Destin turns 2

My brother's baby turned 2 in November. Below is the cake Britt made and Destin blowing out the candles - as best he could! HA!




Destin's train set from his mom and dad.

Daddy and Destin

Brent builds a fence

This is Brent adding on to the fence!

Here are the last pictures of Hurley and Cody together. :(

What did we do in October?

We went to a costume birthday party for two guys in our church who were turning 50. It was a fun night!

Brent was very proud of his red-neck wrestling costume!

Ashes had an Apple Dipping Party! I got the idea from my friend Sandra! It was so fun!

We had a blast! We also talked about how God wants us to be warrior princesses for Him.

I love these girls - they are so much fun!

Shannon's apple had everything on it. This is her trying to eat it! :)

For those who don't know - Ashes is a girl's Bible study we do at church.

We had Fall Bon-fire
at the Angle's house.

We went to Youth Quake.

The pictures tell it all.

Cold, wet, and crowded! Yet a bit fun! :)

October was pretty busy! (plus I left my camera at mom's or Britt's and I did not get it back till yesterday.)

Video at the bottom

Brent went to Houston this weekend to NEHBC where our friend Tim is the youth minister. The video at the bottom of the page is a highlight of the weekend, from Tim's blog. Check out Tim's blog and the great ministry he and his wife, Sharon are apart of!

So I had to put the video at the bottom of the page b/c I can't figure out how to put it in a normal post. Sorry.

Orphan Sunday

Today is National Orphan Day! And Brent was asked to preach - well not because it was this day, it just happend to be that MJ was out of town. But I thought it was a neat circumstance. :)
I think God makes cool details happen like that.

Also we finished our fund-raiser of selling Boston Butts for our adoption. It was so great! Our goal was to sell 100! I knew it could happen, I was just wondering if it would, and IT DID!!! YAY PRAISE THE LORD!!
Actually, the cut off was 96 because of the way we had to cook them, but some people gave more than just the price we set for the boston butt, so we raised as much as if we had sold 100 and maybe a few more! We are so excited! We can almost pay for our entire home study! This is a great encouragment to us! Especially since the last fund-raiser was a wash - literally too -haha -it rained that day. We almost wanted to give up on everything and move back to Texas!!

But perhaps it did not go well because we had not yet changed our adoption back to Peru.
We are so excited about adopting from Peru. It's so right. I just know it!

We have future fund-raisers planned for January - April. Please pray for the Lord to prompt people to give. We cannot do this without the Lord or without others giving for a sweet child in Peru! But God never starts something that He does not finish, so I just have to be patient - which really stinks. I'm no good at being patient.

But back to Orphan Sunday. His Voice for Sudan is a non-profit that our friends Vernon and Amber have been blessed to start some orphanages there.

Here are the links for their sites:
http://www.vimeo.com/1875783 - this is a great video that Amber made.

http://www.hisvoiceforsudan.com/-this has all the info you need about Vernon and Amber's non-profit, plus videos and pictures.

http://www.hisvoiceforsudan.blogspot.com/-this is their running blog. It is fun and current!

These past two weeks.......

Brent did a funeral this week. Very sad.

Matthew 11:28-30: "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

The week really did not get much better in the fact that someone shot our puppy, Hurley. Point blank, in the face. His whole right side of his face was gone. In broad daylight. At the stop sign by our house, Brent was outside with them. We know it was one of our neighbors. Which one is a mystery. But neither of our neighbors like us. I think the feeling is mutual. Poor Hurley. He was not even a year old. So sweet and friendly. Loved to play chase and tug-of-war and run crazy around the house with Cody and toss a ball in the air. Cody did live. He came streaking back to the house after the shot was fired. Brent had to take Hurley off and get rid of him all by himself. I was at work. That night Cody curled up in our closet and only came out once to go outside and then straight back to the closet. We took him to the vet the next day. He had small pieces of shrapnel in him. But he got a bath there and is much better. All though it is sad, because Cody keeps looking for Hurley to come home.

We've been doing a Bible study on Anger in our sunday school class. And it has come at a good time. Probably because of me. Obviously shooting our dog made me very angry, but there are other situations in recent weeks that just make me so angry too, so apparently I need to learn to deal with my anger! :) There are three different ways people handle their anger by Stewing, Spewing and Solver. I'm a spewer and Brent is more a stewer! HA! What a combination! But it is a really good study.

Maybe next week will be better.

New this month:

We decided (finally) to head back to Peru for our adoption.

Brent's mammow is getting married today.

I am reading Job in my time with the Lord. It's interesting.

Earlier this month......

Ryder turned 2. He received ducks for his birthday from Brent and April. Seriously. Brent even made a duck house!

We had our 5 year anniversary. Now about that. When I was younger - I mean as in a teenager, I thought that when you had been married for 5 years that that was a very long time - in today's world it actually is a long time, but I apparently thought that you had a job or jobs that paid a lot of money and you could take a "second honeymoon" or travel to a very fancy place such as Hawaii, Europe if you were really lucky. I have no idea from who or where I got that idea, but it is so not true in our life. So our very fancy place turned out to be Nashville. We returned to the scene of the crime - the Parthanon on Vanderbilts' campus - this where Brent proposed to me. It was a bit crazy in Nashville. There was a came at Vandy later that day and the Celebration of Cultures festival was going on. It was pretty interesting. We had good time walking around the park and seeing the different cultures. We ate lunch at place Brent discovered when he and Tim went to Nashville for a youth minister's conference.

We will finish our homestudy on Tuesday! WHAT?!?! That's exciting! But there are probably going to be some changes in our adoption. The Lord has been doing somethings and I've been thinking and Brent and I have been talking. So we will see on Tuesday. Just pray. I am not the best deciphering what to do. I am as James describes as "a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind." But I'm pretty confident in these changes. So updates will come!

GivMusic: Bluetree - God of this City

Well just let me tell you that Depot Days was downright depressing. The one bright spot in the day came at 5:30 in the morning (and no, it was not the sun!), a former church member gave us enough money to finish our the cost of our homestudy. This was after he graciously helped us put up our tent in the pouring rain too! Other than that the whole day was a wash, literally. It rained all day long. We finally packed up at 2:30. We actually weren't supposed to pack up till 5 and not bring the truck in to get our stuff till 7, but seriously, some rules were meant to be broken. We desperately missed our friends in Texas that day too. So needless to say, I was very glad when it was time to go to bed at 8:45! (we got up at 4:15am!).
There a semi-funny part in that I'm pretty sure that the angels that were supposed to attract people to our tent got confused and stood by the tent in front of us, because the lady in front of us never had a dull moment, there was crowd at her tent even before 8:00 offically came! I think for about 30 minutes, during lunch, there might have been a small lull! So funny.


But this is the excitment of the week! Our friends have received their referral from Nepal! I think their baby boy will possibly be coming home with them around Christmas! You can read the excitment for yourself on her blog: www.achairtospare.blogspot.com
There is also an amazing detail that can only be worked out by the Lord in her blog. So check it out!

Our last homestudy visit is coming up in about three weeks. And then I don't know what to expect.

Coming up.....

Our second meeting for our home study is coming on Wednesday! And Brent and I are having a booth at Depot Days! haha!!! We might not make much money, I think it's going to be fun.

What if Starbucks marketed like a church?

I just saw this video. It's hilarious! It's called what if Starbucks marketed like a church.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7_dZTrjw9I

Grocery Lists

So today Brent and I switched places. He has pink eye. So I am speaking tonight at church and came to his office to get some things in place and he went to Wal-Mart for me. And as I was making a list I though how funny the differences are when I make a list for me and this one for him. Now don't get me wrong Brent is a good grocery shopper, but you know you just like certain brands, right, so I wanted to make sure he got the same brands. Here is a sample similar to what I wrote:

List for me:

Milk
Water
Toilet paper
ALL
Meat
Juice
Light bulbs

List for Brent:
Milk
Water - 2 gallons, green label
Toilet paper - charmin, red
ALL - clothing detergent (white bottle)
Ground chuck beef or ground round
Apple juice
Peach-Mango V8 fusion juice (yellow)
Light bulbs - 4 pack

Maybe not as funny to you, but i kept writing all the specifics down! Haha!!

Latest Letters

These are the latest letters I have done:

Jodi is having Brittlee next week!

And of course Charleigh's were done earlier in the summer:

My new favorite song.....

We will sing, sing, sing
And make music with the heavens
We will sing, sing, sing Grateful that You hear us When we shout your praise
Lift high the name of Jesus

What's not to love about You?
Heaven and earth adore You
Kings and kingdoms bow down Son of God, You are the One You are the One
we're living for

You are the love that frees us
You are the light that leads us
Like a fire burning Son of God,
You are the one You are the one we're living for

We will sing, sing, sing
And make music with the heavens
We will sing, sing, sing
Grateful that You hear us When we shout your praise
Lift high the name of Jesus

By Chris Tomlin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzRNkPXH5V8


Also, today is one year and one day exactly that we have been back.

Here today....gone tomorrow!!

Do you see this little building? It has been in front of our house ever since we bought our house and now it's GONE!!!! Hooray!!! It looks amazing! The land looks so great!! I don't have a finished picture yet. I forgot to take one, but in the pics below, you can see the damage after it was taken down and how much better it looks!

Brent's 10 Year Reunion

Brent's 10 year high school reunion was August 1! A lot sure has happened in 10 years!
We had a good time. It was fun to meet some of friends pals in high school. Some of them I already know, so we had some good hang out time!

Week O' Fun

This week was good. We started our homestudy. The first visit went VERY well. We talked with our social worker for 3 hours! It did not seem that long either. We had a great time. Our next visit will be sometime this month.

Also Christy, Chris and Ryleigh came to visit for a few days! It was great to see them. I told them there was a house for sale that was near us and they could move in!

Ryleigh loves dogs
(above) hmmm....is this a good idea?

Below:

Christy and I tried making bows. These are Christy's.

Her's are great. Mine are terrible, so you will not be seeing them!

Also, my dad bought a SUV and is letting me and Brent drive.

This is a great blessing, esp. since Brent's car blew up!

I start a new job on Monday too!

God is good, well He would still be good even if we didn't have these things!

Contradiction = Me

So lately I have learned a few things about myself:

I am a walking contradiction! ha! As Brent says I live on Africa time. My internal clock is not on the same time schedule as everyone else. I don't care if I'm late (to some things), but it irriates the stew out of me if other people are late.

I do not like surprises, but I LOVE to surprise other people!

It does not bother me for other people to have a messy house, but my house has to be clean.

I am also really indecisive, unless everyone else in the group is indecisive and then I decide for everybody! Our pastor thinks that it's all about me!! haha!! You'd have to ask him to fully understand.

Somethings that I am realizing here lately, I wish they had come to realization a little bit earlier!

Have a nice day!

The Beginning

Home Study begins August 4!
In the meantime we have 82 pages of paperwork to complete!

WHAT?!?!?!

Kenyan Stories

This is my sister-in-law, April. I love her.

She just returned from Kenya.

She went with the organization: 410bridge

She LOVED it!

Here are few things she had to say about it (for a full note you may visit her on facebook):

It is only day 2 of being in Kenya and day 4 of the trip and so far I have already:

-experienced the joy of travelling for 40 hours

-seen a fight in an african airport (SCARY)

-seen Air Force One land in Ghana

-run over a thief in the streets of Nairobi

-met children that have more joy and love than I have ever experienced

-gotten real hugs and tangibly felt love through the hand hold of an orphan name Unice

-experienced Heaven in an unlikely place

-eaten a rib from an unknown animal

-seen God praised in a new way

-had my hair braided by Kenyan children - twice

-seen a chicken offering auctioned off in a church

-walked the 3 km journey to a 100 foot rock ravine where they sent their children to get water

-prayed with a family who just lost their son, which turned into a huge celebration

-seen giraffes on the side of the road......and it's only day two.

This place has captured my heart.

Day 3:

-danced into the community by a group of Kenyan women,

-helped dig a base for the water project
-got my arms and face painted at the worksite

-stood in the rain and prayed

-drank coffee in the home of one of the community members and learned about Kenyan "relationships"

-had a very extensive conversation about my accent

Things just keep getting better.

Day 4:
-taught children the story of Noah's ark and did a craft

-worked in the project for awhile, then sat with the women

-played banya with the women and jumped rope with them

-bought a machette

-had a Kenyan tell us one of our men was strong like chuck norris

How can this get any better?

During the last few days:

-went to a Kenyan funeral

-went a real safari - twice

-got kissed by a grosssss giraffe!

-had my first market experience and almost had a nervous break down if it weren't for the help of james

-experienced the terror of Nairobi after dark

-ate 5 pieces of the best pizza i've ever had....in a kenyan gas station?

Headed home, sad sad day.

The children climbed up and down this

with 7 gallon jugs of water on their backs,

4 times a day......barefoot.

This means "small and beautiful".

It could be important later. :)