Well I have new pictures to show you of our house - but alas I forgot my camera cord, so I cannot upload them on this computer. So you must wait in anticipation! Perhaps they will appear on Wednesday!


Brent is going to the doctor tomorrow. His ankle is not moving and he cannot walk without the help of crutches or a wheelchair! (the wheelchair was used to go to the Winter Jam concert Saturday - it was hilarious!!) So hopefully Dr. Layton will be able to find something.


Adoption update: We are back at square one. For a few reasons:1. this house thing is taking longer than we thought and we are pretty sure that instead of domestic we are going to adopt internationally. Peru being the country of choice. :) I'm really stinkin' excited about this.

But you should know that I was really beginning to struggle with adopting in the first place. Esp. since I feel like we haven't even gotten the ball rolling. Our friends Jay and Tanya are adopting a little boy from Nepal. They started the whole process I think almost the same time Brent and I met with the agency in Birmingham. When Jay told Brent in November, they were about to have their first homestudy. Their adoption seems to be speeding along. Click here to see Tanya's blog.

I though maybe it was just an emotional thing since Brent and I do not have kids yet. Nothing was taking off for us it seemed. Maybe we were just trying to do this ourselves and what we wanted and not what God wanted at all. I was praying through it one day and just asking the Lord and telling Him about all my concerns and worries and the next day - what comes in the mail - Southwestern News - what is the WHOLE. ENTIRE. magazine about - ADOPTION. I am not kidding. Plus the rest of week it seemed like everything I saw or picked up - was about adoption. It just happened. I didn't plan any of it. I thought okay Lord - I got it now. Thanks. :)

Now we are just waiting until we are in our house and ready to fill out the application form. This will probably be March or April, but as soon as possible. :)

I am also apply for a job this week. I'd really love to work at this job. So please pray that the Lord might see fit that I get the job. Thanks!! :)

It's finished!

Well the painter finishes today anyway!! It looks like a completely different house! Amazing! I hope to take pictures today or tomorrow and hopefully i can post them by this weekend! We also have a few new furniture items! A couch and a bistro table and chairs for the sunroom and a new chair for the living room! We will one day buy the matching chair for the couch in the sunroom and we are looking for an ottoman that opens to put in the living room - but we are waiting for our tax return! Also did you know that if you buy a house, the next year on your taxes there is a 1st time home buyer credit where the governement will send you money to help on the new house? Granted it will be paid back to them. They automatically take it out of your refund the next few years. So I guess it's a good thing. It does help with a few things though!

I have a couple of things to blog about.
Adoption update and something I learned over Christmas. But I am working on a few things for Wednesday and Sunday night, so I will have to wait and blog later.

Have a great day!

Extreme Home Makeover: Colee Edition!

Extreme Home Makeover: Colee Edition has begun! And trust me, there is a lot of work to be done!! Below: this is the very first picture taken in November. The former owners still had most of their belongings here. First - all the wall paper had come down. A bit of flooring had to come up. The door and window caseings had to come down. We had to find a painter and people to lay tile and put down hardwood. So by now all the wallpaper is down, we found a painter - he started Tuesday, we have a guy putting crown molding up! MJ, Michael B., Brent and Brent's dad - Greg laid the tile. My dad, Brent, and Brett are going to lay the hardwood, and a pro is going to put the carpet in the 2 rooms upstairs. Whew!

This is the back - an in-ground pool used to be here,

but Brent wants to put in a koi pond!

Yes, we are offically rednecks! Toilet in the front yard!! HAHA!

(it WILL be gone soon)

Kitchen Living Room, Upstairs rooms and part of kitchen

A new stair rail is on the way!!

Living Room and great ceiling Barksdale loves laying tile! HA!

Newly tiled sunroom and laundry....Brent laying tile in the master bath! Isn't he cute!

So he and his dad did this bathroom in 20 degree weather -

no joke it was 8 degrees the next night!

(Still a cutie!)

Okay, below is the ceiling in the laundry room.....are you kidding me? what??

I gave up asking questions after we discovered that DUCT TAPE was used to seal some of the sheet rock together!!!! Yeah.

We are so excited about this house! I can't wait till the color is on the walls!! We have great plans for this house. The Lord has really blessed us greatly!

So come stay with us sometime!

Ode to Chris and Christy

Flashback to December 13 - a memorable day in the Willcutt household. Chris graduated from Southwestern!!!! Hallelujah! Brent and I went out to the great state of Texas for the occasion!
Chris and Christy wonderful friends. Chris is a youth minister and Christy is a PE teacher and Coach. They have a baby girl - Ryleigh Michelle - who is so cute. We are so incredibly grateful to be apart of their lives. We miss them like crazy!

While we were in Fort Worth - we met our friends Greg and Jaime for lunch at this restaurant. The owner is Giaciamo He was in the TV show "Hell's Kitchen"! So needless to say the food was fabulous! He is also very friendly. Greg and Jaime eat here frequently, so they have gotten to know everyone.

These are few pics of Christmas:

Below: me and Cody. I still don't have any pics of Hurley - butI took him to the vet yesterday and the dog is 10 weeks old and weighs 22.1 pounds! He's a chunker!!

I love these pics (except for the nice flash in the background)

Reading

The past few months I have heard about or come across several books that I want to read. I try to hurry to read a book, just so I can finish it and get to the next one. This is not good for me, esp. if I want to retain what I read! However my friend Amber mentioned in her blog recently a quote by John Piper about reading. Basically if you read for 15 minutes a day, you can average 10 books a year! How fantastic! Here is the full quote below. To see Amber's full blog - click "Amber's Blog" on the left side of the screen.

"He recommends setting a goal to read for 15 minutes a day:
“Suppose you read slowly like I do--maybe about the same speed that you speak--200 words a minute. If you read fifteen minutes a day for one year (say just before supper, or just before bed), you will read 5,475 minutes in the year. Multiply that by 200 words a minute, and you get 1,095,000 words that you would read in a year. Now an average serious book might have about 360 words per page. So you would have read 3,041 pages in one year. That’s ten very substantial books. All in fifteen minutes a day.”(When I Don't Desire God, p. 129)"

Blog Changes

I know I keep changing our blog around - but just white was driving me nuts, i needed some color!!

Pagan Christianity

Frank Viola and George Barna published a book called Pagan Christianity in 2007. This book does what it says on the cover - expores the roots of our church practices. Brent and I heard about this book from a friend. After hearing what David (who is in full-time ministry) had to say about the book, both Brent and I really wanted to read it. Brent has already read it and really enjoyed it. So now I get to read it. I'm really excited about it. Some of you know that around the same time we moved to Texas, I became really sick of "church". A few things happened in the church that Brent and I had just resigned from and in my home church. It was pretty - well, to put it nicely - I didn't care to have anything to do with church or the some of the people who call themselves Christians.

I know that you are probably thinking how terrible, how could she think that. But it was making me question some things like - why do we go to church 3 times a week - no where in the Bible does it say to meet Sunday morning, night or Wednesdays? Why do we sing 3 songs and sit down on the third? Or if you are considered a comtemporary church you might stand up the whole and time sing 4 or 5 songs, one will at least be what I have heard call a 7/11 song - meaning you sing the same 7 words over and over 11 times. And more questions about why do we do church like we do church. Besides the church is not a building, but people.

This really wound up to be a good thing for me for several reasons. For once I could honestly say that I understood why people who are not Christians do not want to have anything to do with Christianity. And why some Christians leave the church. Both will ask Why do Christians say they believe one way and act another? Why would you treat people this way? There is a bumper sticker that someone used in a lesson once, it says:

"I like your Christ,
I do not like your Christians,
They are not at all like your Christ."

Pretty good, huh?

Second, I came to realize that my questioning was more out of a wrong attitude/rebellion than it was earnestly wanting to know the answers to my questions. Basically a heart problem. It took me pretty much the whole first year and a half to work through my heart rebellion troubles. I know that for some seminary is a spiritual high, in my experience, my was not. Except for maybe the last semester I began changing.

These are a few reasons why I was excited when David told us about his book. I had finally gotten my heart straight, but I still wondered why do we do things the way we do them. This
book is more like a thesis, than a book. It all just history about where the church building comes from, why do most dress up to come to church, where pews and balconys came from, why there is a stage, what about choir robes and music ministers, tithing and minister salaries, etc., etc., etc. I love history (although I never would have admitted that in high school! haha!)

I have only read the 2 introductions written by the authors about why they wrote the book and the first chapter. I am about to being chapter 2 - it's about the church building. So I will let you know what I think. In the meantime you might check it out. All though beware- the book does come with a warning in the introduction.

Sleeping Stories

Sleep is something that has not been around at our house recently. Both Brent and I have had trouble sleeping the past month. However, this past week, we've both slept pretty well. Brent will sometimes talk in his sleep. It's hilarious! If I wake-up and here him, I try to talk back to him, just to see what he will say. A few nights ago, Brent had a nightmare - of sorts - about all the wallpaper we've been taking down. The wallpaper steamer is a metal box with a long hose connected and at the end of the hose is a metal pan. The water is incredibly hot and comes out of pan in the form of steam and sometime water runs out too. Much like an iron.

In the dead of night I hear Brent: "MARIANNE! HELP ME! I'M STUCK! TURN IT OFF!"
I rolled over and tried to find the light, when I turn it on Brent's arm looked as if it were stuck between the bed and the headboard. He was also pulling at our headboard back and forth with his other hand. He woke-up just enough to realize he was okay and turned over and went back to sleep. The next day, I forgot all about this, but he remembered! He was dreaming that the wallpaper steamer was stuck on the wall and he couldn't get it off and the hot water was falling onto his face!

OH! What a laugh!!

Not only does Brent talk in his sleep, he also snores. Sometimes both together! It's not so bad. We have a fan that we sleep with and I usually can't hear him. If I do, i will just poke or nudge him and he turns over and quits snoring. Well one particular night, in Texas, he was snoring pretty loud and when I poked him this is what he said: "if you poke me one more time, I'm gonna punch you in the nose!" I said: "you are mean!" and rolled over. Only about the time I rolled over, I realized he was still asleep when he said it! I told him the next day and he did not remember a thing about it!

It is never a dull moment with Brent around, whether he is awake or not!

The house that Brent bought......

I wish I had some pictures on this computer to show you! I can't wait for ya'll to see it! Especially the before and after pics! It has 2100 square feet and 6 acres of trees and a great front yard! The past 4 days we have been working and working. The house had wallpaper in 5 rooms! I don't know if you've ever had to take down wallpaper or not, but it is a long process! Our pastor came over on Friday to help and he suggested we rent a wallpaper steamer. We were able to rent one for the whole weekend, this little joy of a machine is such a time-saver! Please do not ever take down wallpaper without one! It took 3 days to get it all down and if we had not had the steamer, we would still be working on it. Some of the wallpaper was double! It creates a mess, but is easy clean up! Brent's dad has been spraying the outside of the house and it looks amazing! It is sided in white siding and I think that the people who lived there before were not sure how to take care of it b/c the house used be white with green tint, but now it is a lovely pure white!

Now we are waiting for the tile man and a painter or two to come this week and give a few estimates and then we will be painting and tiling. I think it will be a few weeks before we can move in. I've been trying to decide on colors for the rooms. It is a good thing that I did get a degree in interior design, b/c this is the most time consuming thing for me! I'm pretty sure it's because I don't really know what I want. Or it's that I do know what I want, I just don't know how to make it happen.

I was on IKEA's website today searching for a few things. We have enough stuff to fill 713 square feet, so that leaves 1387 square feet of space to fill! The closest IKEA is in Atlanta, so I might be taking a a little trip in the future!

We are excited about all the possibilities of this house.

Christmas Crafts

I love to make crafts! So this Christmas, Brent and I made 2 stools for our cousins' little girls - Molly and Addie. They were fun to make. They turned out pretty well. Although we messed up a little bit on the ladybug. I stole the idea from my friend Jen P. Thanks Jen!

The drying stage

Finished!