Life Lessons Learned By a Visit...

Last weekend, my husband and I went to see my sister and her new home in Texas...

The entire time was wonderful. We arrived late Friday night, so I only greeted my brother-in-law. Saturday morning, I came downstairs to find my sister and almost two nephew very awake and ready for the day. I re-introduced myself to my nephew and the next minute show and tell began... "outside, tree, ball, shoot, score, yeah! bitricycle, chalk, letter, flower, plant..." he'd point and say the words to everything he knew. It was so fun and cute!

The rest of the trip consisted of paddling a boat on the lake, going to IKEA (love this place... why in the world don't we have one closer!), hitting a jazz bar to hear some great live music, yummy bar-b-que, but more than anything connecting with my sister.

She has done such an amazing job creating a home of warmth, love, and peace. She also displayed characters of strength, confidence, and contentment I haven't seen in her in awhile. Being newly married, I have struggled with the idea of "only be a mother" and putting my career aside to take care of a family. But after being around my sister and her ability to have undivided attention to her family, she made "only being a mother" a compliment and lifestyle I truly desire. I've known that I have always wanted to be a mother, but I didn't get married till my late 20's and had discovered a career and working path I enjoyed and succeeded at, which became apart of my identity. Now, that I am married and the idea of children isn't that far off- motherhood scares me, because I don't know how 'to be ' a mother and if I could succeed at raising a Godly heritage. But what I saw by living life with my sister for a few days, is that the strength to be a mother is a day-by-day surrender to God and He becomes your life-giving ability to care for a family.

It is refreshing to see that being a mom is still apart of my feminine heart. In fact, my job starts Monday, and I am dreading the idea of going back to work... I just want to stay home. For now, I think God still has some work and healing to complete in my own heart about being a mother; so I will enjoy the season I am in of working and caring for my husband.

In the meantime, I have these pictures up around my home to remind me of the great time and life lesson I learned by visiting my sister.

Discovering Me...

Hello. Several months ago, my husband came to bed with the computer ready to "start blogging"! We were going to complete this task together, and here we are 3 months later and I am just placing my first entry.

As my darling sister has encouraged me several times to "just begin", I feel like in the interim of two jobs is a great time to start. So... as the first entry, I could talk about being a newlywed, but instead I am going to share about a new discovery that I had no idea I would enjoy creating so much. That discovery is decorating cakes!

The story is, my sister-in-law (sil) asked me to join her in taking the Wilton Cake Class at our local Michael's store. I thought "sure", it would be fun to learn something new, but mostly to continue building the relationship with my new family.

As I started to prepare for class, I was really frustrated with how much preparation needed to be done before class. I ended making three batches of frosting (gross) and a cake that was frosted. Plus, I had to spend the beautiful afternoon inside baking than being outside soaking up the beautiful weather with my hubby. Nonetheless, I made the commitment, and I was going to learn to decorate cake!

Here is a picture before going to class.

Well, to my surprise, I had a wonderful evening! My sil and I laughed at our similar frustrations as we walked into class with a box full of supplies and wondering... Is this really going to work? The laughs continued throughout the class as we practiced new skills with the star tip, writing, and familiarizing our self with the consistency of the frosting. Then we had the opportunity to practice these skills on the cake we brought.

Died Fingers trying to get red frosting. (Note, I was the only one in the class with this extreme of messy fingers and even the teacher was asking "How did you accomplish that?".)

I ended up completing my cake at home, with the hopes of my hubby taking it to work with him for his co-workers to enjoy. I was actually really proud of the end results, surprised by my creation and enjoyment of making a cake. Below you will find the end product=-).

So now, I have completed my first blog and decorated my first cake. Go Discovering Me!