A Look Back at 2012:

It's time for a look back at this past year. What a great year it has been! This is one of my favorite posts to write because I take extra time to re-read just about every post from the past year. It's so neat to see what we have accomplished (or NOT accomplished), where we have been and how our family has grown.

Here are some of the highlights: 

• fostering JoJo for several months and finally seeing him find a forever home.
• going to Mexico with some of our dear friends. 
• welcoming one niece and one nephew into the world this year: Carson & Hannah

• attending our best friend's wedding: Alicia & Brian
• enjoying our brand new fire pit & patio 
• having a girls weekend in Canton - a definite must do again for 2013! We had a blast!
• spending another entire year with the greatest husband I could have asked for. Seriously. 

• going to Nicaragua again with my mom
• getting to meet my sponsored child, Alex, in Nicaragua

• deciding to move back to Louisiana! 

We are definitely looking forward to a great New Years and a year full of changes, moving, travels, and new surprises! 

Christmas Highlights: Part 2

After the snow cleared in Arkansas we loaded up the doggies and headed down to Louisiana to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family. It is definitely a little more...um..what's the word... LIVELY at the Walker Christmas with four kiddos 2 years old and under. 99% of our time is spent watching the kids. We definitely aren't short on entertainment, that's for sure. 

Highlights of our Christmas in Minden: 

• being entertained by our 2 nieces and 2 nephews - It is an absolute joy to watch these children grow up, interact and explore the world around them! I also love watching my two big brothers be awesome dads! They definitely have their hands full! :)

• attempting to get a decent picture of all four kids. This is the best we got. 

 This one might be my favorite of the day. :) This is better than crying Santa pics, am I right?

Carson (8 months) and Landon (2 1/2 years)

Hannah (6 months) and Makaylan (20 months)

• eating gumbo with my family! In Louisiana, gumbo is always an appropriate dish to serve but especially on a cold rainy holiday that you are sharing with family. :)

my mom with her two oldest grandkids

Landon playing Peek-a-Boo with MeMe.

• seeing our (probable) future home again. We met with the inspection guy today and he gave us a full report on the house (35 pages to be exact). It needs some TLC but we are super excited that this might be our new home. Nothing is official yet but we are praying that God's will be done on this house. So far things have gone smoothly with the offer, acceptance and structural inspection... but of course I'll keep y'all posted! 

We are heading back to Arkansas tomorrow and it's a good thing because we are really missing our kitties, Hazel & Charlie. We are thankful for our pet sitter/house sitter with Rockin' Paws who makes leaving our cats a little easier. If you live in Central Arkansas I HIGHLY recommend giving them a call.

Christmas Highlights: Part 1

B and I are blessed to come from two pretty amazing families and luckily our parents only live about 2 1/2 hours away from each other. We spent the first part of this week in South Arkansas and the later part of the week will be spent in Northwest Louisiana. We had such a great time with Buie's mom, dad and brother the past few days. I didn't take that many pics but here's a glimpse of our Christmas with the Buies. 

Highlights of our time in Rison: 

• spending more than 24 hours with B's parents - Because of B's FORMER job, he only got Christmas Day off. Now that he is no longer working in retail we enjoyed three full days at his parents home, something B hasn't done in over 6 years! 

• wearing our matching pajamas - Yes, we have become one of THOSE couples! ha! 
• watching old Mr. Bean movies and laughing so hard I do the uncontrollable breathing and I literally sound like I dying walrus. It's rather embarrassing when I really get going. 

•  being entertained by our fur babies. On B's side of the family, the only grandbabies are the dogs so they get the royal treatment which really is no different than the way they are treated in their own home to be honest. :) But they do LOVE going to see their Granny & Pappy because they usually sneak them a little meat. Yum!

• the food is always a highlight as well. I swear I could eat a whole plate of Mrs. Carole's dressing & gravy and over the course of the three days, I'm pretty sure I did! 

• Another favorite thing to do when we go to Rison....absolutely nothing. There is no pressure to be anywhere or go see anyone. We put on our (matching) pajamas and lay around. We might even drift off to sleep once or twice throughout the course of the evening before getting up and going to get in bed. Ahhh... so nice.

• SNOW! This year we had a white Christmas all over Arkansas! In most parts of Central Arkansas, where we live, they had as much as 12 inches! Rison only got about an inch or two. But that was still plenty for Conner & Scooter to play in.

which brings me to my last highlight of our time in Rison...

• watching Conner & Scooter play in the snow - I swear if we moved to Colorado tomorrow they would be the happiest dogs ever. They LOVE the snow! Scooter eats it and Conner, well, he just makes it a goal to get as dirty as possible. 

This was taken about 2 minutes before we threw him into the bath tub. But I think it was well worth it...at least I think Conner would say it was. ;) 

You might be a crazy dog mom if...

you buy matching pajamas for you, your husband and your two dogs for Christmas. 

That's right, Pajama Gram offers pjs for you & your partner as well as for your fur babies. You can even get your name monogrammed on them. :)  Call me cheesy but I was *really* excited when these came in. I immediately put the dogs in theirs and snapped a few pics. Conner's fit him really well while Scooter's was a little big on him. But both look pretty darn cute! :) 

We'll all be wearing our pajamas from Pajama Gram this holiday season. 

* Pajama Gram didn't pay me for this post. I just like them! :) 

Update on Life!

One week til Christmas! How's everyone doing? I keep thinking, "Oh, I need to blog about that!" But who has the time? Am I right? So much has been going on here this last week. I'll do a quick run down to get you all caught up!

• I still have not gone through all of my Nicaragua pictures. I kind of over did it this year with pictures. If you would like to see any of my images, head on over to my Facebook page. 
• There is a huge PODS storage unit sitting in our driveway and we have slowly been filling it up. This moving thing is actually happening! 
• We made an offer on a house in Louisiana! Yup. You read that right. We made an offer! Woo hoo! 
• Oh, and it was accepted! All we need now is to go through the inspection period. Fingers crossed that everything with our future home is structurally in tact and everything look okay. I keep praying that if God doesn't want us to live here then He would close a door. So far everything has been super easy with this move. In fact, this is the first house we saw online that we loved and the only house we went and looked at in person. 
• One week til Christmas! B & I are actually headed to do some last minute shopping. I do all of my shopping early but then there's always last minute items that need to be done. And once again, I am reminded why I ALWAYS do my running around early - I HATE holiday traffic! Be nice out there on the streets! 

Hope y'all are having a great week! 

So much to share!

I'm back from Nicaragua! I've actually been back for several days but it always takes me a couple of days to get back into the swing of things...notice how I didn't say to get back into a routine. I really don't have a normal routine. But as wonderful as it is to be back, I am definitely missing all of my friends in Nicaragua. I have so many stories and pictures to share with you. I always struggle with the best way to do just that. I literally took thousands of images last week. I couldn't possibly share each one of them on my blog but I do want to share with you a few of my favorites. If you would like to see more images, just head over to my Facebook page to see lots more. Each day this week I will be adding a new album, one for each day we were there. I just added Day 1 today. Check it out here. I will also be doing a blog post about my day with my Compassion Int. child, Alex. It was such an amazing experience to meet him and his family. It definitely deserves its own post. :)

I will post more on Nicaragua this week but for now just know that I'm back and busy going through all of these hundreds of images. And to my Nicaraguan friends reading this, I miss you already!