h0ldfast: To .... Last Year & Marvelous Grace -

Welcome to the year in review post .... I was going to go back through & pick my favorite picture from each month.
But I only got to June and had like 30 'favorite' pictures.
So that was turning into a time waste :)

Right now we're actually in southern California.
I know, right.
Surprise - for those who aren't on Instagram.

But we're going to talk about Christmas & vacation after we talk about last year.
'cause I'm a firstborn/finish-every-page-in-the-workbook/rule follower.

Just wait, friends. Just wait.
First I'm going to ~~show you~~ I mean save all these outtakes from our attempt at taking our own family pictures. Also these were are Christmas cards & I did such a flaky job of actually finishing mailing out cards - so Merry Christmas love us ----> to {yOu}

Hashtag someday we should actually pay to have someone take our picture.

Seriously these two.
They are so full of completely different personality.
Except Regan has taken on the wear a million hair ties on her wrist trend.

And this big sister of theirs ..... she's spent the year growing into all sorts amazingness.

The truth behind these pictures is they barely happened.
There was more than one of us in tears on the way there & we said stupid things to each other.

It was freezing cold & that wall was pretty much a wind tunnel.
We bribed Chad with treats & everyone else with Starbucks.

We overused the law & were stingy with grace.
And if we wanted the easy way out we would've quit.

Our year has been all sorts of real life.
Day after day of learning not to be stingy with grace.

Our lives have changed more this year than any other in ways we really could not have dreamed up.
(years when the kids were born were life changing too but we kinda dreamed about them :)

Grace wins, folks.
It just does.
It's simply, without adding words .... amazing.

And so we're going to h0ldfast to it with every last bit of our everything this year.
We're going to keep learning to accept it.
Because the more we have the more we give.