A Night With Friends

Last night we had the opportunity to meet up with some great friends-Kevin and Katie Williams and Shannon and Kurt Baker! It's really amazing how the Lord has used friendships to keep us connected to one another. Here is the connection:

-Kevin and Katie were Guy and Shannon's YL leaders at Boone back in the day

-Guy and Shannon were like BFF in high school!

-Shannon and I played bball and soccer against each other in high school

-I met Kevin and Katie when they were just dating when I first started doing YL in college

whew........Kurt and Shannon met a few years ago-his a fireman and super cool. Anyways. We had the best evening! We met at Abeulo's at 5:30pm and seriously didn't leave until 8:30! A 3 hour dinner! Good thing we have the most flexible child in the world (knock on wood-he did manage to pour a 1/2 empty glass of water onto his shirt and my jeans. chilly.). Guess we need to reconnect with them more often! Kevin is the area director for Urban YL in Cincinnati and Shannon and Kurt do YL at Holmes high school. They have such amazing (and funny) stories of how the Lord is moving in their school communities. Katie and Kevin are going to Ethiopia in 2 weeks to adopt twin baby boys! The boys are so sweet and adorable and have NO idea how loved they are going to be. We are so thrilled for them! Wow. The Williams and the Bakers continue to live by faith alone and it is a blessing to be their friends.

I have finally remembered to post my recipe for homemade granola. I never thought I would like something like this but I LOVE it and try to make it once a month! It's a good, healthy alternative to cereal. It is from my friend Kerri who made it for a leader retreat this past summer.

Homemade Granola

Ingredients:

2 cups regular rolled oats

1 cup chopped or sliced almonds

1/2 cup pecan pieces

1/4 cup toasted wheat germ (or honey roasted)

1/2 cup honey or maple flavored syrup

2 tablespoons veg oil

Dried fruit

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

1) In a large bowl, combine oats, nuts, seeds and wheat germ. Stir together honey

and cooking oil; stir into oat mixture. Spread evenly onto a greased cookie sheet.

Bake for 30 minutes or until lightly browned; stirring after 20 minutes.

2) Spread evenly on large piece of foil to cool. Break into clumps. Stir in 1 cup of desired

dried fruit (I use cranberries-but you can use raisins, apricots, cherries,

fruit bits, banana slices). Store in airtight container for up to 1 week or store in

freezer bags and freeze for up to 2 months.

*I like to eat mine as cereal but the boys eat it with strawberry yogurt!

Black Eye

So while I was doing the laundry the other day, I came back upstairs to find Braylen messing with my mascara. Notice his right eye. Lovely.

The Drive Thru Diet

Hello! We have been like the energizer bunny.....going....and going.....and going! We are finally home from our road trips! We drove down to New Orleans to visit Guy's family last week and then drove with my parents to visit Jess and Vince in Charlotte! Here are a few "highlights":

New Orleans:

1) Guy took off Friday and Monday so we were able to spend 3 whole days in New Orleans!

2) We left Thursday at 5pm and had reserved a hotel in Tuscaloosa, AL-about 8 hours away. We never made it to the hotel! We stopped around Louisville to eat dinner at Taco Bell around 6:30pm. At 7pm, I came down with a stomach virus-I'm just assuming it was food poisoning because I felt sick immediately. The rest of the night was filled with stops at gas stations throughout KY, TN, and AL. We stopped over SEVEN times so that I could vomit. Yes, I'm serious. It was horrible-2nd worse pain I've ever experienced (1st being labor). We never made it to our hotel because we had to stop at a different one in order for me to go to bed. Oh, did I mention that Braylen was awake until 1am? Yup. And did I also mention that Guy got sick in the middle of the night and had food poisoning as well? Yes, it was the road trip straight out of a horror movie. I guess you can say that we were on the Taco Bell "drive thru diet" for about 48 hours. I must say that I did lose a few pounds because of it. :) It took us over 24 hours to get down to New Orleans. It was awful. We're just thankful that Braylen did not get sick!

3) We felt better by Saturday and we were able to enjoy a few parades. We took Braylen to a small family parade and he loved it. Guy and I went to a parade called Bachus down in the French Quarter and it was so fun! Drew Brees was the king and we totally caught some beads that he threw! Well, not really but we did catch some beads! So fun!!

4) We had a great time with Guy's family and enjoyed staying with his grandma, Mommy I. She is so sweet and accommodating. We loved seeing his aunt and cousins as well. Brooke and Wayne are expecting their first baby (girl) this spring! They will make wonderful parents! And I'm excited to go back down next month for her shower! Yea babies!

5) We were able to stay with our awesome friends, Jason and Emily Edwards, on our way home! They live in Nashville so it was a perfect time to visit! They made us dinner and breakfast AND helped Braylen get over his fear of dogs. Well kind of. Love them!

Charlotte (this will be short and sweet):

1) I missed my sis and bro! We were so HAPPY to be down there visiting them.

2) They have a super cute apartment with an extra room for us to stay!

3) Great dinner at Presto Diner downtown Charlotte! And we were able to watch UK beat Vandy! Go CATS!

4) First visit to World Trade Market (which was awesome!) and to the Buy Buy Baby-which is a Bed, Bath, and Beyond baby store. It was so cool. so many great baby items!

This week we will be getting back to our normal routine-YMCA!!!, naps, non-fried foods, cooking, cleaning, visiting friends, Young Life outings and meetings.

Have a great week!

Manly

We went to Crossroads Church last night with some friends of ours. It's a huge church in Cincinnati. You can get more info here from their website. They are doing a sermon series on "Manly" and what the bible says about being a real man. Unfortunately the world's idea of being a man is so far from God's truth. For example, James 4:6 says "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Think about how much we hear from media how important your pride is!! Especially for men. Sick. That's just one example.

The sermon last night gave an example from the account of Samuel and Dahlia from the book of Judges. Dahlia seduced him until he revealed the secret of why and how God has allowed him to become so powerful. Samuel was so prideful and thought he was untouchable. These two factors: pride and seduction, basically led to the death of Samuel. It made me think about how hard it must be for Christian men to stay strong in their faith. There are so many things around them pulling them to invest in things that are not lasting. But it wasn't just Samuel who played a part in this. Dahlia played a huge part! It made me think about my "part" or my role as Guy's wife. Not that I am seducing anyone!!!!!! But how am I affirming my manly man? :)How am I spurring him on to love God and love others? (Matt. 22:37-39). My responsibility as a wife/stay at home mom is not just to keep the house in order but it is to respect, love and encourage my husband.

By the way-I do not do that very well but it's so good to be reminded about it. How are you loving the manly men around you? :)

I Love John Locke

Okay, so I know that John Locke from LOST is not a real person.....but I love him! It might be because he looks like my dad:

but seriously. I just feel awful for him-he was almost killed by his own father, he's in a wheelchair, he lost the love of his life, no one likes him because they think he's crazy, he's always confused, and he was killed by Benjamin Linus. Oh, and now the "monster" has taken residence in his body. Can it get any worse? :) Talk about a hard imaginary life. ugh. And there is always sad music playing during his scenes. Give the guy a break! I will be so upset if this story doesn't end semi-happily for him.

Also, how in the world is the island underwater? What's going to happen? Now that Locke really is dead, who is going to show them that there is hope to be found. Who will spur them on towards something greater?

Well sorry if you haven't seen the LOST premier and I just gave away a few things and sorry if you've never seen the show.

Hospitals and medicine

We have had one absolutely crazy week! Braylen came down with a cold last Saturday and by Thursday we had to take him to the emergency room! Scariest night of my life!

Mon-Wed he had a fever of 102 every single night. He started coughing more by Wed and he was not getting better. He's such a trooper though. I took him to the doctors Thursday morning (which he started crying as soon as he saw the building-he thought he was getting a shot) and they wanted him to get a chest xray to make sure he didn't have phenomena or however you spell it. I didn't hear back from the doctor's office all day and by that evening he was just getting worse. So I called the radiology dept at the hospital to try and get the results-they paged the on call doctor at practice Bray goes to-he called us like 30 minutes later and said he possibly has viral phenomena and we needed to take him to the emergency room right away. WHAT??!!! I was so upset. I'm so thankful to have Guy as my husband. He just held it together and was very patient with me. I was really frustrated with the doctors office for not calling us with the results or offering a prescription. Anyways. We drove to the hospital and by then his temperature rose from 102 to 103.6. Poor thing. He was so sick and weak. It was so horrible to see him like that. They put us in a room where we waited for about 2 hours-Braylen got some medicine and they double checked the xray. Braylen was much better after the medicine and he went from laying with me on the bed to jumping on the bed. yes. jumping. I have proof on my phone. He's so crazy. So he was diagnosed with a respiratory virus and we were allowed to go. I just kept thinking and praising God that we have a hospital to go to. I can't imagine not being able to take him somewhere to get better. ugh. it's just awful to think about sick babies not getting better!

So we all survived our first ER experience. Braylen is feeling much better and has not had a fever since Thursday. He is still coughing but not as much. He is learning and growing so much right now. He's definitely wanting to be more independent-wants to do everything on his own. He has a few new things to say: mobie (for movie), buh bye da-da (he says that to everyone not just Guy), aw man, and he actually says love you. Well I can tell he's saying it. :)

We are definitely blessed. Guy is working so hard in school. He's enjoying his online classes but has found that it's much more work than face to face classes. God is good and we are finding out how important it is to fully rely and trust in Him alone. We are missing Jess and Vince and really hope to visit them by the end of this month!!

Thanks for reading!