The winner...

Thanks friends for all your input on the kitty pics. As I said before, I didn't have school today because of the flooding. We ARE having school tomorrow along with the TAKS test. Please Pray. God knew this would happen on April 28th and He also knew what we had planned for that day. His way is always best. ALWAYS. We just have to trust Him!

Anyways, the lack of work and therefore lack of anything planned to do gave me a lot of free time today and yesterday. It's not like a day you planned for and therefore filled up. It's like finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk. It wasn't budgeted out to some financial category and you would've had it anyways so if you waste or spend it wisely, it doesn't really matter. I put so much pressure on myself to use my time well that it was nice to have two unexpectedly blank days. I could completely waste them away and its not like I would have gotten anything less done. Can anyone relate? So, probably because of that lack of pressure, I had two wonderfully productive and pleasant days. Today I worked on house stuff, mainly my living room. It's coming together nicely. I found some bright cranberry circle place mats and a big vase and fake flowers at Home Goods. I like that place. I even made it to the cleaners today. Now that's an accomplishment worth mentioning!

So, in my wonderfully blank day, I took more pictures of Carlos. Please don't think I'm obsessed, I just had time. So, I think I took one that I like even better than the ones before that I think I'll use. Your thoughts are welcome!

The Perfect Picture

So, there's a contest at my school for the most "Pawsome" Pet. Very catchy. Well, I'm going to enter Carlos. You have to enter with a picture and a short paragraph about your animal. So, I took some pictures...a small kitty photo shoot if you will...and I want to know your favorites. If you think I'm crazy because I actually spent time taking many pictures of my cat, then you've obviously never owned a pet. Anyways, the last 6 years of this contest, a dog has won and this year, I want it to be a cat. Well, actually MY cat. The prize is that you get a gift basket for your animal and you get to bring your animal to school for a day and what's not to love about just winning? So, here are my favorites of all the pictures that I took. Tell me which is your favorite and which would make you want to vote for Carlos the most because of his incredible cuteness.

Picture #1

Picture #2

Picture #3

Picture #4


Picture #5

Thanks for your input! I'll let you know which I choose and if he wins or not!

On another little note, I don't have school tomorrow. Katy ISD was closed today for flooding and then just my school and a few others are closed tomorrow as well because of one of the resevoirs near the school. Wasn't the TAKS test today you might be saying...yes yes, it was, but it will be delayed. Please pray for my kiddos...flooding is very exciting, maybe even exciting enough to forget some things your teacher has labored to teach you! You know I'll be praying!

A weekend with the Pulliam Fam

I always say that April is a busy month and it never fails. Ever since high school, it seems that every weekend in April seems to fill up. Everyone just thinks, let's plan something, oh, it's nice in April, how about then? But I love it. It comes at a good time of year when I'm about to have a little time off. Well, this year has been no different and I have loved it as always! This past weekend, we went to Dallas to see my family and to celebrate my brother's and nephew's birthdays. Keith's, my brother's, birthday is April 26th and Zach, my nephew's, birthday is April 23rd. We drove out on Friday afternoon and stayed until Sunday afternoon.

We left about 5:30 and got there around 10pm. We decided (well, I decided) to take Carlos with us on the trip. Before you start laughing that I took my cat with me on a two day trip, remember he is still a kitten. He did ok on the way down, except for his constant desire to sit with Ben or really anywhere other than in my lap. He slept a little but mostly just got annoyed at me holding him. He did much better on the way back though. Well, when we got into Allen, mom had banana pudding, one of my favorites, waiting there for us. Gotta love mom, there's just no one like her!

Saturday was the marathon family fun day. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it or not, but I LOVE family fun and I'm way deprived of it living in Houston. I started the day with some talking time with my mom over pancakes and juice. At 9, I met my sweet friend Jamie for Coffee at Starbucks. We hadn't seen each other since Christmas time. Houston girl's gotta have some girlfriend time. After that, I met Anne at Jacob's flag football game that he won, then onto lunch and shopping at Weirs, then to Andrew's flag football game, and then to Zach's baseball game. To finish off the day of family fun, we went to Anne and Bob's house and had pizza, swam in the hot tub, and just hung out. They have an amazing new outdoor room and kitchen and we enjoyed just talking and hanging out. And of course no night with boys is complete without an exciting game of shoot each other with water guns.

Sunday, we went to my sister's church with the whole fam followed by a birthday dinner for Keith. It's always sad and hard to leave and come back but also nice to be back in our own house and bed. Carlos did amazing on the way back. I think he was so worn out from dealing with other cats and a dog that he slept in my lap almost the whole trip. It was so sweet! Here's some pics from the weekend...

The Birthday boys - Zach and Keith

What an amazing husband I have!

Look at that girl jump! You had no idea we were so tallented did you??!!

Carlos enjoying his car ride in my lap

The Joys of Pet Ownership and Visitors

Gotta love that Carlos. Friday, I came home from work and found Carlos in the kitchen with this:

Innocently, he looked up as if to say, "Wanna play??!" Ben and I just laughed and left him there. He continued to play on and off with his new toy for the rest of the night. Whatever makes him happy right? Really its more like whatever keeps him from running crazy around the house and playing jungle cat all over the furniture. We love him though and he's learning what's ok to do in the Cooper house. Some of the newest things he's discovered is the window blinds and those wonderful strings that hang down from them and hair twisties that he kindly leaves in his food for us when he finds them.

On anther note, I never got a chance this week (it was in insane, fly-by week) to post about Easter. This year, we got the treat of being visited instead of traveling ourselves. It was such a blessing because we got to go to our own church and see the Easter service there. Ben's family - his parents, and his brother and brother's wife, Luke and Cherish - came down to us from Arlington to celebrate Easter. When they arrived on Friday night, we went out to dinner with them and then came back and watched the new James Bond movie. Saturday, Pat, Cherish, and I went out shopping. We had great plans to go to the mall but got distracted by Mardel and then Ross and then Old Navy and then tried to conquer HEB the afternoon before Easter. Not the greatest idea, but we made it out of there with fixin's to grill hamburgers and an Easter lunch. The Easter service at First Baptist was great and was so encouraging and worshipful. It was a great Easter holiday.

The ladies - Me, Cherish, and Pat at Lupe Tortilla

The guys with Pat - Luke, Pat, and Ben

The Cooper Fam - Mark & Pat, Ben & Lynn, Luke & Cherish

Happy Easter!

Just wanted to tell everyone Happy Easter. Ben's family is here with us this weekend. We have enjoyed so much hosting them in our new house. We are up a little bit earlier to make Easter lunch. We had high hopes when we went to HEB last night. Surely not everyone else in Houston will also want to buy a ham today. Well, they did and they bought them all. So we got pork tenderloin instead. Anyways...details will follow on how the first holiday dinner at my house turned out.

Before I go into much more daily details, I must go into what Easter means to me so that everyone knows. What a precious day it is. I believe that today celebrates when Jesus rose from the dead. He was fully God and fully man and in God's love, he sent Jesus to Earth. He lived a perfect life and took our place on the cross. You see, we have all done wrong things and do not meet the holy, perfect standard of God. Our relationship with God is not right because of that and our punishment for our sins is death. Well, Jesus came and was put on the cross for us in our place to take that punishment of death. He then rose 3 days later, just as he said he would. He is so trustworthy. Because of this, he has conquered death and we can have a right relationship with our God and King. By simply believing in Him and the sacrifice He made for us, we are given the gift of salvation and when we die, we will go to Heaven for eternity. You don't have to work for it and you can never lose it once you have believed. What an amazing act of love shown to each of us.

I am so excited about today and getting to celebrate it, sing about it at church, and really just being reminded of what an amazing act of love Jesus showed each one of us. Be blessed today and if you have a question about this or you want this in your life, just ask me about it! So, please don't get too distracted by bunnies, eggs, or candy today and remember how much you've been given in Jesus Christ.

Randomness

Sometimes I mean to call a friend back again and again and then eventually I feel like its just too late. So I keep putting it off because I feel bad. Then I finally just bite the bullet and call and I am always so glad that I did. Well, that's how I feel with my blog. It's been more than a week since I've blogged and once I got past the normal amount of days I just felt like it was too late. More and more things kept happening that I wanted to blog about and I just kept putting it off. So tonight, I'm biting the bullet and sending you a way random blog.

This past weekend, we had our first guests over for dinner. That was one of things I really wanted to use our house for. We put our dining room table from world market together on Saturday afternoon and then had guests over Saturday night. Ben grilled chicken on our tiny George Foreman, making us want a real grill very much, and I made the sides. We planned stuff for the coming Sunday school lessons with our friends and had brownies and ice cream for desert. Yum! Then to really break in the new table well, Sunday night we also had my sweet cousin Emily and her fiance Preston over. They are getting married in July. We cooked them a chicken stew from kraft.com (delish!) and all the good stuff to go with it. Ben and I tried our hardest to be good hosts but Carlos did not show his best manners. We left him out at dinner and he decided to leap onto the back of one of our very unsuspecting guests while he was sitting at the dining room table. Fortunately this guy is a cat person and understood. Carlos was nicely closed in a room after that.


This weekend, we are going to the Shell Houston Open for a PGA tour event. Ben is going Saturday and Sunday and I am going just Sunday. I thank the Lord that he prepared me to have a husband that loves golf. I grew up watching and semi-following golf with my dad. It was so relaxing and enjoyable to watch it with him on Saturday afternoons. So, in God's kindness, I now love to watch golf with my husband who also loves it. I'm trying to get into the players and learn about them. I'm really excited to go and see in person some big names. Tiger won't be there but almost everyone else will.

On another note, kitty Carlos is doing well. His personality is coming more and more along with his zany side. Some of his favorite things are staring at running water, drinking the water from the shower when we have just gotten out, his tail, my hands, flowers in a vase, and all the specs of dirt on the floor that he can find. It has been so long since I had a kitten that I forgot how playful they are. He also seems to be invincible. He will fall back first onto the floor from the couch and jump up completely unphased. He runs into chair legs as he's playing and no big deal. He is surely keeping us entertained. Well, happy weekend!