Happy Birthday Beautiful.

Happy Birthday Princess!  We can't believe that you've been in our arms for two years.  We are so blessed.

 
We still check you every night before I go to bed, just to make sure you're still breathing.

We still keep you rear facing in the car to keep you as safe as possible.

But despite being overprotective, we still let you fall.

We let you learn new things, often by trial & error.

We're not perfect, but we do love having you in our family!

And we love you.  So very much.

History of a House + a New Family

You know the creepy stories you hear about some houses?  Yeah... I don't like those.  I hate them.  I will run out of the room singing "lalala" so I don't have to hear them. 

So when it came to looking for our house, I really would have loved to buy a freshly built home & be the only ones to ever live in it.  Voila-- no creepy stories!

But with our budget & the area where we live, it was a ridiculous notion.  So we went forward with house hunting, hoping for the best.  If you've ever been house hunting for a middle to lower class home then you know how completely creepy some can be.  Funky smells, odd stains on the walls, missing pieces of carpet...  there are some seriously odd things you will see!

If I had written a list of things I'd want for a home, it would have looked something like this:
1) Know the complete history of the home.
2) Be built like my dad would build something.
3) Not have irregular additions built on (I'm looking at you, flat roofs, carpeted garages & laundry chutes in the living room).
4) Fully fenced in backyard.
5) Needing nothing more than a coat of paint (or freshly painted with gorgeous colors).
6) Nothing weird or awkward.
7) Curb appeal.
8) To have a garage, but not a huge one where the house is hidden behind it & you can barely find the front door.

And that's why I stopped in the middle of the living room one day.  I'd taken no more than 7 steps into a home & yelled for Josh who had arrived ahead of me.  This was it.  I was standing in my living room.

Me: (yelling into the next room) When can we put in an offer?
Josh: Let's look at the rest of the house first, ok?
Me: Ok!

Look, look, look, look.  Yep.  It was our home.  We put in an offer the next day, moved in six weeks later. #2-#8 had all been fulfilled.  We figured #1 was a lost cause anyway, but considered it okay because the home had a generally happy feel to it.

During the buying process, my husband Josh got a Facebook message from the seller's wife.  She explained who she was & that she was excited to see that the home was going to a young Christian family.  Her husband had grown up in the home & it meant a lot to them.  It was a happy place full of happy memories.  Josh forwarded the message to me & I pulled off the side of the road to read it right then.  I had to catch my breath.  Everything that I had wanted in a house came true, just in a different way than I had imagined.


Since then I've learned a lot not only about the house history, but also about the family that lived here.  Everyone speaks so highly of the family.  We even got to hear about the parents love story!  It was so sweet-- I can only hope to bring so much joy into this home.  I love being able to ask what a certain light switch connects to, or what the original bathroom looked like.  This is truly a dream come true!

We had the sellers over for dinner last week and as they were leaving we asked what it was like to be back at the old house and to see it decorated differently.  The husband smiled & said, "it feels like home, and you feel like family."

10 years: Happy & Successful.

2004 was a pretty big year for me.  I met my husband, graduated high school & started college.  I can't even count the number of times I was asked where I wanted to be in 10 years, what I wanted to do with my life, or something of that sort.

I made up answers.  Every time I was asked I would give a slightly different answer.  Truthfully, I had no idea.  I highly admire the high schoolers that know what they want in life.  All I knew was that I wanted to be happy & successful, but I was too afraid to admit it.  I mean, c'mon, what successful person doesn't know what they want to do?  Part of being successful is beginning with the end in mind-- knowing where you want to go!

Looking back, I've met my goals.  I'm happy, and I like to think that I've had a successful 10 years.  Successful by my standards, anyway, and that's what counts here.

I've come much further than I thought.  I never planned to leave my hometown.  Move 30 minutes away?  No way!  So to live 8 hours away is quite comical to me.  Leaving there certainly didn't make me successful, but it became an important part of my story.

Never, ever in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I'd still have the same car!  8 years ago I started saving up to replace it when it broke down.  If that savings hadn't been robbed so much over the years then I'd be buying a pretty sweet car right now!

I also never thought that being debt free would be a big part of my story.  10 years ago I didn't have any debt.  It hadn't even crossed my mind.

I thought I would use math more.  I wish I used math more.

I hoped to be married & have a family by now.  I didn't have a plan for number of kids at this point in the game, but to have at least started having kids.  I always saw myself as a family person.  Check.

I assumed I'd have bought a house at this point.  What a silly assumption!  Houses are expensive!  But sure enough, I did end up buying a house mortgage before those 10 years were up.

I kind of thought I'd be working in an office setting, dressing professionally, and not owning my own business.  In fact, I decided at a young age that I never wanted to own a business.  I saw how hard my dad worked & just didn't want to go through all that.  I'm a lot more like my dad than I ever imagined I'd be.  And my husband is a lot more like my dad than I ever imagined he'd be.

If someone walked up to me in 2004 and told me I'd be a wedding photographer in 2014 I would have had a good laugh.  I would have thought it was awesome, but also something completely unattainable.  Seriously-- that is a ton of expensive equipment to buy, and a lot of skill to invest in.  Then again, I probably would have laughed at that even 5 years ago as I tried to figure out what PSAM meant on my camera.  ;)

Happy & successful.  So what if I'm not a lawyer or a figure skater... I'm right where I want to be.

What did you want to be?  How has life adjusted your dreams?

Us lately.

I haven't written about us lately.  2013 was a pretty stellar year.  I had high hopes for it, to be honest.  13 is, after all, my favorite number.  It's my number.  I mean, it pretty much has a responsibility to me.  :)

And it didn't disappoint.  I finally got out of the new mom fog that lasted for, oh, 18 months.  I don't mean to lessen anyone else's postpartum experience, but it was really rough.  I spent most of 2012 trying to breastfeed and well, it wasn't one bit easy for my body.  I was on medication to make it easier & that just left me in a huge mess of nerves & emotions non-stop.  After getting off that medicine, it took about 9 months to get my body back to feeling normal.  Normal is good in this situation!

But that was 2012.  2013 was the year I came out of that fog & really started to enjoy life again.  Our photography business continued to grow, and the cinematography side just blossomed!  Josh had 3 or 4 weddings that were 3+ hours away!  Not an intentional direction for us, but a fun one to navigate.  Haven't seen his films?  Check them out here!

No plans for more kids anytime soon.  Yes, we plan to have more, but no, not right now.  Maybe 2014.  Maybe 2018.  We started thinking a little more seriously this past year about adopting as well.  It is something we have always said we wanted to do, but didn't have an exact plan for it.  Some of our friends are going through the adoption process right now & it's such a beautiful thing.  We love hearing their updates & following their journey.  It's also probably not something we're going to do in 2014, but the bud is starting to blossom.

Also, you shouldn't take any timelines I say into account.  In true Fowler fashion, we do what we want when we want to do it.  If you'd asked me a year ago, I would have said we would definitely not be buying a house in 2013.  And yet, here we are... we bought a house.  We think about things for a long time with no timeline in mind and then one day we just up & do it.

Our plans for 2014?  Enjoy life.  We are at such a fun stage in life, and we just want to soak up every second of it.  We hear that pitter patter of little feet that all the songs talk about, so we're just going to enjoy it.  We are making a house into our home.  We have a backyard.  Heck, our kid even has a tricycle.  This is the life. 

And yes, I tend to say that about life no matter whether we own a house or live in a tiny apartment behind Roses, 8 hour away from our family.  Why?  Because our blessings are just huge, y'all.  If we're constantly looking at the next big thing then we miss what we have.  And what we have is rich.  It's the good stuff.

A day without heat.

We got back from vacation this week, turned up the thermostat and... nothing.  The fan was running, but when the house didn't start heating, we knew something was up.  We were out of oil.

It was 10pm so Josh went to borrow some space heaters.  We bundled up & made sure the baby was warm & went to bed.

The next morning I called for more oil & after visits from three different oil companies for different reasons, we had it working again by 5:30pm.

My daughter was nice & warm with a sitter all day.  I enjoyed riding in the car because of the warmth.  I went out to Wal-Mart to buy our own space heater.  I started feeling ill so I took some medicine.

All day long I was reminded of people without these luxuries.  People who couldn't just call someone, write a check, and be warm again.  People who would do anything for a warm coat, a roof over their head.  Who would just love relief from that headache.

It's so easy to get caught up in life.  To think poor me.  There are two ways to look at it:


-We had no heat on a cold day & night.
-It cost $600 to get everything working again.
-I'm sick and just want to lay down & ignore the world.


-or-


-We have a roof over our heads.
-We had $600 to write a check and get heat in our home again.
-We have a babysitter who is wonderful, affordable, and truly loves & cares for our little girl.
-We have warm clothes to put on, blankets to curl up under, and TV to watch when we don't feel good.
-There is medicine in our cabinets & food in our pantry.
-Did you notice this all happened when we got back from vacation?  It was a week long vacation where we didn't have to pay for a hotel.  'Nuff said.
-We have each other.  That is far more precious than anything listed above.


The list can go on & on, but you get the point.  Life is full of luxuries.  You just have to remember them.

I much prefer when life gives me lemonade, but maybe the lemons aren't so bad if we remember all that we're thankful for.

How easily 6 months can change your life.

This picture caught my eye the other day & made me smile.  It brought back so many memories of 2013.  Thirteen has always been 'my' number.  I was born on the 13th, met my husband, got engaged & got married all on the 13th.  I was just sure Hazelnut would be born on the 13th- a week early (but she wasn't).

So my entire life I'd been looking forward to the year 2013.  I mean-- a whole year of the number 13?  What could be better?

I'm not sure what I expected to happen, but I am thankful for the year that we had.  Each negative thing had a positive right behind it to overshadow it.  I crave stability in life & this year has been full of stability.

Back to the picture.  It was taken in April at our old apartment.  If you had told me in April (the month taxes were due. mind you) that we'd be in our own house right now I would have laughed.  Even Josh, the big dreamer, probably would have laughed.  Some unexpected taxes had battered our savings & although we knew we could save it again, a down payment & mortgage was just out of the question.

But six months later, we were signing a large stack of paperwork & painting our new house.  Two and a half months later I'm still in shock.  God's blessings have been so great this year, I can't even understand it.  I'm so thankful for it.


The apartment seems like it was years ago.  Our house has only ever know one other owner.  We hear stories about the family that lived there-- all wonderful, heartwarming stories.  They raised their children there, grew old together, and you can feel it as soon as you walk in.

I can't wait to continue that tradition & I'm honored to be a part of it.  Here's to many more fantastic years.

Six months can easily change you life-- for the better or for the worse.  Life is fragile, and I'm thankful mine was for the better & pray that continues.

Battles, Guilt, and Thankfulness.

When we were packing up to move Josh found a few pieces of paper covered in my handwriting.  I grabbed it from him & hid while reading it.  I was a little scared of what it might say, and when I read it, I was speechless.  I just sat in the floor for about 15 minutes thinking.

I wish I could write it here because it was stellar writing.  It was deep & intense.  Too intense to share.

The gist: I've always had issues with self worth.  Insecurity.

I wrote about times in elementary school that I feared my friends secretly disliked me.  It went on to middle school when two girls pointed at a picture of me at a pool party & laughed at my swimsuit & my fat tummy.  I still remember their names.  It continued throughout high school.  At that point I was so insecure that I made it nearly impossible to really be my friend.  Sure, I had girls that I hung out with all the time, but I always wondered if they even really liked being my friend.

Honestly, I still wonder.  I mean, on one hand, how could they have even liked the person I was back then?  The person I am now?  And on the other hand, the fact that they continued to hang out with me probably means they were the best of friends... because I sure didn't make it easy for them.

It's always been easy to say, "Oh, I'd rather hang out with the guys... they're less drama."  It's true.  I never felt that insecurity around the guys.  They were pretty direct.  But truthfully, it was a cop-out because I hated being so insecure.  It was uncomfortable.

By college I shut all my friends out.  I was working two jobs & taking extra classes to graduate early.  I got married after my sophomore year & then added on a 30 minutes commute.  It was easier to just not have friends.

Over & over, insecurity has reared its ugly head.  I'll have a great stride for awhile & then fall apart.  I'll put on the brave face & laugh it off.  If I face my fears enough, they have to go away, right?

And then enters the guilt.

How silly am I to be so obsessed with this?  There are people with real needs, real problems.  And I'm over here worried that the whole world secretly hates me.

Also, I have a ton of friends that I know I can call at a moments notice & they will totally be right there for me.  They would drop everything, and I would for them.

How selfish am I?  How selfish am I to think that so many people spend so much time thinking about me?  I'm like an ant on this earth.  I should be incredibly thankful for the amazing friends I have.

And I am.  I'm very thankful.

Every day I'm reminded of just how faithful God is.  When we moved to Virginia three years ago, Josh told me he wanted me to make female friends here.  Friends to hang out with, to really get to know.  I agreed, but really didn't put any effort into it.  I'm so thankful that others put that effort into me.

I still find it hard to call up someone just to chat.  In fact, I don't.  And it's still hard for me to believe that someone would want to spend time with me just for fun.  But slowly I'm starting to get over that.  I have to.  And I'm thankful for that.