My two favs doing their best crinkle nose smiles!

More about this new 22 month old... coming soon!

Thankful Thursday!

Today is Thankful Thursday and I'm thankful that I get to see this little girl's smile and hear this little girl's giggles everyday!

Your personal mission statement!

What is your personal mission statement? Do you have one? My school is studying the 7 Healthy Habits of Highly Successful People and on Monday we looked closely at Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind  (this is the habit of vision). I enjoyed the activity and I thought you would to! I highly recommend completing the activity when you have time to think and reflect (I've just begun part one myself). I am glad I am giving this some thought now instead of later in life!

Think: You're at your 80th birthday party. You are surrounded by those that you hold near and dear. They begin to toast you! What would you want them to say about you? Looking back at your life what do you really want your loved ones and friends to say about you? What kinds of memories do you want them to reflect on and remember about you?

Start with listing 7 roles and relationships in a chart. Beside each role and relationship list exactly what you want that person to say to you/about you at your 80th birthday party. For me it would look this:

Role 1: Spouse
Key Person: Sam  How committed I am (ex of tribute statement; however generic)

Role 2: Mother
Key Person: Caroline    How devoted I am (ex of tribute statement; however generic)

Some other roles inlcude: Daughter, Aunt, Educator, Friend, and Sister (you get the idea)

Next: On a seperate sheet of paper write one thing you could do to make that tribute statement a reality for each role that you listed above (I didn't thoroughly finish this part (nor the 1st part) so I have half of an example to share).

Role 1: More hugs, date night, (etc)

After you finish that part move on to reflecting on those who have influenced you (you can only list 4).

Example:
Name: Grandmother
Attributes: loving, patient, outgoing, funny, devoted to family (etc)

Last ask yourself these questions and freewrite for 10 to 15 minutes on them. Literally just write away!

What do I consider to be my most important future contribution to others?

Are there things I feel I should really do, even though I may have dismissed such thoughts many times?

What are they?

I am best when..

I am worst when...

What do I really love to do at work? Why?

What do I really love to do in my personal life? Why?

My natural talent and gifts are:

If I had unlimited time and resources, what would I choose to do?

Possible life goals are...

I want to be a person who...

After much thought and consideration about your life and your goals, you can write your personal mission statement. A personal mission statement is like a constitution by which you make all decisions for your life. Highly effective people shape their own furture instead of letting other people, their culture, or their circumstances determine it. It's your purpose and meaning in life.

Benefits of a personal mission statement:
Clarifies what is important to you.
Provides focus.
Helps you design your life instead of having it designed for you.
Guides your day to day decisions.
Gives you a greater sense of meaning and purpose.

If you do this activity or blog about it, share your comments and leave your blog link! Hopefully I can complete my mission statement and share it soon!

Full Circle!

Miss Caroline is enjoying being read to by Rachel! I had the wonderful opportunity of student teaching Rachel in kindergarten and I was delighted when I saw her name on my very first, first grade roll! Rachel was a delight to teach. I love seeing her and her super sweet family around town! On this day I had a dr.'s appt late in November and so did Rachel! I loved this moment, a former student that I helped learned to read, reading to my Sweet Caroline! I was a very delighted mama and an overjoyed teacher!

Here's Rachel with Miss C at our county library in

the summer of 2009, where she volunteered in the

children's department!

Spirtual Inventory

The first Sunday School lesson of this new year left me doing a lot of thinking. A lot of thinking in the way of personal spirtual goals and growth. I posted last year for 2010's new year's resolution that one of my goals was to "get more in the Word". After doing several mini family Bible studies this year with Sam and reading several books my goal remains the same: to get in the Word more, study it, and live it. I see great examples of Godly people in my life, in my church, and in my community everyday, and boy are they living for God! I love Godly examples! They help me in my own spirtual growth. I'm growing more each day even though sometimes I feel when I take two steps forward I take one step back (the "one step back" is a result of distractions I believe).

I love our SS class at LBC! It's a very large class (we split into two groups after we meet for prayer), but I have learned so many things from each and every class member. It's amazing the fun we have all while learning more about Him with every SS class, every meeting, with every social, or any gathering for that matter. I said all this to say that I'm thankful for our SS class and our vision for learning how we can best serve Him and be more like Him everyday! We are the Young Married and Young Families class "Doing Life Together"!

Our SS teacher, Todd Bevill, gave each class member on the first Sunday of the new year a list of questions so that we could each analyze our spirtual growth during 2010. I'm posting it here, it is that worthy! I know I'm motivated!

Here is the Spirtual Inventory: You get to grade yourself for each question using this A-F scale!

A= Perfect, Needing no improvement whatsoever.

B= Great Progress. On the right track!

C= Average,...chugging along. Not really progressing, but not falling back either.

D= Slip-sliding away...going in reverse

F= Does this really need explanation?

1. How have you grown this past year? Where am I now spirtually compared to this same time last year? Have I made progress? How would you "grade" yourself? (Col. 4:12, Eph. 4:14-15, Heb. 5:12-13)

2. Husbands, how have you led your family this past year? Is your family growing spirtually? How do you model Christ to your family? Do you set the example they are looking for? How do you measure the spirtual welfare of your family? Husbands...how would you "grade" yourself? Wives...how would you "grade" your husband? (Eph. 5:25, Col. 3:19, Romans 3:23)

3. Wives, how have you supported your spouse and family this past year? What have you done to build a nurturing environment in your home? How have you impacted your family and those around you with love? Wives, how would you "grade" yourself? Husbands...how would you "grade" your wife? (Proverbs 31:10-31)

4. What sacrifices have you made for the Kingdom this year? How would you "grade" yourself? (John 1:1, Matt. 8:20, Luke, 14:26-33)

I won't share with you my "grade" but I will tell you that none of these questions that I asked myself merited an answer of an "A". We are always works in progress. I needed this spirtual inventory of 2010 so that I can better steer my spirtual growth for 2011. I am so thankful for how real Todd is when teaching our SS class and how he Bibilically executed his lesson on this spirtual progress report.

Now, how did you grade yourself? What are you going to do for those answers that you gave yourself a C, D, or even an F? Think about it, everybody has an eternal life, but the question is where are you going to spend it?

In the fall we celebrated a very special event! I posted "the many sides of C" in October from the same event, but here's some different pictures! The special party was the wedding reception for my stepdad's brother. He lost his first wife five years ago on a crusie (she had a heartattack) and as you can imagine we were all devastated.

His new wife Kathy is super sweet and we love her! I never could get a close up of the bride and groom for posting. The reception was outdoors in their barn (its one of the modern barns you see on CMT that you could actually live in). It's not used for horses but that was the family's intentions. The couple loves animals and outdoors so they picked the perfect place for their party.
We had a great time including Miss C!

Nanny and Caroline!

C loved looking and talking to this horse!

Caroline and Nanny!

One tired little one from all that dancing!

The gals!

C having a blast!

C loved being on this saddle!

This past week has been filled with fun and excitment as our 2nd snowfall for this season arrived early Monday morning! Since Sam was home with us to enjoy our snow days, our time home has been so much fun! 
Our winter friend Wilbur arrived late Monday morning and he's still visiting! One snow year Wilbur will have a friend visting with us too and we' re quite sure her name will be Wilma! Until then Wilbur is enjoying hanging out "Hawaii" style in our front yard!
Miss C didn't care much for the snow after the first two minutes that she was in it. She didn't want to be in it, she didn't want to play in it, and she surely didn't like walking in it, however she didn't like being on the inside when Wilbur began to arrive. So mommy had to hold her! After a while the cozy coupe came in very handy. At one point when I got in her way of seeing daddy and Nick, our neighbor, "greeting" Wilbur, she told me to "move mommy". Nice!
We stayed home and enjoyed our snow days, we had fun playing in the snow, watching tv, and taking naps! We did venture out Tuesday night (we all had cabin fever) for a bite to eat!
Here's our snow day pics!

Snow baby!

Running to the driveway to get out of the snow!

C and daddy!

Happy!

Smiling from the porch!

Make a snow angel C!

Trying to get up and then cried because

she couldn't. AW!

This has to be one of my favorites! We didn't

find this until the morning was over!

Having a little fun!

The Leviners!

Enjoying the view from the car!

Our winter friend Wilbur!

Wilbur last year!

Love all the snow at our house!

C loves eating a "goody"!

Before the snow!

C had a tea party and invited her friends along

with mommy and daddy!

Just being Miss C!

This little girl loves her pockeybooks!

Over Christmas break we headed on over to the Broadwell's for a playdate! Caroline loved Sarah Ann's drums! So did C's other friends Anna Claire and Charlie! The guitar was a big hit too!

Rat-a-tat-tat!

The girls!

Anna Claire, Sarah Ann, and Caroline!



As the weather forcasters predict mix precipitation for later in the weekend I am thinking back to how hot these days were in the summer of 2010 in SC!

Miss C and the Vroom Vroom!

Really!

Fish Lips!

Aw! Let's go!

Mmmmm spaghetti!

Right after I took this picture of Caroline and Matalyn Sam found a 40 inch snake. It was just to their left under some pinestraw...It was very scarey!

As the weather has turned quite chilly I can't help but think about the warm days of this past summer and one very particular day!

In early August, I met my niece, her parents, and one of her friends at USC. My niece, Courtney, is college bound in the fall and she has toured a lot of universities and colleges! I was excited when she included USC as one of her prospects (since her parents and myself are alumni)! Since then she's applied to her top three favorites: Lander, Clemson, and Furman and has been accepted to two (Lander and Furman) and will know Feb. 15th about her Clemson acceptance! Even though USC doesn't offer what she's interested in it still made for a very fun and hot day!

Bicentennial Time Capsule!

All three of my favorite flags!



You are so cool C with your D's glasses!

Happy!

She was very interested in this tiny flower!

Love her silly look!

She is so happy!

This little girl melts my "heart" with every hug, kiss, and cuddle! I love my Sweet Caroline!

Side Note: So in the previous post I mentioned that I had run out of my blogger picture space and I have! But there is hope! So if you have this problem in the near future and if you're a blogger you will, you'll know just what to do. You will need to open a photobucket account (or another account in which you can access the URL image link). Then you'll have to get the URL image link and post it this way (this is if you don't want to purchase more blogger space in Picasa for your blog...your blog pics automatically load to Picasa)!