I want you to know...

Several months ago Justin and I talked to our church about joining with 2 other couples and teaching a young married Sunday School class. One of the many thoughts that we all had was that it would be nice to have a group of people that are in our age group/walk of life to do life with.  

Little did I know that so soon after our group started meeting that we would be going through such a huge loss. On Monday, December 23rd, a young wife/mother lost her life. I am still in shock about this and I can only imagine what her husband is going through. 

The loss of this precious life has had me thinking. First of all I have been telling people how much I love them. If for some reason God wants to take me to heaven at a moments notice, I want everyone that I love to know that I loved them. 

Second, I have been thinking about salvation. There are people in my life that I am always praying for, that they will find the truth about God and his son Jesus. That they will realize that the only way to get to heaven is to have a relationship with God. I used to use the term "saved", and while that is still a valid term, I feel like it should be explained in a different way. For example I could say I was "saved" at age 14, then go on and live my life however I please, but of course I would say I am "saved" and that I know that I am going to heaven. I think that there are a lot of people who feel this way.

A good way to think about it is like this: Once I met the band News Boys (christian music band). I even got to drive them around town! That was when I was in high school. Currently I listen to some of their songs on the radio and of course I tell people about the time I got to drive them around town. So with that being said, does that mean I am friends with them? Do you think if I called them up they would verify that yes indeed they had met me back in my high school days? My guess is that they would not even remember. You see if I don't continue to have a relationship with them, why would they have any reason to remember meeting me? 

In my opinion, our relationship with God is the same way. If I am not building a relationship with him. Learning about him, telling others about him, talking to him through prayer, reading the Bible, then why should He remember me the time back in the day when I asked him to save me, to be my heavenly father? 

This is just something to ponder. If you haven't started a relationship with God then now is the time. You never know when your last breath will be, so make the most of each moment that you have. If you have any question about God, salvation or a relationship with God, please leave a comment and way to reach you. I would be happy to talk to you about it.

Till death do us part...

Today makes 7 years ago I said "I do" to an amazing man! I don't know what life would be like with out my wonderful husband Justin, but I do know that it would not be good.

I think so many people have such a distorted few of what marriage should be like. They see these romantic movies or read novels with amazingly written love stories in them and they think that is how their marriage should be. But the truth is that life is not a movie or a novel. We are all, by nature, selfish people.

Justin and I do not have a perfect marriage. We have had arguments, we have shed tears. I can even remember a time when I was so mad, I put Ian in the car and just drove for a while. I didn't know what I planned to do but I knew I didn't want to be in the same house as my husband. So, how did we get past these moments? Well here are the three things that I feel like have played the biggest part in keeping us together.

1. God. Justin and I both have a relationship with God and put God first. Knowing that the Bible only gives a few justified reasons for divorce, we have pushed through those hard times and have not given up.

2. The 5 Love Languages. This book has very much saved our marriage. I had no clue that there were different ways people show love until we read it. My love language is gifts and words of affirmation and Justin's is acts of service and quality time.  There are times when we are both right on top of it. I'm doing laundry, cleaning house and making dinner. Justin gets me flowers, leaves notes and tells me I'm beautiful. Then there are other times when we have just got used to the way things are going. Like recently, Justin has been doing the laundry and I just decided to let him. I hate laundry. But that is no excuse to stop filling Justin's love tank. We like to have a talk every now and then and ask each other how our "love tanks" are doing. I'm actually considering re-reading the book so I can get some more ideas on how to speak Justin's love language.

3. Communication. I think everyone can agree that this is a biggie! It is so difficult sometimes because I want Justin to just be able to read my mind and know what I want or know how I'm feeling. But he can not. And I can't read his either. They won't know what you don't tell them.

Now, you might be thinking that I have been focusing on the bad parts of marriage. But friends, these bad times, once worked through have led to the most beautiful of times, times where we lay on the bed and laugh, times where we cry. It really is wonderful and I couldn't imagine life with out my husband, good times and bad times. He is my earthly rock (God is my heavenly rock).

Here is a song we had sung at our wedding. I believe with all my heart that our story is the second greatest story ever told (the song says the greatest story, but we can't really compete with God loving us so much that he gave his son for us)! Happy Anniversary baby! I love you and respect you so much!

Snow days...

Ian's school was canceled both yesterday and today due to bad weather. I thought it pretty funny that it was canceled yesterday because there was nothing in the morning. But they closed it in preparation, so that was nice. It was super cold and I didn't want to get out anyways. :) 

It started yesterday, the sleet and freezing rain. But then this morning, well we woke up to a winder wonderland! The boys of course wanted to go outside. I didn't want to at first, but my friend Tara kind of talked me into it. We were out there all of 5 minutes before the boys got too cold and headed back inside! Which I was fine with. We came inside and Ian and I enjoyed some hot chocolate, which is new. They haven't wanted hot chocolate in the past! 

We were out there long enough to get some good pictures though! Enjoy our winter wonderland.

It's days like these...

For some reason today was a day that I wanted to drink a Diet Dr. Pepper. I will not though. I have gone with out one for 194 days. I am planning to celebrate when I hit 200 days. I will not celebrate by drinking one though ;) 

See what I mean? This was on my windshield this morning!

Days like these I also wish I could snuggle in bed for a few hours before having to get up. I don't like getting up on cold mornings. Well who am I kidding, I don't like getting out of bed on most mornings, I am not a morning person!

It's time...

I realized that at some point I have to stop saying "we just moved here". We have been in our "new" town for almost a year now. 10 1/2 months to be exact. At church on Sunday we met a couple who had their grand-kids visiting from Edmond! I'm pretty sure I said "cool we just moved here from there!".

I do love it here in our "new" town. I love our new house and our new neighbors. However, I can't help but still miss the way things were. I feel left out when I hear the news of a friend being pregnant, even though I am finding out with everyone else, for some reason being far away makes me feel left out. 

I feel far away and I can tell that my friendships are slipping away. Not in a we aren't friends kind of way, but in a we live far away so we don't see each other kind of way. It is a natural part of moving, I know. It is also one of the harder parts of moving. 

I am thankful for things like email, texting and Facebook, as it helps us stay connected more than if we didn't have those things. However, I sometimes wonder if not having those things would make it easier to part. You know because you wouldn't know about the things that are going on so you wouldn't miss it as much. Maybe not. 

Okay, I better get out of this slump. I have plenty to be thankful for and I need to think on those things.

Here's the story...

Wow, so much has been going on in the life our our little family! God is so good and I am so glad to be his child.

As most of you know, in December of 2012 God moved our family to a new place.  This was not all together unexpected, as my husband had been applying for new jobs for a while. Part of me was thrilled with the news of moving! I was so happy for my husband and so proud of him for getting this job. The other part of me was not that excited. I was going to be leaving my friends and my family and the town that I knew and loved.

From day one of my husband applying for jobs, God had this under his control. If he would have gotten this job when he first started applying I would never have met my friend Lindsey. Lindsey in turn introduced me to several other people and invited us to go to church, where we now call our church home. You see three years ago she was over seas doing mission work.

Moving on though to the most recent of God stories. Several months ago Lindsey messaged me that her parents were going to be selling the house her grandparents use to live in. They wanted to know if we would be interested in buying it. I was very excited, because not only was it in the school district we wanted to be in, but it was super close to Justin's work! So we decided we would take a look at it.

Now I should mention that we had been renting a duplex and had a 12 month lease agreement signed.  In order to leave in good standing we had to wait till 75% of our lease was up before breaking the lease. 

Okay, to continue with the story...

So Justin and I took a look at the house. It was really cute, but in the end we decided it was a little too small for us. We were kind of bummed because we would have loved to live so close to Justin's work and next door to our friends! During this time I really felt like God was telling us to wait till August to do anything about a house. At the time I thought August would have been the 75% mark, but really September was. 

So August 1st came around and I was back on zillow and realtor.com looking for houses. We got a realtor and set up times to go look at houses. I was SO excited. I was really ready to move into our forever home. 

One day in the midst of all of this we had to take our car into the shop to have the breaks replaced. So on that day I took Justin to work. I decided to drive through the neighborhood behind his work (the neighborhood that our friends house was) to get back home. That is when I saw it. This amazingly cute house. I knew that as soon as I got home I would have to look it up. 

And that is what I did, however the sign must have just been put up because there was no evidence of it online. All afternoon I would continue to look, then about 2 pm it finally appeared! I was in love! But the price was over the price we had told our realtor we wanted to spend. I decided I would show Justin anyway and see what he thought. 

To make a long story longer we decided to take a look at it in person. I fell in love even more. Thankfully I have a husband who is smart and thinks things through, because I would have put an offer on it right then and there. But we didn't. We went home, worked out a budget to make sure we could afford it and then after a week we put an offer down. 

They accepted!!! I was SO excited. I truly believe this is the house God had in mind for us when he told me to wait till August, when he had us get our breaks worked on so I had to take Justin to work and drive by it, when he had us turn down the house our friends were selling.  He knew we would end up being in the school district we wanted, be close to Justin's work and have those same friends as neighbors!

I can't wait to see how God is going to use this house to further his kingdom. We are excited to get the process started to become foster parents, we want to be able to host get togethers for church and birthday parties for the boys and host those who need a place to stay! I am just really excited (can you tell?)!!!!

So there you go. That is the story of the House That God Built. God is good all the time and all the time God is good!!! Praise and glory to him forever and ever amen!!

Kansas City, Kansas City her I come...

Have I mentioned lately that I have an amazingly awesome husband? Well I do! This past weekend he let me drive up to Kansas City and visit one of my very dear friends and her family!  That means he spent 4 days taking care of the boys with out any help! I know, I am so blessed to have him. 

I had such a great time getting to visit with my friends the Irwin's. You have heard me talk about them before. Here is her blog. They are the ones who are adopting this sweet boy. 

They are also fostering another little baby boy, whom we will call J. Sorry you won't get to see pictures of him, but you can trust me when I say he is a cutie!

One of the funnest parts of our weekend was getting to go to a place called Country Club Plaza. We walked around, had lunch and shopped. Then Liesl and I got to stay in a hotel and have our Miss America watching party! We got dressed up in our wedding dresses in honor of the event. I know, you want to be as cool as us, but friends I just don't think it is possible. :)