Jessica Lemmons Photography Blog, Longview Washington (Wa.) photographer.

My Christmas this year was, by far, one of the best ever.   For those of you that know me you know my faith in God is a huge part of who I am, in fact I would go so far as to say it is the very core of who I am.   God gave me a lesson this year on faith.   It wasn’t an easy one, or necessarily a fun one, but God walked me through it and held my hand the whole time.   I’m not going to go into all the details, but I will summarize by saying –  the week before Christmas we were hit with a few small tragedies and God totally came through for me and my kids in huge AMAZING ways.   Someday I want to share the full story as it’s really an incredible testimony of God’s love and faithfulness, but in the meantime I will suffice to say that I think God loves drama.  Yep.  I’m pretty sure of it.  I think that a lot of times God waits till we are at the end of our rope….or dangling from a cliff…..or even about to smash into the rocks at the bottom of the ravine we fell into….that moment when we cry out to Him in desperation….and that’s when He swoops in and rescues us.    God is God of His Word.   (I know I’m preaching at ya’ll….but it’s such a part of who I am that it just kinda oozes out! I can’t help it!)

ANYways.    Two quick photos ( I could overwhelm you with hundreds of course, but I won’t!)

My little guy still wearing his Christmas pajamas (taken the same day as the shot’s of him below) and doing what he did best on Christmas…..eating the wrappings….in this case a bow.

And last – what my mom and I spent most of Christmas doing – keeping the baby away from from the fireplace.  Yes, he’s all boy and the pyromaniac in him has already surfaced.   You can see my mom’s scolding hand in the top right of the photo. Haha….amazingly he never actually managed to get close enough to touch it, though he tried so very hard.  No burns!  Yay!

I was first introduced to Love Inc in 2010 through my home church (Father’s House in Longview). Love Inc’s mission statement is this: “Our mission is to mobilize the Church to transform lives and communities In the Name of Christ.”  To describe in more detail – Love inc is a group of people that work together to organize the body of Christ (all Bible believing churchs across the denominational board) to care for the poor and needy in our communties and show the light of Christ to them through practical acts of caring.   I’ve had the privilige of being asked to work with them on several occasions now – one being the Highlands clean up project, another being an after school program for kids, and this one that I’m going to blog about was the Broadway School painting project.  The Broadway school is our local special education preschool center that desperately needed a new paint job.  It was huge project that spanned several weeks and dozens of volunteers.  When it was all finished the school went from being a bit of local eyesore to a beautiful new-looking building.

Love Inc volunteers completely amaze me with their giving hearts and willingness to go above and beyond to bless our community here.   On a side note – they’ve actually blessed me on more than one occasion –  being a single mom with 3 kids sometimes there are “things” that I’m not capable of doing myself.  When I moved last year (twice) they helped me here and there one time even going so far as to drive to Castle rock to pick up a piano that I was given and deliver it themselves to my front door.  Blessed my socks off – I never could have picked up that piano on my own, and I didn’t even ask, they heard about it through a friend and showed up at my door with a delivery truck.    For those of you that know me – I’ve played the piano since I was 4 years old, but since I’ve been a “moved-out-of-my-parents-home-adult” I haven’t owned one.  It’s a small thing to some, but HUGE to me to finally own a piano of my own AND not have to worry about getting it through my door.   Love inc is AMAZING.

So – when Larry Russell called me and asked if I could volunteer some time to photograph the Broadway School project I was super-excited.   Giving back is something I love.  And sadly not something I get to do nearly enough of in my current life-season.   THIS was something I could do and I jumped at the opportunity.

I started out photographing the prep – scraping off chipped paint, taping, priming, caulking (there were a lot of holes and gaps that needed fixing).

Then they moved on to the actual painting.

And the very last thing – painting the flagpole.

Thank you Love Inc volunteers for all that you do in our community.   You are an incredible group of people and know that the love of Christ shows through all you do!

If your interested in volunteering with Love Inc of Cowlitz County, check out their facebook page here – Cowlitz County Love Inc

My friend and I decided to take a trip down to Cannon Beach with all of our kids (well most of them that is).  We figured we’d make an appearance on the beach and let the kids fly kites or something like that until they were frozen and then pack up and hit some candy shops.  We dressed warm (it was November after all) grabbed our kites, kids, blankets, sweatshirts, coats and wagon and headed out on the beach.  Once we got on the beach we realized that A. There was no wind so kites were out. B.  It was REALLY warm so sweatshirts were unnecessary.  And C.  The water looked really inviting to those kids.   So we all un-bundled ourselves and started playing.  I’ve never been to the Oregon Coast and had it 1. Not be windy, or 2.Be warm.  It was both.  At first it started out with “let’s just let the kids get their feet wet” and next thing we knew all of the older ones were soaking wet, laughing and having a great time.  Now I thought that once they were wet they would get cold, but no…it was really that warm.  They got out of the water, played in the sand for a good long time, got BACK in the water, played in the sand some more and then repeated it until the sand in their pants started to rub their legs raw at which point we finally decided it was time to pack on up and get those kiddos some dry (and un-sandy) clothes.   I think we were on the beach a good  3 or 4 hours which is also probably the longest amount of time I’ve ever spent on the Oregon coast as it’s always windy and cold out there…..this day was the first exception I’d ever seen and I loved it.

Olivia giving me her “Can I please get in the water????” look.

Tristen (being a typical 7-month old) had to taste the sand.

From that point forward it was a losing battle between me and sand.

Such a cute little sand monster! (and I think I went through a case of wipes on him)

The older boys all covered in sand from hours of road and sand castle building.

The 5-year-olds : No we didn’t let them get that far out without one of us close by – my friend is just out of the shot.  ;-)

All-in-all the beach was a huge success.  Dirty exhausted kids.  Worn out parents. And some super fun memories with photos to boot!

She turned 5 last month.   They say time flies once you have babies.   I think that’s the understatement of the year.  She is the bravest, strongest, toughest little 5-year-old I know.  Honest and wise beyond her years.   Funny and adorable as can be.  She has been through a lot for a kid her age, and she has come out on the other side smiling and laughing and praising Jesus. (Yes….she loves Jesus with all her little heart!)  She give’s me courage to keep on plugging away.  I know someday that God has very special plan for her precious life.   She wants to be a missionary when she grows up (or fashion model depending on the day!) and she loves to play orphanage and care for all the “babies” (her doll, chicky, teddy bear and our poor dog who get’s roped into all her make-believe -Huck).  I love her to death, am so proud of her, and can’t believe that my middle-child is 5.

I’m late in posting this but had to share some pictures from my son’s 7th birthday.   We did an “angry birds” theme for it….SO fun!  I learned that “cake decorating” is not a skill God blessed me with, but I did manage to somewhat pull of the cake-pop thing and I will say they tasted pretty good!  Just an FYI – Making those cake pops took me upwards of 12 hours…..my original guessimation of how long it would take was maybe 2 or 3, which ultimately led to me nearly falling asleep in bowls of candy melts at 3 am the day before his party.   Haha…I’m praying my daughter asks for cupcakes and not cake-pops for her birthday!   We had so much fun and he was blessed to have a small army of friends show up to celebrate him.    Love ya buddy!  Love mom.