It's the Simple Things

2011-10-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

The Pacifier

With Jason and I being foster parents, I have come to notice something I never thought of before. When a baby is hungry and crying, you give them a pacifier to calm them down until you can get a bottle to them. Quite simple really...it works like a drug. Very soothing, relaxing, and instantly makes the baby mostly satisfied. But what happens when you have to take the pacifier away? The baby tosses and turns its head to get you away from taking that pacifier from it. It then sucks as hard as possible to resist you pulling it from the mouth. And when you finally get it out of the baby's mouth, it seems to put its hand in there and start sucking insanely right away. Then when you try to remove the baby's hand from its mouth, the stubborn ones get angry and start flapping the fists around. What the baby doesn't realize, is that you are trying to take the pacifier away to actually give it the bottle.

This bottle is full of milk/formula this baby needs to survive, is craving, and starving for, but the baby still insists on resisting it until the pacifier AND the hands are removed from the mouth, the nipple of the bottle is put up to the lips, and then, BOOM! The eyes get big as though saying, "OH YES! This is what I want, I'm STARVING!" The baby immediately starts sucking like mad and drinking down the formula to quench the thirst and fill the stomach.

While trying to take the pacifier away, I am always reminding the baby, "You're gonna have to let go of that thing in order to get the real thing..." (Of course, I know full well the poor child has no clue what I am babbling on about while trying to take the pacifier away and give it the bottle, but that is beside the point.)

Now, to most of us, this is quite simple, silly of me to even mention, and seems to be an odd choice of topic for a blog. I thought the same thing, but in my sleepy nights of feeding children, I sit there watching this struggle between the pacifier, hands, and bottle, and think, "There must be a good example here..." Of course, in my tired state, usually I just decide, "I'm sure there is one, but I just can't think of it." : ) Any parents know what I'm talking about! : )

I must be catching up on sleep or something, because it FINALLY hit me! This is like life. Especially in the spiritual sense, but could be used in other ways too...give me a break, I'm still sleep deprived!

We often times fill our lives with things or pleasures that only will make us feel good for a little while, but have a really hard time letting go of those things to finally receive what we actually need. In one sense, we can go through life trying to fill our emptiness with jobs, lies, drugs, alcohol, sex, money, "stability," things, etc... But the emptiness somehow keeps growing; the inner hunger persists, and the thirst cannot be quenched. So what do we do??? We start grabbing for something else that will satisfy our empty longing and loneliness. This repeats over and over again, when all we really need is a Savior. We know the Savior is the only one who can quench that thirst and fill the hunger, but we keep resisting and grabbing and reaching for something else to satisfy us temporarily.

In another sense, what about those of us who already know the Savior? It again can be any of the above things (jobs, lies, things, stability, etc.). Maybe it is that God is calling us to something bigger and greater, but a lot more insecure, unstable, and quite frankly, scary, but we are clinging to that stability and comfort of where we already are. Maybe it is something more simple, like going to church on Sunday is fine, but stepping up to the plate, reading our Bibles everyday and doing devotionals, spending time with God one on one daily, serving and loving others the way we should throughout the week, etc. is a whole different story! It would cause us to get uncomfortable for a while, and would make us have to STOP clinging to these other things.

We cling to staying busy, our daily routines, our wonderful little comfort zones, sitting in judgment or shame while looking at this sinful world, but doing nothing about it. WE KNOW that GOD IS OUR BREAD OF LIFE and OUR LIFE GIVING WATER! He is the only One Who can quench the thirst, fill the hunger, and take away the loneliness, and we know that better than anyone because we've experienced Him and His Loving Grace...But yet we STILL cling to the other things, and don't do what we know we should! We stay in our comfort zones.

We often times find ourselves holding onto the pacifier, and when that pacifier is removed, we tend to immediately put our hands up and try to make it on our own, but what we really need is that bottle...we need God, we need the Savior, and we need to follow, love, and serve Him with every second of every day of our lives; not just once a week, a couple times a week, or a few minutes a day, but EVERY SECOND OF EVERY SINGLE DAY. God is pulling us and telling us, "You're gonna have to let go of that thing in order for Me to give you the real thing..."

I find it interesting that as the baby gets older, it starts recognizing what is going to happen. It still fusses and cries over the pacifier being taken away, but once that bottle starts coming, it knows to back down and take what it really needs...the bottle! As Christians, this is also true. The more we do what God is calling us to do, and the more we obey what He has taught us to do, the more we are able to recognize it. We still fuss and cry over that pacifier or comfort being taken from us, but we actually recognize the bottle as it's coming, and finally realize what's happening or about to happen....and eventually we even move up to the solid foods, imagine that!

I am writing this because it is convicting to me... I am one of those Christians clinging to stability and afraid to leave my comfort zone and step out to do all I have been called to do. Yeah, I'm doing some of it, but not all. Do I risk looking stupid to others by stepping out of my comfort zone and doing what I've been called to do? I have a ton of conviction about things I should be doing, but am I willing to let go of my pacifier of comfort long enough to experience what is in that bottle? See, I'm not preaching, I'm being convicted myself, as I pray you are. Being a follower of Christ is hard work, but worth EVERY second of it. God always blesses and always provides, and He offers opportunities at every corner for us to grow and change.

What is the pacifier in your life? God is calling you and telling you it is time to let go of that thing, so He can give you the real thing.

"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." Romans 7:15 ESV

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 NIV

2011-08-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder what you're doing this for? Anything you are doing that is eating away at the time you have been given in this life? Well, I started struggling with this question regarding working toward my master's degree. It is so time consuming and so draining at times, and for what? So I can have a piece of paper? So I can look better in the eyes of this education-driven society? So I can get a better job? So I can prove something? Is it worth it? And at this point I was asking, "Was it worth it?" Is this pleasing to God? Am I worshiping Him through this?

What is the point of a master's degree or doctorate's degree anyway? So we can get a job that will take up even more of our time later? Is this what we were made for? Is it really that important?

Maybe these thoughts were coming to me because I am going through a young life crisis, where I realized my 20's are leaving, and with it my youth. Who knows?! But whatever caused it does not matter...here's what I realized...

I don't know if it was worth ALL of the time I put into it, when I think about the things I wanted to do versus the things I was having to do (or in reality choosing to do). I wanted to spend more time at the homeless shelter; I wanted to spend more time creating new ministry projects that would help those in need and share the love of Christ to this hurting world; I wanted to do more with International Child Care Ministries; I wanted to bring change to the westernized church. Instead, I was spending every spare moment on homework, even when I knew I did not have to...I chose to because I am a perfectionist (or as my classmates would call me, an overachiever).

So here I was almost 2 years after starting this program, finally asking myself, "Why?"

Adopting is one of my biggest passions in this life. God gave me this passion and desire back in college...oh yeah, I'm still in college... well, back when I was 19 and in college. Jason and I both have a desire and passion to adopt our children. This degree could allow me to do one of my most important ministries in this life...raising my children. I can be a full-time mom and work some evenings or online as an adjunct professor.

This degree also helps with another passion of mine - helping with the homeless and orphans in this area and around the world. My undergrad and grad degrees are in organizational development and organizational management, I've been trained on how to help organizations survive and thrive and was even taught how to write successful grant proposals. See how this fits?

These degrees have trained and equipped me for public speaking (something I never thought I'd be comfortable with). They have trained me in project management, team building, true leadership and following, and teamwork. These will all help with other ministries I feel called to do.

I finally realized something, it was worth it only if I use it to the glory of God. I, like before, can choose how I spend my time on this earth. I can spend it on wasted degrees, careers, jobs, random pleasures, and living for the weekends, or I can use it to worship my Creator.

Was it worth it? We will find out, but I am counting on a yes. Is it worth it for you? That depends on why you are doing it, and what the results will be. Is it to glorify God or yourself? Is it to go from one busy schedule to the next and forget about the important things in this life, or is it to enable you to spend your time doing more meaningful things? Is it preparing you for the passions God has placed in your heart? And will/do you still have time to serve God now?

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:19-21

2011-03-12T21:28:00.000-08:00

Matthew 25:31-46
Tomorrow (March 13th) is Freedom Sunday. It is a day that churches from all over raise awareness and prayers to end human trafficking. I love that they are doing this, but my plea, my cry to the church is this:

WE ALREADY KNOW IT'S OUT THERE! We have the internet, we have television, we have eyes and ears, WE KNOW IT'S HAPPENING! But WHAT ARE WE DOING ABOUT IT? Don't waste time! Stand firm, don't back down, don't be afraid to say it like it is! God has given us the money and the means to put an end to this, brothers and sisters in Christ! He has given us the resources! Lay them down. GIVE. Put an end to this horrible crime against these children, these human beings, created in the image of the MOST HIGH GOD. WE CAN END THIS. Don't just say something about it, show sad pictures, or say a quick (or long) prayer about it, and walk away feeling righteous, or that you've done something to end this. ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING. Hear their cries!

Oh God, open our ears! Let us hear their cries! Let us not rest until they have been set free!

I have been convicted, and I pray you have too. It's easy to ask, "But what can I do? I'm a world away and don't have much." BUT EVERY PENNY COUNTS. Lay it all down on the alter and ask God to bless it, and multiply it, that these people will be set free! Every spare penny you have to give; lay it down.

There are many organizations out there to put an end to this through education, shelter, food, and love for these children. If you know of one you trust, donate it all to them. If you don't, ICCM (International Childcare Ministries) is a non-profit organization that is taking a stand to end human trafficking. They are trying to start a project in Thailand to provide that education, food, shelter, safety, and loving environment for the very kids who would otherwise be sold into slavery. This project is only going to cost $30,000. That's it. I can tell you that if they are successful, they will not stop there, they will do everything they can to stop human trafficking.

How many churches are in the US alone? How many people are within those churches? How much can a mega church get in one offering? $30,000 is not much. I don't have much to give, but if I give a little, you give a little, and someone else gives a little, it starts to equal a lot.

Thank you for bringing this up. Let's put a stop to this. Let us give to the least of these; the helpless children being forced into slavery without a voice. Without the right to say they are worth more than this.

Will the Master know me? Will He know you? When He looks at us, will he say, "‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’"

2011-03-11T21:09:00.000-08:00

Well, wouldn't you know! I am getting to this almost a year later...again! : )

I am almost done with school (for real this time)! Just a couple more months, and I will have the summer off, then I just go back for one more 8-week class! That is pretty exciting! Jason and I will be graduating together, and then he will be going into his next schooling program. And I will finally be done... well, unless I decide to be a Dr. of business, but somehow that isn't appealing to me at the moment.

Our dog Samantha just had a major leg surgery. Poor girl tore her ligaments around her knee. She has a big cast on her leg now, but is doing really well. Looks like the surgery worked! She has another 4-5 weeks in the cast, but is anxious to get out.

We are working on finishing up some different projects in our house. We just completely gutted and redid our entire bathroom! So there is no more black mold to make us sick!! (Note: the black mold was throughout the walls, and it was not our fault.) We also have been working on finishing the basement (as cheaply as possible, which means we are doing that ourselves). We have already moved the office, a closet, and my craft area down there (almost), now we just need to build some walls and finish the floors. We are working on turning the old office into a bedroom. We are also working on finishing up the wood floors upstairs. Too many projects at once? AGREED!

And last but not least, we have been working on becoming foster parents! We have finished all the paperwork, training, etc.. Now we are just waiting for (and holding off) the house inspection. Now it all makes sense why we're working on so many house projects at once, doesn't it?! We are trying to make it all ready! This is our starting point in our adoption process....for all 20 of our future kids! : ) haha...

2010-04-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while...again. Oops! : )

Well, things are about the same, so there really isn't much to say. It's finally getting warm out, so that's wonderful! I have a ton of homework that I have to get done for finishing up this class I'm in (Business Law). This class, like the last has been a royal pain. But the next class looks promising. We shall see.

We are both getting through school one day at a time. Now we are trying to learn a new language on top of being in school...I can only handle one new sentence a day (or a single word on the bad homework days). Fun stuff learning Swahili, it's a pretty cool language. Much better than French, I didn't do so well trying to learn that one, I just couldn't get the accent down for it. And yet again, Jason is learning it WAY faster than I am!! Go figure! : )

So I really don't know what else to talk about right now. School, work, and volunteering are the story of my life right now. Even though it is very eventful for us, it would be boring to talk about, so I will spare anyone who actually reads this thing. : )

2009-11-30T17:01:00.001-08:00

OH WOW! It's been a long time! I almost forgot I had this thing!

We went to New York's Adirondack Mountains this summer. It was a wonderful trip that was BEAUTIFUL and FREAKY. : ) Nothing like seeing the most beautiful site in your life while going through the most emotionally draining, fear facing experience of your life. We ended up accidentally climbing a mountain without any of the proper gear. My biggest fears are climbing, heights, falling, watching someone I love die, and spiders. Well, I had to face everything all at once, seeing Jason climbing these huge boulders near drop offs, me having to climb them, having spiders climb all over me (which I didn't even care about because of the other fears I was facing). This was quite an experience. A 1 mile easy trail ended up being a 7 hour hard trail. But the view at the top was breathtaking. Surrounded by drop offs and MOUNTAINS as far as the eye could see. So beautiful. Then we had to get back down....that was interesting. At the end I had a HUGE hole in my pants across the butt. Great thing. Good experience. God is good.

We are working with the teens at church now. So now we are doing music, technology, and youth leading there. We don't do the Friday night services at the other church anymore, so that's kind of nice. Kind of miss that one though.

Now, I'm working on my Master's degree. I start the second class next week (and starting the homework this week). I am absolutely loving it! The classes are so much fun. The homework is interesting and can be a little bit boring at times, but for the most part it's good.

While I'm working on that, Jason is working on his undergrad degree. He's received 18 credits already, so it's going good for him too. He is finishing up a novel he started just last month. He signed up for a competition that makes you write 50,000 words in one month, so he has passed that and is now just finishing things up. So between all of the school, writing, work, and church stuff, we've been pretty busy.

Had a great Thanksgiving break! Enjoyed not having homework for 6 days, no work for 4 days, and lots of fun and food with family and friends. Good times.

Already have up the Christmas tree and stockings, just need to put up the lights now. Looks pretty good so far, we are thinking about adding some new lights to the front of the house this year...we'll see. Not sure if I want to pay extra on the energy bill this month. : )

That's all for now! Not very interesting I know, but at least it's an update!

2009-03-02T16:01:00.000-08:00

I can officially say that I have my degree! :) Okay, so I know everyone is sick of that, but still, I'm thrilled to be done! If things go okay, I should be able to start the MAOM program in September, but we'll have to see financially where it stands. Jason is in school now. He is attending classes at the Lansing location, so it's quite a long drive for him. His office is really supportive though, so they let him take a 1/2 hour lunch and leave early to get to class on time. It leaves me bored out of my mind though! So I've been having girl nights every Wednesday. :) It's boring being alone forever, I'm afraid of the dark, hate being alone at night, and yeah...so girl nights are good. :)

I've taken up machine sewing now that I'm out of school. This is quite a challenge for my lead foot, but it's coming along. :) More slowly than I'd like! I've been making sleeping pants, but they aren't done yet. I was thinking, machine + faberic = done in an hour?! OH NO! You got to pin the pattern, cut properly, thread the machine, push the pedal SLOWLY, ease it in, then do the elastic....blah blah blah... Anyway, I think it will be good to know how to do. I like making things and a machine is faster than doing it by hand. And it's fun learning new and challenging things. Of course the challenge is more in the patience it requires. : ) It's fun though.

I've already told everyone about the stupid dog eating all of my chocolate stash and us having to purge them both! Poor inocent Ella had to be purged too because we didn't know which one ate all of it. 52% dark cocoa bars are not good for dogs. Yeah. Told everyone about the dead cat story...kinda sad, but more funny than anything.

Well I guess I don't really have much to say. Other than SPRING WILL COME EVENTUALLY! Very thankful for that. :)

2009-01-08T08:20:00.000-08:00

So I guess I didn't remember to post some pictures. Oh well! I can't right now either because I do not have them on me. Too bad.

I am glad to say that I am finally done with my BA in MOD program! I only have to give a presentation next week for my project thesis. It feels good to be done! I kind of feel like I'm on a quick break and going back, so I don't think it has set in yet. Stinks though because we do have to wait until May before we can actually walk. That is a long time to wait! It won't feel right walking after being done for 5 months! Colleges and their rules! :)

Christmas break was really nice! The first week was filled with family time. The second week was all relaxing time. Well actually we had planned on tiling the basement over the second week, but after bringing the tiles home and cleaning the basement, we decided against it. We realized that the walls were leaking again and the crack in the foundation was worse...and leaking. SO! Instead we called a basement repair place, and they will be coming out in a couple of weeks to fix the whole thing. The bad news is that it will take up all of the money meant to finish the basement. The good news is that when this is all done, we will have a completely dry basement, good foundation, and a safely finished basement. Of course after dealing with this we realized there is a hole in the roof that is making the ceiling crack and fall apart. So now we have to fix that too. By spring we will have a very sturdy up-to-date house! :)

Anyway, we enjoyed our Christmas break. Even though it felt unproductive, it was productive in a different way. Other than that, we had a really good New Year's Eve party with some other couples....and Mark. We just played games all night, so it was a lot of fun. :)

Oh yeah! And for those of you who might not know (assuming someone actually reads this thing). We rescued 2 labs the week of Thanksgiving. They were downtown dodging traffic when we found them. They had no collars and no micro-chips. We meant to take the dogs to the Humane Society, but they were useless! So we ended up having 4 dogs in our house, two of which we found didn't get along well...and of course we had to keep the girls and boys separate. The owners finally decided to show up after posting adds EVERYWHERE! Then the week before Christmas one of them showed up at our house. It appeared that the owners (who were rather uneducated people and terrible dog owners) dropped him back off on us figuring we'd take care of him. Well they were right about that. So we had three dogs for a few weeks. Just enough time to fall in love with him. But we found him a new home with loving owners, lots of woods, and a bunch of kids to play with. So hopefully we will stick with our 2 dogs for a while! :)

Okay, well that's all folks!

2008-09-26T07:05:00.000-07:00

Oh hey, I should update this thing!
Where to start? Well, maybe this weekend I can put some pictures up from our vacation in July and August. We took a two week trip up north to the U.P. and all. Did a lot of fun stuff with that. So I will put some pictures up of that in a few days...if I remember.
I will finish my Management of Finance and Accounting class next week, WHICH MEANS I AM ALMOST DONE!!! I only have two more modules after this class gets over! My last class will get out right before Christmas break, and then I only have to go back twice for presentations on our project thesis stuff. SO EXCITING!!! :) Now I have to get a real job! YIKES! But I am excited none the less. Now the question...Do I continue for a Master's?????? Anyone who is crazy enough to only get updates on this thing might not find out until I'm done with a Master's at the rate I'm going! :)
It is a beautiful day, and is going to be a beautiful weekend. :) Jason and I are spending the weekend with my grandma, so we are looking forward to that. So that should be fun.
Well that's life in a nutshell for ya minus the not so fun stuff. :)

2008-06-09T05:41:00.000-07:00

The Wedding Weekend Story
Ok, so Jason was in his brother's wedding this weekend. The weather all weekend was very unpredictable and freaky. So, the rehearsal started at 6pm on Friday and the actual wedding was on Saturday. We get to the rehearsal just in time for a TERRIBLE storm to hit, this included tornadoes and what not. We managed to run into the chapel just as it started to come down. We managed to get out of the rehearsal just as the storm passed by, so it worked out quite nicely. If only I could say the same about Saturday!
The wedding was great, the weather was perfect (in the 90's and lots of sun). The reception was at a beautiful place and had a dance following it that lasted until midnight. So, at about 11 Jason and I decided it was time to head home. Now we were in a big city mind you, so we had to park a few blocks away from the ballroom. Jason's parents and us headed out into some sprinkles of rain to the cars. I told Jason's mom that I couldn't remember which block I parked on (Jason had to go with the wedding party, so he didn't know either), but she pointed me down a street thinking I would remember...HAH! :) Well they went off to the parking lot that they parked in and sent us on our way. Just as we started crossing some very busy streets, the storms hit...coming from 2 directions of course. So I'm in a nice little skirt, Jason is in a rented tux, and we are stuck in a HUGE storm. The wind was blowing so hard that we couldn't hardly move anymore, the rain was flooding everything around us, and we had no where to go! Just as my skirt took off over my head, I saw a man closing a door. Not caring who the man was or where he was, I ran up to him and asked if we could come inside. He agreed due to the condition we were in (of course this is after watching my skirt fly over my head). We step in only to find that we were entering an underground bar. My first thought was, "Oh great, we're in a strip club!" After seeing two men acting very strange then my thoughts changed to, "Oh no, we're in a gay bar!" But after about five minutes we realized it was just a typical underground bar, no big deal. :) Jason's uncle evidently saw us running to what he thought was our car and figured we could give him a ride to his hotel, so when he saw us dive into the bar he thought it would be a good idea to follow. So all three of us, one in a suit, one in a tux, and me in a dress, all stood on the inside steps to this underground bar for about 30 minutes. People coming in kept thinking they were in the wrong place, so we kept having to assure them that we were from a wedding down the street (well at one point Jason's uncle told some people there was a dress code and they couldn't come in). :) The wind was so strong that it was pounding the rain into the door and pouring it in from under and around it. Finally Jason's parents came back to get us and cram all of us in with them in the pickup truck. That was great climbing into the back of a pickup with a see-through skirt on! :) Anyway, it turned out that I took Jason the wrong way and we would have been searching the town for hours looking for our car anyway. But it was quite the experience.
Yesterday there was a terrible storm again that Jason's sister-in-law and their kids got stuck in, so they had to come to our house for safety. Just as they pulled in, a power line went down and a HUGE tree branch fell down. I watched one big tree branch fly off of a tree to the other side of the road, I thought it was gonna keep going to hit a house, but it stopped just in time. And I hear that today is going to be the same way, so that should be fun. :)
Ok, that's my long story...I'll stop now.

2008-05-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

So I didn't want to write anything on this thing until I had something good to say. Well I have something good to say. And that's all there is to it! It is very good. So good that it's worth writing about. In fact, I'm going to write about it. This is such a good thing that it is worthy of being put on a blog. Wow, is all you can say to it. Ok, so I guess I could actually say it now. I am finally done with my stats class! FINALLY!!!! It felt like it took a million years or more, but it couldn't have because I'm not that old...although I feel I have aged. I keep checking for massive clumps of gray hairs on my head from it, but they aren't there....which is a good thing. :)
And to end this class, my office is taking me on another beautiful retreat. Just to celebrate that I have finished this class finally. Ok, so probably not...in fact, I don't think most of them even know I was in a class let alone a stats class. In fact, I'm not sure if they even know I'm in college. But! I still get to go on the retreat with them, and it will be great fun.
Now I just have to make it through one more tough class before I finally get a 2 week break! FINALLY!!!! :)
And that's all I have to say about that.

2008-05-05T14:32:00.001-07:00

The snow is gone!!! YEAH! Now the painful experience of spring fever has begun. Our dogs want to be outside all of the time, but they don't want to be out there alone, they want us to be out there with them. I LOVE IT!!!!! :) :) Bike rides, walks, planting gardens, oh the joys! This is why we wait a MILLION YEARS to have spring, it's so great! :)
So I'm having a bad day...I bet no one could guess by that opener huh?! Well, my car broke down, so we were going to take it into the mechanic today, but it only made it about 100ft down the road. So we had to pay a towing service to come get it, and then pay even more money at the mechanic because we REALLY broke it by trying to drive it in. So now that it will cost over $500 total, it will be fixed. Now, this might sound terrible right?! BUT! Here is the part that I am thanking God about. I drove it on a busy Rd. and it didn't die, and if it didn't die when it did, it would have while Jason was crossing an even busier Rd. with 4 lanes of traffic. For all that went wrong, and for all that could have gone wrong because of it, $500 is not too bad, it could have been a lot worse. And it happened right after we got a tax return which was just about enough to cover it. God always is good and HE always provides. Bad day maybe, but I'm blessed because of it.
So I am in my second to last class for the semester!!! In July I get three weeks off of school!!! And then I graduate in January!!! YEAH! And God was good AGAIN in that He made it possible for Jason and I to both have a two week vacation during those three weeks off. Anyone who knows about our offices, that is a great blessing and amazing that we both could get it off!!! :) I CAN'T WAIT!!!! So exciting! :)
Spring has inspired Jason and I to start a couple building projects, we are working on building a picket fence for our veggie garden (which by the way, the little seedlings are growing nicely inside right now...so cute...little baby veggies all over the place). Jason just started building a drum box thing that I can't remember what it is called. But he already got the main shell of it finished, so we've been playing with that. So the fence is not a fun building project, but it's educational whatever the case. The drum thingy is fun for Jason, and fun for me to play around with. :)
Alright, that's about it for now. LOVE'N SPRING! YEAH!

2008-03-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I'm working extra hours in the switchboard again, meaning I have time to write something! Ok, the only problem is that I don't know what to write. hmmm....
Once upon a time in a land far far away, there lived a BIG harry spider! Ok, so I won't really tell a story. Oh, but I think we have solved the mystery behind the little secret room in our basement. Much to my relief it does not involve a dead body, although I still have my suspicions. We took pictures of it by reaching over the top with a camera. It had a dirt floor, a big crack in the wall, a spot leading to the outside, and lots of spider webs. Mom was watching one of those tv shows she watches, and found out that our house is not the only one with a mysterious room in it! It was most likely a coal room...a lot of fun that is to tell. I like the dead body story or the hidden money one better, but I'm glad to hear a reason for it.
Well after having snow for the past 10 YEARS! Ok, so maybe the past 5 months, I am ready for spring. This is killing me right now! I have decided that I am going to move to a warmer place, the only question is should I move south or west? Maybe southeast? Any suggestions out there? Give me good reasoning too, I won't just up and move somewhere for nothing!
Ok, well that is my interesting blog for now! Tune in next time for the story about the Big harry frog! That's a killer!

2008-02-18T14:32:00.000-08:00

So I realized it has been like a million years since I wrote anything for this. So I'm going to write something just because I can.
Well let's see here....hmmm....I'm at work at the moment, but I'm done with work. I am working on my edu still, so that is a load of fun. I am jumping for joy in this module because I have a new prof. that is completely awesome and actually teaches us something. Our last one sucked, so it's nice to have one that actually cares. So, school is going well.
I'm trying to think if I have any crazy stories to tell today, but nothing is coming to mind.
I had an awesome birthday this year. Our neighbors had us over for dinner and cake (I had no idea what it was for...duh), my office did a little surprise for me, Jason and my parents took me out to dinner in Lansing to the best place in the WORLD, Jason took me out the next day too, and I got fun stuff too! I thought I was getting too old for people to really care about my birthday, so I was not expecting that at all. :)
Ok, well that's gonna be all folks!

2008-01-03T10:11:00.000-08:00

WOW! It's January already! Where has the time gone? Well I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I had a pretty good one. I woke Jason up at 6am to open our presents. We had a grand time opening up all the gifts! We had a limit this year, so no HUGE gifts, but a lot of little fun ones. :) After opening our gifts, we rushed around to clean everything up. Then mom, dad, and grandma came over with their set of gifts. We made another big mess to clean up with those! (I got a new pots and pans set!!!) Then we cleaned up that mess just in time for the grams to come with the great aunt and uncle. After they got there, I served a nice big dinner for everybody. And of course after that we made another mess of wrapping paper. When we were done with that, Jason and I went to his family's house.
Let's start from the beginning. Sunday: Choir at church, Jason's family celebration
Monday: clean house all day and prepare for company, rememberred the wrong time for Christmas Eve service and end up showing up in time to see people leaving
Tuesday: Christmas at our house, Christmas night at Jason's mom's
We got to go up to Frankenmuth (spell???) on Saturday, so that was fun. We of course had to end up at Birch Run before heading home. :) We had great loads of fun up there.
New Year's was a little interesting. We were supposed to go with our friends to a party, but ended up hanging out at my parent's party with Jason's little brother. It worked out rather well considering it snowed like crazy and we had to stay the night. Yeah, then we got home the next day to find that we couldn't get into our driveway AT ALL because the snow truck made a mess of things. So we parked at Amy and Sid's house and walked home to dig our way in. Of course after all of that it snowed again! :) We have quite a bit of snow now. It's like 5ft deep! Ok, maybe 1-2ft deep, but still!
That's all I have to say right now. I'm working still, going to school still, going to church still, and living. :)

2007-11-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

Well I can see it's only been two months! All I can say about that is I don't have the internet at home, and I don't work at the switchboard again until summer. OH WELL!!! What can we do about it!
Last weekend the light bulb in our bedroom burned out, so we figured it was time to replace it. Well then we got looking at our fixture and decided that could be replaced as well. So, we bought a new light fixture and brought it home. Then we decided that we really didn't like the color of our room either, so we went out and got some paint. Then we realized that we really didn't like the set up of the room or the bed frame, so we moved everything around and are building a new bed frame. Needless to say we painted our entire room in one day, got a new light fixture, and have a whole different set up in there to top it off. All of this because of a light bulb burning out. Funny how that works! Right after that our light in the hallway burned out.
My classes are coming along nicely. I am already on the 11th week and only one week left until I am done with my second module. The next one should be much better than the one I am in now; it is a BUS module! :)
Work...no, let's not talk about that.
I have a story to tell! Jason and I decided to put up the Christmas tree over the weekend. Well, it was a nice thought anyway. We got out everything to set it up and got cracking away at it. Soon we discovered that the tree was 8ft tall instead of 7 1/2, which makes a world of difference. So we ended up having to cut off some on the bottom. We only had to take off one row of branches on the bottom after that because they touched the floor, so that was OK. Then we were missing part of our lights, so we ran to the store and bought some. After that we noticed half of our garland was missing too, so we had to stop part way through with that. THEN the stupid tree branches wouldn't work right and the star kept falling off, so I did the natural thing and sewed it one. :) After that the bottom lights burned out! So! Jason and I pretty much gave up out of frustration. That night I was standing there looking at the tree...something just didn't look right. I called mom to complain about everything, of course. As I was on the phone with her I noticed that I am an idiot! The top of the tree was on upside down!!!!!!!! How could I do that you might ask? Well the branches were bent the wrong way when I pulled it out, and despite my wondering about why it was shaped so strange, I didn't question it. How silly was that?! We flipped it the right way up and now our tree is only 7ft tall. Sad, but true. That is my life in a nutshell for ya!

2007-10-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

I don't really have anything huge going on right now. Let's see here... I am almost done with my first module in school. It is a lot of reading which we all know I hate reading, so that is a challenge. The first week I had to read about 500 pages only to find out that I didn't have to read about 160 of that. :) This next week is going to be about the same though. Other than that it is just writing and so I am liking it. It is a lot more interesting, fun, and educating than regular college was for me, so that is a good thing.
We are still working on our house as usual, but now we are starting some new big projects on it. We are starting on finishing the basement little by little. So far we have gotten pretty much nothing done on it. We painted almost all of one wall and have cleaned most of it. We almost died yesterday! I was doing the laundry down there right?! Well little did I know that the stupid dryer vent tube fell out of the wall AGAIN! They have new regulations on dryer tubes making them all have to be aluminum or something like foil really, so they fall out all of the time. what is this world coming to?! So I had the dryer running for who knows how long without the tube hooked up. This time Jason decided to duct tape it on the hook, so hopefully that won't happen again. ANYWAY! we are also working on making the attic a little less of a heat killer. That's about it at the moment.
Oh yeah, our dogs...evil little girls that they are. I just bought 60 tulip bulbs to plant around the house and what not. After planting half of them Jason and I turned around to find that the dogs had gone right along behind us and dug up some of them again. So naturally we scolded them and planted those poor little bulbs AGAIN, only for them to go right back out to dig them up. So we told them to "leave it" another time only for them to seek out revenge on us! They went out, dug up the bulbs, dug out one of Jason's little yard lights, and tried to barry it! We are about to give up on having a nice yard. It is only a few of the bulbs that they are against, but it looks terrible.
That is all for now! Aren't these just nasty colors?

2007-08-19T13:28:00.001-07:00

I finally have pictures of up north! There are some from Dad's camera and some from Mattie's camera. Ours are on a different computer, so you will just have to wait to see them. We had a very good time and I really don't remember much. To show just how far down the water has gone this year, I put a picture of Mackinac Island on here. The water line in this picture used to be up to almost the trees, now it is obviously not and the water stays shallow for a long ways out there too. And there are leaches there now as well.
Also the picture of the Upper Falls shows how the falls are only carrying half the amount of water, if not less, than what they used to. It made me really sad to see all that water gone. PRAY FOR RAIN PEOPLE!!!!!! Ok, enjoy the rest of the pictures... I can't say anything else about them because this thing won't let me. :)

2007-07-31T09:54:00.000-07:00

Well again I have no pictures, but I am going to start bugging Jason to update our house blog. We had another work day on Saturday, so we got quite a bit done. We covered the last bit of the pink on the house, now we just need to do one more coat on that side and do the edges and it should be done. We put up the new curtain holders and rods in the living room which makes a HUGE difference in the appearance. And we did some small detail work around the house as well.
Sunday we had a potluck after church and then off to Portage Lake for the afternoon. It was quite fun. We had another couple go with us and my niece as well, so the more the better I say! :) It was very nice and relaxing.
Now lets see here to the vacation that I have no pictures of...hmmm... Well we had a wonderful time to say the least. It was storming pretty badly when we got there, so we had to wait for a break in the storm to set up our tent. When the right moment came we went to set it up only to find the steaks were missing! Not only the stakes, but the star that holds the poles together was missing as well!!! So as we were trying to come up with a creative way to set it up despite everything, the storm started up again. Oh the joys. Then as we are all (Jason, my niece Matricia, and I) stranded outside with no tent to hide in the hail started to dump down hard and heavy. By the time it calmed down again our tent became a little pond floating on the ground. We eventually made it up to the camp store to buy stakes and a sewage device that we could use as a star. Go figure when we got back to the site there was the star under the tent and later on during the vacation we found the bag full of everything else under the middle seat in the van. Well now we have a back up for if we really do forget them. :)
I will give the rest of the details with pictures and when I have more time. Sorry there aren't any at the moment.

2007-07-09T15:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry there will be no pictures on here for a little while because of our crazy work hours this week. I will try to remember to bring them in on a memory stick or something though.
At the moment I am starting yet another long evening of phone listening. It has been up and down the last few days. One moment the phone is ringing, the radio is calling for you, the intercom is going, and people are knocking at the door asking for help. After leaving you completely frazzled and confused, then it gets dead silent leaving you bored out of your mind playing stupid games such as mine sweeper and solitaire. Oh the joys! So I have a bag of Rainbow Twizzlers, two cups of punch, and a couple movies sitting here to help pass the slow times.
I must say I am finding it extremely intriguing to be around so many people from different countries and cultures all here at the same time. We have missionaries, pastors, bishops, etc. all here together. Jason and I have felt lead into the mission field for quite a while now, so today a missionary stopped by and talked with me about how to get where we want to be. It was very encouraging. He gave me a lot of advice that I in turn shared with Jason and we feel it was very helpful. I prayed that God would open up the doors for us to get together with someone today and the guy was waiting in my office for longer than he should have been which brought up the conversation. God is good. :) He let us know that we are on the right track and told us what we need to do to make sure we keep focused and ready when the time comes. We really needed that.
Ok, I think I am done babbling on and on now. I will probably write more later on in the week simply because I have nothing better to do. :)

2007-07-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

Well I was told that I had to write a new post on here, so I guess I will do it. I don't really have a whole lot to talk about, so sorry if this gets a little boring. :)
Starting this week I am working extremely strange hours such as, 8-6, 12-11pm, and 9-5. Those hours will continue on for another couple of weeks including the weekend. Very strange.
My niece is coming on the 17th of July and we are going on a nice vacation while she is here. We are going up north as usual, but this time to show her all the places she has heard about all her life, but has never seen. It will be much fun! We are going to the pictured rocks, the Island, and everything else up there! It's going to be a nice time!
With our house...hmmm...our house. Well Jason and I painted the outside of the house a couple weeks ago, so it looks 100% better. We painted it a very pale blue with dark blue shutters and white trim. We still have some to do on it, but the sides facing the road look good. We also got our counter tops put in last week, so there will be no more neon orange in my kitchen from now on! :) My WONDERFUL cousins came to the rescue again, only this time it was Becky and her family. They spent all day putting those in for us...it was very nice. :) It is so exciting to have all that counter space now!!! I got so excited about it that I made a home cooked pot pie and am making an apple pie tonight! :)I love having the space to actually do pies. :)Maybe I will make some pasties after this...YUM! :)If I get fat now, you can blame my cousins. ;)
Well I do believe that is it for now. Nothing too crazy fun happening here. HAPPY 4th OF JULY PEOPLE!

2007-06-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

Well I have just returned from our office retreat. It was not much of a learning time or anything really other than just a fun hang out time. We stayed in a HUGE HUGE HUGE house built in the early 1900's on the beach of Lake Michigan just a few miles down from Warren Dunes. We spent most of our time hanging out, lounging around on the beach, swimming, and going out...all on the office. Although I had a wonderful time with them and enjoyed getting to know some of them better, I am still left asking one question, why can they afford this, but not give me back my hours? We went out to very expensive places to eat with no price limits either...hmmm... But it was fun none the less and I put my grumblings aside and enjoyed the vacation. That house was amazing. They guys had to stay in the garage...sound bad?! Well we got to check it out, it was as big as my dream house, no worries there. The upstairs was almost the size of my house now. Very nice place. Lots of history in it too. BEAUTIFUL BEACH!!! :) The sunsets were AMAZING! And the water was fine for swimming too. Now I am back and BURNED to a crisp. My description would be that I am more crispy than extra crispy fried chicken. Or at least that is how I feel. When I sit down...ohhh...when I stand up...ohhh...
That brings me to another thought. Why do we wear two pieces? It's just more of our poor abused skin to be burned! Now I also have a belt around my waist that is extremely painful and I can't take the darn thing off! Oh dear. I didn't realize it showed that much skin...how did it burn??? That is a mystery. :)

2007-05-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

Ok, there are a couple pictures that you will need to enlarge to see the real thing because they are too small to see it. (especially the one with the birch tree one, the bridge is in it too, but you can't see it on this thing!)

2007-05-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

Pictures of our vacation...now it won't be so boring to look at my blog.

Ok, so we had a really fun time up north like usual. The weather was PERFECT, sunny in the day and rained while we were sleeping. It got a little cold at the end, but it was fine.

We had a lot of fun with the camera this time, so it's hard to pick out just a few pictures! We did all kinds of fun stuff and found all kinds of new hiking trails and beaches that we hadn't seen before. It was great. We watched the fireworks by the bridge, saw some wonderful sunsets, and walked a LOT. It was a good thing I didn't hurt myself until the last day! :) Now my knee is a little on the painful side to say the least. I would tell that story, but it's a little embarrassing...I'm just too clumsy.

Now like everyone knows, we always have something odd and interesting happen to us when we go camping, well this time it deals with this little baby squirl. Yes...that is what I said and yes it is closer than the picture shows...sadly. Jason went sneaking back to a campsite with water hookup to get the dogs a drink and while he was returning we saw something very strange sneaking (very loudly) along behind him. At first we thought it was a snake or an enraged chipmonk chasing after him. Much to our surprise it was a little tiny lost baby squirl who decided Jason should be it's mamma. Everywhere Jason's foot went, it went too. So of course naturally our newest dog went running over and shoved it in her mouth and started whipping it around in circles. While Jason and I were jumping around SCREAMING and YELLING thumping her on the butt to let it go, the poor little guy was getting mangled. Finally Samantha allowed him to flop out of her mouth and he quickly rolled on his back and started crying. Yes Crying. It was so sad. Of course we tried to comfort him the best we could which involved telling him it would be ok (like he could understand), and shoving food in his face (because we all know how comforting that can be). After a long while he finally got up and shook it off and started sucking on a carrot. The poor little guy was so tiny that the big black northern flies seemed like monsters to him, so when they would fly on him, he would start leaping around and run to our feet and cry again. After a while we realized we couldn't possibly keep the little guy at our site with two dogs waiting to get a nice fresh snack, so I called the camp office. They called it an emergency much to my dismay and said they would call someone out there right away. How silly. Well the guy came out and offered to let us keep him, but after we told him we couldn't, he said, "well let your dog eat him!" YEAH! I was like, "WHAT?! I don't want my dog to eat a poor little baby!" So he dropped him into a bucket and for all I know the poor little guy might not have been alive for much longer. The sad thing is that we think it might have been blind because he couldn't find anything on his own.
Time for more pictures.

Take a look at this sunset shot!

2007-05-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

OH that dog! Ok, so we gave her another try right??? Well lets just say she picked a very bad day to do something else. She decided to dig HUGE holes in our yard! Not just any holes either, we are talking 2 feet deep maybe more! And if you thought it couldn't get much worse, the location tops it all off! She dug one big one in my landscaping that I worked forever on, then she went and dug a HUGE one in my flower bed and uprooted a TON of them!!! I don't know how to fix that one either cause she flew the dirt all over the yard. I was really mad for the rest of the day about and was going on and on about how we had to get rid of her and telling her she got on my poop list. But sadly...by the end of the night her sad eyes and pushing her head under my hands finally got to me. SO now instead of getting rid of her AGAIN, now I am calling the lady we got her from and asking her if there is a way to stop the digging problem. She did say that she trains the dogs she gives away by donations only, so we are ready to do that I think. If only she wasn't so stink'n cute! I put my foot down and was going to give her back, but OH NO, she just had to look at me with those sad eyes long enough that I couldn't take it anymore. DOGS these days!
Well, we had another busy weekend I think. We went to the Harry's house on Saturday to meet Abby's man. ;) We only got lost once on the way there that took us a total of about 40 miles out of our way (thanks to construction). We had a good time whatever the case. Sunday was church as usual and then had Jason's brother and his gal over for supper. That was interesting. Oh and something really awesome happened at church yesterday! Well over the week really. A man in our church got really ill and was given 3 hours to live (the friday before last), we all started praying about it last week, and he was in church again this Sunday. God is good! In fact, when we all gathered around them this Sunday to pray we sang that song ("God is so good"). It was such a blessing to see him alive and well. God is good.

2007-05-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

So we didn't get rid of Samantha, we decided to give her a LONG training session about staying in the yard and gave her another chance. She hasn't left since then, so hopefully it worked. :)
We had a very busy weekend! Saturday while I went to a mother daughter luncheon and spent time with my grandparents, Jason went to hang out with a few friends for the day. We got back around 7ish and started working for Sunday! I mowed the lawn (as usual I loved it! and I am not kidding about that either), Jason worked on picking up some stuff around the house, and then I came in and had to bake a pie. Yeah, we were up until 2am waiting for that to get done. At the same time we were trying to get stuff ready for Sunday morning...busy, busy, busy. Sunday we went to church, fixed lunch for everybody to come over, my family stayed until 6ish and Jason's family came for strawberry shortcake at 6:30ish. BUSY! Boy were we glad when it was all done. It was fun though.
Since then it has just been back to the usual work, work, and work. The weather is beautiful though I must say! :) Next weekend will be just as busy and the next we go camping. Maybe after all of that I will have something interesting to say. :)

2007-05-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

Well! I can't remember if I posted about the first TWO times Samantha has taken off running while Ella chases her! It doesn't matter anyway, but the fact is that today she did it AGAIN! This time they were out of view within seconds! So I went running after them AGAIN like an idiot! This time NONE of the neighbors had seen them, so I had no help whatsoever! I even got permission to run through the woods in the area looking for them and STILL COULDN'T FIND THEM! I was about to start crying at this point of course and was praying out loud because I didn't care if people thought I was crazy! I went EVERYWHERE! I couldn't find them. So I went back to get the van and saw a Lowe's delivery truck on my way and they said they saw a lab, but nothing else. SO! I went running home and there Ella was waiting for me like the sweet girl she is. It was kinda cheesy really because it reminded me of a slow motion movie moment...you know those dramatic ones?! Well yeah! Because I saw her and yelled, "ELLA!" and went running for her and she turned and went running for me. When I got to her I almost started balling because I thought I lost her too! She started giving me kisses and jumping all over me. It was a big movie moment.
So Samantha. Yes. Samantha. Well! I asked Ella where Samantha went and she looked all over the place, but obviously had left her to go back home. So I took Ella inside and jumped in the van and took off! I called Jason almost in tears because I had lost her AGAIN and told him to call the pound to let them know we were missing her. I drove ALL OVER THE PLACE! I couldn't find her, I was about to give up when my phone rang. I picked it up and there was this stranger on the other line saying something about a dog. It was cutting out at that point, so I was like, "I'm sorry, but do I even know you?!" She was like, "no, I'm Britney and I think I found your dog." I was EXTREMELY confused at that point and was like, "how did you get My number?!" So she explained that she had found Samantha and called the 24dogwatch number on her tag and they told her to call me! So I went to get her and she had managed to get extremely far away at that point I guess! Within an hour she ended up way out there at an apartment complex!
After I got to work and went to check my email, I discovered that the rescue had JUST registered her 24dogwatch tag the same day! What a blessing huh?! Whatever the case, now we are debating what to do about her escaping all of the time. We aren't sure if we should take her back to the rescue because we don't want her getting Ella lost with her, them both getting hit by a car, or them both getting lost and never finding them again. Ella cost a LOT of money and we are really attached to her now, so we REALLY don't want to lose her. She never ran away until Samantha came and even then she just chases after her and then comes back. I don't know what to do right now. I took Samantha to the gate and had a LONG training session about staying in the yard, she did really good for it, but how am I supposed to know it worked without having to wait till the next time she takes off like that. And we have been lucky the last 3 times, but what if we aren't the 4th? Any suggestions here people?

2007-04-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

Now these pictures are for Andrew! :)

2007-04-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

OK! So to get my mom off my back and Eli too! I will post these pictures of Ella and Samantha! They are very cute together! :) They play together, sleep together, eat together, get in trouble together, everything!

2007-04-26T15:55:00.000-07:00

So those dogs! They have become partners in CRIME! They are deadly! Only in a sweet sort of way. Yeah. So the other day they ran away while Jason was leaving for work, so I had to RUN FAST all over the neighborhood searching for them like crazy! I freaked out! Finally I got Ella back, but Samantha took off running again! Lucky for us and her, one of the people a couple blocks away got her and brought her back. Have I mentioned how nice our neighborhood is? I love it! So anyway! Then the very next morning Jason and I decided to take a nice morning stroll around the block. So we shut the fence and went on our way. YEAH! WELL! As we just get started heading down the next street, we looked back in time to see Ella push her head under the fence and push up while Samantha pushed the hook up with her nose! YEAH! No joke people! They are too smart for their own good! So they took off running to us at first, but when they realized we were going to catch them, they dodged us and kept on going! So AGAIN we had to chase them down! Lucky for us all again our neighbors down the street aways found Ella in their garage and tricked Samantha into coming to them! So I guess through that nice experience we got to meet the only one's we hadn't before. Very nice people...well guy, we only met the guy.
Well that is my story for now. Now I need to go home and release the two criminals from their crates. :) I love my dogs!

2007-04-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

So we have another dog now! Her name was Suri, but that was given to her at the rescue. SO we went through EVERY name in the book and found out her REAL name is Samantha...yeah... We don't really like the name, but it made her really happy when we said it and she comes to it...so I guess that's her name! :) It's ok, Suri didn't work out very well anyway because it sounded like Sarah and sorry. I don't have pictures of her at this moment, but she is adorable! She is taller than Ella and weighs 70lbs, so she is pretty big. She is a mix with a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. She is the cutest thing! :) And unlike Ella, she is very well behaved. They make a very good team and get along great.
Yesterday I spent 4 hours straight making another dog bed by hand and with no pattern! It turned out really good, I was kinda shocked at it really. I got the fabric on sale so it only cost about $6 to make. It costs between 25ish and 40ish dollars to get a cheap bed at the store. :) I'm excited about the savings! :)
We went to Indiana for the weekend. We went to visit people and had a really good time. :) Then on the way back we got Samantha, so it was an eventful weekend I guess.
Other than that there really isn't much to say...I'm sick, have been sick for a long time, and continue to be sick even though I am on antibiotics and what not...oh well.
Oh and I just found out that someone I work with might be moving in down the street from me, that would be fun. :)
Ok that's it I'm done!

2007-04-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

Yeah, ok...Nothing is really new here. Normal life as usual. That is it. Sorry I am not updating, but I don't believe in updating without something to say. Oh well...we almost got another dog the other day, but he was too out of shape and looked like he might be getting heart disease or something, so we didn't. Now we are looking for another one....hopefully another lab or a rottweiler (spell??) maybe...I don't know. Yeah. That is about it. Oh well I guess I turned in an Application to start school again in Aug. for the MOD program. Yeah...that is about it.

2007-03-19T14:42:00.000-07:00

Well I figured it is probably time for an update. Not like there is really much to update!
We finished our office FINALLY! So we are working on setting that up which is helping a TON on making the house less of a mess. I got my little craft corner set up in there, so I got another page done in my scrap book! (I haven't worked on it in like 8 months??) Things are finally starting to shape up around our place! :)
Hmmm...lets see... I was blessed by the wonderful opportunity to perform twice last Sunday plus set up for the praise team! (note the sarcasm) :) BUT for the first time in AGES this Sunday was not very stressful at all and everything went smoothly. We were only in charge of the praise team...what a nice thing. Well...it was good until we got home and found out why our car stunk so bad...heh...evidentally a few months ago when we went shopping, I didn't forget to get some potatoes. Yeah...Needless to say they rotted and almost destroyed my trunk! If you haven't smelled rotten potatoes, you can count yourself to be BLESSED! It is one of the worst smells you could ever think of!
Now that I am done going on about that! Jason and I are looking at getting our passports as soon as possible to go on a trip somewhere...where we do not know, but somewhere! :) Or just to have them on hand I guess...no...we are going somewhere! So to those of you who would be reading this, where would you go if you had a passport...heh...and money...heh...???????
Ok, that is it for now! Oh and with that mirror advice. Don't just take a saw to the opening in the wall to make it fit either...MEASURE AND MAKE MARKS! Now it is too big! We are just going to put trimwork around it and pretend it isn't there! It will look pretty cool, but it wasn't supposed to be that way. :)
OK I'M DONE!

2007-02-26T14:40:00.000-08:00

Well! We had another work day this last Saturday! We got quite a bit done, the results are a little harder to see because we are coming to the end of our projects, but we did a lot! Hopefully Jason will update our house blog so everyone can see all of the finished projects...or almost finished. :) It is finally looking good in there, we just need to organize everything now! heh...that will be fun. NOT!
So I still see no signs of spring other than Ella's hair falling out EVERYWHERE! I personally think she is confused, but I will hope she isn't! That girl is shedding more than ever! What a mess! :)
Ok, so I really don't have a whole lot to talk about...I just thought it was time for an update. Other than working on the house, church, work, and whatever else, we are keeping busy! Busy is a good thing, I just don't really know what to talk about, so I will go now!
Helpful hint when you get a house to fix up... Don't get a mirror (with a med cabinet) bigger than the one you already have in your bathroom, it is a painful discovery when you find it is between two studs. Also...if the only outlet in the bathroom is inside the actual mirror...RUN!

2007-02-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

Those of you who know me well know that I have struggled with several heart problems ever since I was about 12. Things kept on getting worse over the years and my meds had changed over to heavy duty ones that had some not so fun side effects. To top it off if I missed them I would suffer for it greatly. I finally went to my doctor a month ago and said, "I just can't do this anymore, is there anything else to do than this?" Note: I was freaked out about saying that because he had previously told me that I might have to move up to a blood thinner if the last one didn't work. He agreed that I should be taken off, but said it would take a MONTH long process to get me off of it! Meaning a not so good month and gave me some strict instructions on how to get off this drug with as little problems as possible.
I had been praying for a while about this, telling God my struggle with all of it. God laid on my heart that scripture about the woman who just wanted to touch the edge of his garment and knew she would be healed. I talked to God a lot about that verse and just asked that He would touch me. Just one touch is all I need. Then I opened my Bible later and found John 14:12 "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." I prayed a lot about that. I started to feel better and better and was getting pretty excited about it.
This last Friday I went to my doctor and for reasons he can't explain I am finally OK! GOD HAS HEALED ME! I am finally off of all of the meds and am feeling GREAT for the first time in YEARS! When I got home I opened up my Bible and found that scripture about the lady and read: "Jesus turned and saw her. "Take heart, daughter," he said, "your faith has healed you." And the woman was healed from that moment." Matthew 9:22
GOD IS AN ACTIVE GOD! Matthew 22:32 '"I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob' He is not the God of the dead but of the living."

2007-02-12T21:02:00.000-08:00

So we had a WONDERFUL work day on Saturday! We accomplished TONS of stuff! Andrew is not quite what you would call staying here...for now! BUT! I did hear something like he was coming later and staying for 2 months or something like that??? Well we could get a lot done with him around that long I know that for sure! We would only need to work him 10-12 hours a day is all...maybe a lunch break...maybe. ;)
Whatever the case our house is starting to look like a house and our house's blog has been updated with all the wonderful pictures. CHECK IT OUT! :)
My sister is here for one last night tonight. :'( I am a bit on the sad side at the moment. Which is why this is going to have to be a little short! I am spending the night at my parent's house so I can spend every last moment with her and take her to the airport tomorrow. If the weather doesn't shut us in. heh...yeah.
I have an amazing story that I want to share with people, but I don't have my Bible on me at the moment and so I will have to wait until later to share it, but it is SO WONDERFUL! True and exciting! :) I can't wait to share it with EVERYBODY! :) I got to share it in church on Sunday and I just want the whole world to know!
until next time!

2007-01-30T14:59:00.000-08:00

Oh, so I heard I was mistaking on what day my cousins are coming! OOPS! I don't even know now! But it got even better than I thought before! They are all coming the 10th and Andrew is staying a whole WEEK to help us fix the rest of the house up! Then they will all come back the following week and do the last bit! I don't have to do anything with them around! :)
So I had my birthday yesterday, it was a good one. I thought I was turning 24, so after realizing I was turning 23 I didn't have a bit of trouble with it at all. :) It's so nice to make a mistake like that! Jason threw a party for me at my parent's house (ours wasn't ready yet). we had a great time playing the extremely violent game of SPOONS. It got pretty dirty there for a while. Poor mom's table will never be the same...sh....don't tell! If mom reads this...heh...it was just a joke...heh...heh. We all ate lots of pizza and YUMMY red velvet cake! It was fun whatever the case. You would have thought I had something other than pop to drink at the end though! I had just finished saying goodbye to some people and turned to say something to someone else and the next thing I knew I was on the floor! Strangest thing! I was laying there laughing like crazy and mumbling out an "ouch" ever so often. It hurts to laugh when you hit your head! :)
Ok, that is about it for now.
it was a joke about the cousins after one mistake I thought I should add another

2007-01-25T15:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I got a new (used) car on Monday! It is a mini van. People wonder why in the world we got a mini van! Well, there is not a baby reason involved (PRAISE THE LORD), we just wanted it for camping supplies and to get another dog down the road. Dogs are our babies! Who needs a human these days when we have dogs?! j/k...kinda ANYWAY! It is a two tone nice looking thing...as far as mini vans go anyway! It is a 98, so it is kinda getting up there in years, but it is still low on the miles and in excellent condition. It has a CD player built into it, that is all I really care about. :) Jason likes it for other reasons...something about being in good condition and something about car stuff??? Men, their priorities are all messed up! ; )
We have made some progress on our house over the past couple of days. We got the nasty carpet out of the living room including all of the staples and tack strips! That makes it look BEAUTIFUL! We are almost completely done with our cabinets!!! About ready to hang them back up! AND we found out that my blessed cousins are planning to take a day to come help us with their multi talents! They are so great! :)
Other than that I have a birthday coming up on MONDAY! Guess what I am turning 23 NOT 24 and that to me is a miracle! I got confused somewhere along the line and thought I was turning 24 and still have it stuck in my head and have to keep reminding myself I am YOUNG! :) Such a nice thing to be young and just realize it! :)
Ok, that is about it for now, I can't think of anything else to talk about. That's all!

2007-01-19T15:09:00.000-08:00

Crazy stuff happened today that I gotta talk about! Don't worry, I will shorten it for ya'll!
I was home alone this morning in my pj's doing some clean up with all the junk around my house. So here I am in this little tank top deal when someone bangs on my door! I run grab a tshirt and go to unlock the door..... It was still locked, but was open!!!! I crack it open and there is this guy digging around in our dumpster! I said, "what are you doing?!" And he stands up holding an old lamp and says, "I'm taking this stuff!" I was like, " well it's obviously already being taken care of." So then he tells me he is taking all of our scrap metal which we plan to trade in! So I told him no and that we were going to. He was like yeah I am, looks like you are junking it to me! So realizing my vulnerable situation and that Ella had run outside in the process and was just standing there looking at this guy, I decided to play it safe. So I just pretended like everything was alright and said yeah, ok, sure, right, go ahead. I got ella back in the house, shut the door and locked it AGAIN, called Jason to come get me, called Andrew to keep on the phone just incase, he told me to call 911 so I did! What a mess! 2 minutes after getting off the phone this guy books it outta there with hardly anything! We figure he will be back, but now the cops are out looking for him so hopefully not!
This is a messed up world! I'm getting a security system, another dog (this time a guard dog), I am going all out! I am freaked out! People are sick! Sick! Just sick! Maybe I'll wait on the dog idea, but security system all the way! Messed up place! Crazy people!
Ok, I'm done ranting and raving about this now...ahhh... FREAKS! Ok, now I'm really done. Glad to get that out of my system! :)

2007-01-18T16:12:00.000-08:00

Wow, time flies when you are busy...or having fun...whatever! So a whole lot has happened over the past couple of weeks and a whole lot of nothing has happened too! Good stuff first!
My sister came home!!!!!!!! First time in over a YEAR! I missed her SOOOOOOO much! But sadly now she is gone again! So fast that I wasn't over missing her yet and...BOOM! She's gone! It's ok though because I will see her again before she goes back to Korea. Although I wish she would be here for at least a couple months before going back. It was a lot of fun though, we went to Starbucks a lot, shopping, out, and stuff like that. Ok, that was about it, but it was fun none the less! And we finally got to celebrate Christmas with our family! That was good. The only oops with that was our parents outsmarted us this year and woke up before we could get to my trumpet! It was still fun though. :)
I get to go car shopping this weekend! Looking for something a little bigger than my little sports car this time. It's hard to go camping with a huge lab and tent stuff in that tiny little car! Don't worry though, we are keeping my little one too! That should be fun anyway.
The only bad thing is that we didn't have much time to work on our house this week, so we haven't gotten anywhere with it really. Well, I guess we painted a couple more layers on the dining room. Here is some advice for new home owners or future ones! If you are going with a dark red paint, don't get the cheap stuff! In the end you will spend just as much as getting the top quality paint because of how many layers you will have to put on! It never ends! Live and learn!
That is about it for now I think. Yep, pretty much it!

2006-12-30T22:19:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! The pumpkin butter that was supposed to be so pretty this time! Well, it turned out being dark orange brown on the wall! So we had to go back AGAIN! And start over AGAIN! This time we went to a different place and got the good paint and the right paint and now it is appricot light. It's a little lighter than I thought, but at this point I really don't care! :)

2006-12-30T21:53:00.000-08:00

Ok, so Christmas is done and gone for now. It was a fun one for the most part. Jason and I got up at 6am to open our presents in his parents guest bedroom that we have turned into our temp home. We put up a little Chrstimas tree on a stool and put our presents under it. I got A TON of stuff from him... he spoils me! :) And I gave him what he thought were just three little gifts. One was a guitar pick, the other a folded up sheet of music, and the last one was a riddle telling him where his real present was hidden. It read: To find your gift If you catch my drift Unwrinkle your clothes You might find some bows Let off some steam You'll find your dream Find the board And you'll praise the Lord. Something like that anyway...it took four of us to come up with the thing! It was hidden on the ironing board if someone couldn't figure that out. It was fun whatever the case!
We then went upstairs to find everyone already awake (which in my parent's house we all know that wouldn't be the case). So we all opened presents together and then had a HUGE breakfast. After that we all just hung out together playing with our gifts until it was time to go to my grandparent's place. We did games, snacks, and presents there. That was about it! :) We had fun.
Other than that our entire vacation time from work has been spent working on our house day and night...all night...into the wee hours of the morning. 2am has been the norm for the past couple nights before calling it a day. A lot has gotten done though...all we see right now is all that is left to do still, but we have done a lot. Our appliances come in next Saturday! So we need some prayer about getting things done in time. We finally are starting to feel like it is our home now though...that is a good thing! :) Ella thinks it is HER home ONLY though...we are pretty sure of it. She has been very good to it though. Just as I wrote that Ella took a mad leap into the air and landed on Jason who was soundly sleeping...he is soundly sleeping no more. :)
Hopefully Jason will have enough time to update our house blog soon to show all the progress we have made this week! It looks like a whole different place already and we aren't even close to being done. :) He probably won't for a few more days though.
That's it for now...busy with nothing to say! HAVE A WONDERFUL SAFE NEW YEAR!

2006-12-20T09:41:00.000-08:00

Ok, so it is just 5 days away from Christmas and I am finally almost done with shopping! I still need to finish making a couple of things, but other than that I am done! :) I am so excited to give people their gifts this year! I got Jason an amazing gift this year that I am feeling kind of guilty for right now...I went a BIT over our spending budget...a Bit. But he deserves it, he has waited for years to get it. I will just tell him not to go on my blog...I don't think he ever does, but whatever the case I will tell him not to! I got him a BEAUTIFUL acoustic/eletric guitar! It has a built in tuner and is black with dark blue waves through it. His favorite has green waves or a starburst, but they didn't have that, so I got this instead. There is a return policy though, so that is good! But yeah! I am so excited! He is going to love it! :) Can't wait! Now I just have to keep him off of this. :)
Friday last week and all this week I have been working 3-4 extra hours a day just stuffing envelopes! We had a mailing of 2220 things to send out and they cut it in half to have me work on it. I got all the first half done and they said, "oh, she got that done fast lets give her the other 111o of them!" So now I am working extra hours all week...which is good because it will pay off Jason's present! :) I am just going cross eyed with all of the mailings I've been doing over the past week! I am losing it! Hopefully I'll find it before Christmas break so we can have fun!
Ok, what else is new... the house...nothing is new! The plumbing, bathroom (mostly), and the two outside doors are done. Now we need to get the kitchen up and running! And now the people working on it have to take a break to work on something else! So it could be a while! We will try to do all we can with Tasha's dad, but we aren't sure all that we can do in there. hopefully more than we think! This Christmas will not be spent in our new home...it will be spent in Jason's parent's home instead. Oh well! We are just glad to have a place to stay while we are stuck out of our house!
We went in and changed out the paint for what we really want, it is much more dull and light than the other one. It is called pumpkin butter insead of a freak'n pumpkin! It's very pretty. Now we just have to put it on the walls and hope it turns out good! It will this time right?!
Ok, well I think that is about it for now. Ella is growing again and is calming down finally! She still has her puppy moments when she runs around like a crazy dog, but for the most part she is fine now. :) That's all folks!

2006-12-12T21:33:00.000-08:00

So I will have a little update, but not a huge one. Christmas is in a week and a half and I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet! This is the first time I have been this far behind! I guess that's what happens when you get busy with a house. :)
With the house! We will be moving in within a couple of weeks hopefully. We were hoping to be in before Christmas, but it is not looking like we will. Maybe right after? Or not. Whatever the case we will be in it soon enough. Maybe.
Ok, so when painting a room orange, be warned that orange works like pink paint and dries a lot darker than it goes on. I was hoping for a very light soothing kind of orange in our living room, but when I started putting it on it looked pretty bright. BUT we thought maybe it would dry lighter...NOT! It looks like a freak'n pumpkin in my living room! SO! Now we have to go take the rest of the paint back, hopefully get our money back, show them a picture of what we want it to look like, get the right paint, and start over! We have to prime over the other color because it is so bright! Every time I look at it I want to cry...or scream...I don't know, it's bad! It won't be when it's done though!
We got our new furniture in the other day, it's even better than it looked in the store! :) Gotta love it! :) Or whatever.
That's pretty much it for now, we are staying with Jason's parents still. I don't know if they like it or not, but oh well! If they get sick of us we can go stay...somewhere... Oh, this weekend we get to go to TurkeyVille! We have planned a trip there for a month or more now, and we are getting to go now! We are going with 12 people thinking that we would all get a group rate. ONLY to find out that they changed their minds and won't give us a group rate. Sad, but it was only a few $$ difference. Oh well, it will be fun whatever the case. :)
That is it for now! Remember orange and pink dry DARK!

2006-12-07T14:43:00.000-08:00

Well, now that we have our house I don't have time to write! At the moment I just have a few minutes to update...if I can remember anything! First of all if anyone is interested in all of the updates and pictures of our new house Jason has a blog he frequently updates: 3300c.blogspot.com If anyone wants to keep up check it out!
Today is Ella's first birthday! We went to Pet Supplies Plus (and the dollar store) and picked up some fun goodies for her and her little/big friends to have a little party. :) We got baken pigs in blankets, rawhides, a tugawar rope, ball, and a special rawhide filled with cheese for Ella. :) And her first bag of adult dog food! She's all grown up! *as I puddle up* NOT :)
We are staying with Jason's parents at the moment, so that has been interesting. We have been driving to their house, to work, to our house, to town, and back! Over the past 1 1/2 days we have used 1/2 a tank of gas! CRAZY! Good thing they aren't charging us to stay with them! We'd be BROKE! Oh wait, we are home owners now, we are broke! HAH!
Ok, well I think that is it for now...oh and I will leave you with a piece of advice from a new home owner to other people out there. DON'T get excited and start putting in new tile after taking the old stuff out...put something FLAT and SMOOTH down first! Lucky for us we only put down 3 tiles before being told that. :) Pass it on before someone you know does it wrong!

2006-11-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

I said I would write in this thing when I got the house...well...WE GOT IT FINALLY! Yesterday morning we signed the lovely papers! All of them...all of them...and then some... The house is ours now! We have the keys! It's ours! We can't live in it yet because of all that needs to be done with it, but that is ok! We will be in it sooner than later! A guy from our church is going to work on it for us. He can start on it right away, so that's GOOD!
I got my living room set! It's so pretty! It's white...ish... and it has green around the seems. It is really fluffly and so comfortable and PRETTY! It is not leather...but I realized that is better...we will have no sticking of the butts on our furniture! :) It was so cool because we had a terrible time at Art Van, they treated us like CRAP! We sat there for 2 hours with the furniture we wanted, but the girl kept leaving us there claiming it would just be a couple minutes and would be gone for 30 minutes at a time! Then we offered her a deal and she said "I don't bargin anything" which we all know they do(we heard another salesman give another couple about $200 off the same set). So then we waited AGAIN...and then we said well you just lost someone who was going to pay cash for it! We tried to be patient, but she was so rude to us! So we went to another place and found it! We fell in love with it! Everything was overpriced, so we were about to leave when we saw it, so we sat on it forever without wanting to look at the price. Finally I got the nerve to do it as jason was saying, "no don't!" I looked anyway and it was on sale! And there was another discount later! WOW! :)
Ok, so now there is a lot to do in the house...so I will probably have some interesting stories to tell later on. I already have one about the drain pipes going away from the house that we put in the other week. Yeah, so they used the wrong pipes. Instead of taking the water away from the house these pipes were designed to attract the water...so it went to the house! Today I went in with the contracter and there was a bunch of water in the basement. Boy were we sad when he said we would have to replace it all within a few days to keep it from destroying the basement. Poor Jason! He's so sad. Oh well, we will be ok! :)
That's it for now! Some advice for those new people buying a house... DON'T use pipes if there are little holes in them...even if you are told it is good! It's not! It's BAD!

2006-11-15T14:37:00.000-08:00

Ok, so a couple days later and all new again! This is crazy! We said no to the house, but the real estate agent wouldn't take it for an answer. After keeping us on the phone for an hour, we finally threw out that if they gave us $10,000 in cash at closing we would still get the house. We all knew that wasn't going to happen, but it made him back off. They called the next morning and accepted the new offer! SO! We have a house again! Who would have thought! I don't know what to think anymore, my mind is just swirling around like crazy not sure what I'm even thinking about it all. So that is that.
Now I must say that I was kind of looking forward to an opportunity to go to Africa or China while missing out on a house. We will just have to wait now until we have enough money to go again. Or we could finish our college and then go...who knows. We can sell the house in 3-5 years without a problem and actually make a profit at that point, so we aren't too worried about it. And by the way Eli, we wouldn't take the time off, we would just quit and go. As simple and crazy as it sounds we wouldn't mind doing so. We thought about maybe doing all of the above, spend a month or two in China (for the training in their culture), a couple in Africa (I really want to go there to one of the missions), and one in India (the Bishop of the FMC said he would be glad to let us stay with them if we would like to try out India). We are all up in the air about stuff right now, but we are thinking that God wants us here for a little while longer before going off and doing that stuff. We are doing things here, we aren't inactive...we are just in waiting. Who knows where God wants us eventually to go! : ) It's so exciting when you know there is something, but it could be anywhere in the world! Well, some of the time...it can be very frustrating too...most of the time...
Ok, well that's it for me now. Hopefully I will be able to write again and be in a house...who knows how long that will be!

2006-11-08T15:31:00.000-08:00

Ok, so just a couple days later and so much has changed! We are no longer probably going to get that stupid house! They finally finished the whole loan process and said we would be closing in a couple of days...WELL! They called us up today saying that they "oops" forgot to look at the appraiser's note first! GRRR!!!!! They said that they will not let us close now until we sink a few thousand into repairs on it first! Yeah! First! They want us to do repairs that aren't even important (like redo the garage roof and car port roof), so now we are backing out of our offer. Which praise the Lord we signed something saying that we would only go through with it if the inspections all went well!!!! *sigh of relief* So we are now looking at a different location that will be much cheaper than this one was. In fact we could get a newer house with no repairs needed with 3-5 acres of land for the same price! And less taxes! So we are going to start looking AGAIN! How many times is this going to happen!?!? For being a buyer's market they sure aren't very good at selling!
So back to being stuck in an apartment forever...hmmmmm... Other than that everything is kind of the same...yeah... So I should go now and finish getting ready for praise team tonight. If there is anyone actually reading this right now, please pray for us to figure out where God is wanting us to go right now. It is so open ended at the moment there is actually an opportunity to go to China for a month or two...who knows! God knows...pray he lets us know.

2006-11-06T14:48:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I have had a very busy and crazy week, and this time I can't say it's a weekend because it is Monday already and still crazy! I had to rush out of work on Wednesday because of a family emergency on Jason's side...two of them actually. One being for his dad and the other for his sister. Lucky for us they live only about 30-40 minutes apart from eachother...once you get close to them. So that was REALLY crazy, we managed to make it back on Friday by 3:30 to finish the day of work. Then Saturday morning right back up and didn't get back until last night. Then this morning and all day pretty much was one thing after another....oh boy! But we will live (or I will) because tomorrow is a new Gilmore Girls...that always is a good day. :)
So anyway, after all of that we have a new niece who is mostly healthy (a bit of a liver problem, but it is to be expected at her age), she is SO SWEET! :) Adorable little gal! Her name is Delilah Jean...yes like the Bible story...don't ask. But it is a pretty name! I have a couple pictures to show off. And YES I am actually holding her! I didn't want to let her go...but she ended up hungry and so I had to give her back. When she started crying I didn't mind giving her back either. :) She mainly sleeps though. She is so little she looks like a doll (she was a bit early)Ok, I'll shut up and show the pictures now. She's so cute!

2006-10-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, let's have a bit of an update...sadly. We are still getting that house, but not today...:( We are running into a couple delays thanks to the mortgage agent not telling us that we needed some stuff done until the last minute. Now we are at least a week behind schedule. :( Which means more rent...parden me while I go cry over being broke!
To top everything off, our old car insurance place has messed up to the point of not cancelling us when they said they would and have charged us for two extra high months! Idiots! They say they will fix it almost everyday then call the next saying they forgot or screwed up AGAIN!!! Boy oh boy!
To top that off, today I got sick...really sick, but being myself would not give up a days pay to take care of it. (the flu people, don't mess with it...bad news). Yeah, I made it through a whole hour and a half when I made a mad dash to the bathroom and stayed there for quite a while until Jason came and took me home. Bad idea on my part I must say. I think this is just not my week, BUT it is now a weekend, SO things WILL get better. YES...they will.
GOOD NEWS...Ella is finally completely registered! And she has a certificate and a pretty black tag to prove it now. The tag will probably not last very long considering she has already gone through 2 rabies tags in the past few months. I think she eats them or something because we never find them. She does eat everything. She will probably crap them out someday. Which reminds me of a funny thing that happened last night with her. I was playing with her and making fake fart sounds and blaming her (yeah), I did a loud one behind her and said, "Oh Ella, did you poop?" Then I went on...well until she started sniffing in circles (I was very confused) and Jason yells out, "She's about to go! What'd you do?" I barley got her to the door in time, as soon as she got out she went. I didn't think of that when I trained her that when she goes outside she is supposed to do whatever I tell her on command to speed things up. : ) The poor dear was trying to obey me! Well it may not be as funny as it was when it happened, but it was pretty funny at that point. :) It might be a bad idea to teach a dog that command... Now we are really careful not to say that unless we mean it.
I'll end on that note. : )

2006-10-20T21:21:00.000-07:00

Wow, it has been a while since I have updated this thing! Where do I begin?!
Well, my wrist is getting better other than a few set backs...big ones. They discovered a bone that still had a complicated break in it that could take another 2 months to heal. Evidentally the way I held my wrist before in the x-rays it didn't show up or something, but we didn't know about it before, so I was using it and working it out really hard. Now it is painful as all get out and I have to wear a brace again!!! :( It's coming though, I can't complain about it cause it is 100% better than it was before! :)
We have found a house finally and are closing on it next Friday!!!!! :) It's so exciting!!! It has a big living room with a fireplace and a nice fenced in yard!!! :) It needs some help, but it's not too bad!!! :) The only thing now is packing!!!! We have only packed a few things and will be moving in a WEEK!!!!! What are we thinking?! It's a freaky thing to buy a house. But we are glad it is finally happening. God is good! :)
What else has been going on? My office had a fun day today, we all went out to a orchard and went through a HUGE corn maze. It was pretty cool. :)
A college student and I are starting up a new praise team in our church next week, so that will be fun. :) I am really excited and nervous about it!!! It will be good though, the church needs it and we can do it and it's going to be SO nice to be able to get involved in music regularly again! Also I will be directing the choir for the Christmas program!!! We are only doing a couple songs, but it still is exciting! I am going to mess with a song and see what happens with it, hopefully it will turn out good, if not we can just sing it the normal way. :) Music music music.......ahhhh....
Jason is learning the guitar very nicely now, so it's fun we are writing songs together now and having a grand old time with it. :) I wrote one a couple weeks ago and we did it in church, it went really well. We are working on one together right now, with writing the lyrics and music together...it is interesting trying to match someone else's work...it's good practice! :) It's a challenge and loads of fun!
Ok, that is about it for now...an update on Ella... She is BIG very BIG and still doesn't know it, the poor thing. Sadly in some ways she is figuring out her size...in bad ways that is. And with packing, it seems that everytime I start to pack something up she gets distressed and chews something up! Like a pillow and the blanket my friend made Jason and I for our wedding (luckily enough that one may still be fixable). We broke her of chewing quite a while ago, but it's just when I started packing some stuff up she must have freaked out or something! I don't know! I wonder what she will do when we really start to pack! Oh boy!
Alright, that is it for now...hey you should check out websites on xyliltol or something like that...it's a sugar thing kind of thing that is actually really good for your teeth! It looks pretty interesting. :) There is some wisdom in this! HAH!

2006-08-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, no pictures again and not a lot to type because I am typing this with one hand. when we got back and to our busy lives again, we decided to stop for a while to have some fun and to enjoy the weather. so we went roller blading with Jason's parent's dog (they were out of town and said it would be nice if we could play with him a bit. all was going swell and the weather couldn't have been better for it. But half way through our glorious ride something went terribly wrong. The dog whom I was holding took off running. Now in normal situations like this I would just let go, but before I had a chance to, he stopped dead in his tracks and turned around and ran directly under my legs. Of course I let go as soon as possible, but it was too late. The speed and tripping over the dumb dog was too much and spun me around and flung me aiming head first into the pavement. so of course I put out my arm to protect my head. Now I have both of my wrist bones broken, one in multiple places farther down even, had to have a double surgery, and am in a lot of pain and on drugs. I had many screws and pins and a big metal plate put in to fix the damage and had to have my nerves fixed due to crushing them. But the good news is that I didn't crack my head and I am now in theropy to fix my spill. :) Looks hopeful:)
so no pictures, but at least an update...oh well. It'll get better and then there will be pictures. :)

2006-08-17T06:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, sorry it took me so long to write in this thing!:) I have been very busy lately! The funny thing is that I really don't remember what it was that kept me so stink'n busy! :)
Well, Bible school went really well. The songs were hard to learn because of the hand motions, but once I got them down they all went well. There was just one night that was a complete wreck and it was due to me getting myself dehydrated. I forgot what songs I was singing while singing them and started singing the wrong words for the songs. There was a song that we had to jump around quite a bit...yeah...needless to say that didn't go very well. :) Other than that everything went wonderful! It was extremely busy though! We would get out of work at 5pm and have to go directly to Bible school where we only had 10-15 minutes to cram some food down and change! We were hardly home at all that whole week.
Warren Dunes was a lot of fun. We hung out with Jon and his friend guy most of the time. We were trying to avoid some of the other people that were there with us who drove us CRAZY! We did a good job of it, we only met up with them long enough to eat with them. That was long enough! I might have some pictures of the dunes to put in my next blog, but I don't have them here with me at this moment. But it was a good trip for us, we ended up not only going up the main dune, but all the others behind it as well. I almost died while doing so! :)
We had a nice big birthday party for my Grandma that went really well. Well, all except the cake I decorated for it. It was so hot in my apartment that the frosting would melt as soon as I put it on the cake! So I had to throw out my fancy plan and go with something really simple. I guess it looked good, but it wasn't what I wanted to do...darn heat! :)
We went up north last week and part of this week, we just got back on Tuesday. It was a blast! :) The weather was perfect the whole time! It was kind of cold sometimes, but not too bad. The wind was just right so the waves all over the lake were HUGE the whole time! There was one wave that hit one of the pole things on the bridge that went almost all the way up to the top where the road is! It was pretty cool to see! :) Our cousins went to the Island for the first time, so that was fun. AND if any of you know my mom this is pretty crazy for her! She went all the way up to the arch rock look out! I thought she had lost her mind! Her and Dad also went all the way up to the top Fort at the top of the island! Wild! :) We got a lot of fudge like usual, but this time I can't eat much of it due to a diet plan and Jason can't eat it due to his cavities. What were we thinking?!:) We went to the beach for a day and all that fun stuff. The last day Jason and I broke off from the group to celebrate our 1st anniversary. We stayed at the hotel I've always wanted to stay at in Mackinac! :) There was all kinds of stuff to do there, they had a huge pool and hot tub (that was WAY too HOT) and there was a belcony that overlooked the Lake. :) Oh yeah and believe it or not the wedding cake still tasted ok. :)
That is about it for now I guess. I am at work at the moment and everyone is out of their meeting now, so I should go now! :) I will hopefully get some pictures on this thing soon! :)

2006-07-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess it's time for another update. There really isn't much to say. I am FINALLY getting my eyes checked next week so that I will finally be able to see again! I have been without glasses ever since I sat on them the wrong way and broke them in half, and without contacts for quite a while...not like I know which one goes in what eye! So hopefully when we all go up north I will be able to see again!
Our house hunt is at a stop at the moment. We just need some paperwork to start back up, but it is easier said than done! That's all there is to it! Jason and I need to go in together and our schedules have been and will be so messed up for the next week or so that we can't get time together during business hours! That's life for you!
We are going to Warren Dunes this weekend, that will be interesting...we are going with 2 gay guys, 2 VERY (in not the good sense) straight couples, and a lone gal. This will be amusing. We have already made plans for if things go wrong...which they obviously are starting that way. What a mess! We thought we were just going with 2 friends! HAHA!!!! But it will be ok! :) drama, drama, drama. :) It gives me something to write about!!!
To Eli, OF COURSE we roughed it through the night last time! On our nice cozy air matress! :)
Other than that...hmmm...I am the song leader next week for a vacation Bible school. I am going to be making 70 cupcakes and 2 cakes within the next couple days on top of our interesting adventure coming up. Oh and I'm on a "diet" plan...kinda thing. So making those will be fun. That's really about it right now. blah blah!

2006-07-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

So we went on our conoe trip last weekend. It was a lot of fun. Of course much to my surprise (NOT) I got sun poisoning on top of the sun poisoning that was healing! I even used sunblock! I was covered all over with TONS of little blisters! When I would lightly rub my nails over them, they would pop open!!!! So sick! Now that I have totally made whoever is reading this want to vomit, I will continue with the rest of the story. :)
It was really fun! We went about 7-10 miles down a river. And when we got to a dam, we just picked up our conoes and carried them to the other side and continued (well, the men carried them while us gals just stood there watching). There were only a couple obsticles in our way, but Jason had the sense to wear water shoes, so he just would climb out and pull away whatever was blocking us. :) I'm quite shocked that we didn't tip while he was jumping in and out of the canoe. After a while we stopped off for a break and got some ICE CREAM...YUM!!!! Kind of strange really, you are out there being all nature like and then stop and walk a couple minutes to an ice cream place down town. :)
Enough of that now. What do we have here...It is a Friday, so after work we got really bored because we have no lives this weekend. So what did we do? We came up with a crazy idea and 10 minutes later were heading out to do it. We (I blame Jason) decided that it would be really funny to just show up and mom and dad's house and start setting up our tent. Not in the big back yard, but in the middle of the front yard right in front of their house. :) It was rather funny! We just started setting things up right there. They came out and were so confused! It was so funny! We also had a political sign sitting in our trunk, so we thought would be funny to put that up in front of our tent...we later decided against that. So we are camping here for the night I guess. We didn't really think it through too much.
Well, I guess that's everything for now! I should go for now!

2006-07-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

So it is a boring day at work, so I thought I'd put in a quick note to help the time pass before my next project.
We went out speed boating and water tubing last weekend for about 4 hours, so that was a lot of fun! I got fried to a crisp because I'm a freak and forgot to put on sunblock. The worst part is that I didn't really forget so much as I just chose not to put it on thinking I would be fine. Fried...like fried chicken fried! Throughout my insides! I was dying! Dead! Gone! It was horrible! But I lived much to my surprise. : ) I am just pealing like crazy now. Ugly, but not near as painful! :) Just in time for our canoeing trip tomorrow! : ) Yeah, we are going out tonight (if it stops raining) to camp out and then go out on conoes tomorrow! :) Silly weather! We should get some fun pictures if we still can go though!
We have just found out that we need to move a lot sooner than we had expected! They found THE black mold in our apartment building...yeah. If the health department finds out, we will be out really fast! So we decided it was time to get down to business and get an agent to help. So now we have one and are scheduled to go look at 4 houses on Monday and another one shortly after that! So crazy! I found an awesome one 23min. away from work that comes with 10 acres! It's a farm! Sounds really cool! :) I can't wait to go look at it!
Well I guess that's everything going on here for now.

2006-07-12T15:32:00.000-07:00

These are some pictures of our camping trip that we call "a series of unfortunate events". These are our stories!
1. Jason had to do all of the packing by himself while I was at work (due to a mean person that I work with who chose not to give me the day off...no harsh feelings). So when I got back we headed off for our camping trip! Of course not being the one to pack I kept on thinking there was something missing, so I went through a whole list of things. Jason finally just said, "Sarah, I remembered everything so to stop freaking out." So after asking a couple more questions I finally stopped like he asked (the rebel that I am). Well, we get to our destination and start setting up camp. It was a wonderful spot at the edge of the campground, away from everything else, on the sandy beach, and woods for half of it. It was beautiful and relaxing. Well, it all was going well until it came time to put in the tent poles. A basic yet important thing you would need for camping. We forgot them. Instead of getting too mad about it, I laughed for a bit, called mom and pondered a bit about what to do, then Jason decided it was time to take action. He tied Ella's chain from one tree to the next and hooked the middle of the tent to it, then was lost after that discovery. That kicked me into Cedar Bend mode (for those of you who did not attend SAU for their freshman year, it is a time when you rough it for a couple days. You are given 4 tarps and some rope, from there it's up to you.). I went hunting through the car and found the divider walls for inside the tent, tied them to different trees, then hooked the tent to them creating more space inside. Then Jason got more creative and found the stakes and figured we should be hooked into the ground some and got some rope hooking a little more to the trees. We then topped it off by draping the cover over the top. Beautiful! It was done!

2. Now our vacation was going great plus we had some funny pictures to show for it. Well, we thought we should go somewhere for a bit considering we were in a new area, so we were about to pull out of our camp when the next thing happened. The only rule the camp owner gave us was to be really careful while pulling out of our site "NOT TO GO IN THE SAND". Well, as Jason was trying to be very careful about pulling out, he pulled a little tiny bit too forward. That was enough, we got SUCKED IN! The sand worked like quick sand and sucked our front tire down in so far, there was no coming out! People tried to help push us out, but it was no use, we were there for good. The owner came along shaking his head at us like we were complete and total idiots (especially after seeing our tent). Then he said, "this is bad enough to bring out the machine." So not knowing what to expect, we stood there waiting for a good 10-15 minutes with a camera in hand (my hand of course). Out comes this HUGE bulldozer and a couple hicks with big freaky grins on their faces! Of course I was laughing my head off at this point taking pictures like crazy! So they hooked up our tiny car to this huge thing and pulled that baby right out of there with no problems! We were completely humiliated at this point of course...while laughing of course!

3. While running around taking pictures of this all happening like a crazy person. My ONLY pair of flip flops got stuck in the sand and broke! I had these flip flops for 2 years! They broke! So I had to wear a pair of Jason's sandles to go to the store!

Other than that our trip went great and I actually have a couple fun cute pictures of Ella. They had a wonderful beach that we spent most of our time at. They also had a ton of animals that you could pet (elk, buffalo, deer, goats, rabbits, etc). Ella got a little friendly with a cow making for great pictures.

2006-06-27T18:30:00.000-07:00

I have a moment to write, so I am to keep people happy with me. :)
So today was very interesting for me....which doesn't really mean much at all to be quite honest. We found a house that we love (a forecloser no less)! Now we just have to talk them down enough that we could afford to fix it up. We had mom and dad go with us to look at it and they both loved it too. It's really big and beautiful on the outside, has a wonderful yard with lots of trees (considering jason got a tick on him within a few minutes), beautiful landscaping (that could use some fixing up of course). BUT then you go inside the beautiful house and see WOW! It's so strange! So Strang! Messed up! The person (like usual) got mad about losing their home (don't blame them) and took EVERYTHING out of it...when I say everything, I mean anything you can think of at all, they took it! They also trashed some stuff...it's a fixer. If we can just talk them down!!!! It's in the Lord's hands whatever the case.
Other than that there really wasn't anything else that happened. I am very easily amused. It's sad really. So this is going to be a really short one!
Oh, Ella is being a terror in our house and car...she is trying to be good though...bless her little heart.
We are going camping again soon, so maybe I'll have something better to talk about after that. Maybe! :)

2006-06-23T06:23:00.000-07:00

So today is another day. I don't have much to talk about today, so this might not be a fun one...or maybe????!!!!
So we had a huge storm the other day, that was pretty cool! I was stuck at work for a long time! The tornado warnings were all going off and things started to fly, so we all got sent down to the basement. The lights went out and a couple of the girls screamed of course (silly peops). It was quite amusing really. We all went back up the stairs only to be right back down about 10 minutes later to find our basement offices had all flooded. Nice discovery of course! Then there was a break in the systems long enough to send people home, but I had to run to Jason's office. They all were discusing leaving as I was watching the next one come in telling them we should go...yeah... Well, they didn't of course until it was too late and we had to run in the buckets of rain to the car only to not see anything while driving. We then had to grab Ella and run to our landlord's house due to another warning. :) Needless to say, every yard and basement in our area were flooded severly. SO, we spent until 11:30pm trying to help the people who live below us with cleaning out their apartment (it was covered in about 4in. of water all the way through because of a pipe that started to back fire into their apartment like a faucet in a tub or something). For most of the time the water was coming in faster than we could get it out, it was a mess!
That was interesting.
That's all I really have to say right now. Other than I found that Lemons (about a half a lemon in one jug) chopped into thin slices, put into a jug of water, and placed in the fridge for a few hours (at least) (to make the taste blend) makes a wonderful fresh tasting water and it is good for you. It of course is good to drink water, but it makes it taste so good that you just can't have enough of it. That is a good thing for those of us who really don't like water! :)
That's enough of my thoughts for today! I warned that I had nothing to talk about!

2006-06-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I really don't have too much to talk about right now. So I am just going to act like I do ok?! I am working my second job at the moment which is just answering phones, so this is what I get to do in my spare time. It's not too bad most of the time until all the lines ring at the same time. At that point you just freak out in a calm manner of course.:)
We are starting to look more seriously at houses now these days. We found two houses that we really like, both have their ups and downs. One is on an extremely busy road at a BAD point and the other has some fix'n up to do. But they are both nice. I just found a few more that we are going to go look at soon as well. MAYBE we won't have to live in an apartment for too much longer!!!!! Patience is a good thing though especially when buying a house so I hear. Don't want to end up with the wrong one! Wake up one morning and realize you are in a crap house instead of a crap apartment and have a breakdown. Great idea!
So Ella is being worse than ever, yet better than ever. The poor dear is going through her second teathing stage which is a lot worse than her first teathing stage. She has done some serious damage to stuff! Her first teathing stage was a shoe, a pillow, some underwear...her second is the trimwork, the floor, and the cabnits! She is causing a huge problem right now. And the poor thing is trying to be good, as soon as you tell her it's bad she doesn't do it again, but it's already been done to some extent. We have to put some plastic wood in and paint the trim, push down the carpet (it was in a spot that wasn't stapled down and needs new carpet anyway), and just fix it up again. She has made a disaster of my wonderful rug by shredding a pillow and dumping the insides out all over the apartment. I never knew the inside of a pillow could go so far, it took a whole garbage bag to clean it up! Other than that she is trying to be good she really is. The poor thing just doesn't realize how big her teeth are now.
So that's about it for now...I think. Well I guess I didn't mention that I have a part part time job now as well over the summer. That's new. Jason is trying for other positions so that he can have better hours, that's new. Well for other reasons too like experience and pay differences, all the reasons people look for other positions in the same place...work stuff. He likes it there quite well.
What else? I found a kind of listerine that doesn't taste as bad! It's not even the new kind...it's the green one. That's definitely it for my wisdom of the day. Learn from it peops! Or whatever.

2006-06-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, oops! I almost forgot! This is a picture of Ella in her very first swimming vest! She is so cute in it, she could easily be mistaken for a rescue dog in it...although that would be a HUGE mistake! She completely loved the great lakes! She played in them 3-4 times while we were there. She learned how to swim and even left a part of her behind for the lakes to remember her by. (for those of you who don't get it, she plopped down in the water and went potty right then and there...typical girl move)

2006-06-02T17:31:00.000-07:00

The pictures of the bridge are for Eli! But others are welcome to enjoy them. Actually I meant for there only to be one, but the darn thing put on three of them. I would delete two, but when I try to delete one they all go...never to return. Also we have a picture of one of the foot trails at the historical mill creek. A very inexpensive and beautiful place to go I might add. As long as you have some serious heavy duty bug spray with you it is very delightful. There are a hundred pictures total of our camping trip, but I thought it'd be unwise to put them all up here...there are just too many! Here is Jason standing directly under the bridge...can you tell that it was extremely foggy that day? There was so much fog that you couldn't even see the bridge past the first poles underneath it. It was kinda odd feeling to know that this huge thing is right in front of you and yet you are completely blind to it.

There is a picture of our wonderful tent that we learned the hard way has a lot of nice leaks in the tarp that "protects you from the rain". Also we have a shot of Ella being a nauty but cute little girl while sneaking into OUR bed to sleep.

The pictures all along in here are just at the campground alone. That place is the BEST!

Yes this picture is of a bike believe it or not. It has a steering wheel just like a car, but is really pretty much just two bikes put together. Only one person stears while the other just holds on for their life! Or do what I did and almost fall out while taking pictures of pretty much nothing. That was fun. You gotta save up to rent one of these babies though, they cost $12 for 30 minutes only!

2006-05-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

So here are some pictures of my new haircut at the request of Eli! I had some fun with the camera last night and came up with these! :)

For other news, I am so freak'n excited about leaving to go camping on Friday! I can't wait! We did a trial run through with setting up the new tent last night. It didn't go so well, it took an hour to put it up with four people working on it! That tent is freak'n huge! It's the tent I've always wanted (in the past year). It has a HUGE 7ft dome in the middle, two 5ft tall rooms that wing off, and a big 6ft tall screen porch in the front! It's a biggy, sleeps 8 people (or maybe 2 dogs and 2 people). I am so excited about going!

So far for Jason's party I have 16 people coming! And almost had a give away, but luckily I got the voicemail and not Jason! It's gonna be fun!

I should get going though because we are going to a house warming party and then out with our parents for dinner and a movie for their celebration. Busy busy!

I'm gone!

2006-05-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

So I was just informed that is about time to update this thing! So here we go.
Things have been very busy for me lately. I am now in a praise team again working towards helping out with leading it. I am also starting to direct the choir in our church within the next couple of weeks. It's so exciting to be able to be a part of music again! I have waited so long for another opportunity to come along and now after a long period of waiting, God has blessed me with a new one!
My new job is going well, I really enjoy working part time. About the time things get stressful it's time to go home, so that works out great. I really enjoy the people I work with as well. Jason's job is going well too. (He will be turning 21 soon and I am planning a huge surprise pizza party for him at his favorite pizza place)
I just got my hair chopped off. It's really short and choppy. Just the way I wanted it to be! It's really cute! Is that wrong to say about your own hair? Well, the hair lady couldn't help but announce the good job she did either! I should put a picture up or something. Or not.
Ella is getting bigger than ever! She weighs over 50 lbs. for sure by now! I can't really lift her anymore. She doesn't know how big she is, so she still has her puppy fits of energy. I should put up a picture of the last couple ones she's had. She has knocked over my entire dresser and everything in it and on it making our room look like a tornado blew through. She has knocked pretty much everything over that she gets close to. Yeah, she is a real clumsy gal...Like her mamma. ;) She is fully trained now. To the point where I have taught her hand motions to do tricks and it works. She does a whole slew of tricks without me saying a word. She also has learned the command "leave it". She leaves a treat on the floor for up to 4 minutes now without touching it when I say leave it! And we have her hopping through an agility loop already (she isn't aloud to jump through one until she is 1). She has heal down and soon will be learning her left from right. YIKES! We are also taking her camping in a couple weeks meaning she will learn how to swim soon as well. :)
That's the run down for here!

2006-03-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

So I am so excited about this! I just got hired! I have a good job now, the one I wanted. It was worth the long wait to get! So now I have the job I wanted and am looking for a house!!!!!
Ella is doing wonderful. She has learned some new tricks.... She is learning them so fast I can't keep up! I am running out of things to teach her! I'll just have to get more creative I guess. She's the best dog ever! : ) She is so much fun.
I feel so blessed right now, I couldn't even describe how awesome God has been to us! He's so great! When He has a time of waiting, it's a good thing, not a bad. : )
That's all!!!!!!

2006-03-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

Our little baby

Ella

Ella loves to play in the snow!

She loves to play!

She likes to lay down a little too much

2006-03-05T14:28:00.000-08:00

Ok, how does this work? I am just writing a quick thing to figure this thing out. It really shouldn't be too difficult, but I can get confused sometimes. After all last time I pushed the wrong thing and caused a mess.
Ok, that's all.