“A cheerful heart is good medicine…The cheerful heart has a continual feast.” -Proverbs 17:22, 15:15

“The greatest gift you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love & acceptance.”- Buddy Valastro

OH MY HEART.

I can’t believe our baby is ONE. It has been a year full of life with her & I can’t imagine what our family would be without her. She is a GIFT.

I want to continue documenting these seasons & celebrations of life as it rolls along because I don’t want to forget how beautiful each birthday, each celebration, each step into a new season… is! It’s too easy to let it just pass by. So here is one small attempt to keep a hold of these memories.

For Cora’s birthday celebration, we had a party with friends & family in my parents backyard. OF COURSE, because my sister & I went through our pregnancies & births with the girls like twins, it was fitting to celebrate together! Riah Joy is 12 days older than Cora & we do so SO hope that they will be the very best of friends for all of their days as well as being cousin twins.

It was a perfect day for a party, a bit chilly, but windy & beautiful, not to mention we beat the rain that came pouring down later that evening. We spent the morning getting everything ready & when our guests arrived we had snacks & drinks & floral coloring pages with paint, bubbles & chalk & coffee for the parental units on a Saturday afternoon. We had pictures strung up of their monthly milestones up until this point, jars overflowing with wildflowers decorating the open spaces & books to be signed by our family & friends to commemorate this birthday for the girls. The kiddos ran around outside & enjoyed the freedom while the parents got to catch up over their coffee & popcorn.

We put the girls in their wooden high chairs, placed wildflower crowns on their little heads & sang them HAPPY BIRTHDAY as they blew (or lets be honest, the wind blew) out their tiny single gold candles on their baby cakes. Their big #1 birthday balloons danced behind them & they enjoyed slowly eating their cakes, starting with the blueberries of course. My hope for the day, all I really wanted was to get that moment captured in my hearts memory for forever. That beautiful picture of them in their tiny cream dresses with their heads wrapped in flowers eating their cake with their little fingers…. Oh man. So precious. I. LOVE. THEM. I got exactly what I wanted. It was perfect. One for the books in my opinion.

We opened gifts on a picnic blanket on the lawn & thanked everyone for coming to celebrate with us. It was a wonderful, short & sweet time to be with friends & family as we took the time to reflect on the gift of life & our girls turning one. It is always good, to slow down enough, to look back in gratefulness over the last year of someone’s life & all that it held. Because in turn, that beauty changed the atmosphere in which I got to live & breathe. That is a gift. My life is more beautiful now because of Cora, because of her life. I am so so grateful.

A letter to my ONE year old daughter, Cora Kinsey Jenks

My little peanut! Oh how I love you.You make my heart explode with happiness. The joy you bring me is unmatched. I literally feel my heart pound when I hold you close. I am still so in awe that I get to be your Mama! I love being with you each day, getting to watch you grow & change & thrive. I love watching you with your amazing big sister Eliana & how you two adore one another. It is the best feeling. I am so grateful to the Lord that He healed my body from cancer & kept my womb in wholeness so that I could carry you, give birth to you & be your Mama for the rest of my life. I will never have adequate words to describe how thankful I am to have been able to have you & hold you from now until forever. You are a BEAUTY! You are so full of LIFE! The joy you carry, the laughter that you have that bubbles out of you, the voice you have. You are SMART! You amaze me each day with how quickly you learn. You are WANTED. You are LOVED. You are CHERISHED. Thank you for being so wonderful & bringing so much sunshine to our lives. I’ll love you forever & ever & ever.

With all my heart,

Your Mama.

So with that, our little peanut is ONE! Oh my word. I can’t even really believe it. This year has been full of adventure & in this next year of her life it seems that it will be even MORE full of adventure. It will be incredible watching her GROW & THRIVE & see her personality develop even more. I am looking forward to all that it holds. What BEAUTY! What JOY! What a gift it is to be a Mama.

I am the luckiest.

 

Cheers,

Katie.