Christmas Music is ON!

Pandora's Christmas Station is playing, I'm drinking coffee and feeling festive! (Except the ache in my back from the hotel bed last weekend...)

Kanyon and I got home from Edmond, OK last night. We had such a great holiday. My mom's mother's side of the family has a family reunion every two years at Thanksgiving and this was the year for it. Grandma is one of 9 children, which means mom has a million cousins, and I have two million second and third and fourth cousins. Only 70 came to this reunion though :) These are the remaining three sisters - Colleen, my grandmother LoRee, and LaVerne. My grandmother is 92 years old and was able to come out for a couple hours from the nursing home to be with everyone. Mostly because she wanted some pie...
 

We all had Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt Jenny's house and it was the first time in a long time we had a homecooked meal instead of catered. It was so good! Thank you, Aunt Jenny, for all the work you did!

On Saturday, a bunch of us headed to Stillwater for the Bedlam (OSU v. OU game). My family is an OSU family through and through. It was a very close and exciting game but we ended up with a loss. Mom and I had a lot of fun wandering around campus visiting Eskimo Joe's and seeing the new stadium.

When we got home Sunday, Zeb was pretty excited to see us back home! Kanyon's parents had a few funny stories to tell us and he was probably the dirtiest I had ever seen him! After a hard scrubbing and lots of brushing out, he was finally clean enough to get to wrestle and play with his favorite playmate:

I'm going home to a huuuuge mound of laundry and dust on every square inch of my house .... I can't pretend its not there any longer unfortunately.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone's having a relaxing holiday weekend :)

good start to the week

Thanksgiving is almost here!! We had our Community Thanksgiving last night and it was so great. I love Welch and I love that these people will be a part of my life for a long time (that is if God doesn't surprise us with somethin later on.. been known to happen!).

I've been feelin pretty crummy lately with some cold symptoms and am finally going to the doctor this afternoon to get a handle on things. I'm feeling a lot better today, though, so hopefully I'm finished with the worst of it! Everyone says that harvest sends lots of stuff into the wind and that topped with my already-existent seasonal allergies sent me into a major case of sinus pressure and congestion with a sore throat. Not much of a voice today but my symptoms are toned down a lot thankfully!

This weekend, Dawson played in their second play-off game. You have never seen a more proud town :) Facebook was exploding with Dawson pride.. it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the game ended with a loss but we were still so proud of our boys! Too bad they shaved their heads for the game and are now stuck with it, haha!

On Saturday, I had my first free day in a while and decided to meet Kasha in Lubbock for some errand-running. I ended up not going to the big Holiday Happenings event going on and just wandered around Target.. I needed to replace something I broke and buy some cheap shelving. After that, I didn't have anything else to do. That is a predicament (or predic-ee-ment if you are Kalith) since I live an hour away and didn't want to come to Lubbock for only a 30 minute errand.. Called some friends, but they were busy or out of town. But then Kasha invited me to go to church with her and we made a night of it! She attends church in Lubbock on Saturday nights sometimes instead of Sunday morning and after church, we went to Johnny Carinos (so good!) and had dessert at Starbucks! A spontaneous and so much fun girl night. I'm so extremely grateful for God supplying me with so many friends in Welch, but especially for Kasha who has become my closest girlfriend.

Some pictures from this weekend that has nothing to do with anything above..

 Playtime with my favorite Australian!

 A pic my parents sent me of them having fun listening to a Beatles

cover band :) Bet ya didn't plan on this being on the world wide web, Mom..

A very short video of the leaves falling after the freeze next door.. 

The video doesn't do it justice.Everyone else may think this is dumb 

but I thought it was so pretty how quickly and abundantly they were falling!

Also, please enjoy what was on my radio at the time.

gift ideas

Last weekend, Mom came home from her Walk with a gift for me and for Kanyon.. go figure. It made me want to share with you a couple of things that would be great Christmas gifts.

Two devotionals that I try to read everyday and that I really love are:

• "Starting Your Day Right" by Joyce Meyer

This is by far the best devotional I have come upon. It only takes about a minute to read through it but I haven't yet read any entry that didn't keep my attention. Some daily devotionals get repetitive to me or are too shallow but this one is neither. I love it.

You can get it on Amazon for cheap, otherwise its only like 10 bucks at B&N. You can also get it on Kindle.

Its kind of small too .. stocking stuffer size.

• "Love Letters from God" by Bonnie Shluter

This is a really cool book. It was written by Bonnie to her sons and sisters. She wrote it to encourage them when they left home and when going through a hard time. It is a collection of about 80 letters that Bonnie wrote as God to his child. The table of contents directs you to the individual letters by naming the theme of the letter. Some of the themes are "Let go of the Past", "Walk in Love", and "Fighting Satan with Forgiveness". I like going through the contents and choosing by how I'm feeling that day. It really is so good.

Just wanted to share my finds! We're headed to Post tonight to watch the Dawson Dragons play in their second play-off game!

trying to catch up!

I have been annoyed by my lack of time to blog lately.. this fall has been so busy! Anyone with me?

I'm betting a lot of you are.

Even though I have been busy I have been having fun.. I'm still psyched about how fun that retreat with the youth group here was and looking forward to getting more involved with them. I'm still waiting to hear from Lubbock Young Life about joining Committee.. way to be just like every other area, Lubbock, and never get back to people.. Sorry if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

In less important news, there is an awesome addition to my wardrobe that is coming in the mail. I ordered these today from Walmart.com for $24!!!

I'm feeling very frugal and responsible about the whole situation. And in case you're wanting to remind me of my pledge to not buy anything for a while and like what I have that I made a couple months ago... you may have a point. But again - frugal and responsible is the only thing I'm feeling. Don't spoil it for me.

In more important news, I'm still pretty excited about how much Mom loved her Walk to Emmaus. I am becoming more and more convinced that ANYONE from ANY walk of life can and will be blessed from these retreats. In the few walks I have been on/apart of/watched, I have seen 20 yr olds and 75 yr olds, black and white, hispanic and asian, Christian and atheist, happy people and depressed people, you name it, all LOVING their experience on the Walk. God is good.

Tonight, Vaughn and Kasha and I are heading out to my friend Pam's house for a 31 Gifts party. Should be fun, I've never been! It looks like its kind of like Willow House and Pampered Chef, you shop and order at the party.

Speaking of Pampered Chef, I heard the order that I placed at the party I went to last week should be in today! Woohoo! (Did I mention that?...) I'm most excited about the glass mixing bowl I bought... and I feel like my college self would slap my adult self for being excited about a bowl. Alas.. I have arrived.

it feels like a monday

I left work yesterday after being here for about 30 minutes because a cold that was coming on for days finally hit me.. but I'm back at work today and feeling much better! There's a lot on my mind this morning.

 

• A family that I have loved getting to work Kairos and Emmaus with was just selected for EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION just this morning! Seriously!!!! We're all so excited for Jeanne and Mac and Katrina. As I drove to work this morning, the radio stations were all excited about the bus being in Brownfield. Read the story here.

• Mom went on her Walk to Emmaus this last weekend and absolutely loved it. It was so cool to see her participate in something I have become involved in. It was a huge blessing to her. Thanks to everyone who prayed and sent letters for her!

• A typical Welch sunset for ya from this weekend:

• Dawson (Welch's school) is going to play in our second play-off game this weekend!! I love small town six man football.

• The boys are almost done with harvest, hallelujah.. Please pray for clear weather so Kanyon can go with me to my family's Thanksgiving in Oklahoma.

Thats about it.. back to workin on the church website! Yall have a good Monday... I mean Tuesday.

livin on a prayer

I got lots to tell you.. but this is more important for you to see at the moment.

"Excellent Use of Jumbotron Moment"

Hilarious.

P.S. Mom is on a Walk to Emmaus retreat this weekend, please send up a prayer for her!

Youth Retreat

Let me just say first that I love Bob Smith and I don't care who knows it. Bob is one of my co-worker's older brothers and he helped me clean my computer of its viruses and saved me $120!! But don't worry, he's in his 70's and very married. You don't need to worry for Kanyon.

Anyway, I mentioned last week that I was going to go on a retreat with the youth group from First Baptist Church (where I work but don't attend church .. not because I don't like it but because we already had a church home before I started working there). I had been really excited about it for as long as its been since Harris (the youth minister) asked me to join in!

I was the oldest girl sponsor along with two freshman in college who just graduated from this youth group. Along with us, there were about 16 or so jr high and high school girls. It was a big group for a new-comer like me to meet! It was a lot of fun, though.

We went up to Floydada to Plains Baptist Assembly camp ground where Harris and his wife actually lived and worked when they first got married. It sits in the middle of a canyon and is very pretty, although not great for cell phone reception when you need to call your long-time best friend on her birthday.. :/ Sorry, Camille.

I won't go into too many details but just wanted to say that I had a really great time. The kids were really challenged in their faith. I mean, really challenged. The staff at Refuge Retreat (the name of the weekend) jumped right in. The speaker was phenomenal, one of the best I've ever heard speak to youth groups. A lot of speakers I have heard, and I've heard a lot being in youth group myself and being a Young Life-er and leader, either try to focus on one aspect of the gospel in an attempt to not bore the youth or they over-complicate it all in an attempt to not miss something. This guy (Leighton Flowers) didn't do either. He presented the gospel in a simple and interest-keeping way, but didn't skip over the hard parts either. He spoke for about 30 minutes each time but I didn't feel over-loaded with information as I am sometimes when a speaker goes that long. The worship band was also so good. Their name is slipping from me right now but I have their CD in the car. They had teaching sessions a couple times each day on different topics, some lecture-style on topics like gossip or prayer, and others more hands-on like prayer stations.

Personally, I was very challenged spiritually myself. I can never hear the gospel too many times and always came away thinking hard about what I heard. One of the session times, though, a few of the high school girls asked if I would lead something for them. So the four of us went and sat outside and just talked about having a relationship with God. It felt so good to be back in ministry talking about God with high school girls.

I've been so anxious to get back into some sort of youth ministry since I left my Young Life girls in Abilene but I've felt God telling me all this time that I needed to wait. Its so exciting to be on the brink of something that could lead to ministering to these girls again. I talked to Harris this weekend about possibly leading the girl's small group on Sunday nights and he's excited about me doing it too. We'll see what happens!

While I was at this retreat, Kanyon got to take a break from harvest to go hunting! Him, his dad, his uncle, and his cousin all met up at their deer lease for the weekend. Zeb even got to go and had a ball running around and "helping" Kanyon :)

proof

Remember two posts ago, I told you that Kanyon and I did not need to have a baby yet because all of the babies in Welch are too cute?

Here's proof:
(I hope this is okay, Britni!)

I stole this from Britni's blog who is the mother of the baby on the right, Slayde. I just could not keep myself from sharing this picture with the whole world. IT IS TOO CUTE. This is Tripp Roberts (Levi and Nicole Roberts), Noah Phipps (Andrew and Christen Phipps), and Slayde Oaks (Rusty and Britni Oaks).

They are all so fat and cuddley and sweet!

So there you go.

TGIF... S.

Thank goodness it's FRIDAY.. seriously. It's been a week of non-stop .. everything.

I can't remember the last time I was more busy. Maybe my last week of finals last Dec when I was moving out of one house into another, studying for and taking finals, entertaining my visiting family, graduating, and getting ready to go to work in CO @ a YL camp the morning after graduation, oh and a little wedding planning while Mom was in Abilene. Well maybe I was more busy that week..

So needless to say, I was not able to blog nor was there anything interesting to blog about since I was working so much. For the first time in my life, I forgot to eat lunch several times this week. If you know me, you know that does not happen.

Anyway! Now that this week is over, I got to finally have time to open my Willow House boxes! I can't show everything that I bought (on major discounts since I hosted a party) because more than half are going to be Christmas presents! But I took this chance to buy myself some casserole pans since I am just starting collecting grown-up stuff :) Here's what I got:





The red dishes are of the Cinnabar collection, and the cream is of the Gramercy collection. The red are fun and the cream is more practical since it matches my dishes. Pretty excited!! I also got this which I haven't opened yet so here's the stock photo:





Its a card holder. I don't really have a prominently located door to hang it on so I'm going to hang it on the wall to put Christmas cards on!

I CAN NOT wait to put all my Christmas decorations out. And I play Christmas carols from late November to Christmas. Hope Kanyon likes them...

I am really excited about this weekend.. I am leaving tomorrow morning to go on a retreat with the youth at the church I work at. I have missed ministry with high school kids so bad!

Gotta go! Headed to the Dawson football game! Have a great weekend!

babies

Kanyon and I decided that we would wait a couple more years before we would have a baby for several reasons.. but one great reason is the fact that babies are everywhere in Welch! Seriously, everyone is having them. Here's two of them that are in my life:

Harris and Andi's (the youth and children's director at the church I work at) baby, Silas.

He's just a chunk of happiness. He never cries. He just sits there chubbily.

And smiles and laughs. And I get to play with him at work!! 

Al and Kasha's baby, Tac, came over to trick or treat last night! He was a moose!! How cute is that!

Here's the top of his costume:

Rusty and Britni brought their kids over yesterday to trick-or-treat too and I wish I had a picture of Slayde to show you too. That kid is also a chunk of love. I love chubby babies!

All of our friends who have had babies in the last year (about 6 couples!!) keep telling us that if we hurry up, our kid will be in the same class in school as the others. But the truth is.. we're destined to have a girl first. Its predominant in our family. And we know all those babies' daddies. We'll wait a few more years and save ourselves the worrying that would come with our girl dating any of those boys, thanks :)