Allison.Party_of_Six

       “Am I enough?”   This question plagues my day to day.   Every time I take on some new and daunting task, a series of questions that all come back to this plague my mind.   If I let it, the fear paralyzes me and I stop.   I never move any further.   I have to be willing to accept that I alone am not enough.   It is only then that I am able to move forward.   You see, for me, the truth is ingrained in my faith—I alone am not enough.   I can only get through the (at times seemingly absurd) tasks I have been called to if I trust in Christ to carry me through them.   2nd Corinthians 12: 9-10 tells us "And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Chri...

 I love the phrase "adulting."  It basically means making grown up stuff happen and pretending like you truly know exactly what's going on, when really, you are just making it up as you go.  I basically began my adult life as a mom since we had our first baby at 22...so for me, parenting often felt exactly like "adulting" in my early years.  Actually, I still feel like I'm just winging it quite often.  The truth is though, now that we are getting to raising our fourth little one, I'm beginning to feel like I know what I'm doing...sometimes or well, at least more frequently than before.  Over the last decade, my mindset on parenting has changed from "how do I do this correctly?" to "what needs to be done to raise them well."  I've found that taking the mindset off of me and my performance and moving it to them completely changes what I do and how I handle most situations.   For example, my just turned two year old loves trying ...

    While I have yet to make it past Chapter four in Praying with Paul (grace and peace, right?), I was challenged even before I finished the preface of the book.   According to D. A. Carson, one of the major problems within the Western Church is prayerlessness.   Ok, great.   I pray daily.   Clearly this doesn’t apply to me.   T he two pitfalls within the Western Christian church are too much activity that doesn’t include prayer and praying without a basis in the scriptures .   OK, maybe I do pray daily, but are my prayers as well thought out as they should be?   Are they too simplistic?   Do I focus too much on my own wants and needs? They aren’t always based in scriptures.   I rarely sit down with the Bible and pray a passage…clearly, I have a lot to learn.       The first action I took to try to improve my prayer life was beginning to create space.   (I write the word beginning , because truthfully, I st...

I still can't imagine being thrown into homeschooling so quickly. I know I've said this before, but I personally needed the time to prepare. I'm a creative soul, and schedules do NOT come naturally to me, so I was so incredibly grateful to learn from my preschooler homeschool curriculum how to schedule the days for my youngest so that I could do it well! I just got off the phone with the owner of the My Father's World curriculum and he gave me permission to share some of it with you to help you adjust to your new way of life as well! I set up Brayden’s mornings like this so he will play happily & feel included while I homeschool the older kids (and of course, I include him in the schooling as possible as well). I treat his activities as though they as just as important as big kid school so he does them diligently and put them away in boxes after so they are special so he loves them while they are out. Once Avery finishes his K4 schedule he joins Brayden in t...

     Many Christians live in a constant state of worry about whether or not they are good enough. This is not new information to me, because for the longest time, this was me. I, like many others, lived in a constant struggle of trying to be good enough, failing, and then trying to hide my failures from the world and still look “good enough.” God does not intend for me to live like that. He sent His son so that I may live life abundantly.     The illustration of Creation, The Fall, and Jesus’s Sacrifice really solidified to me that the Holy Spirit truly lives within me so therefore I should allow my body to be a vessel for him. At the time of Creation, God created mankind with a perfect union to Him. Up until the first sin, Adam and Eve lived fully and had a complete relationship with God. After the first sin, mankind fell from the perfect relationship with God. While Adam and Eve were still technically alive, they were not abundantly living because th...

Well hello there sweet thing!  I’ve never had such an in depth first trimester anatomy scan before. It was really cool seeing baby!  Can you believe they are this whole and complete at only 3 months gestation!  Every organ is at least partially formed, the sweet little eyes are hidden under eyelids, the tiny little nose is forming, as well as the mouth and even tiniest little tooth buds!!  Baby looks great! I still have a fairly significant subchorionic hematoma which is cause for concern, but my doctor is optimistic that things will go well!  Please pray that this resolves itself quickly! Taking it easy is not my strong point!  I love being active, doing things with the kids, getting outside, etc etc!  That has not consistently happened in two months at this point, and today I can feel it wearing on all of us...especially in my kiddos antsy-ness!  (I half blame the weather, typically I would just send them outside at this point!) Regardless...

Baby is growing big and strong and waving hello!! Measuring 11 weeks and 6 days and due last day of July/1st day of August. We didn’t expect to see baby today, but he/she gave us quite a scare last night. Actually it turned out to be ME causing the scare. There was/is a pocket of blood beneath baby that caused lots of bleeding and resulted in my blood pressure dropping super low & my passing out twice over the last 12 hours!  Thankfully, my church family was quick with prayers and childcare for Nick to take me to the doctor, and we are hopeful that everything will be just fine! 🙏🏻 This verse was on my mind all night and morning long: You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. ~Isaiah 26:3 **Editted to add that Caroline Creel just informed me that the baby is due on Harry Potter’s bday. 😉 🧙🏻‍♂️

*Long post alert* I’m not exactly certain what happened during the last two weeks. It’s all a blur!! We prepped for the hurricane. We left. We spent time with family and homeschooled on the road. We got to see my mom feeling pretty good and talked lots about how her experience with cancer changed us all. One of my closest friends had life saving emergency surgery and I freaked out for her more than I even realized! I left my older children in the upstate for a fun week. I came back home and did all my hurricane clean up. Our HOA scheduled & completed repairs (thank you!)! I went back to my parents and got my kids, spent some time with my wonderful mother in law and aunt n uncle in law, spent some time with a good friend, saw my Granny who hasn’t been doing well (and it was an amazing day!!) and got to see my aunt who was doing an incredible job keeping my Granny in good spirits, got to spend some quality time with my brother and parents! Then I came back home and threw ...

Cooking with kids... ...not going to lie...it’s HARD!  I really want them to learn and they love doing it, but there are constant moments of shredded cheese getting everywhere, strawberries being tossed into omelets, etc etc!  It’s so worth it, and I 100% intend to keep teaching them, BUT, I felt the need to let you know that despite the adorable picture and the fact that the omelets turned out AMAZING, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine! #dontcomparehighlightstoreality

You’ve always taught us to be strong, independent, and self sufficient!  How to love hard and be a little scrappy to make the best out of all things...but this year, you showed us what that REALLY meant!!  I love you and I’m so proud to say that you are my Mom. I’m so in awe of how you’ve fought to give Glory and praise to God and to see His beauty in all things!! I love you, Mom and I’ve never fully appreciated what spending another birthday with you (even from afar) meant to me until this one! 💗 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!!!!

Philippians 1:12-26 When you open God’s Word, expect to meet with Him and to learn something about Him. Expect to find more of who He is and what He wants you to be like. In a wonderful way you’ll grow to understand God and His ways if you are open to being changed by what you find in the Scriptures. Every time we read the Bible together, we will begin by praying over the scriptures.   As you begin reading, open your heart to the teaching of the Holy Spirit; ask Him to give you understanding and to help you think and act in God’s way. Before we do anything else, I want you to simply read through the passage once. You can print a worksheet out  here  to follow along with! Once you've printed your worksheet out we can really dive in on learning how to use the "Observe" portion of inductive Bible study! Observations are what you see with your eyes within the text! “You will miss a lot of information if you are only looking at how you are feeling." ...

I recently started following a new way of reading the Bible!  You are going to have to bear with me, because I am new to this way of doing it myself, but I wanted to share, because as I was getting started with it I discovered that there were very few resources to help people like you and I through this! Tons of resources for the Bible scholar, but very limited hands-on break downs of this observe-interpret-apply process for people like you and me! I started this pattern while putting together our study plan for my Women's Bible Study this spring!  ((Speaking of...do you know that the church of Philippi began as something similar to a small women's Bible study?!?!)) Of course, I had a few resources to help me, including Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin , my brother, Caleb Creel, who recently graduated from seminary, and the timeless  commentary by Matthew Henry . So what am I doing exactly?  This is the exact activity we did in Bible Study yesterday and I plan t...

Before I really get started I want you to think about your answers to a few questions.... Have you ever stepped on the scale and hated yourself because of a number?   Have you ever found yourself inexplicably hungry just an hour after eating, when there is truly no good reason as to why you are so hungry? Have you ever found yourself eating, only to realize it’s because you are sad or tired, rather than actually hungry? I know I have! On February 5th I had my very first zoom call with Ilana and she said, "exercise is extra credit."   I became the world’s biggest skeptic for a few moments there, but I had basically already signed my life away, so I kept listening. Ilana has her own personal success story. Ilana has so many successful clients in LA. And Ilana and I have the same nutrition & dietetics degree, so I knew she knew her stuff. But man. I was concerned for a second there. I'm going to lose weight and I don't have to exercise?   That just felt cr...