Hello, beautiful friends! Don’t worry, I’m still alive. I know it’s been a while, but with the recent holidays, things were pretty busy, and then after that all I wanted to do was relax and spend some time with my family. But I realized you guys might think I’d forgotten about this blog, so I figured an update was probably in order. Plus it’s the last day of 2014 (which is insane!), so a life update, in general, is probably a good idea.

First off, I want to say, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Christmas is my absolute favorite time of the year, so I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the entirety of the month of December. I mean, let’s be honest, once Halloween is over (or sometimes even before), I am breaking out the Christmas decorations and blasting the carols. It also helps that my birthday is four days after Christmas, so I’m just giddy all around. Thank you to those of you who were kind enough to humor me these past few weeks. With that said, I hope you all enjoyed your holiday as much as I did mine and that you got to spend it with loved ones.

2014 has certainly been a great year for me! David and I have now been married for three and a half years, but I feel like we truly hit our marriage stride this year. We’ve shared so many adventures and moments in 2014, big and small, and I can honestly say that time with him just keeps getting better. For David and I, 2014 was a year of laughter, learning, loving, growing, cooking (but mostly eating), cat cuddling, silliness, goal-setting, saying “sorry” first, traveling, and so much more. I keep wondering when we’re going to get sick of each other, but it hasn’t happened yet, so I’m just going to roll with it.

2014 has also been a year of personal growth for me. At the beginning of the year, I set out to make small resolutions each month. I definitely only made it to June, but I feel like any amount of progress is still progress. Plus the time that I spent working toward my resolutions taught me discipline and made me more more intentional in everything; as a friend, as a wife, as an employee, as a Christ-follower. And I even managed to keep one resolution…

On January 1st of this year, I told myself I would resolve to start each day 30 minutes earlier than the previous year and spend those 30 minutes in the Word, and that in the span of the year, I would read the entire Bible, something I unfortunately have never managed to finish. I honestly had very low expectations for myself. I’ve always had the best of intentions with resolving to read my bible everyday, but for some reason, in the past, it just never seemed to stick for more than a month or two. I don’t know what was different about this time. Maybe that I carved out a set time for myself every day or perhaps after a certain length of time, it just became part of my routine. Exactly what it was, I cannot be sure, but I’m so excited to say that on this morning, December 31st, 2014, I finished reading the entire Bible from start to finish. I know that for many Christians, this is not ground-breaking, but for me, it was, so I’m celebrating!

I’ve now come to truly cherish my time with God in his Word every morning. It’s a time for me to just be alone with God, without any distractions. And I feel like this time has really taught me how to talk to God; not so much pray to God, but really just have conversations with him, like catching up with an old friend over coffee. If I had to guess, I’d say God takes his coffee black.

In looking at this past year, I would probably say that the vast majority of change that’s taken place has been internal. Jobs remained the same, no babies were had, but I feel like both David and I changed. Hopefully that change has been mostly good as we’ve strived to grow closer to God.

I’m looking forward to 2015 (how weird does that sound?!) and all of the excitement and change it brings along with it! I hope you’ve all had a great year and I wish you all countless blessings in 2015.

Love you all and thank you so much for reading!