2014... A Year of Change!

Reflecting on 2014, I have to declare it the year of CHANGE (have I mentioned that I hate change!?).  Some of it was good; some of it was hard.

Major changes in our household this year included:

• Becoming a family of 5 when Aleah was born in April
• Josh losing his job of nearly 10 years and starting a new job
• Hannah starting Kindergarten
• Jacob starting preschool
• Me babysitting our niece, Madelyn

Hard things we went through on top of the change:

• My Grandpa Miller passed away.
• I spent 4 days in the hospital with pre-term labor at the end of a pretty difficult pregnancy.
• We spent about two months thinking and praying about if we were supposed to move to Nashville (we never wanted to); that was very stressful!
• Josh's transition to his new job has not been easy on anyone in our household.  We're still working on that one.

In summary, we went from a difficult pregnancy, to adding a baby to our family, to losing our job, to finding a new (stressful) job, to a whole new schedule for every member of our family this fall.  Really, when I think about this year, I think "stress" and "change," and then I wonder if I'm being dramatic because nothing that happened was world ending by any means.  It was just a lot of.... stress and change!

God gave us some new, exciting ministry opportunities and continued on with others we've been doing:

• I assisted my best friend Sandy as she started a new after school program at our church, Cross Training.
• I led two moms' Bible studies this year, one in the spring and one in the fall.
• I don't know if this is "ministry" per se, but Hannah and I both donated our hair this year, something I've always wanted to do!
• We were able to sponsor another Compassion child, walk in The Walk for Life, do OCC boxes, participate in The Living Christmas Tree, and continue on in early childhood ministry and PBT financial work, etc., etc.

We did not go on a big vacation this year, but we visited some fun places:

• 10 Year anniversary in St. Louis
• Jacob's 4th birthday in Indy
• Christmastime weekend in Chicago
• A day at the "beach" (Indiana Dunes)

Some really great things happened too:

• My sister Emily moved back to Catlin
• Josh and I celebrated 10 years of marriage 
• We got two new nieces, Madelyn and Hazel
• ALEAH WAS BORN!  She is the very bright ray of sunlight on this somewhat difficult year.  She makes everything hard seem so small.  She makes me so happy!!!  Being a MOM is still the best job ever!!!