a long hard road, with a good good end...

The title of this post, comes from a line in a Waterdeep song. It seems so fitting for us and what we have experienced since my last post. My absence from here has been for several reasons. At first, I was not feeling well due to some morning sickness as we were so excited to expect our third little one into our family. At the end of October, we went in for my 12 week appointment to hear the heartbeat (the girls were so excited for this) only to find out terrible news, that we lost the baby. We have felt much grief, but in the middle of it, I have felt the great mercy of the Lord. We have not suffered alone, our wonderful church here, and our families, have cared for us and we feel so loved by everyone. I know that God is merciful and gracious, that He gives promises to His people and their families and that one day we will meet our little one, all because of Christ's work. Each Sunday, as we take communion, we are getting a small taste of what our sweet baby is experiencing in full. So as the song goes it's a long, hard road, but we have hope for a good good end.

I just wanted to share what has been going on with our family. In the midst of our grief, we have had some sweet moments around here as we anticipate Christmas. There has been some crafting, decorating and even a bit of scrapbooking that I hope to share with you since things are starting to get back to normal around here.

So for a start, a few pictures from November:

Our grateful tree. Each evening at dinner, we all shared what we were grateful for that day and wrote it down on the tag. This was such a good experience for us last month.

Stella chose to a different item of our centerpiece to be grateful for, most of the time it was the "peoples on our table" or the "pen" we were using to write on the tag.



We traveled to my parents for Thanksgiving. On our way, we made a quick stop at Anthropologie, doesn't everyone stop by there when they go to Houston? We always do...thanks Jeremy, especially, since it is not really on our way.

Let the festivities begin:

a little pre-Thanksgiving Christmas craft

"Emma, let's color!"

Love green bean casserole!


and a post Thanksgiving photo shoot