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?