Making A Come Back

    I cannot believe it has been well over two years since I have given attention to this blog. I stepped away to pursue a little more in photography, begin a master's program, and focus on my family (especially my children who have grown so much). I have been successful in my photography ventures as well as pursuing a master's degree (specializing in social work). I feel like my family has become even more close due to being together because of things being shutdown in 2020/2021 due to covid, and my decision to focus on my family. 

     With the decision to focus on my family and the above pursuits, also came the decision to focus on our faith in God as well. That is what truly has made our family stronger and able to walk through any other trials that may come post-covid. Speaking of trials post-covid, one big trial that came in 2021 was the loss of my grandma. My grandmother raised me along with my grandfather. They were more like my mom and dad when I was growing up so the loss of my grandma was like that of losing a mom. She died from lung cancer. It has been less than 18 months and the grief is still hard some days. 

 

    I had so many intentions since 2020 to sit down and write. Something in me within the past month hit me, instead of thinking of those intentions, I am going to act on those intentions. Yes you can talk the talk, but you need to walk the walk. I am going to start fresh with new ways to encourage my readers and new ways to tell stories from life experiences that you can relate to. I cannot wait to tell what my family and I have been up to since 2020, one of those events happened just last week, our trip to Disney World--that deserves its own post. I hope you will come along as I reboot my blog and join me on this journey of starting anew.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all of my readers! I realize this post is a little late, but I have been enjoying the holidays with my family, as well as their break from school. I hope everyone is having a wonderful start to 2020. I hope everyone had an amazing holiday season! 

We had a great Christmas, it was busy with traveling and spending time with family. Spending time with family is always a blessing for us since we live three hours from some from our family. Our kids enjoyed their gifts, they also enjoyed the best gift of all, time with family. 

In the time leading up to Christmas, our family has been quite busy and my blog has been quiet. Now that the New Year is here, I am ready for things to slow down a bit. One thing I am going to try not to do is schedule so many things all at once. With five kids, someone always has an appointment of some sort. I have been known to schedule way too many inside of a week, or even a day. I am going to learn to spread out our busy schedule so we don't get so stressed out. That definitely goes with one of my 2020 words, peace. 

My 2020 words come from one of my favorite Bible passages, Galatians 5:22-23. It says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control." Even though as a Christian I have always tried to live by these words, this year I am really going to focus on them. I am going to display these words so that others can see them. These words will fill our home and bring a calm to our chaos. 

I am never done growing or learning, spiritually or mentally. I hope 2020 brings more growth in all areas of my life. I am excited to see what 2020 holds for my family and I. I will continue to keep faith, hope and love close to my heart as well.

What are your 2020 words? What are you looking forward to this year?

The Future Of My Blog

Here I am again with another gap (3 months) between my posts. Every time I wanted to sit and write, something else or someone else needed my attention more. Our lives got busy with school starting, my husband coaching soccer, and of course our five precious kids. Now that it is the middle of October, things have slowed down a bit, which I am thankful for. Soccer season is over for my husband and we are on our school routine. Routines are always great for us! We are looking forward to the holidays!

I could fill you in on every little detail in our lives that has happened within the past 3 months, but I won't do that. Suffice it to say, our kids are growing way to fast! Instead, I am going to fill you in on a personal venture that has been going on with me and the future of my blog.

Last year I started a photography business. Photography has been a hobby of mine since I was 14. I am 32. Yeah, I know kind of a long time to wait to finally turn it into a business. Mind you, my focus the last few years has been on my kids. Next school year, all 5 kids will be in school, pre-k through 4th! I will have more time to be able to run a business. I have written a little bit about my business on here, not much seeing as it didn't go with my niche. I will share a link to my Facebook site below.

The camera (Fujifilm) that I had broke at the beginning of August. I was devastated. It was one that I have had since February 2015. Thankfully I didn't lose any pictures because it takes an SD card. I have had the camera for a while and one thing you should know about me is I love cameras and I love taking pictures. I love being creative while editing in Photoshop. I enjoy capturing memories for people so that they have something to treasure for years to come. The feeling of devastation was valid.

My old camera.

I am was in the market for a new one anyway and it is was on my Christmas list. Little did I know, my husband already bought me a new camera (Nikon D3500) and was going to wait until Christmas to give it to me. He told me he had a huge plan for the present, too. He was sad that he had to give me my camera early. He gave it to me in the middle of August. I had some photo shoots scheduled and he knew I didn't want to disappoint my clients. I have been using my new camera basically non stop in all of my free time (instead of writing).

My new camera.

I am so excited that I have a new camera! With that said, what does this mean for my blog if I am going to be diving head first into photography? To put it simple, my blog won't get as much attention. When I do blog, I will be blogging more about my photography I will still write about my family, faith, hope, love, and friends (the roots of my blog), but I want to share more of my photography skills.  Readers, please be patient with me as I make some changes to my blog. I hope you will continue to support me and read my blog! Know this, no matter the changes to come, my blog will still be a place where I want light to shine in a dark world, where you can always find faith, hope, and love. 

My logo!

Check out some of the photos I have taken with my new camera (only sharing pictures of my kids)!
Link to my Facebook page is below!

www.facebook.com/jessical.martinphotography

Where I Have Been - A Four Month Gap

You may have noticed that my blog has been silent for the past four months. Part of it is because I have been busy (a good busy) with my family. Another part of it is because once my desktop computer (where I do a lot of my writing) would connect to the internet, it would cause everything else connected to the our internet to stop working. My husband and I think we finally have it fixed. Yay! It took a lot of uninstalling some programs as well as updating my desktop and making sure it didn't have any computer bugs.

I last wrote a post at the end of February. A lot has happened, I will just give you all a bullet point list of what has happened. 

-We celebrated our first Easter, as well as some other minor holidays in our new home (remember we moved at the end of October).

Easter Sunday

-Our daughter turned 2 and I turned 32 in May.

Birth and 2 Years Old

-School ended for the 2018-2019 school year for my husband (he is a teacher) and our boys. Our four boys finished the school year very well. Landon, our second child, graduated Kindergarten! We have a 3rd grader, a 1st grader, and two preschoolers (our 4 year old will be entering his last year of preschool for the 2019-2020 school year).

Logan, my husband, and Landon on the last day of school. 

Landon and I after his graduation. 

Top row is the first day of school of Logan and Landon. Bottom row is the last day of school of them. 

Liam on the first day of school (top left is the first day at his old school and bottom left is the first day at his new school) versus his last day of school. Can't believe he has one more year before Kindergarten!

Lucas on the first day of school on the left and the last day of school on the right. He will do 2 more years of preschool!

-I got my first tattoo! More to come on this in a different post. You may recognize the meaning of the tattoo from my blog title: Faith, Hope, and Love. 

-We became members of our new church. To tie into this point, we are making a lot of new friends in our new area. We are so happy to have a church family here, and new friends!

-We have already been on a summer vacation to see our friends and family from the area that we moved from. We also took a day trip to Columbus, Ohio to the COSI Museum (Again, more to come on that in a different post).

-I am continuing to work hard towards hobby turned business of photography (www.facebook.com/JessicaL.MartinPhotography). 

Landon lets me practice taking pictures. Sometimes our other 4 kids let me, but mostly Landon. 

A dandelion before it turned yellow. 

Two huge things happened since I last wrote.

-The first is that my husband and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary on June 27th! We got anniversary/family pictures done to celebrate. We also were able to get a date in while we were on vacation and had childcare for our kids. It has been an amazing 10 years with my husband. I cannot wait to see what else is ahead for us!

-The second biggest thing that has happened is that my husband has his teaching contract for next school year AND he was hired as the assistant soccer coach for the high school (where he teaches) boys soccer team. 

I want to center on the last bullet point for a moment. We went through a waiting period toward the end of the school year. We didn't know if my husband would get his contract for next school year. It made for a stressful few weeks before we knew anything for sure. I did my best not to worry, but I did have some weak moments where I worried. I worried about another job change for my husband. I worried about another move for our family. We just moved here at the end of October and we didn't want to move again. In those weeks, we had so many people praying for us and we just kept trusting God (like we always do with everything). Something that I firmly believed (and still do), that helped in the times when I would worry was that God would not have opened doors and allowed us to move here if He didn't want us in this area. God would not have opened doors and allowed for my husband to get the teaching job (high school history teacher) if God didn't want us in the area that we are in. I am so glad that everything worked out and that my husband and our family. Going forward, I pray that God will use my husband, myself, and our family to be a light in the area that we live in. We are coming up on the one year mark since my husband got this position as a teacher, and since our move. Even though we miss our friends and family, we love where we are. God is good! We are really blessed.

Now that my computer seems to be functioning properly, I am excited to be back to writing again. I hope my bullet points have caught my readers up to what is going on with our family. I hope my readers are having a wonderful summer. I know we are enjoying our summer. 

No matter what you are going through, keep faith, hope, and love the center of it all. 

*Answer these questions for my next blog post: Do you have a tattoo? If so, what it is and what was the inspiration to you getting it?