Looking back and forward

Today is 1/1/11, pretty neat. As I think back on 2010 I am amazed at what God brought our way. We had some major changes happen. The biggest being moving back to Memphis. We did not see that one coming at all! I was reading through my blogs recently from last year and read the one I did just about a year ago and I said in there that we will see what God has in store for us because it seems like we always look back and say, "wow didn't see that coming" after that post about a month later we gave the news to our families that we were moving back. It was a wonderful decision and we are so truly blessed to be back. God yet again, like I'm shocked or something, watched out for us. I was still working in St. Joe and bringing Amber to work. It was pretty stressful doing that. I was stressed working there even without her. I honestly didn't know how long it was going to work and was really worried because I needed to work to make ends meet. Ricky wasn't happy with the ways things were turning out at his place of employment and didn't see a great future there either. So he started applying for jobs and just randomly applied for the Commercial Appeal. And here we are back in Memphis. :) So we moved back in March, sold our house in June, celebrated Amber's first birthday at the beginning of August, and bought our house here at the end of August! Phew! God answered prayers along the way, I didn't have to work anymore, we didn't lose money on selling our house, and we got a great deal on the house we are in now! To God be all the glory!

Looking forward now, I have goals and plans of my own and I'm also excited to look back a year from now and say wow look what God did! Things I would like to accomplish this year is to read the bible through and to stick with it in a year. I started last year and sadly I only made it to March I think. Well, its a new year and today is the first day so when I'm done with this I need to read the first one. Its the chronological Bible and I pray I don't get behind, that is what really hurts ya. I have plans to hopefully read 4 books this year. I know some of you are probably thinking JUST 4?!? I am a slow reader and I don't always read every day. So yes 4 books, that will be good for me. I'm currently reading "Dare to Discipline" by Dr. James Dobson. I have also started reading "Bringing up Girls" also by Dr. James Dobson.  The next book I want to read is "Radical" by David Platt. I have heard a lot of good things about this book so I'm excited to read that one. Lastly, its a fun book that was on sale really cheap so I went ahead and bought it even though we don't own a minivan :) "Date Night in a Minivan".

I also want to redo the bathrooms in our house. No major construction just things we can handle. Both bathrooms have shower doors. I CAN'T STAND shower doors. So they will be torn down. Amber's bathroom is going to be a blue and brown theme b/c the tile in there is blue so we are going to paint the walls a brown color. As for our bathroom the shower doors will be taken down and the walls will be painted and I'm hoping to lay some laminate wood flooring down in ours. The tile that is in there looks dirty and its not. Its like they put some grout on the floor and didn't get it up so now it looks dirty all the time. So I'm thinking some sort of green color on the walls and then we would just lay the floor right over the existing floor so it shouldn't be to hard.

This year we will be celebrating Ricky's 30th birthday, Amber's 2nd birthday and our 7 year anniversary! What fun!