HELLO DECEMBER + PRINTABLE DECEMBER CALENDAR


Printable December Calendar

Oh hello sweet sweet December!!! I can't wait to greet your beautiful self tomorrow. Last week was a crazy one...decorated the church for Christmas and preached at Adore but God is good and He always gives the strength that I need (why do I doubt Him when He always shows up??!) 

But now I'm ready to start decorating our house for Christmas. James put up our new mantle and I cannot wait to show you it! I want to go out ASAP and buy some fresh garland but he wants us to go hunt for some in the forest...so we'll see. 

And now it's time to plan out all the wonderful December festivities! Hello cookie exchanges, Christmas parties, church services oh and probably a work out or two..lols.

Hope you have a wonderful December filled with amazing memories with loved ones!

CLICK HERE TO PRINT THE DECEMBER CALENDAR

XO,
laura

HELLO WEEKEND


HELLO WEEKEND

Happy Black Friday everyone! I just did some shopping on the Indigo sale from the comfort of my computer chair, sipping tea and wearing my bathrobe OBVS...now that's my kinda shopping.

To be honest, with my changing body I don't really have the desire to go to a fitting room and try on new clothes right now, so I'll be avoiding the mall today....except I need new gloves because it's FLIPPING FREEZING OUT! These ones look cozy and they're on sale!  Ohh and also these cute joggers look real comfy. 

Who's ready for the weekend? Mine is a little crazy with Christmas decorating at the church and sermon prepping for Adore BUT my Monday is going to be spent putting up Christmas decorations in our home!!! James ordered our new mantle and it's ready today...hurrrah! Can't wait to decorate it with fresh garland. 

Well hope you have a wonderful weekend and I'll be back on Monday with a printable December calendar for you!

XO,
laura

ps. above photo by Rachael Alexandra Photography

WE'RE HAVING A BABY! + HOLIDAY PHOTOS


So the cat's outta the bag....last night we announced on instagram/fb that WE'RE HAVING A BABY!!!!!! It still feels like the craziest thing and I have so many thoughts/emotions to share (which I will soon!) but now you know the reason for my lack of posting and all that "under the weather" garbage..lol! I'm almost out of my first trimester and I'm starting to feel more like myself..(PTL) 

Last week we had our first ultrasound and seeing that tiny little baby jump around and move its arms up and down was one of the most precious moments of my life. That's our baby who God knit together in me....mind blown.

I really wanted to announce the pregnancy with a sweet photo shoot announcement. So the day after James got back from tour, I gently persuaded him to wake up at 7:30am so we could shoot at 8am. We hired my amazingly talented friend Rachael Alexandra Photography to take the photos. Her work is incredible and she has the personality to make you laugh and feel comfortable which is such an important thing for a photog! I highly recommend her!!!

I still can't believe I'm going to be a mom. Part of me CANNOT WAIT UNTIL JUNE and the other part of me is thinking..who let us have a baby? But my goodness, I am already so in love with this teeny peanut!!!!

Thank you for all your encouraging comments on instagram/fb. It melts my heart knowing how loved this baby already is. I'm so thankful for you all.

XO,
laura

WHEN THINGS DON'T GO ACCORDING TO PLAN


clouds

I like to think that I am an expert traveller. My mum is a travel agent for goodness sake. I was raised to travel. And that I've done. England, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Ukraine, Belgium, India, Hong Kong, Trinidad, Mexico. I love airplanes and everything about them. This has always been my mindset.

Until things don't go according to plan.....

I am a planner. I like neat trip itineraries. I memorize all my flight times. I always know where my passport is. We planned our most recent vacation very well. Three nights in Austin, a short flight to Fort Lauderdale and then 7 nights on a Caribbean cruise...YES. The plans were good and doable.

Our time in Austin was wonderful. We sooo enjoyed our time with Ryan & Joy. We even enjoyed their crazy stormy weather....until it messed up our travel plans. Now I'm not going to go into a travel plans gone horrible rant here but I will say our travel plans got heavily messed up due to weather and we ended up missing our cruise by two hours. Bummer. Thankfully, I have a wonderful mum who quickly booked us a flight to Turks & Caicos the next day so we could meet up with our cruise the following morning. 

Through it all, I kept asking God..."WHY!!!"....we prayed for things to work out and they were not working out and I wish I could tell you He told me some amazing reason for why it didn't work out for us but the honest truth is "I don't know?" but what I do know is sometimes things don't always go according to plan and that's okay. You cannot control everything and that is okay...that is more than okay. Life can sometimes be very unpredictable and it can be very annoying but all you can do is continue to trust God and know that He is good and He is faithful. In the end, things will work out.

And they did end up working for us. We arrived on the island of Grand Turk, we stayed in a cute little hotel, witnessed a beautiful sunset and met up with our cruise the next morning and enjoyed five nights of Caribbean bliss.

sunset

And how good is that sunset?

xo,
laura

HELLO WEEKEND


hello weekend

It's Friday and here's to hoping on scoring BIEBER TICKETS at 10am!

Tomorrow I'm going to a pie making class with my momma and sister and I cannot wait!! We each leave with a pie and I'm hoping that we also get to sample lots and lots of pie....mmmmm.

James comes home in two days...BOOYAH. I've found this tour the hardest..probably because when he's away it's only me looking after our students. On the last tours if I was super tired after a long day of work, I could make a smoothie or eat a bowl of cereal and call it a day...not so much with international students...

Another reason why I'm so excited for James to come home is CHRISTMAS DECORATING can begin! He's going to build a mantle for our fireplace and I can't wait to decorate the junk out of it!

"Yes the world is scary as hell, love anyway." <------ yes. Love is what He asks of us, isn't it?

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!!

xo,
laura

P.S. Sorry I haven't posted as regularly as I usually do! I've been feeling a little bit under the weather...hopefully next week I'll be getting back to 3x per week! I still have lots of photos from our vaycay to share with you and oh my goodness, let the Christmas baking games begin!