Two years ago this week I was in the shoes of the brides and brides-to-be. And I was looking forward to wearing my gorgeous wedding shoes! I had just wrapped up my big golf tournament event for work and I was finally able to take one week and completely focus on planning our wedding and nothing else.

I was born a planner, so planning our wedding was a dream come true for me. I planned events for work, but I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted and I was always on limited funds. We definitely had a budget for our wedding, but it was ours. We could splurge on food and other things if we wanted to.

I was so excited to have all of my family and friends and Todd’s family and friends together in one venue. It’s such an amazing feeling. That never ever happens again– having all of your loved ones gathered in one space to celebrate.

ah, we were so carefree! (photo by Kelly Moore Photography from our engagement session)

Before we got engaged, I hoped that my extreme need for control wouldn’t turn me into a Bridezilla. And it didn’t. I was a surprisingly go-with-the-flow kind of bride and let a lot of details roll of my back. I was excited to marry my best friend and to spend the weekend with our loved ones. There were no fights and no falling outs with vendors. I had a few freak out moments when I felt like people weren’t doing things at my pace and following the standards that I thought a wedding timeline should follow, but I never let out those frustrations on anyone.

My big “thing” that I wanted was to have the wedding get published either on a blog or in a magazine. Because we had such an amazing photographer, that became a reality when the wedding was published on the Southern Weddings blog and later in their magazine.

But there was still a big let down after the wedding planning was over. Todd and I were completely enjoying being newlyweds, but I missed having such a fun project to work on. Well I’m not sure how much I prayed for a new project, but the Lord gave me a big one. Five months into our marriage, on October 15, we got the surprise of our lives when I took a pregnancy test after not feeling well for a few days. I was at least four weeks pregnant, I knew.

Our life was flying by right before our eyes and there was no way for it to slow down. We would officially be forced to grow up and put ourselves last. Wedding planning became a distant, but fond, memory. As the months of sickness and baby preparation flew forward, the obsession over the details of our flowers and invitations seemed silly and unnecessary. I’m not saying that these things aren’t important at the time of wedding planning. But everything was coming into perspective for me.

Now, here I am, two years later. Todd and I are about to celebrate our two year anniversary and in a month we’ll celebrate the end to the best, most challenging year of our lives. I will still say that planning our wedding was one of my favorite life experiences and I have zero regrets about the whole thing. We ended up with some beautiful photos and great memories. It was a fantastic party, but it was also the day that I committed to love and honor my wonderful husband and be the kind of wife that he needs.

We’ve gone through so much since that day and any worries that I had get more and more fuzzy every year.

Those worries were replaced with worries over how much food to feed my newborn boy and how to get him to get enough sleep for him and for us. But when he was a few weeks old I stopped worrying and started praying and turning it over to the Lord. I’m confident that there will be more struggles, worries, projects, and things that I exaggerate, but that’s all part of completely experiencing life.

Next week we’ll celebrate two years from our wedding day and look back and remember the people that were there, the laughs we shared, the music we danced to, and how much it meant to us for everyone to be there.

Then we’ll remark on how far we’ve come since then and thank God for never failing us.

our little family when Hudson was 5 months old* (photo by Tracy Turpen Photography)

*We’re due for some new family photos. It’s hard to get a picture of the three of us together because one of us will pose with Hudson while the other holds the camera. And no, we’re not so good with the timer feature on my camera. We’re meeting up with Tracy Turpen again on June 9 for some new family photos!

I can’t even believe that Hudson is so close to turning 1 year old! Time seriously flies. I honestly don’t miss the tiny baby stage– this stage is so much more fun. He plays games with me and laughs all the time. He is playing his own version of “boo” where he buries his head in the sofa and pops it back up. I think he thinks that because he can’t see me that I can’t see him and it must surprise me when he pops back up. So cute. I would like to take this time and just freeze it.

But little boys have to grow up. And I get to plan a party. We’re celebrating Hudson’s first year of life, but we’re also celebrating our first year as parents. We’ve all had quite the eventful year and we’re ready to party.

Because we don’t have many (or any) friends our age with kids, we’ll be inviting all of our friends that don’t have kids. Hudson’s Little Gym friends and their parents are invited and we’re also going to invite a lot of our friends that have older kids. We’re asking that no one bring a gift– this isn’t about gifts. We were spoiled by our friends and family enough when Hudson was born. Todd and I will give him a few big things from us and I’m sure his grandparents will spoil him even more, but we don’t want our friends to bring gifts. This is just a celebration!

But I love to throw a party, so I’m going to let you in on my preliminary plans. I’m planning it around an inspiration board that I did for a baby shower that I never planned, so it will have a lot of the same aspects except it’s for a birthday party and not a baby shower.

The baby shower board was based on Green Eggs and Ham. I think orange and green are a great color combination.

This was the original board that I created back in 2008:

This is the new board based on my plans for Hudson’s first birthday party– and still following the fun green and orange, Green Eggs and Ham theme:

thanks to Nina for helping me modify the board since I no longer have Photoshop

I have lots of fun plans for the party–most of them revolve around fun food, but I’ll be revealing more and more as the planning progresses. I don’t want to give too much away before our guests get to experience it.

Any good, helpful first birthday party tips? I already have a few bloggers and Etsy sellers helping me with invitations and decorations, but I’m looking for tips on activities. I’m thinking of having a giant ball pit. Any experience with that?

I’m so happy to be back home with my boy after being gone for a few days. But we’re back to the grind of keeping our house clean for possible home lookers and today there was actually an agents’ open house at our house at lunch time. I had to get Hudson and the dogs out of the house for two hours.

I needed to run some errands and don’t like to leave the dogs in the car, so I called our wonderful vet and asked if I could drop off Boudreaux and Fiona for a couple of hours this afternoon. Hudson and I went to the grocery store and to meet Todd at his office for a few minutes. When I picked the dogs up the vet told me that the day boarding was “on the house.” I can’t even express how wonderful that is and how much it means to me to have people in our lives, helping to take care of the canines in our family, that truly care about us.

We also had Hudson’s class at The Little Gym today. He absolutely loves it. He loves seeing his friends every week and smiling, clapping, and bouncing to the music. He does the wheelbarrow move and when put in a handstand position he always tucks his head to roll. He’s a natural! And I’m biased.

playing with the bells at the beginning of class

doing his shoulder stretches

doing a little stair climbing

totally the stair master

At the end of class, his teacher always gets out the balls and then the bubbles. Hudson is more fascinated with the bubble blowing contraption (not the old school bubbles we had as kids) than the actual bubbles and he tries to get in his teacher’s face to inspect the device. Today he pulled up on her legs and let go and stood for a minute or so. Then…. wait for it…. he took a step. Then another!

I’m so happy I saw it and got to see him reach such a big milestone. Earlier tonight, after Todd got home, we tried it again and he took one or two steps before sitting back down and going back to his easiest form of mobility: crawling.

Todd and I are going to be out of town for a few days to celebrate our anniversary next week and Hudson’s grandparents will be keeping him. I’ve been praying that he’ll either walk before we leave town or he’ll wait to walk when we get back from our trip. He’s just been on the verge of walking for a few weeks now, so I knew it would be soon. It just thrills me that Todd and I were able to see him do something so big before we left.

After sharing all of my deepest insecurities with all of you, I went to Atlanta to see Beth Moore and to face them head on. I also got to spend lots of time with some wonderful women that I’ve grown to love over the past couple of years, but had not met yet.

The Lord spoke to me about a lot of things through Beth Moore and there are a few situations in my life that I’m ready to remedy. But for right now, I’m going to keep all of these things to myself and process them. I can’t change overnight, but I’m trying to take some big steps to changing the way I think about myself and stop obsessing over me. I think the biggest lesson Beth Moore taught me is that insecurity is NOT humility. Insecurity and narcissism are very close to being one and the same. So it’s time to stop obsessing over my flaws and start focusing on the woman that God created me to be and thanking Him for the many blessings in my life. It’s time to recognize that I am exceptional in my Creator’s eyes and I am clothed in strength and dignity. It’s time to stop putting myself down.

If you haven’t read the book, my new friend from Lauren from Adventures of Southern Newlywed is giving away her copy of the book on her blog. (I met her this weekend along with her mom and sister and they were so nice. I’ve been reading Adventures of Southern Newlywed since I got married and I was so excited when she came up to introduce herself. She doesn’t live too far away, so I really hope that we can get together again soon!)

I thought I’d share a recap of my weekend with all of you.

On Friday morning, I left Columbia and headed to Atlanta to pick up my good friend, Megan from Tales of the Trees. Megan has such a great, honest, hilarious blog. She’s so much fun to be around and she is one of the most real people I’ve ever met. The weekend would not have been the same without her. We totally “get” each other and have similar styles of dealing with things. I’m so happy that I got to spend so much time with her this weekend.

I picked up Megan from the airport and while I was there I met Caroline, Jenna, and Faith. The five of us went to kill some time before our next airport pick ups at a nearby Chick-fil-A.

Then, after a fun visit, we left to go back to the airport to pick up two more good friends, Mrs. NCF and Rachel from In No Simple Language. I had met NCF and Megan before, so I was so excited to finally meet Rachel. The best part is being with people and not feeling at all like you haven’t known each other for years. Everything was so easy and fun! NCF and Rachel are so much fun to be around. They’re carefree and love to laugh. Rachel is so sweet and easy to talk to. She’s so go with the flow and always points out the positive side of things. NCF  is one of the kindest, most gentle, loving people I’ve ever been around. Both times I’ve hung out with her have been so easy and felt like I’ve been with an old friend. We even cried together a few times during the conference and worship.

The four of us headed to our hotel and then hopped back in the car to go meet Amy, Lianna, and Becca for dinner at a cute pizza place in Kennesaw, Georgia called Zucca.

I have been reading Amy’s blog since I started blogging and always feel like I learn something every time I read one of her posts. She is a great writer and a teacher (not to mention gorgeous!) when she probably doesn’t even realize it. I was thrilled to finally get to meet her.

After dinner, we hung out in our room for a while and I met Trina, Jenna, and Jennifer. We stayed up way too late and getting up on Saturday wasn’t easy, but we were going to see Beth Moore!

On Saturday morning, we woke up and went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel where we met a few more bloggers and Twitter friends. All the girls from Friday night except Becca joined us for breakfast and then we added Lyndsey, Natalie, Kim, Jennifer (Natalie’s twin sister), Rachel (their friend), and Kelly. I was so excited to finally meet Natalie. We’ve been Twitter friends for a while now and her family is so precious.

Natalie and me

Lyndsey and I have been “friends” for a long time. We started Weight Watchers Wednesdays together with Mojito Maven back when the three of us were struggling with gaining the “happy weight” after getting married. Then we were pregnant at the same time and emailed a lot about what we were experiencing during our pregnancies. Now we both have happy and healthy babies and I can’t wait for our chunky kiddos to meet each other soon. Lyndsey is also one of the most hilarious people I have ever met. Her voice, her expressions, her stories. She’s great!

Lyndsey and me

everyone at breakfast

Trina met up with us before we left for the conference and we were off to see Mrs. Moore! The conference was incredible and we even got to see Beth make an appearance in the “overflow room” when she came during lunch to do a question and answer session. The praise and worship during the conference was a great experience. There’s nothing like worshiping with 300,00 other women nationwide and standing next to some of your newest, most wonderful friends and singing to the Lord.

After the conference, we headed to a fantastic restaurant called the West Egg Cafe (Amy had some great dinner recommendations) and met up with PinkSass. It’s a great restaurant where all of the food is grown locally and served fresh. I had a delicious fried egg sandwich! (Disclaimer: we’d all just been rained on and our hair was a mess. Just wanted to put that out there before showing what we looked like after walking/standing in the rain.)

Megan got to try grits for the first time.

We all had delicious cupcakes and cookies.

On Sunday morning, I got up early and headed home. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone, but I know that we’ll see each other again. I missed my boys so much and was so happy to get home to see Hudson smiling at me after church. I feel completely refreshed and ready to go. If you ever get the opportunity to take a girls weekend away, you should definitely do it.