new year.

new year, new goals, fresh starts.

I love New Years. Not as much as I love Christmas or the 4th of July, but it's number 4 on my list of favorite holidays (after Easter). I like the idea of a fresh clean slate, like in the old days when we used chalk boards at school, and the teacher would wipe it off with a wet rag so it was all dark green, and not chalky.

We had a speaker at church on Sunday, who spoke on the analogy that we need to be like pencils. He handed a brand new, unsharpened pencil to everyone, and then explained it more in depth. The most important part of the pencil is the inside. Without the inside, it's nothing. Pencils are only effective if sharpened (daily prayer time and Bible reading sharpen us!), the end result is determined by who is handling the pencil. Hitler could hold the same pencil as Ghandi, and you're gonna get 2 completely different things... And last but not least, pencils have erasers. God gives us multiple opportunities, and just because we feel like we screwed up and missed the window, doesn't mean it's over for us. God has more than 1 window!!!

I needed to hear it. Maybe you did too.

Matt is here in NC with us, and I'm so thankful to wake up next to him (or hear him in the kitchen when I wake up....) every morning. We've had a lot of fun, and I'll have more pictures later, I'm still finding a balance here in NC. When I can edit, and post, and still having fun making memories.

These were all shot on New Years Eve. We picked Matt up from the Wilmington airport, got lunch and then visited the Wrightsville Beach Pier before we came back to Jacksonville. Matt and I got engaged on the end of that pier, on Valentine's Day 2004. It was ridiculously cold, rainy and windy. I complained the entire length of the pier, and then all of sudden none of our surroundings mattered any more. <3 The 3 shots, of Matt and I, my sister and her husband, and my brother are all SOOC, just resized and sharpened for web viewing.

When we got home, we played with sparklers with the boys, got them in bed and relaxed by the fire out back until midnight. Low key and quiet, just the way I like it.