Happy Valentines Day!!

I hope you had a great one!!  

PS- Does the shape of the collage look familiar?  It's a computer monitor. :)  I love to make these for Mark in Picasa to put as his desktop background.  No more stretched out weird picture or stressing over trying to pick just one!  I'm horrible about getting pictures printed, so this way he can always have updated pictures!  

Blue-eyed girls!

Before heading out to Mark's going away/retirement party, I snapped a few shots of the girls in their matching dresses!  I LOVE that God cares about everything that we do.  Although I certainly don't expect it, and the Bible doesn't promise it, we've gotten LOTS of matching hand me downs!  This makes me so happy!  Sometimes we get clothes from two different families in different years that have matching things.  It's crazy. :)  Of course I buy some too. I can't help it!  These dresses are the ones that one year old Landrie and her four year old cousin McKinnan wore for family pictures two years ago.  I never would have dreamed that I would one day have TWO baby girls to wear them!!

This is about as good as it gets with a 17 month old!  Remember when she was a newborn and I took pictures of them together all the time?  About 2 seconds after I put Tatem down, she ran right towards me.  :)  She's not all that into standing still!  

"Whatcha doing, Tatem?"

"Look, I'm just like Tatem!"

"Landrie's so silly, Mamma!"

haha!

Happy Monday!  :)

My husband quit his job...and I'm smiling!

I have to admit, my husband and I are not big risk takers.  We are the play it safe kind of people, and it's worked just great for us.  BUT, sometimes God stretches us out of our comfort zone in a BIG way!

That's how we found ourselves staring at this delicious cake, in a room full of people celebrating Mark's retirement from the municipal athletics field.  Yup, as a single-income family, in the middle of this rough economy, Mark quit his job!  There are only two reasons that we would do that.

1.  We have lost our minds.

2.  We are so in love with our God that we are willing to do whatever He asks!  We believe that being in the center of his will is the best place for our family.  

Hopefully, you guessed #2!  Although, I wouldn't blame you if you picked #1.  I know that when I listened to friends who did similar things tell their stories my heart started racing and I got stressed out for them!  Don't worry, this decision has been almost a year in the making.  We have prayed and prayed and prayed about it, and God has made it SO clear that this is the path for us!

Now, back to that party!  Mark's coworkers are the nicest group of people!  They really threw him such a sweet going away party!

His boss, Chuck, gave a really nice speech.  It's a good thing the girls ran up and jumped up in his lap so he didn't cry too much!  Mark is going to take a LOT of ideas from Chuck for his next job.  He's a great boss!

They had a real street sign made for Mark!  How cool is that??  

He's going to miss these folks!

I'd never met most of the people there, but it was great to see so many come out for his send off! 

The girls were thrilled with the cake. :)  

There they are!  I didn't even work with them, but I'm going to miss them too!  Such a great group!!

So...what's the next step??  Well, all the pieces fell into place a mere 6 HOURS before Mark had to put in his 2 weeks notice.  He was up against a big deadline.

It was the first day of school!  My honey is back in college!  I know, we can hardly believe this is happening ourselves.  He's taking a ridiculous amount of hours AND doing a 40 hour a week internship!  Yes, he's that amazing. :) 

Christmas with the Beams

We headed to my parents house for round 2 of Christmas celebrations!  We got in Monday night and were ready to celebrate Christmas morning.

This cutie was THRILLED with her first BIKE!!  

Landrie and Tatem tore into their stockings.  It was our first Christmas without our Nonny, and memories of her (like these stockings she made for all of us) were all around!  My favorite gift of the year was one I gave, not received.  I had a big box of Nonny's journals.  After many months, I was able to looks at her handwriting and began reading them.  What a gift!  They are newsy and just like chatting with her on the phone. :)  I made copies of special pages, like when each of us was born, family vacations, and stories that she had written down that we all had heard over and over growing up.  I gave a copy to each family.  

Melissa and Braiden

Brookie and Mark

All the cousins humored me with a group shot.  Who is that grownup that managed to sneak in the shot??  :)

Adelynn, Bennett, Braiden, Anna, Tatem, Brooke, Landrie and Abbie

("A" names are Kevin's and "B" names are Eric's)

Tatem even unwrapped a few this year:)

Christy checking out her new hooks:)

The girls love their new backpacks!

A game for the game master!

Bennett got this Saints set and gave us all LOTS of poses to choose from!  

Each year seems to get a theme somehow.  This year the theme was treasure hunts.  There were lots of awkward or large gifts that were too hard to wrap!  Here's Eric opening the first clue!

Bennett (still in head to toe Saints gear), Anna, Landrie, me, Abbie, Eric, my mom and Brooke worked hard on the dressing.  Yum!

Of course, Landrie had to help with the chopping!

It's been so long since I took these that I don't even remember what they were doing here, but I thought it was sweet. :)

It's a bit embarrassing that it's FEBRUARY 1st, and I'm just finishing up Christmas posts.  There is a good reason though!  There's been lots going on in the Long house the past few weeks, but I can't blog out of order, you know?  So stay tuned to see what's going on! :)