i felt it was only appropriate to call this a "baby party" instead of a "baby shower." my dear friend, kat, is very very pregnant. and seriously needs to have this baby soon. we had a little baby party for she and karl this past weekend. one last hoorah complete with lovely table decor outside and razorback watching inside.

it was such a fun time and i had a great time decorating. my mom broke out my great grandmother's linens and a few old vintagy-looking sheets. i found a bunch of old jars at a flea market. we pulled out some candles from my wedding, homemade banner (i'm slightly obsessed), a few fresh flowers...and there you have it. baby party. but the best part...the food! all of us eikon girls brought great food. from dips and meatballs to punch and sangria. my favorite...the owl cupcakes by my friend sarah. so cute! enjoy some photos...

yesterday lucy started pre-k. first day of real school. it was emotional. i cried. more than i should have. she laughed at me. ryan took her to school. he may have cried...just a little. and she loved it. couldn't wait to go back today. she loves her teacher and has made some new friends. she said she liked everything but the boys. so we're off to a good start. max, olive and i walk to her school in the afternoons to pick her up...and she talked the whole way home about how much fun she had. i'm excited for her. sad she's growing up...but happy at the same time.


pretty girl.


ryan & lucy.


olive & lucy hugging it out (and yes, olive does actually have underwear on :)


daddy taking her to school.

eight years ago today i married my favorite person in the world. somedays he may not actually feel like my favorite person...but he is :) no matter what. it's been a long eight years filled with the usual ups and downs, 3 kids, starting a church, moving a bazillion times. and doing it all together. i wouldn't have it any other way. nothing ever ceases to surprise me anymore. i feel like if we've made it through these past eight years, we can make it through about anything. i'm so thankful to be married to my best friend. i thought i'd share a few (embarrassing) photos of where it all began...

Hello to all Eikon folks and friends! As many of you know, we will be feeding our homeless friends under the Broadway bridge on Christmas Eve. We have decided to not only make this a meal for them...but also have a Christmas party. I mean, it's Christmas, and they're homeless! They need some joy in their life! We are going to try and make it a joyous time for all involved.

We are a relatively small group trying to make a BIG impact. So this is going to take all of us...and our friends to help us pull this together! So please spread the word, ask your friends and family what they can donate to help us out.

FOOD: We will be having a Mexican food theme. We figured they probably get a lot of "holiday food" and might like a change up. So If you'd like to help cook or volunteer to bring a dish, please get in contact with Alena on facebook or on Sunday night. We need to plan for between 35-50 people.

DECORATION: We have apparently secured a tree. So we need any decorations that are easy to set up and quick to take down, and christmas lights.
• Battery powered lights
• easy to set up decorations

GIFTS: Most importantly, we'd like to give these lovely people something for Christmas. Here is a list of things we are trying to collect...
• socks
• gloves
• hats
• scarves
• bus passes
• packaged snacks
• hot chocolate packets
• coffee
• insulated mugs
• tents
• sleeping bags
• blankets
• coats

I will organize some kind of meeting to wrap everything once we have it. Also, if you would just like to make a donation...please feel free! Contact me at christen [at] babybyrds [dot] com with any questions. We will take what we can get and give it to those who desperately need it on these cold nights. Thank you so much for your help and willingness to give! Now get to work and see what we can gather up!

christen

over the past several years, my feelings on christmas have begun to change. i love christmas. i mean, i really love christmas. it's the happiest time of the year. my birthday is on christmas eve, which is when ryan proposed to me many years ago...i love christmas. i could listen to christmas music all year round...but then it would just get old, so i don't.

i'm not going to rant and complain about how early people and businesses are putting up their christmas decorations...although it is a bit early. but i secretly enjoy it, so i can't complain about it.

i would like to share my thoughts on how we're doing christmas this year. over the past few years we've really limited the amount of gifts we've given our girls. i believe last year they each got 2 presents from us. and ryan and i haven't gotten each other anything in years. now, this all was not by choice...it's because we couldn't afford it. we usually take the money we get for christmas and buy something we can all use or need. however, i'm glad this tradition kind of accidentally happened.

every year i'm amazed at the obsession with shopping. the ridiculous spending and just the greed. i was shopping for olive's birthday present last weekend, and could barely get through the aisles...and it's not even thanksgiving. i just don't understand the "christmas shopping" phenomenon. it's insane. what about christmas says that we must buy everyone we know 15 presents? i don't know.

since lucy was born, we've always wanted to show our kids how we should help others in need. and not just at christmas time. and we haven't always been able to or taken the opportunities. however, last year we helped feed the homeless at an emergency shelter...and my eyes were opened. this year, we've been given an opportunity, as a church, to feed the homeless group that gather under the broadway bridge in downtown little rock. we will be feeding them the 4th friday of every month. this friday will be our first time, the day after thanksgiving. and next month will be on christmas eve. which is my birthday, and i'm more excited about spending my birthday with a bunch of homeless people than i have been in years!

today i was telling lucy what we were doing, and that she can come and help us. i told her that these people didn't have a home or food or anything really. and she immediately replied "can we give them our home?" and then she proceeded to work it out in her head that if we just had a bigger house, with a really long hallway, they could all stay with us :) she got to hang out at the shelter last year with us and i know she's picturing all the cots lined up in our "really long hallway." and i wish we could. i wish we could do SO much more than we are doing. i also think it's important for my kids to be a part of it first hand...how else will they learn. and the joy lucy and her friend, cash, brought to some of the people last year...priceless.

after some conversations at church, i realized that we have to make an effort to ignore the poverty and hurt that is right in front of our eyes. we were discussing the other night that unless you allow yourself to be face to face with these issues everyday...you'll never do anything about it. there are people hurting, no matter how they got where they are. no matter whose fault it was...they are hurting. no matter how uncomfortable it is for you...it's real. i know we can't save the world. but we can do what we can do.

this year, as a family, we have decided to put our efforts towards helping those that have nothing. i'm even pursing another outlet for our family to help out in other ways. all that said, i am NOT perfect, and am guilty of over-spending and buying things i don't need all the time. but i want my kids to know that christmas is not about presents. it's about jesus. and jesus helped, and fed, and clothed, and healed people. and i want them to be jesus to people who have nothing else. it's the least we can do.

if you'd like to join us, check out our blog at eikonchurch.com and feel free to come join us and help serve this friday!

it seems i've been looking back a lot lately. i guess i've just been realizing how drastically our lives have changed in 7 years. since we're at the beach with the toon cousins this week i thought i'd take a quick look back at our last vacation together.



this was rosemary beach in october of 2006. we went with rob, stephanie, and jack. jack was 9 months old, and i was actually 9 weeks pregnant with lucy. crazy! it's so weird looking back. it's been 4 years since this trip and we went from 1 kid...to 6 kids, and lost rob along the way. it's nice to look back though and remember how much fun we all had together. and it's great to remember the healthy, funny, old rob every once in a while. things just aren't the same without him.

if there's one thing i've learned over the past 7 years of our marriage...it's to trust.

trust myself,
trust ryan,
trust god,
trust my motherly instincts,
trust my kids (when one says the other one is puking in the middle of the night...don't go back to sleep and let her lay in it for an hour),
and so on.

i know i blogged about some of this on the eikon blog a while back, but i have more to say :)

for most people, the first year of marriage is the hardest. our first year was our easiest (i didn't say best). we both had jobs, both had cars, rent was $425(!!!), no kids, and so on. little did we realize how much would change in 7 years. as ryan put it...after 7 years, 6 cars, 5 moves in 4 different cities, and 3 kids...we are 2 different people.

i realized how simply trusting has taught me so much. for instance, when we moved to nicholasville, kentucky (btw, i hated it)...we had no jobs, knew NO ONE, had no money, etc. we couldn't even turn our heat on throughout most of the winter, and it is cold up there. since i traveled with the crappy job i eventually found, and it was just ryan there most of the time, he decided he could go without heat. which meant staying in bed as long as possible in the morning and then running to the hot shower, then wearing LOTS of clothing around the house at all times, and hanging out in the library a lot. looking back...it's hilarious to us. at the time...not so much. we also ate lots of hot dogs and ramen noodles. we were broke. i would have panic attacks about how we were going to make it.

we moved to paducah...not much changed. except i had a job i actually enjoyed, well, mainly just the people i worked with. ryan was still in seminary, driving 4.5 hours to school, sitting through classes all day, then driving 4.5 hours home...one day a week. that was ridiculous looking back. we were down to one car, i hitched a ride with my interesting friend barry (who brought horse bbq to work one day and didn't tell anyone it was horse until after everyone ate it...i'm still laughing, b/c i knew and threw mine away!)

we had a great church family and friends in paducah. i loved it there. i miss it sometimes. we had the weirdest neighbors in the world...and we loved it! i miss creepy Jackie who used to stand at our glass front door and stare at us watching tv till we realized he was standing there...staring at us. and betty, who couldn't remember our names after we lived there for over a year, and she covered the trunk of her car in contact paper. she loved us, and she loved lucy, and she cried when we left. i cried when we left. because it was lucy's first home. i had a front porch swing that i loved. we experienced losing a baby there. i was pregnant there. ryan and i grew so much closer when we lived there. so many good and heartbreaking memories. looking back, i was just beginning to learn how to trust.


*that would be the day we brought lucy home (i know, i look hot).
*and betty holding lucy.
*and me and lucy the day we packed up and left...that's why my eyes are all red and i look crazy (no explanation for lucy's giant head other than her father).

however, i think ALL of those experiences, and more i can't even remember, have prepared me for my life right now. this whole "starting a church" thing has done a number on us. while it is an exciting adventure, it is also scary. it has definitely brought out the best and worst in us. there's been times when we wanted to quit, and times when we think it couldn't get any better. it is way more work than we ever thought it would be. i miss my husband a lot. while he does a wonderful job of balancing a full-time job, a church, a wife and 3 kids...i'm still jealous of the time we used to have together.

and obviously, the biggest part of my life...my 3 kids. definitely something we wanted, just not all so close. it has definitely been the hardest thing i've ever done. i can honestly say that being at home, alone, with all 3 after max was born...i didn't think i was going to make it. i really struggled for about 2 months, pretty sure it was a little post-partum depression. i cried at least once, maybe twice a day. (i think most moms do more than they would admit.) i realized why people are driven to hurt their children. thanks to ryan and our mothers, i made it through that time. and about a month ago, i finally felt like i was coming out of this cloud i'd been in. i realized how much i loved my kids. enough said. everyday is still a struggle, and i feel like a crappy mom a lot of the time...as most mothers do. but things are definitely better.

everyday brings new challenges for us. literally...church issues, financial problems, bad days with the kids, new business ventures. but everyday, with every issue, i choose to trust...i mean, what else can i do. but i usually choose to laugh. because i remember the old me who would freak out and have a panic attack because we couldn't pay the bill on time. and thanks to my lovely husband who has always said "well, there's nothing we can do about it right now, so go to sleep," i've learned that i can only do what i can do. and it may get worse before it gets better...but that's life.

enough sappiness now. i have an amazing husband, and beautiful kids. and i've learned how to cope with life...for now.

so, in the words of the fabulous Tim Gunn..."carry on."

here's a few of the summer brides i had the joy of photographing this summer. these are some of my favorites of stacy, elizabeth, and tracy. enjoy!

and olive, because she's so darn cute...

needless to say, this year has been FULL of surprises. i was thinking about it yesterday and how strange it is to think that this time last year...there was no thought of little max. i mean NO thought! we were definitely planning on having 3 kids, just not all right now, and so close in age. as most of you know, i was in denial for at least the first 15 weeks of the pregnancy. it was actually very hard for me to come to terms with the fact that i was pregnant again and about to have 3 kids. i was finally able to deal with it. however, i will say, being pregnant and having to care for 2 other kids...not fun or pleasant. and it definitely made for a difficult few months at the end. but then it all paid off as now we have little max!

i have still not completely adjusted to life with 3 little ones. it is most definitely the hardest thing i have ever done. i'm still trying to figure out what to do with them everyday and just generally struggling to make it through everyday without strangling someone :) i'm hoping to settle into some kind of a routine soon. i am thankful for my mom and mother-in-law for all their help with the girls. it is nice to have a break every once in a while so i can get some work done.

not only was max our big surprise of the year...but i've had a very successful new business this year! what starting me thinking about all this stuff was realizing that i joined etsy a year ago this month. i had absolutely no clue what i was doing and if it would even sell...but it did! to my surprise, things took off. way better than i ever expected. once i figured out how everything works and the best way to promote my items and when to list things and when not to...it started to really flourish. it definitely keeps me busy, especially with these 3 at home. i usually work on orders every night after they go to bed.

and looks like things are only going to get busier as i have a children's store that is going to start selling my prints! i will post more later when everything gets up and going...but for now, i'm just really excited! i have big dreams...and never really thought they'd go anywhere. i'm so glad i have something that allows me to stay at home with my kids, and i can still make some money. well, enough of all that. i'll update about my business as things change!