Hey friends! You’ll be seeing pictures of the kids throughout the post. I took some Christmas photos of them for our Christmas cards and I’d love to share them with you.

Lately, life has been busy in a good way. We’ve been decorating for Christmas since the end of October and I finally feel like mostly everything is in place. We are also hosting our first ever Front Porch Pickin’ this upcoming Saturday, December 7th, and so we’ve been gathering things and finishing up last minute projects for that. If you haven’t heard me mention FPP yet, it’s basically an invitation to tour our home for Christmas and I’m going to have some antique and vintage pieces for sale on the front porch. I’m excited to welcome people into our homes and I hope they leave feeling like they are a blessed part of our family.

Like most of you, we celebrated Thanksgiving this week and so we were also busy preparing for that. Benjamin’s family gathering is at a local church and is quite a large gathering of his grandfather’s brothers and sisters and their families. We prepared a few dishes to take to that and then we came home and hosted our own Thanksgiving dinner. Only my Dad was able to make it, but when you have a large family like we do, every meal feels like a big celebration. 🙂

If you’ve been around for awhile, you may notice our YouTube channel has been inactive. The main cause for this is the sickness that lingered over our house for most of November. We are planning on shooting and sharing some new stuff soon.

Since we haven’t really shared what’s been going on in our big faith journey, I would like to take a minute (or five) and gather my thoughts on here. If you have no idea what our faith journey is, you can check it out here. 🙂 When Benjamin first quit his job, our priority was establishing some family routines. We started our morning Bible reading as a family and then we transitioned into homeschooling.

I have still treated blogging and my Instagram as a hobby. To be clear, the only money that comes into our household currently comes through avenues that I’m in charge of. We bring money in through my being a FASTer Way to Fat Loss coach and through me working with companies through Instagram. I have not monetized my blog yet (meaning have ads set up) because I’ve heard the magic number to do that is 25,000 visitors a month and the blog isn’t there.

I was feeling stressed and a little disgruntled because I needed more time to actual concentrate and work on those areas, but I’m not the best communicator. I’m also not used to having my husband home 24/7 and being in charge when he is home. When he was working, I was in charge, but when he came home, I gladly handed the reigns over to him.

Basically, we needed to sit down and have a conversation. There’s no way for him to know what I need, if I don’t communicate it with him. I told him I felt I needed to devote full time kind of hours to planning and working, if we expected to live off of my income. Of course, he agreed and asked how we could change our day and schedule to make it happen.

We’re still trying to figure that part out. It’s still been hard to devote the time I need to it all since we’re also concentrating on FPP and on finishing up the she shed to sale. I think, too, the main problem is finding a place to work without distraction (I know that statement is ironic since I just wrote that we are selling the she shed) and taking a step away from my family and kids to do the work. Like, it feels weird not being around them.

There have also been moments where I’ve wondered if I’m cut out for this. I wonder if Benjamin is really happy with washing dishes and changing diapers while I reply to comments on Instagram. Those are all just the random thoughts that occur in my head.

What really matters is what God says to us. And from the beginning of this journey, we felt like things would become clearer after the New Year. Money is now tight. We are hoping FPP, selling the she shed, and my January 2020 rounds of FASTer Way bring enough money in to pay the bills until God makes it clear what our next step is. Right now, He is telling us we are still just to wait and trust.

Both Benjamin and I desire to somehow use our lives as a ministry to share Jesus and encourage women and men to live a life for Him. That’s really the entire purpose of the YouTube channel to share what family life looks like when you really just give it all to God.

Even though the last few weeks have had some stressful moments, I sit here feeling a bit of peace that we are where we are supposed to be. And I’m so thankful that you are here too.

Oh! I want to finally share baby boy’s name! I am now 22 weeks and am still feeling great! We’ve decided on Jacob Davis Grier. Jacob was my great-grandfather’s name and one of my favorite great-uncle’s name and we love that it’s also a Biblical name. Davis was Benjamin’s grandmother’s maiden name.

Thanks for stopping by for this much overdue weekly wrap up! I’ve missed writing these over the last couple of weeks. Be on the lookout for a cookie blog hop tomorrow morning! Until then, from my porch to yours!

XO,

Sharlie