Thanksgiving 2010

Visit to Corpus

Last weekend, I took a Friday off and visited Corpus. It was such an enjoyable trip! I spent Thursday night with Mom and Dad, eating one of my favorite meals and watching some TV.

The next day, I went to see Mom's new 1st grade classroom. I had so much fun sing songs and making Halloween masks with the kids. After I left Mom's school, I visited with Aunt Dordie for a little while. Then, I met up with Becky for some coffee/catchup time. Before I knew it, it was time to head to dinner with Aunt Rose and Uncle Bobby. They took me to the Yacht Club for dinner. It was so nice to catch up and to sit by the water and enjoy some seafood. After dinner, Aunt Rose made me a special cup of tea with real ginger in it. It was delicious! The rest of the evening, I got to hang out with Becky and her friends. They were making jack-o-lanterns. It was a delightful evening.

Saturday was my day to catch up and hang out with Mom and Dad some more. We went all around town looking at different things. One of our stops included a furniture store that got me thinking about purchasing new sofas. After a full morning of walking and shopping, we ate at a delicious Chinese buffet. There isn't anything better than a nap after a full meal, so I took a nap once we made it home. We spent the rest of our time chatting and watching TV. It was so nice to spend some time at home! Looking forward to Thanksgiving in less than a month!!! :o)

A"maize"ing time in Hondo

Today Sunday school class headed to the Hondo corn maze for a little fun. We had a blast running thru the mazes, playing in the hay, and jumping around acting silly. Here is a photo recap of our day!

Camping

Last weekend my girls and I went camping. It was interesting to say the least. Since many of you know I am not a camper, I'm am sure you will laugh at how I spent the night at the cabin. Megan was kind enough to share a bed with Rita and I. We ended up on an air mattress. Unfortunately, the mattress had a leak, and every hour the mattress deflated. I don't know if it was just the complete lack of sleep, but it was so hilarious!!

The next day we had a wonderful devotional time on the river and enjoyed hanging out in God's country. Here are a few pictures of our fun time!!

Girls Night

So, once I returned from Moldova, there hasn't been much time for me to blog. I spent most of my time at work until my deadline passed. I did get a chance to see Mandy and Co a couple weeks ago for Jered's ceremony. Please see her blog for an update on that...lol.

Tonight, a few friends and I went to dinner. I took my camera in hopes to share a few pictures of the girls that have been blessing my life recently. Here are a few photos from our dinner.

THE GROUP


THE ASHes


KIKI and ME


MEGGO, ASHLEY and ME

TWINS


TWIN SANDWICH


VICKI and ME


ASHLEY AND ME


CRENSHAW SANDWICH


GIRLS JUST HANGING OUT

Moldovan Royalty

On Saturday, July 31st, we got to go shopping downtown. When we were done shopping, we got some ice cream and walked around downtown. We ended up in this park that had a booth for dressing up and taking photos. Here is what my group ended up looking like...

Pictures Coming Soon...

Ok, I have had a lot of requests for photos from Moldova. I don't have as many as I wish, and I don't feel like it tells a complete story, but I will try to post what I have tonight. I look forward to getting a better selection of photos to put together more of a story of my experience, so keep an eye out for this too. Hope everyone is doing well!

Also, I added a new blog on my Buddies. Bethany is the photography intern in Moldova, so her blog is definitely worth checking out!

Moldova Update

Hey All!!

I am here in Moldova getting ready to head to bed before church tomorrow. We are going to enjoy our last day here and leave on a plane at 2am tomorrow night. I just wanted to give yall a quick update on the amazing things that the Lord has done while we have been here this week.

The camp went extremely well for us. We had more and more kids show up each day to play sports and see us act completely ridiculous in American Club. I have been completely amazed by the ways the Lord has used me this week. My first experiences in evangelizing have blown me away. I was so nervous about it being that I have never done it before. God definitely has shown me that he is capable of using anyone for his purpose, even if you are unprepared or unskilled. Thru the help of the wonderful translators here in Moldova, I learned how to transition from sharing food to sharing spiritual food to the elderly here. We visited the poor elderly residents in the nearby apartments and used the opportunity to share Christ. After a couple of visits to the apartments, I was blessed to experience sharing my testimony and the Gospel with a lady in her home, and she asked me to lead her in a prayer to receive Christ. I can not express how moving it is to see a sister in Christ joining our family.

As for the work that God has done with the youth here, I don't know that I can express what wonders he has accomplished. I have developed so many wonderful friendships, and I am surprised and amazed at how much I have connected to the teens here. As some of you know, I spent some time creating a little photo album of family pictures. I thought that this book would be more for me remembering home than anything, but God had other plans. This book ended up being a tool for me to share my life and testimony to the teenagers. God has blessed me with a way to really connect with some of these kids... a lot of it was thru them laughing at my crazy silliness... rofl. We had a lot of fun just hanging out and playing badmittion and volleyball.

After our last American Club day, we had a chance to share more with the teenagers in small groups. The Lord laid it on my heart to share my testimony at this time, and it was awesome to see their interest light up and ask questions about Christ. Two of the teens over the next two days sought a private conversation to ask me more about my faith, Christ and what it is to be a Christian. I feel so undeserving and extremely blessed to have developed a closer relationship with these two kids. Thru our talks, these two amazing young individuals went from curious to excited about Christ... and they asked Jesus into their heart. There are not words to express the amount of love and spirit God surrounded us in these conversations. I don't think that these paragraphs can even begin to cover the amazing things God has done while I have been here, but I hope it at least gives you an idea of how much the Spirit is moving here in Moldova. Thanks again for your prayers and I will see you back in the States soon!! :o)

Lemonade Stand Award goes to…

Melanie gave me a blog award: The Lemonade Stand Award! All I have to do is answer the following questions with a single word answer and then pass this along to five bloggers. Here are my answers!

1. Your Cell Phone? Hero

2. Your Hair? Shorter

3. Your Mother? Loving

4. Your Father? Caring

5. Your Favorite Food? Pizza

6. Your Dream Last Night? Nice

7. Your Favorite Drink? Rootbeer

8. Your Dream/Goal? Heaven

9. What Room Are You In? Office

10. Your Hobby? Church

11. Your Fear? Dissapointment

12. Where Do You Want To Be In Six Years? Settled

13. Where Were You Last Night? House

14. Something That You Aren’t? Tall

15. Muffins? Love

16. Wish List Item? Vacation

17. Where Did You Grow Up? Corpus

18. Last Thing You Did? Email

19. What Are You Wearing? Tank

20. Your TV? Awesome

21. Your Pets? Nervous

22. Friends? Amazing

23. Your Life? Happy

24. Your Mood? Excited

25. Missing Someone? Mandy

26. Vehicle? CRV

27. Something You Aren’t Wearing? Hat

28. Your Favorite Store? ATL

29. Your Favorite Color? Green?

30. When Was The Last Time You Laughed? 2pm

31. Last Time You Cried? February

32. Your Best Friend? Mandy

33. One Place You Go To Over And Over Again? Work

34. Facebook? Enjoyable

35. Favorite Place To Eat? Chuys


Lemonade Stand Award goes to…

Mandy

Becky

Tiffany

Annie

Karen

and Mom, I know you would enjoy this one, so you can email me your answers! :o)

My Visit to VA Beach to see AMY!!

This past weekend, I had the absolute pleasure of visiting my dear friend Amy in Virginia. She picked me up at the airport around lunchtime Thursday, and that is when all the fun started. Once we ate lunch and I got settled in, we started working on a puzzle! This is why I love hanging out with Amy... we can have fun doing just about anything. Before we knew it, it was dinner time. We went out to one of Amy's favorite places on the water called Chicks. They had wonderful seafood! We got souviner tshirts too. After hanging out there for a while, we ventured over to Amy's PT job and played some pool. That night we started our three day slumber party. We spent the night in the entertainment room watching movies! It was so much fun!!

The next day we headed to the beach for a while, and of course worked on the puzzle some more. :o) After we cleaned up from the beach, we got all dressed up and went to a nice restureant on the boardwalk. It was goregeous! We had a lot of fun until I got cold...lol. Then began night two of falling alseep to movies!!

Saturday was our busiest day. We got to go to this private WWII airshow! I had a blast seeing all the classic planes take off and fly around. They had all these different areas set up like the different branches of the military from back then. My two favorite planes were the P-40 Warhawk (painted like a shark... so cool!!) and the P-51 Mustang (Cadillac of the Sky!!). There was also music playing from that era, which was delightful to sit and enjoy like they did back in the day. After the airshow, we spent the evening watching more movies and having a mini spa treatment. What a fun day!!

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time on Sunday to finish the puzzle... in fact I even left the border unfinished. Amy promised to keep me apprised of the progess on the puzzle. I will have to post a photo when it finally gets completed. All in all, it was a wonderful little vacation! I am so glad I got to spend some time with Amy! :o)

Great Weekend!!

This past weekend was amazing!!

My parents came up on Friday night after work. We went to Chuy's for a nice dinner, then back to my house to sleep. We woke up in the morning, and I had the pleasure of making my parents waffles and bacon. It was such a joy to host a breakfast for my parents!

After breakfast, we drove up to San Marcos to celebrate my cousin, Matt's graduation from grad school. I won't even begin to explain the thesis he worked on. I still claim the title is written in a foriegn language. :o)We had lunch with the family and headed back to SA. We had a little bit of time before my parents had to leave, so we drove around some neighborhoods nearby my area of town. I found one that I decided Mom and Dad should move into, but we'll see what God has in mind. :o)

Once the parents headed back on the road for Corpus, the mission team headed over. We spent the entire evening cooking and hanging out. I had a blast spending the evening with everyone, and I look forward to serving God with them in July! Our bake sale was a success, with over $300 raised in our Sunday school class. I nice start to the approximately $20,000 we have to raise as a team! God certainly does provide!

Here are a couple pictures of the team that was at church on Sunday. Keep a lookout for this picture in the mail!




And a silly photo thanks to Joe. :o)

Easter Weekend

This weekend I got to travel down to Corpus to visit my parents for Easter. As it happens, my dear friend Becky's birthday was also this weekend! I had tons of fun and got to catch up with my loved ones.

So, I guess I should start with Friday night. After a lot of sneaking and planning by Becky's roomie, Jenna, Becky spent two hours going around Corpus on a scavenger hunt. Little did Becky know, I was a part of the plan. She showed up to Snoopy's, and there I was waiting to surprise her! We finished the scavenger hunt, then made our way to the final destination... a bonfire on the beach! Oh, what fun we had eating burgers and sitting around the fire talking. I enjoyed meeting Becky's Bible study group, and hanging out with Becky for an entire evening. Did I mention that the burgers were amazing? As the night progressed, we were in need of something to keep the fire going, when I remembered that I had a box full of items I needed to shred. I ran to my car, and spent the next couple of hours burning stuff. It was a blast! I am so glad I could celebrate Becky's birthday with her! :o)

(I will steal some pics from Becky's facebook soon)

So, Saturday my parents and I drove over to U&I and had a delicious lunch. After lunch, we drove out to my Aunt Rose's house. Funny enough, within a couple minutes of us arriving, Phebe and Aunt Dordie showed up. It was great timing! We spent most of the afternoon hanging out and playing SkipBo. How lucky could I be to catch up with everyone?! We headed home later in the afternoon. Once we got there, I got to go through all the items that I had stored on the top shelf of my bedroom closet (yeah!). After a couple of hours of sorting through stuff from the shelf, and going through some of Grandma's things, we cleaned up and ate dinner. We finished off the evening with a movie-- Sherlock Holmes.

But the evening didn't end there for Dad. He got a call in the middle of the night, and had to go fix a problem at work. He didn't make it back home until 630am! So, while Dad caught up on the sleep he missed, Mom and I went to the Easter service. When we got home, I packed up my stuff and we all headed to lunch with GG. Becky graced us with her presence during lunch as well. It was nice to spend some more time with her and to see GG. Oh, and I got to eat a ton of ribs too. Yummy!

I feel blessed to have celebrated the resurrection of Christ with my family and friends. Thanks for making it such a wonderful trip! :o)

Pay it Forward

The week after my trip to Bermuda was a pretty tame one. I worked most of the time, but I managed a little shopping time on Saturday. I went crazy and got several pairs of sandals at Dillards. If only I didn't have to get shoes to go with my Easter dress...lol.

On Sunday, I attended an informational meeting about the mission trip to Moldova. I am so excited to serve God overseas, even if it is only 10 days. All of the people that attended the meeting seem like genuine and fun people. I look forward to serving Christ with the people that sign up. After the meeting, several friends and I went to a Mexican food restaurant (not Chuy's, but still pretty good). We took our time eating and hanging out, and when it came time to pay the bill, we didn't have one! A man sitting near our table was impressed with our table, he paid for our lunch!! It was an amazing experience and a great way to start the week off. I just hope I can pay it forward soon.

I continued my spending binge on Monday. I redeemed some of my credit card rewards points and bought myself a treadmill. I am hoping the convenience of having one in my house will help me to start exercising in the morning before work. I guess we'll see how well I do...lol.

I am definitely looking forward to spending this weekend in Corpus with my parents, celebrating the salvation that Jesus Christ's sacrifice provided. Wishing all of you a blessed and happy Easter weekend! :o)

Bermuda

Hello All! Its been quite a while since I posted anything... I have been pretty busy this year with work and such. Luckily, business has provided me with a chance to go to beautiful Bermuda. Sadly, I cannot post all the photos separately because of the size, so I am attaching a slide show of my trip. Bermuda is clean, and the water is strikingly clear. The people in Bermuda are a joy to to business with, and I look forward to dealing with them more. They get their drinking water from the rains during the year, so all the houses have special roofs that collect the rainwater. All the roofs are painted white, which makes the villages look amazing. The village is very much how I would imagine the village from the show "The Prisoner" to be like. The last day we were in Bermuda, Lisa and I got a chance to go the the Aquarium and Zoo they have on the island. It was neat, and there was one part where you actually walked around with some of the tropical birds. All in all, a wonderful time on my business trip! :o)