For the Life of us

Please excuse the slightly enthusiastic title but I'm just a little bit excited!! I just got the txt I was waiting for ALL day. In less than 2 months, Gavin and I will be off to Mexico, living it up at a 5 star resort for 5 days - at absolutely no charge to us, whatsoever... God.Is.GOOD! I'll back up a bit and explain from the beginning because I've been waiting to share this testimony for a whole year as we've watched this answer to prayer unfold. Really it's been year upon year of answered prayers in this department...maybe I'll write a book about that too? Or at least a very loooong Blog post to tell the full story. So this year began in February with our Church's leadership weekend when a very inspiring speaker spoke about sowing in faith and believing for prayers to be answered. Not paying for miracles and not even sowing into that speakers ministry specifically (before I open a can of worms with people who totally misinterpret this situation). No

It is the night of the 25th of January and that means that tomorrow is our wedding anniversary! Yay us! A whole 9 years  of being married! (cue applause) That means that 9 years ago we were setting up our wedding venue and getting ready to say 'I do'. It was a Sunday night after the evening service at our church and as people left to go home, faithful family and friends stayed behind to help hang fairy lights and decorate with ivy my mum had scavenged from the neighbours while they had slept the night before. The cafe was soon turned into a ceremony venue and that venue, where we had met, sat drinking coffee before services while we dated and where we would soon tie the knot, became the place we would hold our daughters first birthday family celebration and gather to celebrate dedications of our babies and other special events. It was a relaxed, beautiful, special day filled with love-filled touches from family and loved-ones who did things like making the bridesmaids dresses t

I lay in bed last night (after having caffeine, rooky error) and thought about what we wanted to focus on with the kids this year. Last year we sort of just focused on the fruits of the Spirit (cue song... goodness, faithfulness, joy, love, peace, kindness, PATIENCE, SELF-CONTROL, gentleness...) a tall order for young growing kiddies but something we wanted to keep in front of them always. Finding a family focus is harder than you think because there are so many things you can work on, the list is endless. Well lying in bed a song popped into my head that I had heard before, it's called, "Speak Life' and I totally knew that had to be our family focus. Sad to say but things have definitely 'slipped' in that department over the last little while. I grew up in a very word-conscious home where we never heard anyone being called dumb or stupid and we weren't even allowed to say 'shut-up'to each other. For a myriad of reasons, slowly some of the things that a