Cloudland Canyon Adventure

On Mother's Day weekend we took the kids on a little weekend adventure to Chatanooga and Cloudland Canyon, GA.  We celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary, my birthday and mother's day in a fun filled weekend of hiking, relaxing, exploring, and enjoying eachother's company without any distractions.

Here are the pictures of our trip.  Enjoy!

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Elias Simon Brown

Well, I know my life has been anything but normal for about a year now which is why the long silence on my blog. Part of all that change is this amazing new little person in our life.  I can't express how much joy and peacefulness and love he has added to our home.  He is an incredible gift to us.  So he deserves to have at least one post on my blog even if I never post again! (I would like to start posting occasionally- but I am not making any promises.) People have been asking for pictures of him so-- here you go! Enjoy!



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A Thank You Letter for My Mom

I wrote this letter for my mom for her birthday and wanted to post it here. I know she touched so many lives and if you have a way that Mom influenced yours that you are thankful for, please share! It is such a comfort to me and my family to know all the ways that her legacy lives on in others!

March 14, 2013

Dear Mommy,

Today was your birthday.   A year ago you turned 60 and I wanted to do something really special for you when you came back to the States but it never happened. This year you spent your birthday with God. I guess it can’t get any better than that!  But I wanted to write you for myself because I keep thanking you for things as I go about my life now without you.  Since your death my eyes have been opened in a new way to the myriad of ways you have shaped my life and taught me.  I know I said thank you before many times throughout your life for being a wonderful mother, and even as you were dying I hugged you and thanked you for as many things as I could think of but I just keep thinking of more. I keep realizing how pretty much everything I am or am capable of stems from something you directly taught me, or the home that you created for us, or how you modeled living life.  So, for your 61^st birthday here are 61 things I am thankful for- in no purposeful order.

Thank you Mom

1.       For being a MOM- the kind of mom everyone longs to have- loving, comforting, encouraging, supportive, approachable, available

2.       For telling me you were proud of me- as a little kid, as a teenager, as grown up, as a wife, as a parent. This is so important to me now that you are gone.  Remembering that you were proud of me helps me feel confident when I feel anything but worthy of someone’s pride.

3.       For letting me live my own life, come into my own faith, make choices that now in retrospect I know you weren’t sure about or totally in agreement with, but you supported ME and I never felt like a failure or incompetent because you listened and gently counseled.

4.       For teaching me hospitality

5.       For modeling loving everyone God puts in your path

6.       For teaching me that seeking transformation by continually putting yourself in God’s presence and truly, deeply desiring to do His will is Life’s ultimate goal- you were so incredibly beautiful because you embodied this.

7.       For praying over me and for me so faithfully my whole life.  For praying that I would know God’s love. I have lost my most faithful prayer warrior.

8.       For trusting my parenting style even when it was different from yours.  For telling me I am a good mom. 

9.       For making me charts when I was little and positively reinforcing my efforts.

10.   For taking me out to eat before my wedding to make sure I had time to ask you any questions if I wanted to.

11.   For our mommy/daughter retreat when I started puberty.

12.   For sewing me so many clothes and ultimately my gorgeous wedding dress.

13.   For packing me lunches.

14.   For not only packing my lunches every day I went to school but making them with creative flair- no peanut butter sandwiches for me everyday!

15.   For sometimes writing me encouraging notes in my lunches.

16.   For creating family traditions like doughnuts on Christmas Eve and hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls for the car trip to the beach and reading out loud together.

17.   For simple rituals of chai or hot chocolate and fruit every morning with breakfast.

18.   For your incredible brunches.

19.   For teaching me about quiet time with God- modeling how to pray and read scripture.

20.   For modeling that it’s ok to question what you believe in and to continually search for God.

21.   For buying me a bread maker for Christmas and teaching me how to make bread.

22.   For teaching me how to express my milk when it “came in” after Hannah and how I have never had a breast infection thanks to you.

23.   For teaching me how to dress a newborn.

24.   For cuddling my babies.

25.   For singing to my children.  I wish I had you recorded because I can’t remember all the words to the songs you used to sing them.

26.   For singing to me every night and on nights when I really needed your comfort for singing a long time and rubbing my back.

27.   For calling me “your snuggle-bug and your pumpkin” when I was little and for still occasionally calling me that even when I was all grown up.

28.   For teaching me how to plan monthly menus.

29.   For teaching me how to plan and cook a meal so everything ends up hot at the same time. (I don’t often do this, but it’s not because I don’t know how!)

30.   For loving nature.

31.   For playing games with us.

32.   For listening patiently to me while I learned to read.

33.   For making my scrapbook when I graduated from high school and then redoing it later when it was getting old so you could make it even better!

34.   For not reading my diaries while I was growing up even though you really wanted to. (Now I wish I had kept my promise and let you read them when I was 21 like you asked!)

35.   For letting me have Michiko and enduring her shedding and having puppies in the house and allowing her to be a part of the family even though you don’t even really like dogs.

36.   For buying me a bird.

37.   For encouraging my interests and facilitating them.

38.   For warm chocolate chip cookies and apple slices and a glass of milk after school.

39.   For telling me I am beautiful.

40.   For helping me get a job my freshman year of college that I could handle with the stress of this new phase of life.

41.   For coming back to the States with me my first year of college. (The whole family deserves my thanks for that!)

42.   For accepting Shawn and truly treating him like he was your own son.

43.   For encouraging me in my parenting of Hannah.

44.   For cooking endless pounds of meat, and making numerous casseroles and pot pies and meals for me when my babies were born.

45.   For hot chocolate and cinnamon toast at 6am in the morning when nursing a newborn.

46.   For rubbing my head and my back and combing my hair and breathing with me and encouraging me during labor.

47.   For swallowing your panic and supporting me both times I hemorrhaged after my girls’ births.

48.   For never questioning my decision to have home births.

49.   For washing towels and sheets and diapers and baby clothes, making beds, cleaning floors, washing dishes- for all the numerous ways you kept my home running after I had my girls and allowed me such precious time of bonding with my babies.

50.   For teaching me that my marriage is my upmost priority by modeling that in your own marriage.

51.   For teaching me to sew and then never complaining when I never used the skill but just asked you to sew for me….. you always did with great joy and willingness.  Thank you for all the beautiful curtains in my home.

52.   For a recipe box full of recipes in your own handwriting painstakingly collected from our own family favorites and from friends to give me for my wedding.

53.   For sharing your journey through life so openly with me when I was older so we could be friends. And I have learned SO much from that sharing.

54.   For listening and listening and listening and listening to all my joys, all my sorrows and all the mundane in between.

55.   For teaching me how to get food stuck of a pan by boiling water in it

56.   How to make the creamiest cream of wheat

57.   For celebrating me and pivotal moments in my life (like graduations and birthdays and goals accomplished) with extravagance and gifts and outings-making me feel so special and loved. I have so many good memories of moments like that.

58.   For being at Elias’ birth at 4am even though you had a brain biopsy 5 days earlier.

59.   For caring for the poor and unjustly treated.

60.   For learning another language at the age of 58.

61.   For giving yourself completely to LOVE.

 

I am so thankful that I am one of your children. I am so blessed to call you mother. I love you. I miss you deeply.

Yours Always,

Rebekah