Reflections while waiting for 2010...

So I have about 32min left in the year, and I figure while I wait in a chair, all family sleeping except for me (it wouldn't be as much of a big deal if it weren't for the fact that we are ushering in a new decade) I decided to make the time count and blog about my year in review...

Favorite things I have done:

Lots of surprising Tim and I have done this year. Earlier this year we flew up to New Hampshire to surprise Mom and Ed for their 15 year anniversary and then to my family's house for Christmas just in time for our Christmas Eve get-together. Both were fun events and Tim and I truly enjoy getting together with both of our families and spending time together.

GA/FL game. Game, not so much fun, seeing my beloved Dawgs get pummeled is not easy to take, but playing ultimate Frisbee and getting together with most of the family at Amelia Island and spending some good quality time together is priceless.

Jersey Shore. Too much fun. Different beach, I have never "chilled" at any beach farther north than South Carolina. So, although the water was a bit colder than my body is used to, the Jersey Shore is amazing. Board walk, unforgettable, especially getting to ride our bikes through it during the day. Even on the rainy days, we had fun playing board games or putting together a puzzle. And the food, oh my goodness the food!! Vic's, Kelly's Tavern, Uncle Nick's (just guessing on this one) and an amazing seafood place who's name I cannot think of at this time. These four days were jam packed and we look forward to more of them!

There are more, we spent an amazing week in Houston, so graciously hosted by Tim's Aunt Meg and Uncle Jon. And there is always the Amelia trip, I look forward to reinstating the yearly trip, so much fun relaxing and playing endless games of volleyball with you crazy folks.

Favorite Music that has gotten me through the year:

1. How He loves Us (David Crowder version)

2. Perfect People- Natalie Grant

3. Surely We can Change - David Crowder

4. Give me Your Eyes - Brandon Heath

5. Fifteen- Taylor Swift (oh how I wish she would have been around when I was in middle school!)

6. Words I would Say- Sidewalk Prophets (the whole CD is amazing)

7. Soundtrack to Fireproof - So glad that Stephen and Alex had the courage to put a movie out that spoke so honestly about marriage and its importance.

8. I'm just going to say the WHOLE CD of Church Music by David Crowder, LOVE his lyrics.

Favorite Quote by Pastor Johnny:
"You are going to end up where you are going if you do not change the direction you are heading."

And on that note, here are my goals, a "New Years Resolution" if you will for the new year:

1. Establish total discipline in spending time with the Lord, knowing him not just as my Lord, but more intimately, like a Daddy (Abba)

2. Run two miles. That's it, I'm not going for a marathon here, just two stinkin miles without feeling like I'm going to have a heart attack.

3. Volunteer more at church.

4. Be a better friend. For all those that I let down, you will never tell me because you are amazing people, but unless you live with me, I have probably failed our friendship/relationship in the most terrible way. I want to be a better friend for you next year.

Ok, I think that about covers it, I dwindled the time down to less than 10 minutes until the new year. I can hear fireworks in the background. So, that probably is a good cue to go, but before I do I just want to give a shoutout to the Edfeldts, the Heil family, the McConnell family, and all of those who had a different year in that they lost some very amazing and wonderful people that are dearly missed. We long for Heaven and our great reunion.

So, I can't think of any way to end this than by leaving my favorite verse:
he LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing
Zeph. 3:17

Oh, We got you SO good!

Tim and I pulled a BIG one, I mean huge. We made approximately at least four people cry, in a good way, at Christmas Eve. Yes, we told our family that we would not be able to, under any circumstance, be in GA for Christmas. Fooled you fam! Tim and I had quite the adventure, flying in to Atl in the morning, living at the airport, taking a taxi to the home (only to be confused as he drops us off a whole block before the home) and completely surprising the entire family! Christmas Eve was so amazing, I am so glad God blessed me with a husband that likes to see his wife happy!

I was playing around with snapfish and they have a link where you can see all the picture from our weekend. And once I can e-mail the pictures Tim and I took on his phone from the airport, I can give an update blog and walk you through our day with pictures.

It was an amazing Christmas, I love waking up Saturday morning knowing I was spending Christmas in GA. And once again, I was reminded of what a holy day this was, as this day is the day designated to celebrate God's greatest gift to the earh, Jesus Christ, through Him we have Salavation and the privilege to live for something so much greater than ourselves.

I can use this...

To complain, right? I mean, I know it is mine and Tim's blog, but I run it, sometimes Tim walks by as I am blogging and complains about me blogging and then approves of all I have posted and then walks away. But I feel like I run 99.9% of this sucker, and I should get to use this as an outlet for me. I am much better at writing down my thoughts and feels than talking anyway. So, I will write my complaint.

And it is to complain about me. I wish I was not lazy. I wasn't at one point in my life. In high school, I was a cheerleader into two seasons, when I wasn't at my school gym, I was at another gym practicing, tumbling or something of the sort. I took honors classes, or advanced classes. For goodness sake I took physics my junior year and got a B in the class, that is pretty darn good for not knowing the math that it takes to understand physics!!! I went to college, and got a little more lazy in the beginning. But one semester I took 18 hours and had a job, and I got almost all A's. That is really impressive, at least for me. So the question begs.... WHY AM I SO LAZY!!! I have always worked hard. It kills me to know that my everyday routine is to go to work, come home, and sit around for five hours and then at 10 o'clock at night decide things need to be done...AH! I hate that I am mad at myself right now!! So, I am going to go finish wrapping presents, and try to come to the bottom of my laziness problem. And really, what I really need is prayer. If you guys could pray that God would reveal to me why I have become so slothful (it is a deadly sin). This really is something that affects my marriage (Tim hates laziness, I think it is because he is so Godly) and it is affecting my spiritual life. And as my sister writes about how she runs today, I kick myself because I am getting fatter and I still continue to sit on this couch. Jenn, you are truly an inspiration to me. My future as a mother, a good wife, and servant of God depends on kicking this habit of lazy. I ask for your prayers, not that one day I wake up and all the sudden I am just not lazy anymore, but that God would reveal to me the source of the sin.

That would be helpful, because I really don't want to get fat either. Night!

You better...

Save some time for reading this post, it may take awhile, cause I'm going all the way back...

To October as more fun things happened that I so rudely decided that the world could wait to hear about, (just kidding), but a lot has happened. First, I need to educate those on my husband, Tim. He is a man that LOVES to be connected with others. He loves to "make connections" if you will, and when the Chick-fil-a conference came down to Orlando, Tim could not wait to see the Cathy's and introduce himself, he was so excited to see them, and Bubba is such a hoot, he was handing Tim gifts as he was talking to Tim! But anyway, part of this experience and education about Tim, is that he LOVES planes. Loves them, he still stops talking to me to watch the plane, I have never taken offense to this because I love watching his passion. I honestly do not know how God is going to use that in Tim's life, but God gave Tim that passion, and God will be the one to use that passion to glorify Himself. So moving on, Truett Cathy flew down on his plane, and I have some lovely family members that were kind enough to get Tim "connected" with John Dixon, who was such a great guy, and let Tim take a tour of the plane.

Here is Tim in front of the airplane, this might looke like an ordinary smile, but it is actually his "Iam SO excited smile" trust me, there is a difference.


This picture is blurry, and you can't read the inscription, but Mr. Cathy puts this inscription on his plane, and Tim has stated that he has seen it elsewhere on other vehicles. I honestly can't remember what is says, hopefully Amy will leave a comment stating what it says, but it is basically a reminder to all that these gifts come from God and we are to be good stewards of them. Tim was very blown away and had an awesome experience touring the plane.

Ending our beautiful and exciting month of October was the GA/FL game. April gave a good synopsis of the game: we come, we eat really good food, we go to the game, we lose, we go back to the condo and eat more really good food. The most fun was had playing ultimate Frisbee and jumping into the ocean after than walking out of the Jacksonville stadium ashamed... Some pictures from the event:

Everyone getting ready before the game, hoping to use their "dawgs win celebreation tools." We did not use them...

Us before the game, before I sweated off all my make up and lost my voice yelling. Side note, Jennifer got me that wonderful purse for a Christmas gift, matched my outfit perfectly!

I was quite unhappy with the scoreboard the whole game :(

My first GA game that I attended that got me insanely addicted to UGA was the GA vs Northwestern game. It was a complete blowout, and the stadium was full, but not crazy and packed like this! GA/FL was Tim's first game, which I thought was very cool. But I still want him to go to one "between the hedges" to get the full effect one day!

And, I'm just throwing this one in cause Amy is hilarious!

OK, now we are finally in November, and I think at least my mom knows what that means, MY ANNIVERSARY!! I know two years is not that long, and it is not, Tim and I can't wait to be sitting on rocking chairs holding hands when we are eighty years old. He is still my best friend, I am still my crazy weird self around him, and we have loved getting to live in our own little world here in Orlando. But our anniversary gives us an excuse to go out of town, spend money, and take a long needed vacation. Tim's Aunt Meg and Uncle Jon were kind enough to open their home in Houston to host our gig.

Our first full day there, we went with Aunt Meg to our first dog show. They have the most adorable puppy who is a German Short-Hair that they show. Very cool!

This was just one of the dogs that was a winner, but it is an English Bulldog, and it WILL be our next dog, because I get to pick. They are so adorable :)

Just a couple of people at a dog show, lots of fun!

The next day we went to a mall called The Galleria, it reminded me of Phipps Plaza in Atlanta except it also had an ice-skating rink in it. Did we go ice-skating? Yes! Was I excited? Yes! Until I realized the last time I went ice-skating was OVER ten years ago! Oh crap! Here is what happened:

Me skating around looking like a fool, trying not to fall.

Stop for a fun picture on the ice, see I look like I'm having SO much fun!!

We go back to skating and the only way I would do it is if Tim promised to hold my hand, that is not a "pose" face, that is really sheer terror as I have realized what I got myself into.

I was not holding Tim's hand, I was clinching onto it for dear life.

Did I mention Tim was a pro at skating and had no problems whatsoever, and at one time he skated circles around my clumsy self??? Oh yeah, he's a skating pro! seriously...

The next day was our anniversary day, so we decided to stay at home and relax and go out to dinner that evening. The Vitarious's have a kyak, so Tim and I were discussing about going out on the lake that is in their back yard. It wasn't until I saw that kyak that I realized it was only for one person. Did we try to fit two in it anyway? Yes we did. Aunt Meg told us her daughter goes out on it all the time with her friends, so it should not be any harder for us.

Then Tim and I realized we DO weigh a lot more than two teenage girls. Here is our first try at it, I am in sheer terror, again, because as you can see, this kyak is a little back heavy (don't know why?? jk) and the slightes move of his orr was making the whole thing shake BIG time, that was going to send us tumbling into that VERY cold lake. Luckily, we did get back to the shore to try a different method:

This worked a little better, the kyak was still shaky, but our center of gravity was more in the middle, so it was doable. However, if you can see my legs, they were so pressed against the side of the kyak I lost feeling in the bottom of my shins. We did have fun though, it was quite an adventure.

That night we got dressed up to go to Vic and Anthony's.


I'm kind of upset that we did not take a picture with the food, it was an awesome steakhouse were the meat just melts in your mouth. Amazing. It was recommended to us by a friend and we thanked him for giving us a great place to eat for the evening.

Wednesday, Grammy and Grumpy came into town and unfortuneatly, we did not take any pictures that day (I need to work on that) but it was a fun day of catching up with them and relaxing around the house. Thursday we spent the day at a Museum in downtown Houston, and then went to dinner with one of my friend's, Kim and her boyfriend. That was a fun evening as well, and unfortunately, agian we only took pictures at the museum:

Me and Dinorsaurs.

Tim getting eaten by dinosaurs.

I love faceshots, I do them all the time with Tim. This is us having fun at the Museum.

To be honest with you, we did so much. There was a butterfly garden we went to at the museum (all who know me, know I love butterflies) I took SO many pictures, it is almost too much. We did a lot of relaxing that week, it was actually nice to go on vacation and relax and not be so busy we can't sleep or just lay around. And, I am officially going to have to cut this blog into two because I have pictures of our last adventure which was on Thankgsiving as we tooled around Orlando, with Riley, trying to find the perfect Christmas picture. More to come on that! So I hope you enjoy the catching up, more updates to come later!

Weekend update...

So, I don't have any pictures for this post, but I will leave links so you can click on things and be entertained. First of all, last weekend, Mom and Dad came down to visit. When you come visit me on a long weekend, this is what we do: Saturday we wake up and go to the Winter Park Farmer's Market. What I like to do is get $20 in cash and see how much I can buy for that $20. I always encourage people to buy the fresh squeezed lemonade that is always there, kettle corn (I have eaten a whole large bag by myself), and then I take you to the bakery part of the Market where you can buy Belgian waffles topped with fresh strawberry topping and cheese cake topping (you need at least three people to finish), or the fresh cheesecake "cupcakes" that come in all kinds of flavors from key lime to cookies and cream, SO good. The Market has fresh flowers there that I always think would be great gifts for the "green thumb" members of the family, and that does not include me. Very cool place.

After Farmer's Market, I would lead you to Park Ave just across the street from the Market. There are all kinds of boutiques and fun places to look at different clothes, however, these kinds of places you would buy an "investment" article of clothing, but they are fun nonetheless.

After Park Ave, we would come home and get Riley. Riley cannot come to Winter Park yet because he has not developed manners yet, we are working on that, mostly just waiting for him to grow out of being a puppy. We love taking dogs to Fleet Peeple's Park which is an off leash dog park. That kind of scared mom and dad because there happened to be a higher number of pit bulls at the park that day, but we have never had a negative experience with dogs at the park and most people are good about making their dogs behave, we love it there.

After Riley gets tuckered out, Tim and I like to take people out to "Orlando" restaurants, places that you don't have in your own home town. We do have a number of places we enjoy like, Blackhammock where you WILL try gator tail (good) and the other wonderful seafood selections offered. They also have an alligator exhibit and air boats, its a pretty cool place.

Sunday we bring you to our life group and church, which is always an experience, I like showing off my family to the group, its fun. Sunday's are always a lazy day maybe do some shopping if we didn't do any on Saturday.

So, hopefully mom will post the little pictures we took of the weekend on her post, but it was a fun weekend.

Currently, Tim and I are going to a class on Wednesday nights that focuses on the person not only finding their spiritual gift, but finding how that gift is married to their passions and how you can serve the church with the gift and passions that you have. We first had to take two spiritual gift inventories that Pastor Jimmy himself created with his wife (his ministry in the church is actually helping people find their passion and where to serve in the church) Try is for yourself at jandlministry.com. Very enlightening. I am looking forward to see where God wants me to serve in our church to better his glory. Hopefully I will have an update for you on where that leads in the coming months.

Ok, that's all for the weekend update, wish I had something clever to end this with, but oh well. Love you All!

September

So, so much has happened in September that is has taken me a whole month to think about what I have wanted to blog about. And now for some reason all of my writing is underlined. Due to the fact that blogging confuses me greatly, I will continue because I do not know how to get the underline to go away. Here are some highlights of the month...



September started out with an awesome extended weekend in New Hampshire/New Jersey. We flew into Manchester and spent a whole day with Tim's dad and the model T's driving around Keene. It is actually a very cool experience, you kind of feel like a celebrity, people stopped along the way and waved to us and honked (some good honks, some bad:)) I enjoyed the experience greatly and it was another unique part of Tim's life growing up we got to share together. Ah, the joys of being newly weds and continuing to get to know more about each other...



I don't know how many of you know this, but Tim actually knows how to drive a Model T. With some refreshment courses from Bill, Tim drove us around town in his (that's right, Tim actually has his own Model T that Bill is keeping for him for now) Model T truck.



Next we drove down to New Jersey to vacation a little bit with Kathy, Ed, Uncle Rod and Aunt Lori. While at the Jersey Shore, I was introduced to the fair, I mean the original one. So I partook of the goods and played one of Tim's childhood favorites and played Frog Bogs. I won a BIG FROG. The above picture is a picture of two grown people strategizing about how to win a carnival game... Nice...

This is all of us in front of Kelly's, an extremely authentic Irish tavern that has really good Reubens. I liked the place so much I got a shirt. I can fortell that there will definitely be more Kelly's in my future.

I know this is out of order but I am tired of trying to rearrange pictures on the blog and then having them lost. This is a picture of me in front of the Frog Bog place that I won BIG at the night before. That day we had rented bikes and you can ride through the fair because most of the shops are closed and not as many people are walking around. Fun times!

The next weekend away we spent was in GA due to the fact that Weston was supposed to be born only a couple of weeks earlier, not the day after I left from the last weekend I visited GA. So, I kind of missed my nephews "new born" baby stage, he was about a little over month old by the time we got up there. However, the boy is still so cute, a little grumpy, but very cute. He has an adorable sister, this is me, Emily, and Savannah, I like the pic!

I got the pleasure of assisting in bath time a couple of nights I was there. Those baby blues are SO adorable I cannot resist that child, her Aunt La definitely spoils her rotten!

I like this picture because this is my typical family, busy, organized chaos, and a whole lot of fun, this was our attempt at a Christmas picture, I think we should probably go with the one we took back in July, mostly due to the fact that is that picture all the girls were ready for it!

And finally, a couple of hours before we had to fly back to FL, Uncle David gave me and Tim our first tour of the Chick-Fil-A corporate building. For those of you who don't know, Uncle David is an awesome tour guide and is extremely informative about everything in the world, especially Chick-fil-a (one time I interviewed him for a term paper and with all the info I was given by him, not only did I get an A on the paper, but the professor wanted me to do more research on it for him!) This is Tim and I in Truett Cathy's office, very cool, really does feel like a tree house.

And last but certainly not least is us infront of the famed Batmobile that Mr. Cathy bought a long time ago. I think it looks cooler in person. We couldn't touch, but the pic is great.



So, here was September in a nutshell, lots of great memories and I am glad I got this one over with so I can blog about my other topics I have been thinking about!! ha!

My Jericho Progect

So lately, I have been reading through the book of Joshua and about all the many battles that took place in order to take the land of Canaan, the future home of Israel. And as I am reading through this, I am just now realizing, through all my years of Sunday School and Bible class with Mr. Bowman (home school teacher) and all my other Bible teachers, that taking this land did not happen over night after they took Jericho, it took quite some time. However, God was trying to teach them an important lesson beginning with Jericho.

You all know, that at Jericho, the only instructions for war, beside walking around the giant city a millions times (I'm sure it felt like that to them) was to shout, but not to shout a war cry, but a shout of praise to God, for HE had GIVEN them the city. They were crying victory before the war even began!! And then God handed them the city, almost gift wrapped it for them. And as I kept reading throughout Joshua, when the Israelites had to continue to fight to win there inheritance, Joshua reminded them over and over that it was not going to be a battle, God had already PROMISED them the land, the battle was mostly just a test of faith for the people, almost a technicality. What is even more interesting is, as I am reading I am just realizing that the Canaanites were not small villages that were in the beginning steps of forming a more sophisticated government. These were highly militarized, big states (kingdoms, as the Bible calls it). And even though they had such technology as iron chariots, Joshua continued to contend that God can take them, just show up for the battle!

So, through reading this, I am realizing there needs to be some application. We all have Jericho's, you can call them what you want, your "Giant," "Goliath", "Mountain"..etc. But the key is to praise God for the victory no matter what the circumstance and how crazy it is. I like to think of Tim and I's situation as a Jericho because we do have a promised land waiting for us, no more college loans! So as we are coming up through different obstacles, waiting on the Lord, and looking into the future, I am challenging myself to praise God for all the victories that are coming ahead and hope that it will not take us as long as it took Israel to take our promised land by storm, hopefully I can practice more faith in God for victory... to be continued...

Let me muse over this...

So, this week was crazy with so many different stories, and of course, I have a million different thoughts about each different event. First I will start out with my sister, Jennifer, had my nephew, or her son mainly. I am so happy and sad at the same time. This beautiful baby comes (two days after I left town, my theory is that its because he wanted to see me so bad he came four weeks early) and as I am joyous for this blooming family, my heart cries because I miss you all SO much. I don't know if anyone caught on, but when I was visiting last weekend I stopped myself from crying at least 100 times. :) So congrats my lovely sister for popping the little guy out!

My week at work was mainly uneventful besides calling my mom all day on Wed. to check up with Jen, and the weekend had come so quickly. Tim is now back to having Sat. and Sun. off with me which means two things: 1. I am happy again and 2. We will travel. This weekend we went to Wekiwa Springs Park. And we decided that we should do a 1.9 mile hike to a place called Sand Lake, with a five month old (Riley). When we finally reached this "Lake" it was more like a pond. We thought we would be able to swim. No. It had alligators. I will post the pic's of this tiny place and our exhausted dog later. Did I mention the dog was foaming at the mouth because we hiked in the middle of a Florida afternoon in August? Not, quiiiiittte smart, however, my amazing husband did pack water, so we were at least mostly hydrated for our total 4 mile hike.
P.S. I have several mosquito bites the size of softballs (Tim had zero).

So, next weekend, we will do another adventure, maybe to a more dog-friendly place where we can let the poor canine off the leash, I keep you updated on our new adventures. All, in all, the weekend was good and now I'm tired, and I start the week over.

Dear Lord,
I know you are always with me, but let me feel the power of your presence to comfort me when I feel like I can't keep going!

My day in court

So, in my job I occasionally have to go to court. Most days in court are boring. Judge asks me questions, attorneys are asking me questions because they cannot remember the cases, parents are trying to look better than they are, their attorneys are trying to make them look better than they are, and then we all go home. Occasionally though, some parents will ask for a trial as they deny all allegations against them. And that is where all the action happens... ALL of the action, I mean people will go straight Jerry Springer during trials. So, anyway, I had a trial today, and the best part was that mother hired an attorney. Why is that important, you ask? Because most people who are in Dependency court qualify for court appointed attorneys, and they do a really good job. Plus, if the allegations are not true against you, the case will be dismissed based on evidence, not what type of attorney you have. My rule of thumb is, in Dependency, if the parent feels like they need to hire an attorney, they did something wrong.
So, today, we go to court. The State of Florida's attorney is Jill. Jill my kind of person, and by that I mean she is messed up and she knows it. Jill takes a smoke break every time she goes outside. Jill is getting married to make her fiance's rich family happy. She is letting her rich mother-in-law to be plan her wedding. She doesn't see the point in being married, she's in her fifties and already been married twice, but it doesn't make a difference to her, she's pretty laid back like that. When Jill goes up to ask questions she takes her time and reads over her notes. Sometimes her voice shakes when she talks, it makes me wonder if she still gets excited/nervous about being a lawyer. She makes me think she is like me, she probably replays arguments she gets into with people back in her head and thinks of different things to say after the fight.
The CPI is an awesome black lady, creole really, she's around my age. She is thorough, and her hair looks amazing, when I touched it without thinking she didn't slap me, she smiled, which makes me like her more.
The Judge is a female Judge. She has been known to hate DCF, she held one of my former co-workers in contempt of court once. She has been known to chew case managers up and spit them out. She is intimidating, but she smiled at me several times this morning, and that puts me a little at ease.
The mother's private attorney is annoying. He has a high pitch voice and has objected to every question Jill asked this morning. At one point, I thought the judge would just tell him to shut up already, she over-ruled most of his objections, but I mean, if he is getting paid $250 - $500/hr, I would hope he would put up at lead 100 objections no matter how stupid (and most of them were) they are.
The morning went very slow, we only got a few witnesses in, an although I could not get to speak, I had to sit there to be the client for the attorney... Long day..
Jill takes me and the CPI to lunch, you probably do not know how cool that is, but let me just tell you, that is cool. Most attorneys have nothing good to say to you, let alone talk to you outside of court. Jill bought me lunch, it was a business lunch, but in my opinion it counted. At lunch we went over the CPI's testimony. Jill fulfilled my life long dream, she asked me to be her unofficial co-counsel, to make sure she does not skip anything in the CPI's testimony, she says "I'm good". I am more than excited, this has made my day. I make an outline and some notes for myself, Jill likes them so much she takes them to the stand with her... we sit there the whole day and analyze the mother's attorney's witnesses and crack knowing smiles at each other. Mom has not been the best mother, at all. This type of thing has excited me, it had made me breath heavier and makes my fingers tingle, I am loving every second of making argument points and talking between the CPI and attorney. Hoping the Judge sees it as plainly as we are, but there will be no decision made today in regards to the case. Finally, court is dismissed until tomorrow and I am a case manager again, no more co-counsel... Ah, until the next time I get to go to trial...

On the Job...

I was in a trailer park today looking for one of my children that has runaway. (Do not ask me about this case, I don't have anything good to say about it, yet) and as I was trying to locate a residence and talk to the people inside of it, a nice older man approaches me. The man is wearing a wife beater and shorts holding a cup with a "clear liquid" inside of the cup. The "clear liquid" certainly could have been water, but due to the man's lack of inhibitions and slurred speech, I believe it to be something else. The man walks up to me and proceeds to ask how he can help me (as if he the "the man" for the job) and then proceeds to hit on me, two of my favorite lines, as followed:

"Why are you not used to the heat, you are so hott!"...

me: (awkward) thanks... ( mother always said to say thank you whenever someone gives you a compliment)

"You know, if you asked me to marry you, even if I was blind, right now, I would say yes"

me: (awkward) Ok, thank you, I need to go, have a good day...

I. Love. My. Job...

Because I know you've been dying to know...

I will give quick update of our fun summer and its not even half way over yet!

At the end of June, we went to Amelia Island, the highlight of the week for me was sitting around the camp (no camp fire at least for this trip:)) and eating as we go on the many grilles! My sisters, Jen and Emily, did an amazing job of food prep, you girls are awesome, us Turners and Bounds' know how work as a team when it comes to preparing and eating food!

This is my niece, Savannah, I feel sorry for my kids, cause I don't know if they will be as cute as her, honestly!! haha! She's a firecracker of a child, such great personality, knows how to pose for a camera, and calls me LaLa, love her!!

Then comes fourth of July and celebrating our independence. Tim and I joined our amazing LifeGroup at one of our friends house for a home-made fire works show. And yes, there were duds in the bunch, and yes they did explode almost less then ten feet away from where we were standing. This is me and Ginger's (one of my good friends in the LifeGroup) reenactment of what we looked like after the explosion in our faces...

Finally, a couple of weeks ago (maybe two? they are running together so far) Tim called me and told me about some ducks that had been run over by a car. Only one survived, and we owned it for about an hour before an animal place told us they would take the duck. I kind of wish we could have kept it, I like the idea of having a small farm of animals...

And for your entertainment viewing, this it Tim, the ONLY husband that would hold the roman candles as they were supposed to shoot FORWARD, except for the dud he had gotten that shot backward, AT. HIM. I choose my battles wisely, this was one for some reason I chose not to fight, probably because I did not want to get shot by a firecracker...

Puppy Love

So, as it is with all new puppies, we are now having to weigh our options for obedience school. Our adoption place highly recommended so, and now that Riley is getting comfortable with using our apartment as his own personal chew toy, obedience classes look like a good idea.

But the one thing that I am conflicted about, is the beauty that I find in this little guy, NOT being perfect. I kind of think its funny when he plays tug of war with me when he is on a leash and I am taking him for a walk. I like it that he is the only dog at the obedience intro class that barked and whined the entire time because he wanted to play with the other dogs. I just love his little rebelousness, I find it endearing. So, we probably will do obedience school for the dog, but part of me hopes he won't stay obedient all the time...

When two people love each other very much...

And want to start a family, but can't because they want to wait to get a house and can't get a house because they have heinous amounts of college loan debt... They GET A DOG!!!

This is Tim, making sure that the cage we bought for the dog is not too big, and yes he did go all the way inside to check...

The adoption place calls him Mookie, but we will probably rename him, probably with something to do with aviation, because that is how we roll here.

If you have any name suggestions, we are open!!

He already knows to smile for the camera!!

I know he looks bewildered here, but he had a long day, and he is still shocked from leaving his home. And yes, I know he is not a dachshund or a beagle, please try to forgive us for stepping out! But we love him and you should come down to see him, with your puppy (ies)!!

A Brilliant Weekend

You might be wondering why I labeled this weekend a "brilliant" one since we (and that I mean, the state of Florida) rained, in fact it rained so much, we have had record breaking rain without need of a Hurricane. Terrific! However, I believe it was a brilliant weekend for the following:

1. We got to spend Saturday, first shopping with my sister, which I bought three pairs of shoes, and then I got to share with my wonderful sister one of my favorite stores. I was delighted to find that no only did she like the store, she loved it, so I get to share some shopping love with my sister.

If you could just ignore my facial expression, the outfit my sister is wearing is one she bought, I love it, but much more, I love her and shopping with her!

2. We then went to Lake Eola which I rarely get to do, especially with my husband and others. It was fun, and we saw probably the biggest swan, EVER. I almost wish Savannah would have been here to look at the Quack Quack, but I think she would have freaked. When this swan "honked" it sounded like a fog horn, no lie.

As you can see, it was probably the size of a 3-5yr old? Well, anyway, it was large, and I kind of felt sorry for it, due to there being no other large swan playmates for it.

I was not going to volunteer to be the swan's playmate... just photographer.

3. We did the Great Date Experiment with Jennifer and Joey, they blogged about it very much more in detail, so I will let you read my sister's blog to get the full experience.

4. My final point, but maybe my most "brilliant" point of the weekend, was Sunday school. I have an amazing teacher who loves the Lord, and might be related to us somehow because he cries when he starts to talk about what the Lord has done in his life, and if anyone comes to the Bounds/Turner Christmas Eve party, there is some cryin going on in "share time." But I digress, so we were talking... well, let me rephrase that, here is what I got out of the lesson, because I stopped listening to the teacher at one point, due to God starting to talk to me at another. We read a piece of scripture where the Lord is talking to Moses, and Moses says, "Who shall I say sent me?" And the Lord replied, "I AM that I AM sent you." And I mean, I've grown up in church and for some reason, that phrase stuck with me, this Sunday. And I think it is because I get now how much that really means. God is an exsisting state of EVERYTHING, He is constantly, continually, forever it. I will give some examples (as a disclaimer, these are just some that came to my head, not all of them are exactly for me, they could be examples for you!)

Lord, I'm hurting right now I need a comforter! I AM your Comfort.
Lord, I'm broke and in need of finances, I need provision! I AM your Provider.
Lord, I am sick and I need healing! I AM your Healer.
Lord, I am discouraged, I need encouragement! I AM your Encourager.
Lord, I feel like a failure, I need you! I AM right here Always.

The list goes on, what aspect, what kind of God do you need??? He is perpetually everything you need constantly, He has literatlly never changed. God knew that Moses was going to present himself to a people that had been crying out to the Lord for 500 years or so. God was saying, he was there for them, He IS there for them, and He will always be there for them. When the people were crying out, Lord are You there? His answer through Moses was I AM.

I wish I could convey how deeply touched I was by the Lords message. Mainly because I feel like a failure a lot, and I wonder many times if he sees me struggling, plodding, falling down, wishing, dreaming, and praying my way through my faith (or unfaith at some moments, to be honest) And His answer came Sunday, not in a whisper but in a definate unshakable answer of: I DO see you, I AM Here. Just Brilliant.

Mike and Noelle's Wedding

Wow, what a week! I am so excited for Mike and Noelle, they are now officially happily married and our wonderful group is completely married, which makes me happy to see us all start out and finish together. So, there are truly a million pictures of the wedding, unfortunately since I was in the wedding I forgot to get my camera to George and Mema so there are none of the ceremony. It was a great ceremony. Here are some pic's of before and after with some captions, below:

Here is a picture of where they got married, it is an old southern mansion (plantation??) call the Bragg-Mitchell. They were married on the steps, beautiful southern charm!

That's me and one of my good friends, Abby Zito, I miss her and it was so great to be a bridesmaid with her at the wedding.

The man and woman of honor, practicing their vows, and looking oh so in love!!

My two best friends, I love these girls and miss them like crazy!!

She looked absolutely stunning, and was glowing, one of the most beautiful bride's I've seen!

Here we all are! We did it, we all dated and married, and are now looking forward to more adventures together in the future!!

I just wanted to share with you guys my wonderful week, I know most of you guys don't know Noelle and Jacque, but they are truly some of my closest friends and it was such a blessing to get to be a maid of honor in both of their weddings. And for those of you dying to know, I did not throw up during my speech, it went over well, but my hands did shake!!