2013 in review

What kind of blogger would I be if I didn't do a year in review post? I didn't plan on doing one until finding the following piece of paper in our 2013 memory jar. This has been the best year of our lives with the birth of Crew. This year brought blessing after blessing and I have loved looking back and reflecting on it.

january

Will and I started a new tradition of a memory jar with writing things on little pieces of paper throughout the year and then reading it the following New Year's Day. I'm so glad we chose to start this when we did!

We spent a lot of time together riding. We haven't done much of this since last January because of being pregnant.

februrary

We found out we were pregnant!

I shared how we told our families about our big news

We celebrated Will's 25th birthday with dinner at Carrabba's

march
We celebrated 3 years of marriage by announcing our pregnancy on our anniversary

april
We went to our gender ultrasound and gave the secret envelope to Kelly for her to prepare for our party

We had our gender reveal party and found out that we were having a boy!

may
I shared why we chose Crew's name

Will graduated with his Masters from seminary

june

Will got ordained at Faith Baptist

I shared about all I've learned from pregnancy

july

I went to Myrtle Beach with my family....

...while Will went to Kenya, Tanzania and China

august

We had our first baby shower with the couples' group from church

Kelly took our maternity pictures

We were given our second baby shower at our home church

september

Kelly and Roxanna gave us our third baby shower

We went on our babymoon in Nashville....

...Chattanooga,

and East TN.

october

Only the greatest month of our lives...we had our first baby, Crew William Kassner. I shared all about his birth

Kelly took his newborn photos when he was 8 days old.

november

We celebrated Crew's one month birthday

We dedicated Crew to God in front of our church and family

I shared Crew's birth day video

We had our first Thanksgiving with our little turkey

december

Crew turned two months...already

We started cloth diapering full time and love it

I took Crew's picture for our Christmas card

We celebrated my 25th birthday

We had Crew's first Christmas!

Can't you see why this has been the best year...thus far?! I can't wait to see what 2014 has in store for our little family. I'm so excited to watch Crew grow and learn and experience new things. God has truly blessed us!

babymoon part 3: great smokies

part one: nashville
part two: chattanooga

Day 3 (Sunday) of our babymoon was spent in East TN. We said we were going to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, but after we got there and spent hours in traffic I was so over it. Being Labor Day weekend, everyone and their momma were in Gatlinburg. For me being so pregnant, swollen and tired from the previous two days, the last thing I wanted to do was fight through the crowds in Gatlinburg.

We spent most of our time in Sevierville walking through antique shops. It was a lot less crowded and something I enjoyed doing much more than the shops in Gatlinburg. About mid-afternoon that day I started cramping pretty bad and was having difficulty standing or walking. (I got nervous because I did not want to have a Gatlinburg baby! Ha) We called it quits and made our way to Pigeon Forge for a delicious Apple Barn dinner before heading back to the hotel. I'm wishing that I had some apple fritters and apple butter right about now. SO. GOOD.

Monday morning we got up and drove up the mountains. The weather was in the 60's and felt perfect up there. It was a long drive, but it was so relaxing and we loved it...especially my outdoorsy, nature-loving husband!

35 weeks pregnant

The water was FREEZING. I thought it would do my swollen ankles some good!

Pushing a foot back in...

The next day we drove back to Nashville (after making one last stop at Apple Barn for some apple pie a la mode!) We stayed in Nashville one more night before driving back to Memphis. Overall, we did a lot of driving over 5 days, but breaking it up each day made it so much better. We had so much fun together and were so thankful to have one last trip before we become a family of 5. (I'm counting the dogs here, duh.)