Ending a Chapter

Even though I'll always be a Louisiana girl to the core, Fort Worth will definitely hold a special place in my heart! It's the place I gained a lot of independence, having my first full-time job, getting engaged, starting a home with my husband, getting pregnant, and having a baby! And sooo many lifelong friendships were formed here though SWBTS, and our beloved church, Christ the King--I will always love my Fort Worth!

Here are a couple snapshots from our last month in Texas!

I heard Kate babbling, and this is how I found her. Hah! She wasn't even crying, just having a good ole time!


Kate and Jason on the lawn in front of SWBTS. She loves her daddy!



My little girl is getting so big! When did she get all those teeth??

Baby Love - 9 months

Ever since I was on the good ole yearbook staff in high school (hah!), I've always been kind of interested in photography and such. This past Mother's Day, Jason got me a DSLR camera! Hallelujahhhhh! So of course, Kate had a couple photo shoots so I could start learning the settings. Here are some of my favorites :) Eating her spaghetti!

Baby Love - 8 months

I am so thankful for Jason, working so hard to provide for our family. This past year, he taught Bible classes at a private Christian school right outside of Fort Worth, enabling me to quit my job and stay home with Kate! Occasionally, Kate and I would visit him at work around lunchtime, and this time we went to get sushi at the grocery store! Such a fun, spontaneous treat! Remember those 5 babies from November?? We've added 6 more! (2 not pictured). So much precious in one picture!! Wagon rides with our best friends! We miss you, Cari and Adrian!!  

Baby Love - 5 to 7 months

So after 5 months with a baby, we decided it was time for a date! Here is our favorite little 3rd wheel at the drive-in movies in Fort Worth!  It was quite the adventure trying to get a 5 month old to sleep in the cargo space of an Xterra, and there's nothing like watching a movie over the steady drone of a sound machine! Hah! Such a fun memory :)



Here's my little 5 month old enjoying the sunshine in January! We packed a chicken salad picnic and headed to the Botanical Gardens. This little girl loooves the outside.



Jason can always maker her giggle like nobody else can! Her sweet little laugh is so infectious!



 

A Little Taste of December

At the beginning of December, I experienced my first Ft Worth Icepocalypse! We were iced in for a few days and entertained ourselves by watching cars get stuck at the red light outside our apartment, hah! Here is the little snow bunny..it was sooooo cold!! We only stayed outside for 5 minutes!



Here's our apartment complex with a layer of soft, fluffy, white snow, like a pillow. Just kidding. It was sheeeeer ice everywhere you stepped, and we kept slipping and sliding the whole time we were outside!

Leopard Print Journal

As a brand new mom, those first couple of months were, in a word, OVERWHELMING! Trying to figure this mom thing out, I kept a leopard print (of course) journal in Kate's nursery. Each time she would eat,  I recorded the exact time, how many minutes she ate, which side she nursed on, the span of time between feedings, if she fell asleep while eating...you name it, I recorded it!

Well then, she started waking up in the middle of her naps, so I started writing more notes. It's so funny to look back at my messy handwriting as I try to deduce why she kept waking up. My thought process went something like this...Does she hate being swaddled? I bet she's hungry... no, she just ate 45 minutes ago. I wonder if her crib mattress is uncomfortable. Well, maybe she didn't get enough to eat. I know, the room has too much light. But then she'll get her days and nights mixed up. Was she overstimulated while she was awake? I bet she was under stimulated. But maybe....

Aghhhh!! I obviously Googled wayyyyy too much haha! But even in the midst of having no idea what I was doing, there were so many sweet memories I will always treasure. One of my favorite things was watching Jason become a father, seeing him hold her with such a sweet tenderness, watching him become wrapped more and more around her chubby little finger :).

Here is Kate at 2 months! This was right after she peed in my bed, God love her.

Just a regular Sunday morning in October! I could kiss those cheeks alllllll day.

That afternoon, we went to the Botanical Gardens in Ft Worth. Our 2nd family selfie :)

Baby's First Vacation!

At the beginning of October 2013, the Kees Krewe headed down to Toledo Bend, LA to spend an incredible week at the camp with the family! If you're around the Brinker clan for long, you're bound to have a fabulous time where your sides hurt from laughing so much! Complete with golf cart rides, nature hikes, fishing off the dock at sunset, afternoons at the pool, fish frys, and sticking our toes in the lake, this weekend was just...perfect.

Here's Kate meeting Rylie, Sadie, and Callie for the very first time! They are such wonderful older cousins!

Snuggles with Aunt Lissie!

Baby's Firsts

Motherhood is one of the most incredible gifts. It's the most  fulfilling, most rewarding, most beautiful thing in the world, where it feels like your heart is going to explode, it's so full! Granted, it was sooooo hard in the beginning! I was super overwhelmed, felt like I had no idea what I was doing, and I never wanted my mom to leave! I mean I read What to Expect When You're Expecting, what else did I need to know, right?? Hah! Thankfully, we survived! With a little Google, a a lot of mom and sisterly advice, and an incredible husband, the Lord saw us through.

Here we are right before we left the hospital as a family of three!



I seriously have no idea how I would have survived without my incredible mother!! She stayed with us the week after Kate was born, cooking us dinner, buying out Buy Buy Baby, showing me how to breastfeed, sleeping on the air mattress with me in Kate's room, enduring all the nightly feedings and the nightly cryings. I'm pretty sure she knows everything about everything in the world haha Thank you sooooo much, momma! You are so incredible, and I hope I'm just like you when I grow up :).



Here is Baby Kate's first car ride! I was certain everyone and their mother was going to hit us on the way home haha! I was so paranoid now that my Baby Kate was in the car!



 

forget not all His benefits...

If you have not yet surmised, writing things down does not come easily to me! I can't tell you how many dusty journals I have sitting on my bookcase with sad, empty pages, save a few well-meaning entries at the beginning. But looking back on my childhood, I can remember watching my mom write, with her big beautiful handwriting, in her prayer journal diligently. Once, I remember her flipping through previous entries and prayer journals, showing me the Lord's incredible faithfulness through the years.

I have nothing like that. I have a few scrapbooks, lots of empty journals, nonexistent blog posts, and a incredibly spotty memory!

Occasionally, I'll read Mornings and Evening Devotions by Spurgeon, and I came across the entry, "Forget not all His benefits" from Psalm 103:2. Spurgeon begins by acknowledging it a great delight to see the goodness of God in the lives of ancient saints. However, he then writes,

"But would it not be even more interesting and profitable for us to remark the hand of God in our own lives? Ought we not to look upon our own history as being at least as full of God, as full of His goodness and of His truth, as much a proof of His faithfulness and veracity?...Surely in these we may discover some happy incidents, refreshing to ourselves and glorifying to our God."

This was finally my ultimate confirmation! I needed to document all of the Lord's sweet blessings and benefits--his benefits of mercy and compassion and love and forgiveness (Psalm 103). Thus, I'm trying to be more diligent in blogging, being faithful to remember the Lord's incredible goodness.