sorry.  But take my word for it...he's handsome and squishy and a great baby. Some of you may not know but my sister had a rough pregnancy.  Lots of morning sickness, aches and pains and braxton hicks and list goes on.  As her due date approached, things started to get more intense for her also.  His due date was Sept. 16....by the end of July, she was having more pains and it seemed like more calls to her doctor as well as more visits were happening.  She also had a couple late night runs to the ER but all was well.  We all knew that Case was coming early....but no one knew how early, except the Lord of course.  :) Well, my mom and I had planned for Britt's baby shower to be August 9.  It was super cut...

WOW! What a few weeks!!!  Busy!!!  I cant even begin to tell you what has been going on... Let's start with praising the Lord for what He has done.  Kraig and I have set out to take our youth kids to GoldRush 2014 in Atlanta, GA.  I have gone on this trip probably 3 times and every time I come away amazed and encouraged by the Lord.  I am so excited to take our kids.  But in order for this to happen we need to raise some money.  We put on another yard sale.  Last year, we had a yard sale and made right around $1,000.00.  Well, this year by our 2nd dropoff date, I was hoping for just $500.  I don't know why I short change the Lord.  So, on Friday (day before the sale), we went up to the church and began to set up and get everything organized.  Our kids showed up to work (and play and eat)...and our church family showed up!!!  They came out to help set up.  Such a blessing.  Over the past 2 years, I have so enj...

Last night, I got the opportunity to talk to our youth.  Usually, I just get the girls and sometimes put my little tidbits in every so often but Kraig has been super overwhelmed this week plus he is preparing for his sermon for Sunday....HE'S PREACHING!!!  So, he asked if I could handle the youth service.  I apprehensively said, "Sure...."  Whatever I can do to help....RIGHT!?!?! I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to talk about, it was just putting it together... I started with a video from the Skit Guys.  If you hadn't seen them, they are generally a funny duo that go around and tour with conferences and stuff like that.  This one is pretty serious.  I like how it shows that we are a work in progress and that God loves me enough to not leave me like I am.  I think the kids got the message. From there I talked about Job.  If you know anything about Job....HE HAD A ROUGH LIFE.  He had many trials and tough times ...

  Photo bomb!  Sorry for the way this looks, I'm not patient enough to figure out how the pictures should be placed.  :(  And sorry so long but we have some great pics of the last few weeks of our snow days!!!!  Hope you all enjoyed your snow/time off/rest time....it was a great time for us!                             These are from our snow a couple weeks ago.  He didn't like it.  However, we think due to a tooth breaking through, him just waking up from a nap and the lack of gloves, he just wasn't feeling it.  So, we didn't last long.  But it was a great few days with Kraig off work to be able to spend some extra time with us and a time for rest.                                 These are also from the last snow days....I gave Rett his first hair cut.   I didn't cry one t...