failure to post

So sorry blog, its been a long time.

I always have great intentions of writing and then life happens or Jared is using the computer to watch TV(which happens quite often).

So whats new now that it's March?
*well today is Jared's birthday:-) He's getting old and turned 25 today.
*I had a birthday in January and turned 27! And I may or not have freaked out a little bit! whoa! How did that happen so fast?
*we went on a cruise in January, which was really fun and we did get stranded on the ship! How terrible would that have been? Our cruise was quite enjoyable and we had super great weather and I got a tan in January(said tan has currently disappeared tho). We even went swimming with stingrays which I just LOVED!!!!! I will definitely do that again! Maybe not a cruise again, because I like solid ground and like staying in one place. I would also choose a different cruise line, Royal Caribbean would be preferable.
*we got a new dog January 1st! His name is Dieter and we just LOVE him. I still really my sweet Edo boy:( But Dieter has fit right in and he and Zeena really LOVE each other, its nice that they now have each other to play with.
*I finally took care of all my Christmas stuff.
*youth group has been really great lately! We have a great youth pastor who just loves the kids and it helps that he and his wife are becoming fast friends with Jared and I! Yay!!
*recently I got to have a girls weekend with my mom and twins, as Jared and my stepdad were both gone at the same time! It was so much fun!! Lots of ice cream was consumed and my mom and I watched lots of Vampire Diaries!
*In less than a month, it will be our 1 year anniversary! Seriously? Time flies! :-)
*we have been studying the book of James at church and it has been awesome!
*I've been doing my best to eat gluten free for the past few weeks and have since had way less headaches!! I love that!!
*On April 1st(my moms birthday) we are going to start P90X again! Yikes, it is gonna suck but all the pain will be worth it! And we have already decided that once we are done we are at least going to work  out 4 times a week, no taking a break and not doing it for 2 years! I've become a bit of a fatty!
*I only have a few more mission trip payments for Peru! I'm very excited to go! God really changed my heart and I just know its going to be an amazing trip for everyone going!
*I am still trying to read through Harry Potter. I am currently reading book 5 "the order of the phoenix". I just need to get through it!
*Mariah won a short story contest that one of friends from high school was doing. Here is the link if you would like to read her story :-) Its quite good. www.mariahhammond.wordpress.com
*I got a pair of prescription sunglasses and think they are pretty great! Its so nice to be able to see and not have squint all the time since I have them! And I got new glasses too, they are pretty fun as well and are orange. Pretty appropriate since orange is my favorite color!

Well currently I am going to try to upload some cruise pictures to Facebook. But I'm gonna do my best to write more often especially since I can update from my phone!

Merry Christmas!!!

A very Merry Christmas to you all!!

Today has been a most wonderful day even though I am now at work. We are currently watching Christmas Vacation which I love :-D

Yesterday we celebrated at my Moms house which was very fun.then we went to the candlelight Christmas Eve service, which I always love even when I get burning wax on my hand over and over. Today we went to my Dad's and then Jared went to his parents and I went back to my Moms for some dinner and on to work. This weekend, we have two more Christmas events and then next week its the New Year! How did that happen so quick?

I got some really fun stuff for Christmas. Really cute sock monkey PJ's, sock monkey key chains, sock monkey key covers. If you notice a theme, there is one. I just love me some sock monkeys! :-)  I got a really fun scarf from my Grandma. I got a Barnes and Noble giftcard from my brother and a Starbucks gift card, I think my family knows what I like! My Grandma Karren got Jared and I new sonicare toothbrushes, which is super nice! I'm gonna have fresh clean teeth!And I even got an orange knife. Jared and I did stockings for each other and I got some super cute snowmen stuff made by one of his friends moms. They are so cute! I'll take some pictures and put them on here!

Today I am just feeling blessed, God has blessed us so much and on this day that we celebrate his birth and then ulitmately his death on the cross, for us! Its just incredible. I have so much to be thankful for, so much more than just the gifts I have received from Christmas.

Thank you Jesus:-)

This is just a super cute photo, someday I'll do this on Christmas!

Wedding ornaments from my Momma! Love these! <3>

Todays tasty ham! :-)

I'm a pretty big fan of our Christmas tree! :-)

Christmas Eve Service. (also my hand that is being burned by hot wax)

Love this! :-D

And just a little self portrait while driving to work. Why yes I am a dork, haha!

It's almost Christmas!!

I am getting so excited for Christmas! Maybe thats because its one of my favorite holidays :-)

I think I am almost all ready, and could even say we are almost all ready.

This past Tuesday Jared and I took the twins to Frankenmuth to go to Bronners, which is the worlds largest Christmas Store!

It was so much fun! The twins did eventually enjoy it, when we first arrived at Bronners Mariah was not to thrilled. After we looked at ornaments and finally picked some out we went out to eat. But more on that in a minute. The twins each picked out a really fun glass dragon ornament, and they each a pickle ornament. You might be wondering why one might want a pickle ornament, 1. the one that the girls got is a real little one, so its cute :-) and 2. they are a Christmas tradition, in other countries the pickle is placed on the tree last and it is hidden somewhere in the tree and on Christmas morning the first person who finds the pickle ornament gets to open the first present. Pretty fun if you ask me. I'm pretty sure that $3 dollar pickle ornament is the twins favorite. My mom even told me that Makayla tried to bring it with her the other morning, lol! Maybe I just have weird siblings...
So we went out to dinner at Zehnders, which has famous chicken dinners. We had the family style all you can eat meal, it was really fun. It was fun to do that with the twins, they just thought that was the best! "you mean I can ask for more?" Yes! So all in all, it was a great day! And maybe we'll start a little tradition of doing that each year. The twins and I also took some really fun pictures with Santa and the nativity scenes outside, Jared however would not take any pictures with us. Oh well, at least the twins are fun ;-)

Well I suppose I should go to bed~

Merry Christmas!!

Adoration

I was just reading a little devotional on my phone and really liked it so I'm going to post it on here. It is on Christmas carols, hope you enjoy it :-)

It made me think, and I've been really realizing that I need to be reading my Bible every day, not especially just one month of the year.


O Come, All Ye Faithful

Come and behold Him,
Born the King of Angels;
O come, let us adore Him

Adoration is a word that we love to use during the Christmas season thanks largely to the classic carol O Come, All Ye Faithful as we sing, ""O come, let us adore Him." So many of us during the Christmas season spend more time thinking about Christ and giving Him adoration than any other time of the year. Think about it for a moment. More people go to church during Christmas than any other time of the year. We also tend to find ourselves singing and listening to songs about Jesus more during the Christmas season than any other time of year. As a result, Christmas is a time when we love to praise Him, honor Him, and adore Him much in the way Philippians 2:9-11 describes.

While it's great that Christ earns so much of our attention and adoration during Christmas, it's important to remember that we should pay that same amount of attention to Him 12 months a year instead of just one. Sure, it's easier to get caught up in all the Christmas hype and spend more time thinking, singing, praying, and adoring Christ during December, but in order to have a true relationship with Christ we must adore and spend time with Him daily and not just during Christmas. This year as you move out of the Christmas season and back into the normalcy of life, strive to find a way to capture that Christmas spirit that will enable you to adore Him and grow with Him every day of your life.

What things keep you from adoring and spending time with Christ on a daily basis? What steps will you take to ensure that you spend time daily with Christ?

Make War

Well I wanted to write this last weekend when I got home from our super awesome youth group retreat.  It was a really great time away and really fun getting to know some of the high schoolers more. We talked about making war on specific sin in our lives. And it was really nice to have everyone share at the campfire what they were going to make war on. The sin that I am making war is my swearing. I do that far more often than I would like to admit, especially when stressed or in the heat of something. So God showed me some verses in Proverbs 4 verses 23-26 to be exact. And it reads "Above all else guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." And these next verses are why I am memorizing these. "Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths of your feet and be steadfast in all your ways." I currently have those verses written down on a note card in my car so at a light I can look at them and hopefully try to memorize them that way. But that is definitely my goal. If I just were to even memorize one verse a week, I could have 52 verses memorized by next year! That to me is a great motivator.

While we were on the retreat, besides lots of hanging out time, the teens did the low ropes courses. It is always really cool to see everyone come together as a team and figure out who should lead and talk. We even did trust falls, and all of the leaders did them too. I may have freaked out a little bit!
We went ziplining that day too, which was fun. Although nothing in comparison to the crazy zipline from Honduras.( I dont think I've written about my recent trip on here, soon my fellow readers) But all in all it was a fabulous high school fall/winter retreat! We have some amazing teens and pretty much the best youth pastor around!

Alright, I'm off to memorize some verses and read my Bible, which I have been trying diligently to do every day even if just a few verses.

 God is good.

Fun picture with Britt and the lovely Makayla and Bailey

Me and Ashley about to go zip lining

Trust Fall! Scary!!

 A great group pic!

And of course a goofy one! :-)

Christmas Time!

The Christmas tree is up and decorated! And I just love it! Now I just wish I wasn't working the next 2 days so that I could be home decorating the house. Christmas is one of my favorites!

Woohoo!

Thanksgiving was great this year, even despite the fact that I worked from 3p-11p. It was really slow at work, in fact we didnt do any surgeries the eight hours I was there. So that was definitely something to be thankful for! :-D

Ok thats all for right now! Its the holiday season...  

Putting the lights on the tree:-)

The twins helping pick out the tree

Miss Kitty sleeping on the Christmas pillow

All decorated and ready for Christmas fun! :-D

just a post....

I always say I'm going to write on here more often, but then I don't. You would think I might more often as I have the internet readily available now (which by the way is so nice!).

Well here I am....
I never finished telling about my trip to Panama. It was just so good! God showed up each and every day and gave everyone strength in ways that we might not have expected, like when it was so stinking hot (which was every single day) and the students didn't think they could keep going, they did and God totally blessed them because of it. I just have so many great memories and made so many lasting friendships. God is just so good. I really need to get my journal out and then write more. I just loved it and am currently signed up to hopefully go with Big World Ventures and Never the Same Missions to Peru next summer. I'll be writing more about that on here and keeping everyone up to date with my financial situation.
Here is a God story for all you readers about going to Peru. In Panama they showed us a really cool video about the trip to Peru and I watched it and pretty much decided right then that I was not going to Peru. It didn't look very exciting, and I definitely did NOT want to fundraise, I wanted a nice normal summer where maybe I could go on vacation and just do what I wanted. Shortly after thinking that, I knew that God wanted me to go. I can still say that I'm not all that excited about fund raising but I do know that God wants me there next summer. I am not entirely sure why or even how I am going to get there but still I am willing to go and I know that God will definitely provide. And some pretty amazing people are going back as well, so I am sort of excited:-D

I think I'm getting sick, ugh!!! Seriously? It might have something to do with the fact that I worked 19 hours straight on Monday. What was I thinking?!?

Well speaking of mission trips, I am going to Honduras in almost a month!!! AHHH!!! :-D I can't wait! The trips to Honduras are always really refreshing because incredible people go, God shows up and we get to do surgeries for people who are actually grateful, even if you just fix up their ACL. I love seeing the joy on the Honduran faces as we help them and I love being able to do my job and serve my Creator as well. And I'm looking forward to going because my friend Lauren is going. We actually met on one of the previous trips to Honduras and I'm super excited to serve with her again! :-D

Well I think thats about all for now. I'll write more soon (notice I did not say tomorrow, hehe)!!!