About me

I am a wife to an amazing husband, mom to two beautiful children (Luke, age 12 and Abbey, 10 years old), and a Christ-follower.  We love a lot of things--family, friends, the outdoors (especially hiking in beautiful places), eating and cooking from scratch (we call ourselves "foodies"), telling stories of people via photography, playing and watching sports, music, technology, festivals, travel and our everyday adventures.  But above all, we love our God, who we seek to glorify in all we do.  He is the reason we are here and to Him we are thankful for the many rich blessings He has provided to us.

Our little family (Oct. 2014)

Drew and I consider ourselves nerdy.  We try to learn something new everyday, and are especially nerdy when it comes to technology, photography, cooking from scratch, health/nutrition and frugal living.  Drew's day job is as a software engineer for a major technology company.  When Abbey was born, I decided to resign my normal day job as an executive Human Resources Professional for a large healthcare organization to pursue my own independent Human Resources consulting business (with part-time hours) and spend more time raising our two children. Later, God led me to homeschool our children when they were ages 4 and 2.  I still homeschool them to this day.   

On September 17, 2012, our lives began an unexpected new path:  I was diagnosed with Stage 3c Invasive Ductal Breast Cancer, in my left breast with involvement of 10-20+ lymph nodes.  As a mom who was breastfeeding her 8 month old-daughter, with what I thought would be a long healthy life in front of me, it was quite a shock.  I really had none of the "risk factors" for getting breast cancer.  In fact, I actually thought that I had drastically reduced the chance of me getting breast cancer since I had been breastfeeding for a total of over 21 months (between both children at that point in time).  My OB/GYN even thought that what I was experiencing, when I visited her with concern, was just engorgement.  She reluctantly scheduled me for an ultrasound.  I had a terrible feeling in my gut though that something was really wrong.  And then the journey began.  I tried to avoid looking at statistics for 5-year survival...but I accidentally came across them and they were very grim.  But, since hundreds of prayers began going up on our behalf, I feel at peace with everything.  God is bigger than cancer.  God is sovereign.  He knows the beginning and the end of this, and this gives me peace and comfort.  He orchestrated our lives for me to beat this!  I will beat this.  I have so much for which to be thankful--He answers my prayers, both big and small, daily.  So much good already come from this terrible disease that has inflicted me.  These good things, in my mind, already far outweigh the suffering I have gone through. Treatment was a long road in battle, with 6 months of chemotherapy, surgery, and then radiation (followed by 10+ years taking the drug, Tamoxifen), but He was there every step of the way. (Update: Cancer has returned and I received a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis on 6/16/2022).

sporting my free wig given to me by the American Cancer society, shortly after losing my hair due to intense chemotherapy.

 

After my cancer diagnosis, God revealed to me what was most important and in the process revealed a new purpose for my life. Through His direction, He showed me the opportunity of homeschooling my children and I followed Him as He led me down that path.  Today, I am still in that path and absolutely love it.  I look back and see how God used all sorts of small circumstances and outcomes to lead us here.  It is pretty amazing really.  

We are not a perfect family, but we serve a perfect God.  This blog serves to journal our adventures together as a growing family. 

Our Son, Luke, born October 2009

Our 5-year old, Luke.

Our daughter, Abbey, born January 2012.

Abbey Lee at age 3.