A little Light

Well helllloooo there!

Where do I start?!?!

Our Mikayla Grace turned 13.

{November 30}

We took her on a trip of a lifetime to commemorate this special birthday.

Florida-South America-San Francisco

I have lots of pictures I can finally share!

{And I will, but I'm a perfectionist and will want them in order so I'm gonna backdate them}

Today I was approached by a Banmanland blog reader at Michael's!  She knew me by name and asked how the family was doing.
And she said reading this blog was inspiring.
How nice!
Apparently, that was just the encouragement I needed to finally figure out the storage issue and start posting again:)

I wish I had thought to ask her name.
Thank you for taking the time to say hello, it sure meant a lot to me.

This blog is a way for me to document our lives, share with the far away family, and also connect with others.  My prayer is that it would be a little light in this crazy world.  A reminder that faith and love and family should always come first.  An encouragement toward thankfulness and appreciation of God's gifts in those around you and using the ones He's blessed each of us with individually.  Lots of vulnerability and honesty instead of just a bunch of perfect pictures because comparison is such a treacherous tool of destruction.  Each of us has our own strengths, gifts and purpose!!  And maybe sometimes just words and photos from the trenches of a busy family life.

Why am I typing this?
I don't know, seems like the start of a new year is a good time to remind myself what the goal is here.

Doesn't 2013 seem to hold a lot of hope and promise?  

I love that feeling of freshness at the start of a new year!

Let's conquer this year like none before:)