the end of 2012

How is it already New Years Eve?

2012 has been an interesting year.

I've learned more about myself and about my God.

I've seen His promises fulfilled, and where I come up short.

I've felt immense peace in some of the hardest days of my life.

I've trusted God's timing and lived in the moment.

I've learned to rely not on my own understanding.

I've learned what it means to trust my husband and what God is doing in his life.

I've asked questions. I've been confused. I've been tired. I've been disappointed. I've been challenged.

But I've been given hope. I have been given peace. I feel purpose.

I've made mistakes. I've told lies. I've been selfish.

But through Christ I am free, I am forgiven, I am enough.

I have felt the constant love of Christ through my own ups and downs

and though not all my goals were met and not all my days of 2012 were positive

I am thankful for each and every day

Seth + Beth Part 4: Let's Make This Forever

this is part four of the Love Series (or our love story) 

Part 1: Young Love

Part 2: High School Heartbreakers

Part 3: Dating at a Distance

Part 4:

The Fall semester of my senior year of college there was a lot of talk about marriage. I knew I was ready, but I just wasn't sure about all of the silly details. I started to wonder if Seth might propose around my birthday or Christmas. 

In November 2008, Seth and I attended a leadership conference at the Hersey Lodge in Hersey, Pennsylvania. Seth had the opportunity to perform over that weekend and also lead worship on Sunday morning, which was a pretty cool deal. That Saturday night Seth seemed particularly nervous, which is incredibly odd for the many times he has performed. Up til that point and over the course of 5 years and hundreds of concerts/shows I had never seen him nervous. Prior to him playing he kept asking if I could be up front and grab his guitar from him after he was done. 

He sang a song that he had written called "The Faith of a Seed" (which to this day is one of my favorite songs of his) and after he was done he grabbed me and pulled me up on the stage. After a few sweet things, he got down on one knee, proposed ("will you mur me?"), then dropped the ring :) It was such a sweet moment and an absolute surprise!

Wedding planning began quickly after that day. We loved the idea of a destination wedding in South Carolina under the live oaks, but it just didn't work out for us. We knew we wanted an outdoor wedding, but finding a venue can be tough. Thankfully our families are very tied to numerous people in our area and a dear family that is very close to Seth's was kind enough to let us use their property. It was the perfect location with privacy, hills, a pond, and a windmill. We walked the area numerous times before finding the perfect spot for the ceremony and the tent. 

Our wedding could not have been more perfect. I am so thankful that I was married prior to the pinterest fad. Everything we did felt original to us and felt like us. On July 3rd, 2009, we were presented with a slightly overcast day and a refreshing temperature for July. People lined up to sign our guest book and took seats. So many loved ones were able to attend and Seth's father was the one to marry us. I will never forget what it felt like coming over that hill and walking down that aisle to Seth singing Edelweiss (a lullaby that my dad used to sing to me). According to our guests, just as I walked over the hill the sun came out behind me and shined the rest of the wedding. It. Was. Perfect. 

photos by Jessica from Lemongrass Photography

At the end of the night our family surprised us with fireworks and we drove back to our apartment to prepare for our honeymoon. The entire drive home we just talked about how wonderfully blessed we are and how nothing could not have gone better. It was a wonderful start for the rest of our lives.....and they lived happily ever after :)

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. 

We had a wonderful time with family and shared lots of memories. 

Seth + Beth Part 3: Dating at a Distance

this is part three of the Love Series (or our love story) 

Part 1: Young Love

Part 2: High School Heartbreakers

Part 3:

The day that I left for school I remember crying in my foyer as Seth so sweetly handed me a half dollar and shared an analogy of both of us carrying around a half dollar....I honestly don't remember, but it was cute, it made me cry, and I still have that half dollar so it must have been good!

Dating in college was hard, but maybe not in the way we expected. I loved my college, but of course like many Christian universities there were numerous rules and dating was an extremely awkward thing. I hated when Seth would come to visit because there was no where to go, everyone was awkward, and it just was never fun. I can probably count on my hands the amount of times that Seth came to visit me at school during those 4 years. So I usually went home 1-2 of the weekends in a month. 

I still remember my first "Ring Down". At Taylor, the girl's dorms have numerous traditions and one of the most popular is when one gets engaged. The PAs (similar to an RA) run through the hall with pots and pans screaming "Ring Down" and everyone runs out of their rooms and sits in the middle of the hall singing "Going to the chapel" and passing a candle with a ring tied to it. When the candle gets to the lucky girl she bows out the candle, everyone screams, and she tells the story of the engagement. For some reason it really clicked during that first ringdown that my relationship could get so serious that I could really marry this kid (and hopefully get engaged and have my own ringdown!) But I remember the day that it clicked that our relationship was just more serious than it was in high school. We had been intentional about our relationship from the start and he was lining up with what I wanted in a man, but for some reason getting married seemed obtainable. 

We talked on the phone a few times a week and we visited on the weekends. I remember times of frustration, lack of communication, and jealousy but for the most part we handled the ups and downs of long distance relationships smoothly. We were always active in the things going around us, busy, and wanted to be present where we were. 

God really shaped our hearts and grew our love for each other. I was presented with numerous opportunites that didn't exactly bring us together, but that Seth selflessly supported. Numerous summers were spent away from home. Between my Sophomore and Junior year I spent most of the summer in Alaska as a camp counselor, where our only form of communication was 30 minutes on a pay phone once a week and letters. 

(the bench where I sat all summer to talk to family on the phone)

 (and the view from the bench!)

(a hike with Lake Clark and the camp in the background)

Then that next summer Seth supported me in a "soul searching" of sorts to live with my grandmother in Arizona. He drove me out at the beginning of the summer and then we spent the rest of the summer chatting with skype and over the phone. Over that summer we started our conversations about marriage. The topic came up throughout our relationship, but as my Senior year in college was quickly approaching we were starting to talk about some sort of timeline. It was probably one of the hardest summers for our relationship, but I'd say we came out strong. 

Update: The Master Bedroom

Slowly but surely we will get this house furnished!

I'm enjoying the ride and getting giddy about every step of the way.

Something I have been planning for many months is our master bedroom. As I mentioned in a previous post, we were gifted a king sized bed from family last month. I knew once we had the bed I would want to get that room finished...as in: paint it, make a headboard, buy bedding, add accessories, etc. So that has been my focus for the past month or so.

Here is what I've got thanks to Polyvore!

The bedding is from West Elm (I don't I have ever expressed it on here but this is one of my all time favorite stores!) and the rest of the details are all just to get the idea of the overall concept of the room. 

One of the biggest pieces that I was trying to work out was the headboard. 

I have desired to make an upholstered headboard since we were married. I actually wanted one so bad in 2009 that while my husband was at work I went and bought 2 yards of fabric, a staple gun, and batting and covered our old, inherited headboard. It was cute but whenever we would move and dissembled the bed I would laugh so hard at how funny it looked. 

Last year I started planning and looking into the details of making headboards and started discussing it with my step-dad, who loved carpentry and was very good at it. But April came and we were reminded how precious each day is and I realized that my goals of making a headboard might not be possible anymore with him gone. 

My mom shared with my grandpa the plans that I had built up with my step-dad and last month we started emailing back and forth regarding the details. I drew up a template and the measurements over Thanksgiving and after numerous detailed emails with measurements, materials, and plans I got this picture yesterday from my grandpa:

Holy Excitement!

I am so in love with it already! 

I have a beautiful slate colored fabric and nail heads on their way and I can not wait to make this thing beautiful. My grandpa did an amazing job, don't you think!? I am so incredibly thankful for him and I think he has really enjoyed the project as well.

I will definitely post updates when he delivers this to me in January and as I work on the rest of the room!

Wildlights at the Zoo

One of our favorite things to do in the city at Christmas time is go to the zoo. They do an absolutely fantastic job lighting up the zoo with thousands of beautiful strands of lights. We missed out on this tradition last year, but we made up for it by getting starbucks and getting our good friends to join us. The weather was perfect...not too chilly, but just cold enough to bundle up. This is the perfect family friendly tradition that I can see us doing with our future family.

{Capturing December} December 10-16th

This is part 3 of my {Capturing December} series

Monday, December 10th: Wrapping Paper

Tuesday, December 11th: Green (or pistachio to be exact)

Wednesday, December 12th: A Beautiful Sight

Thursday, December 13th: Family

Friday, December 14th: Christmas Tree

Saturday, December 15th: Favorite Holiday Song

Sunday, December 16th: Outside Christmas Lights

Seth + Beth Part 2: High School Heartbreakers

this is part two of the Love Series (or our love story) 

Part 1: Young Love

Part 2:

We began talking again and our friendship (and love) started brewing during a school trip to Washington D.C. Our Friend, Liz, played the perfect little matchmaker. She would listen to all the reasons we liked each other and then she would tell both of us all of the details. It was cute and soon after we got home we decided to officially "go out" again.

We wrote a lot of letters on the bus but I especially like this part where we were conversing about RK (the band Relient K)

I don't remember a whole lot about those few months. But I know that I had finally gotten my license and for a few months I would drive us on a few small dates and then Seth started driving an old, rusty, blue van that was fun to ride around in. We sat with each other at lunch and sometimes he would come over to my house after school. After a few months, he called me up and called it quits. I have a journal entry from that day and apparently it was the smoothest break up in relationship history!

Soon after we broke up, a guy from church started to get interested in me and my heart got distracted in everything football, country music, and things that farm boys do. That relationship lasted for around a year.

Sometime after that time, Seth showed up on my doorstep after school, handed me a note wrapped around a cassette tape and left without saying a word. This was the first song that he wrote for me and first time that he shared with me that he still had feelings for me. 

Throughout that year Seth and I basically communicated through letters. They weren't necessarily love letters, but they were definitely emotional. At times we were angry at each other, other times sad, and some times we just wrote about God was doing in our lives and how he was challenging us. 

Valentines Day rolled around and I still remember the day that I walked out to my car at school and saw that cd with candy on my windshield. I drove around for a few hours that day listening to that 5 track CD of songs that Seth had written for me. To this day it was one of my favorite things that Seth has ever given to me (we also still sing these songs all the time haha).

(the actual card and cd cover that was on my car on Valentines Day)

By early spring, we both tried out for the school play and found ourselves hanging around each other more. But it was just fun to hang out with our friends and just build up that face to face friendship with Seth again after mostly writing letters for so long. 

I usually say that we started dating on March 18, 2005 because that was the day of the school performance and I clearly remember him holding my hand that day. 

I was a senior at that time and I was so confused with where I was going to go to college. I didn't want to start dating Seth if he wasn't willing to try and make it work while I was away at college. I had applied and gotten accepted to 9 colleges (haha I realize that is crazy) and knew that I wanted to go to Taylor University. Thankfully it was only 2 hours away from home and he was pretty set on making this work. 

We enjoyed prom, graduation, and summer before he sent me off. It was so hard and scary going to a new place and knowing no one. He was very nervous that I would find some cute, Christian guy at college and never be seen again. 

a box of letters, poems, and songs from Seth 

{Capturing December} December 3-9th

This is part two of my {Capturing December} series

Monday, December 3rd: Red 

Tuesday, December 4th: Joyous (my husband surprised me with a macbook pro for a birthday gift!)

Wednesday, December 5th: Today's Temperature 

Thursday, December 6th: Shopping

Friday, December 7th: Bright 

Saturday, December 8th: Ornaments 



Sunday, December 9th: Something You're Reading