2016 Christmas Card

I've confessed to you before that I am ridiculous about the mail. I wait every day for the mail truck to drive up and barely give it time to pass by before I fly out of the house and rush to see what treasures await. {And if the only "treasures" turn out to be bills, I'm sorely disappointed.}

So Christmas card season is just about my favorite. I love sending cards. Real cards. And I love getting them, too!! Since there are so many of you, and I don't know where all of you live, I'll send you my card this way, and I'll even include my letter! Enjoy!! :)

2016 from  A to Z in Shafferland!

Almost 9 months passed  this year before we resumed our quest to visit all 92 counties in Indiana. We did manage to get to Tippecanoe and Delaware counties before the year ended. But  if you keep reading, you'll quickly see why we were too busy to visit more!

Book time! Bekah released a new book this year, called Be Still: Learning to Know He is God. It's a combination of story and study, and we are really excited to see how God is using it! 

Clean eating! Starting with our 3rd anniversary last December, we began a journey of new, consistent workouts and improved eating habits. We feel so much better, and Bekah lost about 30 pounds!

Dog sitting was a new adventure this year. In March, we watched a Great Dane for a couple of days, and in May, we got to keep little Phoebe, a miniature Golden Doodle, for a week. Her people have let us watch her many times since, and we love her!

EF3 tornado came through Kokomo and flattened our Starbucks {and did a lot of other damage}. We were thankful that our home wasn't damaged and other than Bekah's panic attack, neither were we! 

Focus no more! We sold Bekah's car this year. We figured since I no longer drive to work, we didn't need to own three vehicles. So the Bekah-mobile, which turned over to 200,000 miles this year, found a new owner in a college student! 

Greensburg, Kansas, was the location of our summer trip. We pulled an all-nighter to drive 850 miles to attend Bekah's niece's wedding. The wedding was beautiful, and we enjoyed a few extra days in Kansas spending time with family and seeing the town!

Home improvements! We moved into a move-in-ready house and spent four months overhauling it to make it ours. Yes. We're crazy. But it really is perfect now! {Kudos to Ryan for HOURS of hard work!}

Ignoring Bekah's mom's wishes for NO PARTY meant we got to celebrate her 80th birthday to the hilt. We hosted a fun cookies and canvas party for her and her friends, and a bonus: both of Bekah's sisters came too, so it was a double surprise party!

Just a few side jobs popped up this year! Ryan dabbled in home health care in addition to his PTA job at the rehab hospital, and Bekah did some photography, writing, and editing, as well as joining the "carpool" ranks by driving one of our friend's kids to school every morning. 

Kokomo is our home now! In January, we put an offer on a house, we closed in March, and took possession a week later. We adore our new home and town and are thankful for the faith journey God took us on to get us here. 

Leading small groups! We hosted a small group in Marion {through our church} before we moved, and we co-led another group this fall, along with Ryan's boss and his wife. We love having enough time in our schedule to do this! 

Mommapalooza 3.0 was our first big party to host in our new home. We love having both our families come together to celebrate Mother's Day every year, and despite having a frigid-weather day for this year's party, we had a great time!

Newspaper debut! After Bekah blogged about the great garage makeover of 2016, we were contacted by a Wall Street Journal reporter, who included us in an article about the changing face of garage use! Never thought we'd see our names in the WSJ!

Our little Braeya kitty turned ten this year. She was unimpressed with the gift we gave her: a new home. She has finally settled in, but turning ten made her no less of a diva! Whew!

Podcasting continues to be one of our favorite things to do together! Every Tuesday, we release a new episode of Spill the Beans, a half hour podcast about life, where we try to balance much laughter and story-telling with a few things of eternal significance! And this month, Bekah added a second interview-based podcast called The Conversation Cafe.

Quality time together...on our dates! We kept up our tradition of observing our monthiversary on the 2nd day of every month, and we went on many dates, big and small, all year long! 

Retreats were our thing this year. Ryan served on a Brethren Way of Christ team in March, Bekah spoke at two women's retreats in the fall, and she spoke at a number of other events throughout the year as well. 

Sold our first house! The house Bekah lived in since 2000 {which had been her grandparents' home for their entire marriage} finally sold after five years of being on and off the market. So thankful!

Twenty years out of high school for Bekah meant attending a class reunion! 17 classmates got together for a tailgate party before a football game and we had fun seeing old friends! 

Unique new project we started is called "Tuesdays at the Table," which keeps us accountable to inviting someone over to share a meal with us every other Tuesday evening. We LOVE opening our home and can't wait to carry this into next year!

Visited Lake Webster with ALL of Ryan's family - 15 of us under one cottage roof made for a tight squeeze, but it was fun to be together for the weekend and to enjoy time at the lake!

Wisconsin...specifically Chilton, Wisconsin, was the site of our annual birthday trip this year. We combined business with pleasure to travel there so Bekah could speak at a conference. We stayed with our friends, Tom and Olivia, and they treated us to a peek at life in Wisconsin!

X-rays and hospital visits were part of our fall this year. Not for either of us, but for Ryan's Grandpa, who had brain surgery {twice} and then spent some time in the hospital where Ryan works, recovering and rehabilitating. We loved being close enough to visit him every day!

Yuletide is one of our favorite times of the year, and we are excited to decorate our new home for Christmas, make new traditions in our new town, and celebrate the birth of Jesus!

Zee end of zis letter has finally arrived. You're welcome. Thanks for reading along, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Decking Griswold

Podcast Tuesday! Lots of fun Christmas and date stories for you this week...enjoy! Hope we can help keep you company while you do last minute Christmas prep!

Click here to listen. 

So I mentioned last week that we had to forego our tradition of visiting an actual tree farm this year, because weather kept us from stopping at a tree farm on our way home from our anniversary trip.

Kroger's "tree farm" {aka pre-cut trees leaning up against the side of the store} became our 2016 scrapbookable memory, and we made it fun.

Here's the thing: we really had no idea what that tree looked like at all, other than its height, when we bought it. It was all secured in netting up against the building. We could tell it was tall, but Ryan was so excited about our vaulted ceilings in our new living room that he was all for getting the tallest possible tree.

So we welcomed the tree into our home and took some time getting him all settled in his pot of water.

 That part was harder than you might think, because he was SO BIG, he kept wanting to topple, no matter how you arranged him in the base. Ryan Googled the issue and the common fix was to secure a hook in the wall behind the tree and then tie rope or twine around the trunk and attach it to the hook to hold the tree up. So yes. We have a tree held up by twine in the living room of our house. {Insert laughing/crying emoji here.}

We started to unpack the guy, and I have to say, for being purchased sight unseen, he is one full and good-looking tree:

 {Just so you can appreciate the height.}

And yes, that is Ryan wearing a stocking on his head, because we don't own Santa hats.

Like I said before, sure we had to forfeit the memory of finding and choosing the perfect tree and cutting it down, but we have never had a tree this huge, and we certainly have never gotten as good a price as we did on this one.

We felt Griswold was a perfect name for this monstrosity of a tree, and sometimes we call him Grizzy for short.

When I realized HOW big he was, my main thought was...we do not have enough lights or ornaments to cover this thing. Not by a long shot.

FORTUNATELY, my parents upgraded to a pre-lit tree this year, which is a first for them, and Mom, who knows my affinity for over-tree-ing our house, came over with a big shopping bag full of sets of Christmas lights. And those definitely came in handy. We combined what we had from years past with what they donated and had enough to light the tree. {This is the only tree in our house that has colored lights.}

Since Ryan had a vacation day Monday, we worked together to decorate the tree!

I'm not sure if you know or remember our tradition with the ornaments, so let me tell you! Since we got married at Christmas time, we received a number of "first Christmas" type ornaments as wedding gifts. We had also purchased an ornament on our honeymoon that we felt symbolized our trip. Those two things began the tradition of collecting ornaments to represent our story. We get one on {sometimes more than one} on every vacation, we get one to commemorate every big life event, and we also get one that we feel best summarizes our year.

I take pictures of every ornament and print the photos. I write the story of that ornament and the year we got it on the back of the photo, and then when we decorate the tree, we read the stories of the ornaments and remember the adventures behind them. I. Love. This. Tradition.

{This was the one we bought on our honeymoon.}

I also took some pictures of ornaments that reminded us of friends and texted them TO my friends to thank them for being part of our memories. That was just an impromptu idea I had, and I enjoyed doing it.

Ryan put the "star" on top, which is really an S Pinterest project I made a few years ago. He had some trouble with it initially:

He kept saying, "Something doesn't look right." LOL!!!! Got it fixed.

I filled in with green and gold ball ornaments, a little bit of gold ribbon. It's still not as over-the-top decorated as I would prefer, but given that it's an 8.5 foot tree that is quite portly, I feel we did well.

It's especially pretty at night, with the glow filling the living room. This past Saturday night, we had a slumber party on Mo and I loved waking up throughout the night and seeing the pretty lights.

Griswold may be huge, but he's a success!!!

92 County Tour: Orange County

We decided that since our anniversary destination took us to a yet-unvisited-county, we would make our trip double as a county tour!

French Lick is in Orange County, Indiana, which sadly is not nearly as warm as the Orange County we all know by heart! It's almost directly south of where we live, but it's allllllllll the way at the bottom of the state! Orange County is not actually orange {though there are a lot of trees there that I imagine create a lovely similar hue in the fall!}. It got its name because many of the first people to settle there were Quakers who were fleeing slavery in Orange County, North Carolina.

There aren't any huge, famous cities in Orange county, but it's home to French Lick, with its history of mineral springs, casinos, wineries, and Larry Bird, and also the town of Paoli, which has a ski/tubing resort {that wasn't open yet when we were there}. There's also a lake there, and if we'd gone in the summer, you can know we would have visited that!

Here are some of the highlights of our visit to Orange County!

We toured {but did not stay at} the French Lick Resort. I am not a history buff at all, but I really enjoyed the tour we took. Our guide was great and knew his history well. He told us about the mineral springs in the olden days, and how people came there because they believed the water would heal everything under the sun. He also showed us all the amazing, ornate decorations and how when the Sheraton corporation took over the hotel several years ago, they ripped it all out and made it look like all the other Sheratons. It all had to be restored and redesigned later. I can't even imagine redoing and restoring all this kind of beauty:

 He also showed us these crawl space hallways that were originally used by hotel staff to transport carts of all sorts of hotel needs that they didn't want guests to have to see. Eventually these areas were turned into public halls, because everyone is so fascinated by the stone, and they wanted guests to be able to see it!

We also toured the other big hotel - the West Baden Springs hotel. We decided if we were ever independently wealthy enough to have a night at one of the hotels, this is the one we would pick - because the atrium is AMAZING.

Our same tour guide told us the story of this hotel and the ups and downs of its history throughout the years. He also took us through the gardens and showed us the locations of some of the mineral springs, though they are no longer accessible.

Fascinating stories!

We also visited the little town of Paoli, which has the most adorable courthouse:

They also had this old hotel for sale, and I told Ryan we should buy it and go all Chip and Joanna Gaines..

We shopped around in the little stores on their square, and that was fun, too! :)

Then we went to our coffee date for the county. The one we picked was called French Licks. It specializes in coffee and ice cream. See what they did there with the name???

 The menu - all cute on chalkboards.

 This particular coffee shop also featured a wood carving store, so there were wood carvings everywhere - including one of Larry Bird!

 They also had this huge buffalo, which Ryan wanted to sit on, despite the sign that said DO NOT TOUCH. Ha!

We didn't do any of their specialty drinks - just fresh brew and ice cream, but we enjoyed what we had! And we'd never shared a coffee shop with wood carvings before, so that was unique! {This was also where we played the game of checkers, where Ryan won by a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng shot.

These are the non-Christmas-related highlights of the county; you saw all the rest in our anniversary posts!

Thanks for the fun weekend, Orange County! We enjoyed our visit and hope someday we can come back and enjoy the lake and the skiing. {That last part is just Ryan.}

The Shafferland Shuffle

* Last Sunday, our traveling vacation ended, and we had to pack up the car and come home from French Lick. Ryan did an amazing job keeping us safe in the wintry mix that dominated our trip home, and we went out in the snow to the "Kroger Tree Farm" to get our live tree for this year. Old Grizzy was much skinnier in a net than he was all settled into our living room!

* Ryan had Monday off work as well, which was a huge treat, and we enjoyed the whole day together. {I dearly love days when I do not have to share him. I'm greedy that way.} We decorated Grizzy, took naps, and watched football! Perfection. {OH! And he ran his first carpool trip with me. That was fun!}

* Tuesday, neither Braeya nor I wanted Ryan to go back to work, but he had to. And what a poor choice that was. He came home SICK. He ended up with the same stupid cold I've had off and on since the end of September - and it literally just smacks you in the face with no warning. You can imagine how amused the two of us were! So when he came home, he settled in for a nap, and I thought maybe some chocolate chip cookies would fix the issue, so I made a batch. He's still sick, but those were GOOD cookies. I will not lie.

* I spent all of Wednesday wrapping gifts {with the help of my "assistant," and loved the way they turned out! :) My mom stopped by and brought our annual gift of a box of her Christmas candy, which is ridiculously good, and I'm making Ryan eat most of it, because left to my own devices, I could eat the entire box in one sitting. That night, even though Ryan was sick and I told him he should stay home and rest, he wanted to go help his mom haul some Christmas tubs out of a barn loft. So we did that, and in the process, found Ryan's first Christmas ornament! :)

* I'll tell you more about this part this week, but Thursday night, we toured the Seiberling mansion, which is this huge historic house in Kokomo, and for the Christmas season, it's all decked out with trees and lights and much festivity! It was kind of an impromptu date and then it turned even bigger and more fun when we met up with friends and had this big group fun night!

* Friday, Ryan's work provided a Christmas lunch - complete with a quartet singing Christmas songs! How cool is that!?!? We planned to get groceries that night, ahead of the panicked-store-emptying-extravaganza we imagined would happen on Saturday, since snow is predicted, and it turned into a whole date night! We got coffee and drove through the lights in the park - so much fun! {Ryan really is a trooper when he's sick. I am proud of him for how he pushes through when he feels TERRIBLE.}

* Yesterday, Ryan had to work all day, but while he was gone, look who came to visit me! PHOEBE!!!! We cuddled and snuggled and took walks and had the best time! I have been planning and planning a special date for Ryan for the last several weeks, and it was last night! Of course he was still sick, but he said he had fun, even though he didn't feel well. I can't wait to tell you more about it!!

The Saturday Six

One. 

Click here to listen

Guess what!? I recorded a new Conversation Cafe this week! :) Last Saturday, I told you about a book I'd just read, called Pray A to Z by Amelia Rhodes, and this week I had the chance to talk with her about the book! She was fun and easy to talk to, and I learned even more about her unique approach to prayer from talking with her, so here's a bonus podcast for you! Enjoy!

Two.

Details here

Speaking of Amelia and Pray A to Z, there's actually a big giveaway going on right now {until December 20th} if you'd like to enter. All the details are found here, but the grand prize is a copy of the book, a set of prayer cards {like Amelia talks about in the podcast}, a custom wood sign made by one of Amelia's friends, and a prayer journal. Pretty fun! :) 

Three.

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You know I'm always looking for creative, affordable date ideas. Ran across this one involving a dollar store trip. Love this idea!!!


Four.

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I needed a couple of printables for frames in our house that were still sporting fall art, and I loved this one I found on Pinterest. I love that it's simple, has a great message, and didn't take a bunch of ink to print. HA!!!

Five.

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Anyone else out there ever secretly dream to own a Christmas village? I have always thought it would be SO GREAT to own one, but where in the world would I put THAT!?!?? {I went on a Christmas tour of homes one time, and the owner had a huge village that she had acquired one piece at a time from a nail client. That was the client's gift to her each Christmas...a new village piece. When she and her husband built a new home, she specifically built an area for the village on a stairway landing. It was stunning.} Anyway. Most of us do not have money or space for a whole village, but I do love THIS idea from the Nester!

Six.

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Several weeks ago, I happened upon a new Bible study, just released from Moody Publishers, that offered a 10 week study of Acts 1-12. An Unexplainable Life by author and Bible study teacher Erica Wiggenhorn intrigued me, so I asked to see it. I didn't want to just flip through it and write a review. I wanted to live in its pages, learn from it, and get a full opinion on this study.

I should confess that I'm kind of a stickler about Bible studies. If you know me, you know I do love a good Beth Moore study, complete with all the in-depth homework. I am not a fan of a fluffy Bible study. But I will say that a good Beth Moore study does demand a lot of time, if done properly {and if you're going to invest time in a Bible study, you should do it properly}.

I was a combination of thrilled and relieved that Erica's study was nowhere near fluffy. She worked hard, did research, cross-referenced Scripture passages, and did a magnificent job of introducing important truths about the passion and persecution of the early church. {And I will add, for those of you who are not entirely thrilled about long hours of homework, that these daily study sessions are not so long that they're daunting. Manageable without being fluffy.}

Erica's study focuses on the unexplainable events of the early church: the change, courage, mission, vision, unity {and more} of that first group of Believers. She brought out points I'd never before considered and asked hard, convicting questions that sometimes I didn't have ready answers for.

I appreciated her theology, and I also appreciated the real-life stories she included, making it easy to relate to what she has to say.

I will also say that while this book is written as a women's study {and Erica's ministry is focused on women}, it is written in a broad enough sense that this easily fits men, too. When Ryan and I started leading a Bible study this fall, I easily recommended this as the book we should study. For the past several weeks, a group of both men and women have gathered to study and discuss this book, and we're learning so much from our discussion together.

I am so glad I studied this book and have learned important truths to carry with me as I push forward in my own walk with the Lord. I appreciate Erica's hard work, her heart for ministry, and her insights into the early church. If you're looking for a study to do heading into the new year - whether on your own or in a group - I heartily recommend this one!

** Moody Publishers provided a copy of this study to me at no charge. All opinions are my own! **