Success this week is surviving!

We were blessed so many times this week – with great fellowship, with support and with food! All these blessing more than make up what I have lacked in motivation this week.

Specific successes this week…

That Accounting mid-term I turned in last Saturday – I got a 94! Success!

I had 3 Etsy sales!

I finished and mailed out Girls Night Out Invites for my mom. I even made an extra set to list on Etsy, so watch for those to be posted soon.

I lined up a walking buddy! YEAH!!!!

Grace had her first sleep over. It went brilliantly!

Oh, and someone else’s success to share. That special teacher I wrote about in my Made of Monday post for back to school, well she was named Teacher of the Year for her school! Congratulations, Mrs. Johnson!

Friday Thankfulness

Oh, there is so much I want to say…and so much more I want to know.

Let me start here though….Ladies, we need each other’s support and friendship. We need to build each other up. We need to encourage each other. We need to be present for each other. We need to be welcoming and embrace each other. I know…I know this because I have been blessed by these very things this week, and without the women who have encouraged, supported, made time for and been friend to me I would be lost.

I have been invited.

I have had fellowship.

I have been supported.

I have been encouraged – by strangers and friends alike!

I have been consoled.

I have been inspired.

This week, I have been thrashing around some old hurts this and without the encouragement and support of other friends I don’t think I could have held on to the here and now, even as little as I did. The encouragement and support, the welcoming that I received wasn’t even directly related to those old hurts, but it was an important counterbalance to that darkness.

You know that George Strait song, I Saw God Today? I don’t know that I saw Him, but I certainly felt His presence through the wonderful women who touched my life this week.

Thank you to each of you.

How have you been encouraged this week? Were you supportive of others? Were you a positive encouragement, or did you use that moment to deride someone in need? Did you use your strengths to call others up or to hold them down?

There is a great giveaway going on over at Naptime Diaries that includes some goodies from the TIAMO shop. Including a hair tutu of choice from the list of Hair Tutus of the month, and a set of Glad Text cards similar to those found here. I hope you will go enter for a chance to win!

Thursday…Can you believe that it is Thursday already?

Our two week summer reprieve is quickly coming to an end. It really was more like a crazy blend of mad dash to get life back in order and a lazy laid back family decompress.  The kids have really blossomed under their daddy’s influence. 

But today is the end…We have Grace’s pre-school open house and just like that a switch is flipped and the semester begins. Back to School picnics, back to school events, prepping assignments and books, checking calendars, and this year the addition of Grace going to school and on-line classes for me, as well as the commitment to make TIAMO a go and my husband will be working part-time not at school.

As much as that sounds like a heavy sigh, bordering on a complaint…this year it feels like a challenge, a challenge I might be able to live up to.

Regardless it is full of blessings! Like fellowship that is treasured respite from the hustle and bustle. Like a home that is sacred space for our family.

The greatest blessing though is my husband (as much as we might drive each other crazy, as much as I know there is HUGE post-law school adjustment a head of us!).  As he starts his third and final year of law school there is so much happy, fulfilling future in front of him.

He has always been a hard worker, though he sometimes does his best not to look like it. He is thriving on the rigorous law school schedule.  If it is possible, He is more excited about the start of classes now than he was two years ago, and not just because it is the final first day. He loves law, he loves analyzing, he loves “putting bad guys in jail”, and he loves seeing God’s law in our law, and is going to love being a lawyer.

There isn't any greater blessing to a wife than a happy husband. The kids thrive off of that happiness. It makes home life agreeable.

Sometimes it is hard to compete with law school and all that comes with it, but I know he is happy and I know some day (very soon) he will be done and the pace and focus of our lives will change. I am trying not to wish it away, trying to let him have room to savor his successes and prepare for the next challenge (finding a big lawyer job to pay all these big law school bills!).

I couldn’t be prouder…So let the games begin!