Friday, December 31, 2010

I'm Alive!

Yes, I'm still here!  This holiday season has kept us soooo busy that I haven't even had time to think about blogging!  But I'm bound and determined to catch up!  My posts may not be in order (a pet peeve of mine), but I'll have to sacrifice that to just plain get them up!  So look for some scattered updates soon!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Picture Lover

As the holiday season is approaching, I've already started thinking about our Christmas cards.  Making our Christmas cards is always one of my FAVORITE parts of the season.  Even before we had LL, Matt and I always sent out photo cards.  To me, they just make sending and recieving a Christmas card SO much more personal.  Every year we have used Shutterfly to make our cards.  Shutterfly is a photo website that my sister told me about several years ago, and I have never looked back!  They have great prices for printing pictures, are always running great specials, and all of our products arrive very quickly!

Recently, I eve used my Pampers Gift to Grow points to get 200 FREE prints from Shutterfly!  I got caught up on all the pictures that I hadn't printed since LL's birthday!  We also used Shutterly to make photo calendars for all of LL's grandparents as a Christmas present last year.  Anyway, I've already started browsing Shutterfly's site in anticipation of this year's Christmas card.  Here are four of the cards that I'm really loving and thinking about using this year:





Well, once again Shutterfly is being pretty awesome and they're giving away FREE Christmas cards to us bloggers!  Here's a link to the information on how to get YOUR free cards and here's a link so that you can go ahead and start looking through their Christmas cards, too!

Thanks, Shutterfly!

Monday, November 8, 2010

Seminole Fans!

One random Wednesday, I got a facebook message from an old friend Rossie.  Matt and I both grew up with her in church (she is the same age as me) so we've known her for forever.  She lives in Tallahassee with her husband and she works for FSU somewhere in the Athletic Dept.  We haven't talked to her in years, but she sees Matt posting on facebook about FSU all the time.  She and her husband have season tickets to the FSU games, but weren't going to be using them on October 16, so she sent me a message to see if we wanted them.  Duh!  When I mentioned it to Matt, he was SUPER excited about it! 

I asked Matt's mom if she would be okay with watching LL, and of course she was fine with it.  We left about 9:00 in the morning, and made it there in perfect time.  They were playing Boston College, and ended up pulling out a win.  Here's some pictures from our day:

Chief Osceola and Renegade
Waiting for the game to start!

Throwing the spear.
Finally our side of the stadium was in the shade!
During half time the band did a 70's themed show and played a bunch of awesome music.  Can you tell that they're dressed in afros and stuff?
Can you see the garnet and gold guys?  They painted that junk on their bodies!  All they are wearing is shorts!


Bobby!  Matt was super excited about this statue.  The guy behind me while I was taking this asked who he was pointing to - haha.
A big thanks again to Rossie for the tickets!  We had an awesome time and it was so good to see you again after 10+ years!  :)

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Following God's Plan / Our Big News

Alot has been happening around our household lately, but I haven't wanted to post about it until it was all said and done.  I think you'll understand why.

Matt has been working at Bethany Baptist Church since February 2005.  When we started at Bethany, everything was WONDERFUL!  The entire church was loving, kind, and accepted us as family immediately.  I developed a quickly deep relationship with our youth minister's wife and Matt and I quickly fell into the church life. 

I don't want to go into much detail, but we felt like God might be calling us elsewhere in the fall of 2008.  We put out Matt's resume and just began praying for God's guidance.  We were contacted by a church in Toccoa, GA (waaaaay up north, in the mountains) and even visited it a few times to see if we thought that was where God was leading us. 

In January of 2009, our church had a pretty big split and Matt and I were pretty devastated.  Most of the people that we were really close to left.  In February 2009 Lorelai was born, and I pulled away from the church alot. We've been through alot of ups and downs since then, but felt like God was still calling Matt to stay.  We started noticing that God was shaping us and molding us, but we didn't really know what for.  Honestly, we figured it was to take us to a different church for Matt to serve in.  In August of 2009 we became friends with Zach and Emily Parker.  Zach works for Aflac and pretty much from the beginning of our friendship, Zach has told Matt that he thinks that Matt would do wonderful at selling Aflac.  We always just brushed it off and kind of laughed about it and reminded them that Matt was called to the ministry, not to sell insurance.

Very slowly, that idea started to not be quite so absurd anymore and it seemed like God was pulling us in that direction.  Eventually, we started praying really really hard about what God wanted  us to do.  Then we started praying that God would stop us if this was not the direction to go in.  He never did.

October 3, 2010 was Matt's last day as the music minister at Bethany Baptist Church.  He has been working for Aflac for the past 4 weeks, and is really starting to do well at it.  It's a big adjustment for us - going from salary to commission is a BIG change.  But we're sure that this is God's plan for our life right now, and we're just following Him.  We are VERY excited about this opportunity, and even though it can be very stressful and is definitely NEVER where we thought we'd be, we know that God has amazing and wonderful plans for our family!!

We're enjoying visiting around to churches as a family - that is a luxury that we have never had before since Matt has been employed in a church since we were engaged (I was 18!), and I'll be sure to let you know when we decide on a church home.

But, we could sure use  your prayers.  :)

Monday, October 25, 2010

Fall Fun

I had Columbus Day (it was a Monday) off from school.  Emily is a member of a play group and I went with her to several activities (the Firestation, the Splash Park) with her this summer.  That same play group was all going to the Corn Maze in Hahira on Columbus Day, and Emily invited me to tag along.  I was completely for it because I figured that LL would have a BLAST.  They had a grain silo filled with corn kernels for the kids to play in, a huge PVC Pipe slide (that didn't work too well for the little little's), a hay ride, and the corn maze.  We had a good 30 + minutes to just hang around before the hay ride and the kids had a blast running around and playing.




How cute is this??
Buddies!  :)

Playing in the corn


Time to slide!


Then we went on the hay ride (which LL was TERRIFIED of before it started, but then ended up LOVING it) and then we did the corn maze.  I guess I just didn't think about it very well, but to have such a small child and such a BIG corn maze wasn't exactly the best idea.  Not to mention that it was very hot by this point and that there were ants EVERYWHERE.  We did a little bit of the corn maze, but then the kids were done (LL kept asking for me to hold her) so Emily and I just walked through corn until we were out.  We had a really good time, LL was exhausted when we left, and I'm happy that we went!
Holding hands!






Lunch time!

The Honey Bee Festival - 2010

A couple of weekends ago was a crazy busy, but crazy fun weekend for us!  (I know, I'm mega behind on blogging, but my goal is to be completely caught up by next weekend).  I ended up taking a Friday off because Matt's mom was going on a trip to Tennessee and I needed to watch LL.  Mom took the day off, too, and we spent the whole thing getting ready for a baby shower that we were throwing the next day for Meghan.  We started the day off right, though - at Chik-Fil-A.  I'm always down for eating there, and LL had a BLAST playing on all of the playground equipment.

I was at the top to help her go down the slide, and Gigi was at the bottom to help her when she got out.

She LOVED it!

Trying to go back up.....
I had to get down somehow!
Her first time actually riding in the buggy part of a grocery cart.  She really liked it!

The next day we had Meghan's shower in the morning, and then headed off to the Honey Bee Festival in the afternoon after LL's nap.  This has been one of our traditions every year.  I used to march in the parade in highschool, Matt and I used to take Lola when we were first married, and now we go with LL.  It's usually extremely hot, beyond crowded, and pretty miserable - but we love every second of it.  This post will be mostly pictures of our day, so here we go!
She LOVES riding horses, just like her mommy!
She finally held on all by herself instead of holding on to me!

The boys and their gyros.
I tried one for the first time and it was actually AMAZING!

Georgeous Girl
Honey Bee Festival 2009            Honey Bee Festival 2010