I made a list of goals at the beginning of the year, like so many people do, and unsurprisingly, I’ve already failed half of them. Sometimes, I find that I “decided” to do something, and then felt that the deciding was the important part and the rest of it will somehow just happen without any additional effort from me. Obviously, this is not how things work. All the good intentions in the world will get me absolutely nowhere if I don’t back them up with some action.

Enter: Discipline. I’m in desperate need of it. As well as a whole ton of grace.

In looking at my schedule, as far as I can tell, the only spot for me to have any sort of quiet time/me time is at 5 in the morning. If you know me at all, you know that I am *not* a morning person. Not at all. The idea of getting up at 5 in the morning is just awful. But with Gabe getting up at 730 and only having one nap during the day (which happens while I’m at work), my options are limited.

So, starting tomorrow, I’ll be getting up with Adam at 5am. I usually stumble out of bed to see him off to work, and then lock the door behind him and go back to bed. Instead, I will brew some coffee, workout, take a shower, and then have 1-2 hours to write, read, and pray before Gabe wakes up.

I need consistent, extended time with the Lord. I want to have spent time in the Word before everything else gets going. It has been too easy to merely snatch a bit of Scripture here and there during the day and call it “enough”. Not that here and there is a bad thing, it just shouldn’t be the only way I’m reading my Bible.

I want my heart to be quiet and ready for each day as it comes. I want to greet my son with a smile, and not be groggy and slightly annoyed at being jolted from sleep. I want to have a cup of coffee and a little bit of energy so I can keep up with him from the get-go.

I want to have more time to journal and write songs and read books. I want to get back in shape. I want to be a better manager of my household. I want to enjoy mornings with my son without feeling guilty that I’ve neglected other responsibilities.

So I’m making a start. I’m super overwhelmed, and not at all excited about getting up early. I know I’ll fail. But I know the grace of God is bigger than my failure. And at the end of it all, what I want is to know more of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (Gal. 2:20).

Tonight at the class I’m taking at Sojourn, Sarah Cosper taught on “Meditation, Memorization, and Application”. At the end, she shared the following verses.

Colossian 2:6-7 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

This is what I want. I am so, so thankful that Christ has already won, and I get to start at the finish line.

The same thing happened with reading. For years, I’d devour every book I could get my hands on, and then one day I just stopped. I think I read every book in my parents’ house, and all the books at our local library, and then just stopped reading.

Having married a literarily inclined husband, and deciding I should read more if I want to write better songs, I’ve decided to read at least 2 books a month. That may sound like a lot, but I can totally do it. I can do this really great speed-reading thing, so that helps. However, I’m paralyzed with indecision. What book do I read first? What if I’m not in the mood? What if I hate everything I ever read ever again?

So here’s what I’ve decided. Adam and I have made a list of books. There’s a good 30 books on this list, at least. In fact, I’ve made a Pinterest board of them (I love Pinterest..). I’m going to write the title of each book on a strip of paper, put them all in a mason jar (I also love mason jars), and let fate (or divine providence, if you prefer) choose for me. I’m actually kind of excited about this. I don’t have to decide which book I want to read, so it takes all the work out of it. Hooray!

I have other goals for the New Year.  If you’re interested, here’s the link.

Also, here’s my Pinterest board of books I want to read.
And the Pinterest board of books I’ve already read.
Both are still under construction. Also, you should definitely consider this a subtle call for book recommendations.

At any rate, I think that’s all for now, and I’ll be updating soon. Seriously. I really will..

Thank you for a good year.  I am glad that Jupiter didn’t turn into a sun this year despite what science fiction movies told me.

I am thankful for students who help make learning and teaching fun; for friends and church members who laugh and cry with me; for having a job in a recession; for not having to worry about paying bills; for Snow Days!; for Simply Thai; for Buffalo Wild Wings; for La Rosita’s; for Actor’s Theatre; for picking out colors to paint the babyroom; for babymoons in Indiana; for friends who donate couches; for a school administration who supports my attempts to bring drama back to our high school; for students who have fun on stage; for actors who show up to rehearsals; for students who can make me laugh when I’m having a rough week; for professors who inspire me to be a better teacher; for summers off (kinda); for that Starbucks in Athens, AL (for those times when you need a little jolt halfway through the trip to Pensacola or back); for parents who decide at the last minute to come visit during their spring break; for family members who try to plan events so that we can all see each other; for my Gran-Gran; for Rebecca’s Granny; for LOST and Community and Hell’s Kitchen; for Hulu and Netflix; for Ridgemont Reserve; for John Steinbeck; for being able to say “it’s a boy” while handing a friend a cigar; for a very loving and understanding pregnant wife during the hottest summer on record with no AC for 3 months; for being able to take my wife to her first prom; for things that inspire my wife to write music; for Ben Folds; for Antwone Dodson; for jack-o-lanterns and passing out candy on Halloween; for friends who I didn’t see all year but who still keep in touch; for watching my wife carry and deliver my son like a pro; for my son – his laughs, his cries, his facial expressions; for discovering that I could love anything as much as I love him; for Dr. Brown bottles; for Soothieâ„¢ pacifiers; for Evenflo carseats and strollers; for Bumbo; for Shutterfly Photobooks; for baby Tylenol; for people who freely give new and used baby stuff; for Grandmas and Greatgrandmas who knit and crochet baby blankets; for the best Christmas in recent memory; for being twenty-something; for grace from God, my wife, my family and friends when I mess up; for friends; for family; for dogs; for my beautiful, thoughtful and talented wife who is always there for me.

Today, for the first time, I really didn’t want to go back to work. I’m going to miss him in the afternoons when I’m gone. He will be super happy with Abby and the girls, but I will miss him so, so much. I only have a few more weeks before I start work again. It will be helpful for us to get out of debt and all, but I can’t wait til I can stay at home with my boy.

He’s so close to laughing, I can’t wait! He’s so ticklish, and is starting to smile a little whenever I tickle him. He’s such a happy baby. I’m so thankful for that. The Lord has blessed us with a beautiful, intelligent, happy baby. It hasn’t been hard to take care of him at all, except for the milk supply issues. Those are getting worked out tho, with the medication I’m on. I have more than enough to feed Gabe and have him gain weight. I might even be able to start storing it for him to take to Abby’s, instead of having to use formula. The Lord is good.

We set up our Christmas tree Saturday night, and we put lights on today. I bought a few little Christmas decorations. Nothing much, but it’s a start. We have a poinsettia on the piano, we set up the crèche, and I got a red glass candleholder with a green sugared-spruce scented candle. I’m also making stockings, so that’s fun. Tomorrow I think I’m going to go to hobby lobby and get some holly garlands to put on our lamp poles in the living room. I haven’t gotten into decorating this much before, but now that Gabe is here, I want him to have Christmas memories. So he gets stockings and decorations and all sorts of things.

I bought him his first ornament today too. It’s a little shiny nutcracker. We are doing toy soldiers/nutcrackers for him as an ornament theme, and every year he’ll get a new one. That way he’ll have his own ready-made ornament collection when he’s got his own Christmas tree. ☺

I love my little family. I am a blessed woman.

We did everything we could think of to no avail and then pondered our doom in bed.  How could this huge expense come up right when we starting making decisions to save money in other areas of our life?  If we upgrade to the 3GS iPhone, it’ll use up 3-4 weeks in grocery savings that we think we can do.  We need to save money, not spend it!  And as we were laying there, it came out:  maybe we don’t need an iPhone.

silence.

We both use our iPhones a lot for many things everyday.  To drop the iPhone and go back to *gulp* normal cellphones that don’t have all those wonderful applications, might mean that we’d have to… well… use the computer instead.  Or get the directions ahead of time.  Or only check our email once a day.  Or entertain ourselves through reading.  Or talk to each other.  Or to our friends.  Or neighbors.

Wait.  How much would we save monthly if we didn’t have two smart phone plans?

Seventy dollars.  A month.  That’s a lot of diapers.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce that Mr. and Mrs. Elliott (2 ts) are now former smart phone owners.  We went out today and replaced both phones and already have an offer on Rebecca’s 3G.  (My phone is, sadly, just a bulky, pretty clock that has to be charged every night.)

It would be nice to get back into smart phones at some point. But the moral of the story is that we found a way to turn an unexpected expense into a money-saving venture.

Hope we can find more of those!

-Adam

Our plan is to put the money that I’m making as a teacher this summer into savings and then depend on my salary and savings to cover our budget from Birthday until the end of the year.  This was all well and good until the AC unit went out and the warranty company says they won’t cover the repair/replacement.  But that’s another story.  The point is that already we are finding unexpected expenses trying to thwart our well-thought-out financial plan.  So, we still need to be on the look out for things we can sell, things we don’t need to buy and things we can buy cheaper.

One major way that we intend to try to save money and eat healthier at the same time is to be more intentional with our grocery budget.  We hope to radically change the way we eat by giving us a more healthy and consistent diet of food cooked at home with as little preservatives and additives as possible.  This will require baby steps, but we hope to map it out on here.  Rebecca will be largely in charge of showing what we are doing to save financially (she’s the budget queen around the house) and we’ll both be describing our baby-step easy recipes to start moving toward cooking at home more often and what tastes good.

Our plan is to keep this updated at least weekly over the next 12 weeks.  Please be patient if we have a hard time being consistent… after all, it takes 12 weeks to form a habit.

-Adam

-Adam

So, I now have no unmarried siblings.  My only sister became Dr. Laurel Newman over the weekend.  It was so much fun to travel down to see my family and be there to celebrate with her.  The wedding took place in the wedding garden at our farm that has been in preparation for a few years now.

It actually started out with Laurel deciding (long before she met Michael), that she wanted to have a garden wedding and that it would be nice to have said garden at Green Cedars farm (that’s right, my parents have a named farm).  Dad was brought on board when he realized he would get to build a second barn for the reception.  They built the “party barn” two years ago, in time for the wedding reception we had in Pensacola about 3 weeks after Rebecca and I got married, and the wedding garden was planted before that so that all the large shrubs would be full size in time.

Mom and Dad put a lot of work into the planning and care-taking and it was fun to be a part of the preparations.  I apparently missed out on one of the most fun moments of the weekend (I was at the bachelor party), when many of my cousins went a little crazy shucking corn.

Everything was beautiful and “just so” and I think Laurel had the wedding she really wanted.

Laurel was the last in several groups we grew up in to get married.  We have 3 cousins who were born within a few years of us, and of the five she was the last to marry (although Jake got married just 2 months ago).  We also grew up with the Tyner children (although they all got married before I did).

It was nice to be so much a part of something.  Most weddings that I have attended, aside from my own, have just required me to find a nice seat and maybe stand in the back of some picture.  I enjoyed having some responsibilities and being able to help out.  It was also nice to have my wife sing a song at my sister’s wedding.  I love that girl.  We had two arduous 9-hour drives over the weekend and I fell more in love with her.  Maybe it was the book she was reading to me.

It’s snowing outside and Rebecca’s napping. We got up early today for her to play and sing and for me to do powerpoint at the East End campus of Sojourn, our church. It’s not a typical way to spend Valentine’s, but things are not typical for us right now.

I suppose that’s not quite true, but typical has changed since we’ve been expecting this new family member. Rebecca’s sense of romanticism is no different than it was before, and today she’s just trying to nap away the nausea. The first trimester is ending, so hopefully she won’t feel as ill so often.

While she was napping I watched “The Seventh Seal” on Netflix. It was directed by Ingmar Bergman and had Max Von Sydow in it. I must say, I’ve never watched a film in Swedish before.

I probably shouldn’t have watched so deep and heavy a movie as this in the middle of the afternoon and by myself, but I really don’t get the chance to watch too many “arthouse” films these days as a first-year teacher and I just decided to take the opportunity as it presented itself.

The story is about a medieval knight returning from the crusades who challenges Death to a game of chess in order to win his life back. He and most everyone in the film is somewhat grim. The squire is witty and comical, but in a much darker way than I expected. His character professes a disbelief in any kind of higher being as the knight and several around him think about death. Other characters get involved and lighten the knight’s mood even as the black plague is all around them. Here, there be spoilers. In the end, the knight, as must we all, loses to Death and just barely makes it to his home to see his wife when Death comes to visit him and all of his guests. They all look Death in the eye and respond in different ways. The Knight is still praying to God for mercy, while the squire says to forget praying to nothing and enjoy the last seconds of life. A girl with them looks almost admiringly at Death, as if she’s been hoping he’d come soon.

We all do look at death differently. In some way, we’re all a little afraid, as we would be of anything so uncertain as death. Aside from what we believe about God, and the occasional acquaintance whose heart stopped for a few seconds and may have actually seen a white light, we’ve not met anyone who has died and returned, and that’s as it should be. Any idea we may have of what death or the afterlife will be like is a guess, even if it is based on Scripture or the experiences of others.

I’m the kind of person who likes surprises and I have always enjoyed starting out on a new journey. In some way, I’ve made my peace with death as a young person. On the other hand, I’ve never had as much to live for as I do now. I have a wife and a coming child to take care of and provide for. I’ve never been much of a risk-taker; I’ve always played it safe –for example: I’ve never had any interest in sky-diving or bungee jumping, and recently I’ve been offered the opportunity to sky dive with a friend at his bachelor party, an offer to which I’ve given plenty of thought since -”hey, why not? I’ve never really had an opportunity to do it before, why not now?” – except I then remembered that I’m going to be a father a few months after that, and as safe as I’m sure the sky diving industry is, I don’t really want to put myself in the way of anything that would keep me from being able to raise my child. I guess there’s no point in keeping it a secret that I would like to live long enough to see my grandchildren marry. In the end, I only have so much control over how long I live — even making wise decisions doesn’t assure me any extra time.

Lord, come for me when You’re ready for me, but please don’t make it soon.

-Adam

So, a lot has happened since I last wrote… My apologies. However, I now have a really good excuse to keep updated.

A couple of Sundays ago, we found out that we’re pregnant! We are due sometime around the 3rd of September.

Given the fact that there are a lot of family members that don’t live in our immediate vicinity, I am going to try and keep up with this alot better than I have, especially given the fact that there are kids involved now. Heh.

To begin with, here is the link to our first ultrasound pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=142595&id=504708282

My next appointment is on the 12th of February, and we should find out if it’s a boy or girl sometime in April.

We’re excited, if a little nervous, and we can’t wait to meet the little one!

More to come as I think of it…

Rebecca

Apparently, no matter what I do, I *cannot* keep a blog regularly updated.

Well, I’m out to change that. I’m not setting any kind of schedule, or standard, or anything like that, but I have a blog, dang it, and I’m gonna use it!

At any rate.

A lot has happened since the last post.

Adam has a job teaching Spanish 1 at North Bullit Co. High School. He likes it so far, though there have been some stressful moments. We are definitely thankful for the Lord’s provision. It’s not that far away, and apparently there aren’t very many really bad kids.

I’m still teaching piano and driving my medical courier route. I’ve been writing more lately, and hope to record a CD within 6-8 months.

We’re leading a community group again this year, and that’s been a lot of fun.

I can’t think of anything else at the moment, so I’m going to sign off. Hopefully it won’t be too long until I write again.

~R