The big catch up...get ready!

I have come to the point where it is absolutely mandatory to blog. There have been many events that I wrote blog posts for in my head with pictures and catchy sentences. And they never made it to the actual blog world. So today will be a major catch up of events with pictures and brief descriptions if you can handle it. If I don't do this now, the events will be forever lost in imaginary blog world and you will never know about them. Oh the tragedy.

This is us at Houston Project. Notice we look a little sweaty and like we're workin...well we were! It went so great and God blessed our site greatly. For a more detailed account, my friend Jen wrote several detailed posts about our site.

This was the going away party for our sweet Herringtons. They moved to Springfield Missouri recently. This is some of our Bible study girls - Amy, Liz, Rachael, and me (aparently I wore the wrong color). We already miss her!

The church we did Houston Project at invited all the volunteers back for a delicious authentic Mexican taco dinner. They were delicious. Some of the guys had 8 tacos. Wow. This is Jen, me, and Shayna stuffed from amazing tacos.

Now we're up to last weekend. Slowly but surely catching up. My cousin Emily got married and this is at her rehearsal dinner. We were very excited for her hence the faces.

Rehearsal dinner with my wonderful sister Anne and I.

Now to the wedding. I didn't have any good pictures of the beautiful bride and groom but I did get a picture of the cake. This is the grooms' "cake" in the form of a bunch of chocolate chip cookies. Then they brought out little cups of milk. Such a cute idea.

Now we're caught up to yesterday. I drove to College Station for the day and the day really deserves its own post but won't get it. The Lord worked it out perfectly and I got to see so many people in such a short time. Some of them are here - in the back - me, Jen (in from East Asia), Rebekah (friend from college), in the front - Holly, Carson (Amber's son), Erin, and Amber. I also go to see Lindsey who is moving to San Francisco!

Erin leaves soon for North Africa and this was the last time I will see her before she leaves. It was so sad to say goodbye, but I'm so excited for her.

Wow, so that's been my July pretty much. Teachers go back to school August 12th so my summer's almost over. Sad to see it go, but once I'm back, I'll enjoy getting back to work and being with the kids. Today sometime, we go to San Antonio for the weekend for one last hurrah!

Tremendously Blessed 2 years

Today is Ben and I's 2 year anniversary. Wow, two years. Sometimes it seems like a lot less, and other times I can hardly imagine life before Ben. Thank you sweet Ben for a great 2 years. We have both grown so much in patience, love, kindness, faith and trust in the Lord and dependence on the Lord. Ben has reminded me and challenged me often to love the person God made me, to be confident and decisive, and to put my ultimate faith, security, and hope in the Lord. Ben is blessed with wisdom and the gift to remember facts. He is silly but also sweet and gentle. He is a wonderful person to talk to and to be honest with and to discuss ideas or feelings. I love Ben and I couldn't be more thankful! Here's some pictures of us the last two years...

Our wedding Day

July 21, 2007

Halloween 2007

Valentines couples retreat 2008

Cayman Islands summer 2008

Houston Project

This week is finally it! We and so many others have worked hard to prepare for this event for a while now. We've been working on it and recruiting leaders and volunteers since the beginning of May. It seemed so far away when we started and now its here!

Houston Project is a city-wide event put on by the church Ben and I attend. Groups of people from the church go to different smaller churches around the Houston area. The goal is to help the local church reach the people in their area so that they may learn about Jesus and believe in Him and get involved in the church in their neighborhood. Ben and I are leading one of the groups that is partnering with a smaller Spanish speaking church. The pastor and people of this church are so gracious and kind. We can't wait to get to minister to them and hopefully help their church grow and reach the community. So, if you think about it, please be praying for us and the other sites for safety, wisdom, soft hearts and for people to come to believe in Jesus as their Savior. We're offering them free dinner every night but ultimately, we want to show them the freedom from their sins they are offered by Jesus Christ. He died for each of us in our place on the cross and then rose three days later conquering death. We now by simply beliving in Him can have Eternal Life with Jesus in Heaven. Praise the Lord!

If you want to sign up, its not too late. Just go to houstonproject.org and pick your site.

Search with Swagbucks

Swagbucks is a search engine that lets you earn stuff while you search. Many of you might have already heard of this - I read it on Jana's Blog a while back but just never signed up. If you heard of it from someone else first, by all means, use their link. But if I'm the first one you have heard this from then use mine! You earn swagbucks randomly (I haven't found any ryhme or reason to it) when you search. You can trade in your swagbucks for gift cards and other prizes. Right now, I have 5 swagbucks. If you want to sign up, click on the link below and I'll get swagbucks for referring you I think. You can even download a toolbar search spot like Google has for your Browser.

http://swagbucks.com/?cmd=sb-register&rb=740651.

Happy Searching!

Craigs List Newbie

Today, I bought my first item off of Craigs List. I started small - just looking for a cute wooden chair for my new craft room. Ben and I lived in an apartment for our entire marriage until we moved in February so we got used to living in just two rooms. Well, little by little we're realizing that there are other rooms in our house that we can use! Like three of them. One of the upstairs rooms has wonderful big windows and it was just filled with boxes that never got unpacked - mostly of random decoratives and things we don't use much. So, this past week, I cleaned out the room, threw away stuff, and put the boxes in the closet (genius I know) leaving myself a wonderful craft room! I already had a desk and a chest of drawers and our sweet friends that are moving (I'll miss them so!) gave us two bookshelves that they didn't want anymore. The only thing missing was a chair. I didn't want to put a black leather swively office chair in my cute girly craft room so I went to Craigs List in search of a cute chair. I found one and even bartered the price down a little. I drove and picked it up today from a sweet school teacher in Houston. I bought a girly cushion for it and a bright lamp and my room is almost complete. Below is a picture of the chair and the lamp. Later, I'll post a picture of the completed and organized room.

The cute "vintage" chair...the lady said she bought it at an antique shop and she thinks its English

I love this lamp! Clearance at Home Goods. Great place.

Honesty from Lynn

I was recently tagged by Jen to say 10 honest things about myself. I've been in a blog slump lately and have had no motivation to write a blog so thanks Jen for getting me back to blogging! I have done this before so I'll try to think of 10 new things that you may not know about me or maybe they are new things that have come about since I last wrote one of these types of posts. Ok, here it goes...

1. When I'm at home, I talk to my cats on and off all day like they are people. They don't respond but I think they understand.

2. I have a whole new love for rain. I always have loved storms but now it means one more things to me - a day I get to skip watering the lawn. I love you rain.

3. Although I have embraced my incredibly straight hair now and am learning to work with it, in high school, I had a perm every 6 months or so and even convinced a friend to do it. She ended up hating it and wearing her hair in a pony tail for the rest of the year. Poor thing.

4. I took copperplate Calligraphy (like you see on invitations) lessons this summer from a lady who has her own Calligraphy business. Actually her office door says Calligraphy and Haircuts. Maybe I'll start cutting hair too. So, if you want something calligraphied, let me know! I need the practice!

5. I have discovered recently that I love to bake. I love to make cookies, cake, or any other type of dessert. But, I am conflicted. See, I love to also eat what I bake but this could be bad for my midsection. So, I need to brainstorm more reasons to bake when I don't have to eat what I bake.

6. I genuinely love to watch golf. Ben was gone this past Sunday and I was really disappointed that we weren't going to sit and watch golf together. I haven't gotten to the point of watching by myself but anythings possible now!

7. I hate to waste things - time, food, clothes, money, craft paper, etc and get a pit in my stomach when I do. It just happens sometimes though and you can't help it. I'm learning.

8. I am trying to cut two things out of my diet - caffeine and fake sugar. You don't realize how much of something is in your diet until you try to cut it out.

9. I am starting the Twilight series (don't judge me!).

10. One of my favorite things to do this summer has been to go to Starbucks mid afternoon with a book and get sweet tea and an oatmeal cookies. Its just so wonderful.

Thanks for reading. I hope you learned something new about me!