Hi friends, welcome!

Since this is my first post after the site’s name change, I thought I would tell you a touch of who I am.

My name is Hannah Innis, and I’m 30 years old, just shy of 31. I am wife to Ryan – my strong and steady, my big spoon, my life love – and mother to, Samuel – my one and a half year-old, bursting at the seams with energy, big lover of life, all boy – my son.

Photos by Kaleigh Simmons Photography

I am a part-time working, mostly staying at home mom, but when I do partly work, it’s at my beloved fine dining restaurant cozied up in a historic building in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. I adore being part of others’ experiences and that’s what people expect when they dine there. Many are celebrating something, and I have found deep joy in making memorable evenings for others. I love food, I love wine, and I love everything that involves time around a table. If I ever leave my job, I’ll leave a piece of me there.

When I tell you about my love for time around the table at my job, it seeps right into my love for time around the table anywhere. Food and wine are a big part of who I am away from the workplace as well. I think the best conversations are spent at a table with good food paired with a good glass of wine. Some of my favorite memories are these moments, these sacred times with people I love with soft music in the background, quiet lights, and usually loud and real talk going on endlessly. Change that table to a paper plate on your lap and a cold sparkling water with lemon on a hot summer day and you have just as much of my attention as a detailed dining production. If you sit me down with good food and good people my soul is overflowing.

I live in a small town, the one I grew up in and said I would never live in again. We moved there four months ago after searching all surrounding areas for 6 months. I’m endlessly grateful to be back, to raise my family in this friendly, small town, on this quiet cul-de-sac, where I grew up.

I am very much a family person. I am my parents’ youngest of five daughters and each of us are married to incredible men, with beautiful babies ranging from growing in the womb to almost 15 years old…fourteen grandbabies to be exact. Ryan, on the other hand, is the oldest to six siblings, with three brothers and two sisters. Throw in my Ryan’s parents, one sister-in-law and their sweet baby boy, just four months younger than our Sam, and you have my family. Big, loud, loving, supporting each other’s dreams, encouraging one another…that is my foundation. I am very much obsessed with these people, every single one of them. Each of their unique personalities and passions, their hurts and joys that make up the stories of who they are…just obsessed with them.

As for the one growing in the womb, that one is mine. We will welcome our second child this summer, expected to arrive sometime around June 20. I’m nestled somewhere in between fearing for my sanity and overwhelmed with excitement. Aside from these emotions, we know we are beyond blessed to be parents and bring this child into our lives.

There’s no telling you about who I am without telling you what I believe, because those go hand in hand, heart in heart. I am in love with Jesus, who saves me daily with grace. Who brought me back to Him time and time again in big and small ways.   He is my reason for everything. I have been through the dark and the scary without letting my Savior near me, and it was indeed the hardest years of my life. Never again will I choose to walk through the years of this beautiful, challenging, sin soaked, beloved life without the One who offers me hope in every grief and joy. My biggest prayer is that I may seek Him daily and shine His light with my words and actions. And that He continues to rescue me each time I fail.

Aside from food, family, faith, and friends, my passions rest mostly in the creative. I love to photograph and have been pursuing this as another part time job. I photograph families and kids, and am learning more and more the love of capturing life through a lens.

I also love to write, but have been doing most of it in my head over the past year and half. The pen and paper and the laptop and been sitting patiently on the back burner as I learned to parent and discover what this new life looks like. Writing in my head doesn’t feel as good as the physical exhale that is getting it onto paper or a screen, and so, with great effort, I’m putting my fingers to keys and rediscovering this life long passion of mine.

This is my little space to share stories and experiences that cause me to think, learn, live, parent, and in the meantime, maybe we can connect on some topics. I don’t know, but I need the exhale, and this is my favorite spot for doing so.

My first year of living my thirties has been beautiful and life giving, and entirely different from my twenties. But if you’re interested in that too, keep scrolling. Lots of lessons learned there.

So, this is me. Just a touch of me. I couldn’t give you the rest if I tried, because I’m still learning.

Life is wild, isn’t it? We imagine that some day we will reach a moment where it all clicks, and then instead we realize we are actually re-learning and re-shaping everything we’ve ever known. I’ve come to see that if we aren’t growing, changing, evolving, then we are stagnant. We settle for complacency in what we think is probably the best it’s going to get for us. What if we keep going, even when the change and the questions are scary?

I want to chase after and demolish things that scare me, and then move on to the next one. My twenties were great and all, but so far, I’m absolutely in love with my thirties.

Happy Weekend, sweet friends!

Cheers!