The first adventure for our family started on January 1st when we hit the launch button on this blog. When I say we I have gotten input from everyone in the family on the design and different wording of each page on the website. I told them all I’ll let them have portions of blog posts, but I was the one writing most of it.

We, as a family, have tried to start a couple of different times since I got out of the hospital to start a blog or document our journey but at first I started battling depression and pain so hard that at times early in this battle I slept alot and just sat around doing nothing. Honestly, it was the days that the new church we had joined let us help with little things like cleaning the church or letting me mow the lawn that I started to feel like I was more than just a drain on society and my family. We, as a family, started seeing life as a complicated but necessary journey to help others. It wasn’t too much longer after that I was sitting in a Revival meeting, and I knew that I had been called as a youth to God’s service, and I had run from it. I told my wife I thought he was calling me to something and she said “Duh” to me. I was scared she would tell me to shut up, but she already knew.

Since that day, I have finished a Masters degree in educational ministry. I know weird, why not a Theology degree. This has more to do with my learning and teaching style. I am more of an educational style teacher, so I figured a degree in Christian Education (what it pretty much is) would be more interesting to me to learn while still taking mostly theology courses.

We, as a family, have declared 2025 a year of growth for our family. Part of this is going to be this blog and forcing ourselves to follow our goals by having to record it. That’s why we chose the categories we did. A major goal of our family is to meal plan, one reason is money saving reasons and the other is eating better. Another goal is starting a way to reach out to those suffering from PTSD and trauma related mental illnesses. Along with small goals for the rest of the family that are embedded in each days blogs. This blog categories is actually a goal of mine more than anyone else’s in the family as I want to do more things outside of the living room TV, which is funny because this week our adventure was in the living room staying up till 11pm (shhhh we told them it was midnight) watching the NYC ball drop with snacks and sparkling cider having our own little party to start 2025 off and remind us that 2024 was a year we learned to trust God more and 2025 was our year to grow as a family and take the next steps toward serving God as an entire family not just as me.