Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. We had a wonderful holiday. We left on Wednesday and spent New Year's Eve in the Tulsa area with some of our friends. We played games, ate yummy food, and even did a little duck hunting.

 Excited to share another year with him. 

 These are Aaron's friend's girlfriends, fiances, and wives. I'm so glad I got to meet them recently. We have only hung out a few times, but they're so sweet and totally my kind of people. So glad we got to hang out on New Year's Eve.

My 2nd time duck hunting. It was cold and we came home empty handed, but it was still fun.

Can you see us?

We stayed Thursday night with Aaron's parents. Aaron was so excited on Friday because he got a new toy that he's been wanting for a while. He bought a fishing kayak. I'm pretty sure I better buy a kayak before summer so I can go along with him, or else I'll never see my husband this summer. We're looking forward to a lot of camping/fishing trips in our future. 

Friday night, we drove to the Tahlequah area and stayed with our friends from college. It was great to see them and catch up. Saturday, I went shopping with my cousin and we stayed Saturday night at her new, beautiful home. We cooked dinner and had game night. It was another wonderful weekend getaway. Now, I'm looking forward to staying home the next few weekends, snuggling up, staying warm, and relaxing with nothing on our to-do lists. Sounds amazing to me :)

I wanted to leave you with a few paragraphs from the book I'm currently reading, Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist. If you know me well, you know she is one of my most favorite authors and I have read and loved every one of her books. This particular book really hit home with me. There are just a lot of good words of advice and hope. I know a lot of friends that are going through wonderful times and a lot going through really hard times and this book has so much encouragement and words of advice that I think everyone should hear. 

"We are a million miles from last December, and I want to keep this moment with me as a reminder of what can happen in a year. Anything can happen in a year. Broken down, shattered things can be repaired in a year. Hope can grow in a year, after a few seasons of lying dormant. I didn't like who I was or how I was living a year ago, but I didn't know any other way to do it. I recognize the face that stares back at me in the mirror these days. When I look into my own eyes, I recognize a person I thought was lost, and I feel whole, for the first time in years.

I don't know where you are these days, what's broken down and what's beautiful in your life this season. I don't know if this is a season of sweetness or one of sadness. But I'm learning that neither last forever. There will, I'm sure, be something that invades this current loveliness. That's how life is. It won't be sweet forever. But it won't be bitter forever either. If everywhere you look these days, its wintery, desolate, lonely, practice believing in springtime. It always, always comes, even though on days like today it's nearly impossible to imagine, ground frozen, trees bare and spiky. New life will spring from this same ground. This season will end, and something entirely new will follow it."

For those of you going through times of sweetness and times of bitterness, my prayer for you is that 2015 will be the best year yet and that many new, wonderful things will happen for you.