A first birthday for my little girl and some thoughts.

It's been a year... a whole entire year... wow, it's hard to believe in many ways... my daughter is already one!

We enjoyed a chocolate and vanilla coconut flour cake with a whip cream frosting. I used boiled down beet juice to color the whip cream pink.

A little over a week ago,  the grandparents and our family got together on a Saturday to celebrate the birth of my daughter. My beautiful little girl, whom I adore and thank the Lord that He blessed my life with. This first birthday was not only a milestone for my daughter, but also for me. This has been a wonderful, hard, encouraging with lots of learning type of year.

Having children is an amazing blessing. It's hard work and long days, but the reward of seeing your little ones grow, learn, bond, explore, laugh and smile is beyond words.  For me, the three greatest blessings in life are a personal relationship with Christ Jesus, having a spouse who loves and supports me and having children whom I can love and raise. I thank the Lord every day for those blessings. When things aren't going quite as planned and I'm having one of those weeks where I have absolutely no idea where my  time has gone, not a single thing has been completed on my "to do" list and the house is still a mess, I struggle with not shutting down. I get to these points where all I can think about is taking a break, you know like a little vacation on a remote island far, far, far away from all my daily tasks. It's very easy to wallow in that mindset and let life overwhelm me, but that's wrong. In those hard moments, I've been working on stopping myself, no matter what I'm doing and kneeling on the ground and taking a minute to pray. I pray to the Lord for strength and help, for a change of mindset and a better outlook. What's so cool about those prayers is how the Lord answers them and helps me get through the rest of my day. Instead of being overwhelmed with the mountain-of-a-task-list or a frustrating day with the kids, I can instead focus on the blessings that I have. With a change of attitude, the whole world looks differently.

 These are my thoughts as I reminisce over the past year and watch my daughter walk around the room, as proud as can be that she no longer needs assistance to do so. She grabs a little book, hands it to me and then holds up her arms so I'll pick her up and read to her. These are pretty cool moments and they are worth every sleepless night or days of exhaustion. My daughter and son are my blessings and there is not a single thing in the world that I could want more besides being a child of God and having an amazing husband.

Nothing beats that first bite of cake, except, perhaps wiping those oh so clean fingers in the hair!