The "C" Crew

Merry Christmas To Me!

Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginnings End

As I was driving today I heard this phrase in a song playing on the radio, “Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginnings End,” and that could not sum up 2010 for our family any better. This year has been nothing short of many challenging, faith driven, risky, pray filled hopes for these new and uncertain beginnings, and in the end has left us wonderfully blessed with some awesome outcomes.

In March, God blessed us with a handsome baby boy, who has been our sweetest and most adored blessing of 2010 but really the best blessing of our lives. He is so sweet, happy, loving, funny, spoiled, smart, crazy and I could just go on and on but I won’t because this blog would them become very long! He turned 9 months in December and is crawling everywhere, getting into everything, clapping, pulling up, resisting table food (which is crazy because I thought that would be such an easy switch), inquisitive, loves to play with any type of interactive toy, loves to try to get a hold of my laptop and I phone, laughs, plays hide and seek, points, pulls hair, shakes his head no, pushes things away that he doesn’t want, throws his food on the floor so he can watch Banquet eat it, loves to pet and pull on Banquet, loves to play patty cake, loves to push and ride his mobile toys and so much more! I can’t believe I am going to be planning his first birthday party in a few short months, time has flown by so fast! We would be so lost without our sweet Canman and praise God everyday for this wonderful blessing that has made our lives so much more exciting and worthwhile!

Christmas pretty much came and went in record speed this year in the Chandler home. I usually go all out the Christmas décor of the house and bake like crazy, this year however I put up limited décor and only baked a few loafs of bread and cookies. I definitely was a Christmas slacker this year without question but all of that didn’t matter I was just happy to celebrate our very first Christmas with our new little edition! My family came down and we had a wonderful time – eating, playing games, watching movies, opening presents, cookie decorating contest, practical jokes, played with Cannon and his new toys, played with our new toys, laughed, chatted……that was pretty much our Christmas holiday in a nutshell and it was awesome! As long as we have our family and God in anything that we do, that is ALL we ever need in our lives!

Christmas Afternoon Headed To Yaya and Poppas House!

TTU Bike That Yaya and Poppa Got Me

Feeling Pretty Miserable.....

Cannon’s first Christmas wasn’t exactly the picture perfect moment I had envisioned in my mind, on Christmas Eve he started running 102.2 degree fever and was sick for the rest of the weekend. He felt so miserable and just wanted to rest, he had his moments of excitement but they were short lived due to the limited amount of energy he had! Although he was really sick, I am pretty sure he loved every bit of being held and never put down all weekend. We made frosted sugar cookies for Jesus, we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus, left the cookies and milk for Santa to enjoy, and we listened to the voice recorded book of The Christmas Story that his Yaya and Poppa recorded for him before he went to bed. The morning of Christmas, Santa made a big appearance in the Chandler household, he left Cannon toys and clothes; ate his cookies and sipped his milk; and left Cannon a letter. Cannon was definitely overwhelmed with so many new things to figure out, he played until he started feeling bad again and ate his Christmas oatmeal and then it was back to everyday life for him – eat, play, sleep, poop and repeat – LOL! He definitely made out like a bandit this year with an overwhelming amount of toys and clothes, which we enjoyed watching him have fun playing with but concerned us a little, as we didn’t want to start his first Christmas off with crazy amounts of materialistic STUFF but I guess you can’t really control what crazy, obsessed and in love - great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles are going to do!

Christmas Oatmeal

2010 was a great year for our family and reflecting back to the beginning of it……….We found the perfect school for Cannon, that we all love and are so thankful for; we’ve made new friends that we cherish dearly; we’ve grown closer to God; we’ve fallen more in love with our church and church family; we’ve learned hard lessons in different areas of our lives but have found ways to move on and learn from them; we’ve experienced the love for our own child, which is unlike anything else; we are in the process of selling our house (please pass prayers along our way that everything goes as it should and we close on January 17th); God has opened doors and closed them; we’ve prioritized the things in our lives that we feel are important for ourselves and our family, which has come with some difficult, process of elimination decisions but in the end has created some new and abundant blessing through new friendships, our spiritual walks, financial peace, our family/friend relationships, parenting, our careers, new personal/family goals……….I know every day I receive a new blessing that I fail to see and my hope is that for the new year, I will learn to look beyond the major blessings and disappointments that happen to me or our family throughout the year and make a DAILY acknowledgement of the blessings that God gives me every second of every day! I hope to find a way to use all of the physical and spiritual gifts that God has blessed me with on a DAILY basis, rather than when it is convenient for me or on a special occasion.

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me." - Erma Bombeck.............that's my hope for myself not just in the new year but throughout my life!

I can't believe this is my last post in 2010! May God Bless You All In 2011 – Happy New Year - We Love You All!!!