Wait... Do You Have Your Keys?!

 A typical Saturday morning for us involves yard work.  But on this particular Saturday, things did not go as planned.  Please enjoy this reenactment.  And yes, by reenactment that means we did the whole thing a second time for pictures.  

 Sarah: "Hey Tim, do we really need to mow today?  The grass doesn't look that bad.  Maybe we could just do the edges and call it good."
Tim: "I think you're right.  Want to go for a walk instead?"

 (After making a quick dash under the closing garage door) Tim: "Wait... do you have your keys?!"
Sarah: "Oh my gosh, NO!"

 Tim: "Haha!  Just kidding, mine are in my pocket.  Hehehe!"
Sarah: (The look)

 Tim: "Come on.  Let's go walk."
(Commence walk around the block)

 (After arriving home) Tim: "Uh...these are my car keys, not my house keys."
Sarah: "Bahahaha! So what do we do?  Is the bathroom window still open?"
Tim: "Yes.  Or we could try the doggie door in the back."
Sarah: "We have locks on our gates... can't get into the back."
Tim: "Good thing the window is open!" (Audience can imagine why said window is open)

 Sarah: "Let's use the keys to pry off the screen."

 Sarah: "So how do we do this?  Who's going in?  Do you want a boost?"
Tim: "I've done a few pull ups in my day, I will be fine."

 Tim: "Okay, you try."

 Sarah: "Hahahahaha!"

Sarah: "Um... what do I do now?  I can't reach the floor.  Do I just go head first?!"
Tim:  See if you can get a little further in, then pull one leg through to stand on the toilet."

 Sarah: "Got it!"

Tim: "Will you come let me in?"
(End scene)

Aren't you glad you were curious enough to read?!  :)

Making A House A Home

Our house has really started to feel like home, which is a wonderful thing!  We've added several personal touches and I figure it's time for a Pinterest edition of the blog.  For those of you who don't know, Pinterest is a website that allows me to take other people's clever ideas and replicate them at my house.  It has helped immensely with decorating our new home.  I have been able to incorporate things that have meaning, are functional, and look good!  So, not much to say, but lots to show this time around.

One of the first things we did after semi-finishing the kitchen floor was have an Olympic party, of course!  We celebrated the opening ceremonies with some of our married friends- each couple got to choose a country to represent. Can you tell where we were "from"?

If you have been in my home in the last three years, no matter where I was living at the time, you have probably seen these frames.  I found them at an antique store and bought them for a dollar a piece.  They were empty.  And for quite some time, remained empty on my wall.  I received much grief over this.   But I finally decided what to do with them.  I put burlap on the back and a clothespin on the burlap.  This way, I can easily change out what is in the frame.  This was  what decorated the wall throughout the Olympics.  

First Pinterest project- card board letter from Hobby Lobby, drew design on with pencil, then made design with hot glue and painted.  Ta da!

Obviously, my projects do not go off without a hitch.  This next project was really simple, but in the process I splatter painted my dining table, and yes, that's my computer up in the top left corner.  Oh dear.

This is the date night jar I made during the splatter paint episode above.  Another Pinterest idea... the jar, not the splatter paint.  The stick are color coded with dates based on money, planning required, and where.  It is a fun way for us to be spontaneous, which I love!

This was actually a gift.  Tim's best man, Max, currently lives in Abu Dhabi and got to come home for a visit over the summer.  He brought us this impressive sand are that we now proudly display in the living room.  It also helps me remember to pray for them while they are so far from us. 

Thank you, Pinterest!  I had been trying to figure out what to do with my mess of jewelry and finally saw this beauty.  The best part about this project was that it was so simple I started and finished in the same day!  Plus, we have a fun owl friend in our bedroom now.  :)

We got a grill!  Tim's parents passed their grill down to us.  This happened several weeks ago, but we just recently used it for the first time.  Naturally, I'm taking the picture through the blinds to avoid West Nile.  It's no joke around here and the mosquitos love me, but always leave Tim alone.  

I got brave because I wanted a better picture.  This was actually Tim's first time as grill master.  I'm happy to report that he has quite a future ahead of him.  Dinner was great!

The current use of our frames in the living room.  I took down the British flags and now we have this lovely display.

This was our first official housewarming gift.  It was a bit of a joke from one of my coworkers, but how could I not hang that up in my kitchen?!  

We still have a long way to go, but it's nice to call this place ours now.  Glad you were curious enough to read.

America is Not a Melting Pot, It's a Salad Bowl

It's funny how after I have been blogging for a while, I start to think in blogs.  What I mean is that as things take place in my life, sometimes I instantly think about what I will write in a blog about it.  Because of this, and because it has been far too long since my last blog, I have been walking around with something like three different blog topics in my head.  Hopefully this first one will help explain why it's taken me so long to get them out of my head.

On August 9th we got a new roommate.  One of our college students from church came to stay with us for a little while.  Not only is she a college student, she is an international college student.  She is from China and got to go home to spend the summer with her family.  Due to circumstances out of her control and ours, before she returned she ended up losing her housing here in the states and we ended up with all of her things in our garage.  Not only that, but she was supposed to come back on the 8th. Remember those giant typhoons that went through Shanghai that caused over 200,000 people to evacuate?  Yeah, that slowed her down a bit.  So, when she arrived on the 9th, she came to our house to stay with us until she could find suitable living arrangements.

On the 10th I had my wisdom tooth removed, which wasn't really that big of a deal except for the fact that the anesthesia made me sick for a week.  Not throw up sick, but more of an "I'm so dizzy I can't get off the couch or I might fall over" kind of sick.  So, with a new roommate and the traumatic loss of my tooth, I was a little preoccupied for a while.

Shidi (our new roomie) must have looked at two or three houses a day that she found on Craig's list.  When she finally found the one she wanted to move in to, we celebrated with ice cream cake!  Shidi loves ice cream.  We love ice cream.  So it was a win-win situation.  Shidi loves sweets, possibly more than me- which is saying something for those of you who know me- and she informed us that girls have two stomachs.  One is for food, but the other is for sweets.  That's why we always have room for dessert!  She also told us one night that she had always heard that America was a melting pot.  But once she lived here she disagreed and said it's actually a salad bowl because we are all thrown in and tossed together, but we all keep our uniqueness.  Shidi was so fun and brought much laughter and joy into our home.

She loved to help me in the kitchen and learn about how we do things.  One day she offered to cook us Chinese food, but insisted that her cooking would not be very good.  She was so nervous!  I assured her that I had certainly messed up dinner before and if it was completely inedible we would go out for dinner.  Well, let me just tell you that she can cook!  We had two wonderful meals while she was here.  It was so fun to see her try new things and have success.  Plus, we got to eat some great food.  She told us her parents didn't believe that she cooked, but we were sure to tell them how well she did when we met them on Skype last night.  :)

Yesterday was the 1st of the month, so Shidi's rent began at her new place.  Tim and I were not at home, so we helped her move today.  She was sad to go, and truth be told, we were sad also.  I told Tim it felt like we were dropping off and leaving our child at college for the first time.  Some people, okay most people, thought we were a little crazy for getting a roommate.  But we never doubted that God has given us this house to glorify Him and since we have experienced His love and blessing, we need to love and bless others in return.  There was a need and we were just available.

Shidi got us some flowers and we all love ice cream cake!

Shidi's first attempt at opening bread in a can.  I have never seen this happen before. 

Shidi and Katie helped with the dinner assembly line.

Now it's Shidi's turn- hard at work making dinner!

Lots of prep

This is Shidi's favorite seasoning that she brought back from China.  Thankfully,
she can read the Chinese directions because the English ones don't translate too well.

This was my favorite!

I named this dish "Chinese Tacos"

We are professional chopstickers!

Mmmmm!

Dinner #2 = lots of left overs.  Hooray!

Love That New Olreans

We spent July 29th-August 4th in New Orleans with a few of our college students.  At the beginning of the year, we decided as college leadership, that it would be important for us to go on a mission trip.  But where to?  After some conversations with ministers at our church, we decided to go to New Orleans because of prior relationships that were established.  It was our first time to be on the planning end of a trip and I was more than nervous on a few occasions- making sure paper work was done on time, gathering student money, planning when to go where in the city, etc.  It was a learning experience!

There were 10 of us all together... 4 leaders and 6 students.  We drove one 12 passenger van and our little Corolla.  We stayed at Annunciation Missions which is a church that has several rooms full of bunk beds and dorm style bath on the hall.  They fed us breakfast and dinner and sack lunches that we took with us to our work site.  James and Jean are the staff members there who pretty much keep the place running.  They were so welcoming and did anything they could to make us feel at home.  James is originally from the Lower 9th Ward where the levy broke during hurricane Katrina.  He took us to the neighborhood and showed us what remains.  There are a few houses rebuilt, but mostly lots that have seven years of overgrowth on them.  The levy has been rebuilt and there are even houses just across the street from it again.  We were so thankful to James for letting us hear his story and ask questions about a very traumatic time.

We worked with a church called Vintage Church.  They have a couple of campuses in the New Orleans area, and the one we helped at was in an area called Metairie.  We quickly learned that the people of New Orleans stick pretty close to their neighborhoods.  So even though the church got it's start uptown, the people of Metairie weren't interested in going too far from home and decided to join with a church in the area that was dying out.  They have been remodeling and working to build the church for about a year.  Now that they have a good body established, they are starting to reach out and invite the community to come visit.  Our work with them was two-fold.  First, we went into the community to spread the word.  We went to a park to pass out water bottles with the church label on them.  Our kids were nervous to start conversations in this way, but they were champs!  On another day we went to a local mall and passed out business cards with the church info on them.  This was also nerve wracking for us, but it was amazing to hear our group talk later about how they surprised themselves and were able to do this so easily.  Some of them are really excited to keep practicing their new skill of sharing Jesus with people!

The other part of our work at Vintage church was to help them update what will become the children's area.  They are a church of growing families and need classrooms and space for the kids that are growing!  We painted and painted and painted.  Door frames, walls, doors, ceiling grids, and maybe even ourselves a little.  I was so proud of the way that everyone stayed busy the whole time and really got a lot accomplished.

The best part of the trip for me was to watch our students get to know each other and love each other!  We have been praying for unity and commitment among our students and from day two of the trip it was easy to see it start to happen.  We are excited to move into the school year with this momentum and are praying that the many members who didn't get to go on the trip will catch the enthusiasm of the other students.  It has been neat to hear the students share about what they learned.  Totally worth a few nerves leading up to the trip!

I think we all fell in love with the people of New Orleans.  They have such a welcoming and thankful spirit.  Everywhere we went, people expressed their thanks for our help.  They were so willing to share their stories and city with us.  We can't wait to go back!  Here's a few pictures of the fun.  :)

Annunciation Mission

Party Van!

Lower 9th Ward- this lot is kept up so the city won't take it, but on all sides you
 can see overgrown lots where people didn't come back.

House across the street from the levy.

Musicians Village

Keeping up with the Olympics, of course!

Brandon attended the fire academy here and got to spend some time with the NOLA firemen

Skyline from across the Mississippi

A little fro-yo nourishment... it was hot!

Famous New Orleans Sno-Balls

We helped Annunciation get ready for the fire marshall
to inspect by tearing down all the beds before we left.

Ok, the boys tore down the beds and the girls had blanket and pillow duty.

Mount Pillowmanjaro

St. Charles Line- oldest streetcars in New Orleans

There were beads everywhere!

Glad you were curious enough to read.