Bring it 14!

We rang in the new year with some dear friends from church. We laughed, we had a little dance party and we ate way too much. 

 We also attempted a "duck face" photo. Hilarious! 

 Here's the crew:

  We didn't quite make it to ring in the new year because on New Year's Day, I was signed up for a five mile trail run at Rural Hill with Jennifer and her hubby Matt. It was very cold and was quite the challenging course, but I was happy we started off our New Year with a bang! 

Once Kennedy went back to school, she celebrated her 100th day of Kindergarten. Each student was to bring in 100 of some item to show their classmates. I cannot lie - I Googled ideas, but in the end we came up with paperclips on our own. Once we decided on our item, I realized we could do even better and thus making the number 100 out of our 100 paperclips was born!

 Can't believe she's been in school for 100 days! 

The remaining pictures are pictures I want to try to capture more often in this New Year

 - pictures of my kids in specific moments. 

Moments of sisterly love:

 oh.my.sweet.heavens!

Moments of inquisitiveness, learning, natural curiosity:

 

 and even moments of frustration

 Momma! Help me open this! 

 HEY! 

I'm not really one for New Years resolutions per say, because ultimately that usually ends in disappointment (of which I'm not a fan). I have, however, decided to rise earlier each morning - to find time to be quiet, to meet with the Lord and try to focus my thoughts and days on Him. Don't get me wrong - I love my sleep just as much as the next exhausted Momma, but if I can get up and have a cup of coffee and have some "me and God time" I am a MUCH, MUCH better Momma. So far, so good - I've been giving myself 30 minutes for devo/prayer time and then about 15 minutes to prep the kids breakfast and get Kennedy's book bag ready before waking my three crazies and starting my day. I wish I could say that the result has been overflowing patience and joy - mornings of Kumbaya and sunshine. Not the case folks. What I will say is when I feel myself getting flustered or irritable it's much easier to immediately open back up my dialogue with the Lord since I've already met with him each morning. To accomplish the early rising, early go to bed is required - I'm usually in bed no later than 10 PM...I'm an 8 hour girl! 

I'm excited for 2014 - there are BIG things to come!