June Fun

We were able to attend our younger niece Karissa's 5th grade graduation ceremony.  We found out about it at the last minute, but thankfully Chad & I were able to go into work a little late so we could be there.  Here are some pictures from her graduation:




We were also able to attend the birthday party for Braden and Katie - the kids of our good friends Becca and Jason. Braden turns 4 in July and Katie turned 2 in June. Luckily their party was the night before we left for vacation so we were able to squeeze that in and start our vacation off with a great birthday party. Here are some pictures from that evening:

May Bird and Cat Pictures

Here are some pictures from our bird feeder and of the cats from the month of May.  We finally had a goldfinch come visit and we've had lots of cardinals come by which makes me very happy!

Sandy looking cute sleeping behind the blanket basket.

Roxy looking out the sun room windows.

Dating, Wedding, and Honeymoon old pictures

I was inspired by our 12 year wedding anniversary to pull out some old pictures and scan them onto our computer.  I can't believe it's been 12 years that we've been married and looking back at the pictures from when we were dating we look like babies!  Here are some pictures of us when we were dating, from our wedding (mostly candid shots that friends took), and from our honeymoon in Prince Edward Island, Canada:


Pictures from when we were dating



Pictures from our wedding at the Latimer House in downtown Wilmington, NC



Pictures from our honeymoon in Prince Edward Island, Canada

12 Year Wedding Anniversary

This April Chad & I have been married for 12 years!  I still can't believe it's been that long.  We decided to just stay home this year and not go away for our anniversary.  We went to eat at the Cheesecake Factory and Chad got me a beautiful Tommy Hilfiger bracelet.  I'm getting him a new ipod since I accidentally washed his in the washing machine a few months ago.  We also took a trip to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC.  I hadn't been to that zoo since I was a teenager.  Honestly, it was just OK.  The Asheboro Zoo is MUCH, MUCH nicer and I would definitely recommend it over Riverbanks.  We did have a good time though and it's always cool to get to see lots of animals.  The best part was when we went to the Galapagos tortoise area and two of the tortoises had recently had 5 babies - these were the FIRST live birth Galapagos tortoises in the zoo's history!  So, it was really cool to get to see that.  And there was a nice walking trail through some woods to get from the zoo to the botanical garden and we really enjoyed that part too.  Here are some pictures from our Riverbanks Zoo visit:

Hoping and Praying...

We've gone back and forth over the past few years about whether to try to sell our house or try to keep it as an investment and rent it out.  We've met with realtors a few times and even gone to look at other houses, but always decided to just wait a little longer.  So, now we've finally decided to put it on the market!  We are really hoping and praying that it sells soon and we can FINALLY get into a house with a yard and a garage.

Since we decided to put our house on the market we ended up planting flowers in our newly renovated garden beds.  I will REALLY miss our garden this year, but it's a small sacrifice to get closer to having a house where we can really garden on a much larger scale.

Cardinals are BACK!!!

A few months ago I decided to buy some "better" birdseed from Petsmart for my bird feeder.  Well, apparently none of my birds liked it because only Mockingbirds were eating it!  So, I finally gave away that "better" birdseed and got some from Lowe's.  We had Cardinals come by sometimes before and I wanted to try to draw them back so I got the "songbird Cardinal mix" and it worked!  Here are some of the pictures of Mr. & Mrs. Cardinal that I've taken in the last week or two.

Easter @ Verizon 2012

This is the 4th year our church has had our Easter service at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.  We now have multiple physical locations (our main campus, 2 local satellite campuses, and even a location in the UAE) so it's really cool to see a location as big as Verizon be used for a church service.  This year Chad & I volunteered at one of the water stations.  Meck sold water bottles for $1 each (cheapest thing you'd EVER buy at Verizon!) to support the Mission trips that Meck sponsors each year.  I'm really glad we were able to volunteer and it was a lot of fun.  We got to meet some other members and we were still able to experience the service, just from a little further away (we were in the lawn area).  I told Chad that I think we should make it a new tradition to serve in some way for the Easter service at Verizon.  Every regular service requires hundreds of volunteers, but to pull off having a service at Verizon requires even more volunteers, so I think it would be a fun new tradition for us.  Here are some pictures from Meck's Easter @ Verizon service this year:

Back Yard Re-Design

Since we live in a townhouse we try to make the best with our tiny back yard.  For the past 2 years we've had 3 raised beds where we grew vegetables during the spring and summer.  This year we decided to make some changes since the back bed (against the house) just didn't get enough sunlight.  So, we expanded one of our other beds into a larger bed and turned the bed against the house into an extended patio area.  Here are some pictures of before, during, and after our re-design:

Sandy & Roxy's "New" Bed

Sandy & Roxy love it when my Mom comes to stay with us because we pull out the futon into a bed and they love having a "new" bed to sleep on!

March 2012 Wilmington Trip

When my Mom comes back to NC I always try to take time off work so we can spend time together.  Chad & I went to Wilmington for a quick weekend trip to visit my Mom and Grandmother.  The weather was absolutely incredible too - upper 70's or low 80's and sunny.  It was abnormal for March, but we definitely enjoyed it!  We were only there a few days and mostly just hung out with my Mom and Grandmother, but here are a few pictures from our trip:

Hickory Grove Library

I worked at the old Hickory Grove library location from June 2001 - September 2003.  In 2010 they finally opened a new building, which they had been promising since I was working there!  The new building is beautiful and the staff area is bigger than the whole library was at the old location.  Here are some pictures of the old and new Hickory Grove library:

Georgia side trips

On the way down to and home from Florida for my cousin's wedding we stopped in Georgia to break up the trip.  On the way down we stopped overnight in Savannah, GA.  We didn't have time to really do much, but it was very pretty and I'd love to go back for a longer trip.  Here are our pictures from Savannah:




On the way home we spent the night in St. Simon's Island GA, and other than having to go over a HUGE bridge it was so beautiful there. We were able to stop by the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on the way home, but I'd love to go back there too. Here are our pictures from St. Simon's Island:

Florida Wedding

My cousin Davy got married on March 3, 2012 in Melbourne, FL.  Chad & I were able to go down and be there for the wedding.  My Mom and Grandmother came too, so it was kind of a mini family reunion.  The weather was beautiful and it was really nice seeing everyone.  The last time we had been to FL was in 2006 when my other cousin Phillip got married, so it had been awhile since we'd been down there.  Here are some pictures from the wedding weekend.

Here are some of the pre-wedding pictures: 

The wedding ceremony: 

The wedding reception: 

The day after the wedding was overcast and much cooler, but the water was still so pretty. 

There were also 2 weddings held at the hotel where we stayed and we noticed this guy across the courtyard from our room. It looks like he had a pretty rough night!

New Bird Seed

I had been buying a giant bag of bird seed at BJ's that was their generic brand.  I wanted to try to attract more cardinals and goldfinches to my feeder, so I decided to buy some "nicer" more expensive bird seed at Petsmart.  But, apparently the only birds that like the "better" seed are mockingbirds - which I don't like because they are mean birds who constantly harass other birds.  Then, recently I finally saw some other birds at the feeder - I hurried to get some pictures since I was so happy to see something other than mockingbirds out there!  Hopefully they'll come back so I can use up the rest of this "better" seed and go back to the BJ's brand that attracted lots of different birds.

Sweet Sandy

Recently Sandy has been very affectionate with Chad.  He thinks it's because she knows he's the one who usually gets out the mouse laser pointer to play with her, but she is just a very sweet cat.  Recently after dinner when we're relaxing on the couch she will go over to his side and climb all over him giving him head-butts and purring.  Then when she's done she'll lay down on the arm of the couch for awhile.  It's so cute and I was finally able to get some pictures with my phone.  Here are a few pictures of Sandy being especially sweet.

Valentine's Day

This year Chad & I celebrated Valentine's Day early because I had to work until 8pm on Valentine's Day.  But, like I told one of my co-workers we probably would have still celebrated early even if I didn't have to work that night because we're an old married couple who likes to avoid crowds!  While we do celebrate Valentine's Day we don't make a big deal over it - we usually just go out to dinner somewhere nicer and exchange cards or maybe a small gift.  I don't need a holiday to show my love to Chad I go home to the love of my life every day!  Here is a picture of us before we went out for our early Valentine's Day celebration.

January & February 2012 Cat Pictures

Here are some cute pictures of Sandy & Roxy to start of 2012!

Sandy sleeping among all our Christmas decorations before they were put back in the attic.

Sandy inside the cat's new cube bed.

Roxy keeping Chad warm on the couch.

Sandy cuddling with Chad upstairs on the futon.

Top 10 Books of 2011

This year was a record year of reading for me, I read 87 books in 2011!  Here are my top 10 picks - these are not necessarily books published in 2011, just books I read this year.  Here is my list:

Fiction

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jo Jo Moyes
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Non-Fiction

The Pioneer Woman by Ree Drummond
The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn
A Secret Gift by Ted Gup
Animal Factory by David Kirby
A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres

2011 Totals

At the beginning of this year I made it a goal to see if I could save even more money with coupons by being more strategic.  I signed up for the Harris Teeter and Lowe's Foods e-mail ads that way I could check the ads each week and combine the sales with my coupons.  This takes only a little extra time each week to look through these online ads and it's made a BIG difference in how I shop.  Now instead of deciding what to eat each week and buying what I need for those meals I buy what is on sale and what I have coupons for and then base our meals on what we already have at home.  I still have to buy milk and vegetables, but this has changed how I shop for groceries.

So, this year we saved $1597.04 with coupons!  This is almost $400 more than last year so I think my new way of shopping has definitely made a difference!


Our 2011 Garden Harvest totals:

4 yellow squash plants = 37 squash
4 zucchini plants = 22 zucchini
2 cucumber plants = 7 cucumbers (we had a problem with some worm eating all our cucumbers)
2 lima bean plants = 28 pods
2 kidney bean plants = 25 pods
5 okra plants = 318 pods = 18 bags of cut and breaded okra

Christmas Reflections

This Christmas season I was reminded of something we don't often focus on - how God purposely uses "lowly" people to shine through.  First my church did a series in December leading up to Christmas called "The Mother of God" that focused on the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Most people are familiar with the nativity story and as someone who grew up going to church it's easy to overlook things and just remember a familiar story.  I learned a few things I didn't know from this series, like the fact that Joseph probably took Mary with him to Bethlehem to spare her from the gossiping since she was pregnant before they were officially married.  Also, that the part in the story where the shepherds follow the star and visit Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus would not have been a good thing - in that day shepherds were considered the lowest class of people and they were not even allowed to testify in court, so their visit would have been seen by most people of that time as something bad.  I also learned that when Joseph and Mary took Jesus to be presented in the temple after 30 days they were so poor that they had to get special permission from the priests to sacrifice a pair of doves instead of the typical lamb.

This reminded me that God does everything for a reason and every aspect of Jesus' birth was done to make a point.  In Isaiah Jesus' birth is prophesied and he is described as "...[having] no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account." (Isaiah 53: 2b-3).  God did all of this purposely because if Jesus came from a wealthy family or royalty then the common people wouldn't be able to relate to Him at all.  People would say He was who He was because of a privileged background, but He came to lift up the broken and humble the mighty.  If He came from a family that was "something" that would have been the focus not God.  One of my favorite verses is 2 Corinthians 12:9 that says "My grace is sufficient for you; my strength is made perfect in weakness."  If God used strong, powerful people to fulfill His will people might not see God in it, but when He uses weak, lowly, despised people it is obvious that something beyond that person is at work.

The second thing that reminded me of all this was an annual Christmas concert that my church hosts called "Behold the Lamb of God" which was written by Andrew Peterson.  Chad & I have gone to this concert for 6 years now and every year I'm reminded of how powerful it is.  Andrew Peterson basically decided to write a Christmas concert that really focused on Jesus.  He starts in the Old Testament and the prophecies about the Messiah who was to come and goes all the way through the birth of Jesus.  Not only is Andrew Peterson and the other musicians who join him extremely talented, but the songs and the perspective of the Christmas story is very powerful and moving.  This has become one of my favorite Christmas traditions.

So the combination of this series at church and the "Behold the Lamb of God" concert just really reiterated to me how God does everything for a reason and it's all to try to bring us to Him.  One of my friends recently posted a quote on Facebook from a Penn Jilette book that was talking about how if every religion was wiped out with no trace it would never be recreated the same again - more nonsense might be created, but not the exact same nonsense, whereas if all the scientific discoveries were wiped out science is true so it would eventually be rediscovered.  While I agree that "religion" does not always represent God well, I don't agree that anything to do with God is nonsense.  God has been revealing Himself to us since the beginning of time and He will continue to do so.  Humans tend to screw things up even with the best of intentions, but that doesn't mean that God isn't real.  There are so many layers to God that we'll never be able to comprehend with our small human minds.  But, yet He is always there showing us that He is at work in our lives and everything down to the smallest detail was done for a purpose.