I just realized that the last time I blogged was DECEMBER! Hopefully I will get better at this once Everett gets here. Since December we have done more than I can even begin to write out. Here is just a brief synopsis....
I can't really remember what we did in January and February.... Pregnant brain is a real thing people. We spent most of the month of March taking the youth on different trips. We went to camp hopewell one weekend and then took them on a spring break trip to Blue Ridge, GA. I got the privilege of driving the 12 passenger church van and planning all of the meals for the week. Lets just say that I am ready for a big family now! Now it is April and this month has been filled with baby showers. We have had one every weekend since the start of the month. Our friends and family from our hometowns have been so generous to us. Our church family here in Starkville gave us a shower as well and I think that we are officially set on clothes! He is going to be the best dressed boy in town. This month is also moving month for us! We close on our very first home on Friday and get to move in on Sunday. I cannot wait to decorate and clean this new house! We aren't the best packers, but we are some good movers. I can't move a thing these days because every time I do I have a contraction. So my job is going to be sitting on the front porch telling everyone where to put things.
As far as baby news goes we have been to the hospital twice already for them to stop my contractions. Apparently Everett is already 5 lbs 1oz and my body is trying to get him out early before he gets any bigger! But I am trying to "rest" and see if my contraction stop. Resting is not easy for me to do right now because my house needs to be packed and we are getting ready for testing at school. But, I am trying very hard to not look around the room as write this post. Until next time!
Easter Sunday! Clay got to preach at the sunrise service and did a great job!
So... I know that I am the worst blogger ever, but LIFE has gotten a hold of me. I haven't blogged since Clay and I have found out the most exciting news every.... We are going to be parents :) This surprise came to us around our 4 month anniversary of being married, so we were a little in shock. But, after spending some time in prayer about everything, we feel a large peace about this new stage of life! I am now 16 weeks into my pregnancy and feeling much better than I did in the first trimester. To give you and idea of how bad it was, we couldn't even say the word "chicken" around me or I would have gotten sick. But, once I hit the 13 week mark I felt like a new person! Now I am anxiously awaiting the gender reveal and enjoying this LIFE growing inside of me.
LIFE. Along with our baby news, we have some new things happen at our church. Our senior pastor has felt a call to a congregation in Georgia. We can't imagine our church without him and he is going to be hard pastor to replace. With the change in that, Clay's job is kind of shifting as well. He originally was hired as the director of children and youth. Now he will be taking over the college ministry as well! This means that he will be ministering to children from birth to seniors in college.... Kind of crazy! This has also been a long prayerful experience in asking for guidance for our church and it's leaders. I have no doubts in these guys and their abilities to lead.
LIFE. Besides the fact that my clothes don't fit anymore and my husband is learning new roles at the office, my best friend got engaged a few weeks ago! Ann-Katherine and John started dating when we were in high school. We all kind of met around the same time at a church retreat called Search. John and AK started dating at the end of our Junior year of high school and have been together ever since. AK and I would joke back then that what if they got married... and now the dream is becoming a reality. They are two people who are about to discover the wonderful joy of marriage! I am trying to give her all of my wise advice on living with a boy, but she has 4 brothers and could probably give me more haha. The proposal was so sweet and special, and I felt honored to be able to celebrate with them afterward. I spent the night with AK that night and we laughed at the fact that I am married with a baby on the way and she is engaged, but we still have to have our sleep overs! Overall, it was an amazing, special night and I can't wait to stand up at the alter with her :)
Here are a few pictures of the past few months...
I love this picture! She was surprised to see me :)
Baby belly at 16 weeks. This is in front of our first Christmas tree... we don't have very many ornaments :)
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Self-timer picture before the football game :)
Last weekend started with me having fall break on Friday! I thought that we would have a very low-key, chill, relaxing weekend. I even thought that we could possibly go out of town.... I must have been dreaming. After having this thought of traveling, I was hit with the reality of being a Youth Pastor's wife. It is a title that I never thought I would have. It is also a title that I pray to live up to. Well this weekend was completely dedicated to our youth group. No we didn't go to a conference or have 24 hour bible studies. All we did was support them in things that they love doing... SPORTS. Friday night we went to the Starkville Academy football game. We have youth who play football, cheer/dance, and in the band so we had a lot of names to holler out. The atmosphere at the game was awesome. This school is a private school that has K-12 in 1 or 2 buildings. It reminded me a lot of the school I graduated from, St. Benedict. While watching the game, we started to get really into it. One of our youth is the kicker and he lead the team to a victory with those 3 point field goals. They won and the team now gets to go to the play-offs. I was so intrigued by the cheerleaders that I asked Clay if I could send my resume to the schools and try to get hired as a cheer coach. It made me miss my cheering days so much that when we got home I performed, solo, my whole nationals routine from the 8th grade. Clay did not appreciate the stunts the way he would have if he were at the Milk House in Orlando watching Mt. Pisgah Middle school beat our biggest rivals, Houston Middle School. It was awesome! We stayed up pretty late talking about our high school sporting events and the differences between the two schools.
After spending all night reminiscing we went to bed and woke up thinking that we were going to go for a walk. Clay remembered that there was a cross country meet in town and he promised the youth that he would go! So we rushed to the Horse Park just in time to see the Varsity girls team run. We went thinking that we would know half of the team because so many of our youth are cross country runners Well, we were surprised to only see two familiar faces. The rest of our youth group was either injured or out of town. It was kind of sad that we didn't get to see everyone run, but the two that we did see were awesome! Clay ran all throughout high school and he felt right at home. Me on the other hand, had never been to a cross country meet. I had no idea what was going on. When we left the house I was tempted to drive back to get our chairs. When I told Clay this he laughed at me, like any good husband would. Then informed me that we run to points to cheer for the runners. This sport is more of a work-out for the parents then the kids! I was amazed. The parents were almost knocking each other over to get to the next marker. After all of the running, the girls team did really well. The boys Varsity team actually got 1st place! I'm glad that I got to experience a cross country meet and learn all the workings of it before one of my own kids wanted to run and I wouldn't know a thing about it. Overall, we had a wonderful, sports filled, weekend! Yes, we were a little sad that we couldn't go out of town. But, instead we got the opportunity to support and love our youth while doing something that they love!
Well it sure has been a long time since I have written on the blog. I know that it is October, but I am just feeling like I have gotten into a routine with school. In the past four months my life has dramatically changed. I went from being a college student, roadrunner, roommate with 5 other girls, Delta Gamma, special education major, and girlfriend. Now I am teacher, ministers wife, and Sunday school teacher :). All of these changes are wonderful and I can see God's hand in my journey. Looking at the list I feel like my obligations have slimmed down, but the ones that I have now are just more time consuming. I love being a wife and enjoy teaching. I think every first year teacher learns the ups and down of running a classroom, and I am definitely learning that.
On a different note, we have been very busy with church functions as well as school. The weekends are very busy and full of youth group fun! Last weekend we camped out with the youth group out at the church's property. We were in charge of the haunted trail for the Harvest Festival and we needed some planning time so we decided to camp out there. It was the perfect night to camp! It wasn't freezing, but we could sit by the fire and not be super hot. I later learned from my very knowledgeable mother-in-law that it was "national watch the moon night". I would say that we did plenty of that. The moon was so bright that we barely needed lanterns to see. Oh and the haunted trail planning went really well too. We gave everyone jobs and tried not to make it too scary for the little kids.
This weekend we had our friend John and Anna Clemmer come stay with us for the MSU vs South Carolina game. It is always fun catching up with them and just visiting. This weekend was also the Harvest Festival and it was a hit! The youth group did a wonderful job with the haunted trail and the whole church helped out to make this festival perfect. There was chili, costume contests, pumpkin carving contest, moon bounce (always a favorite) and hay rides. It was a little on the hot and buggy side, but we still enjoyed every minute of it.
Here are all of the pictures showing everything that has been going on! I promise it won't be this long until I post again.
Clay leading the haunted trail.
The youth had a blast camping!
Camping :)
We got the privilege of eating a delicious breakfast made by one of out church members.
Twins :) They showed up and were wearing the same thing.
So proud of our youth for getting so involved with the haunted trail. Carys looks super scary!
Well school has officially started and I am now officially a 6th grade inclusion teacher! The students have been coming for two weeks now and I am beginning to feel a little more organized and I am learning the schedule a lot better. My sleeping habits have also changed since school has started. I go to bed around 9 and wake up at 5:30( only on the days that I have morning duty, which is every other day...). Besides getting up early, I love everything about my school. The students are challenging, yet wonderful and the administration is so willing to help! Everyone seems to have a good relationship at our school and it makes it feel more like a team.
Throughout the day, I am teaching Math, Science, English, Social Studies, Study Skills, and Social Skills. It seems like a lot when I write it out, but I really like the fact that I am not just sitting in my room all day long. I am just 6th grade inclusion and there are resource and other inclusion teachers. Middle school is an interesting place. All of the kids are discovering the opposite sex and most of the girls are taller than the boys.... Middle school pictures are always the ones to come back and haunt you for life! Speaking of middle school, I think that I was more terrified on the first day of me teaching than I was on my first day of middle school.
Me on the first day of teaching. Clay was not happy about having to wake up and take this picture!
Now onto the second part of this post.... PIES! The other day Clay and I were walking around North Farm and started talking about what our lives would be like if we lived on a ranch. We started pretending to be ranchers and what a day in the life would look like. Of course my role in this day dream was to be tending to the children and baking pies while my husband was tending the ranch... Yes we are weird people who day dream about ranching haha But this sparked an interest in me and I got the idea to make a homemade pie. I have a Martha Stewart Pies and Tarts cookbook that I looked through and I did not see a peach pie in there that was what I wanted. So I looked it up on recipes.com (which is one of my favorite websites!). I found a peach pie recipe and just used the pie crust recipe from Martha Stewart's cookbook. These next few pictures are the steps to our pie...
Ingredients
This is how Martha Stewart says to make a pie crust....
You have to put it in plastic wrap and then let it sit for an hour in the frig
10 peaches
The pie crust did not turn out the way it was supposed to. The bottom layer looks horrible!
A little better
Putting it in the oven
It tastes a lot better than it looks!
After baking this pie Clay and I both ate 2 pieces. It was so good! I now feel like we would survive living on a ranch :)
Overall, life is good and we are counting down the days until Christmas haha We miss our family and are looking forward to vacationing!
p.s. I have learned to never trust Martha! Her pie crust is too difficult for the average woman.
With this being the last weekend of my summer, I feel like it is appropriate to have a re-cap of everything we have done in this very exciting/kind of crazy summer.
To start our summer off, we both graduated from college! Clay had a frisbee tournament so he didn't walk, but I did
After graduation I moved back to Memphis to live with my parents while finishing up some wedding planning. I really enjoyed that month at home. The wedding planning did stress me out at times, but I got to spend some quality time with my mom, sister, cousins, and grandmother. Looking back on it, I can see that the Lord truly knows me better than I know myself. God knew that I needed that time with my family before we said "I Do" and He helped us to grow closer in that time. For those of you who don't know, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer my freshman year of college. It was so hard leaving home and knowing that my mom was hurting and really sick. Well God is good and she is now cancer free! But during this month that I was home before the wedding I began to cherish every moment spent with her. After her having cancer for a year God showed me how precious time is (especially time with my mommy!)
This is a picture from my bridal shower. My mom is on the right and Clay's mom (Sally) is on the left
After living in Memphis for a month..... WE GOT MARRIED!!! I would say that this was the major highlight of our summer. Our wedding was perfect, wonderful, beautiful, special, and we will never forget that day. We had the ceremony at First Presbyterian in downtown Memphis. Our friend Joey Sherrard married us and it was a perfect ceremony. During his homily, Joey was talking about how life can give you good and bad times and how we, as husband and wife, are going to face trials and tribulations. As he was saying that a large clap of thunder came from the clouds..... there was only a 10% chance of rain and when we left the ceremony.... it was pouring! The reception was at the Peabody Hotel (where my mom works). We started dancing right when we walked in and didn't stop until we left! After that night we collected our thoughts and sat in awe of how much God has blessed us with wonderful family and friends because without them our wedding would not have been possible.
This is all of the sisters getting down to Dancing Queen. We love Abba and Mamma Mia....
After our wedding we had an amazing honeymoon in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic and enjoyed relaxing on the beach and reading books. The resort we stayed at was awesome and the coffee was sssssooo good. The first night there we were so tired from traveling, we went to bed at 7 and woke up at 9:30. I think we needed some sleep. The rest of the honeymoon was spent by the pool or on the beach reading/napping. They had these awesome bali beds outside and we fell asleep on them almost every day.
When we got back we had more weddings to attend! Two weeks after ours we went to Cameron and Emily's wedding.
Sweet friends cooked us dinner! We don't want them to leave :(
Then we had Kathleen and Jason's wedding. We didn't have a weekend home until the middle of July :) But I love weddings and hanging out with our friends, so it was all enjoyable. Since the wedding craze we have been doing projects, having family visitors, and doing youth related activities. We took the youth group to a BigStuf conference in Panama City, FL last week. The conference was awesome! The worship band is so talented and they play new songs every year that I always fall in love with. The speakers were great too. During the adult leader time we got to hear from Reggie Joiner. He is the author of the book Think Orange. It worked out perfectly that he was there because Clay had just started reading the book before the trip. Anyways, we loved being at the beach with the youth and the late night chats.
The Leaders
We do a lot of nail painting and makeovers on youth trips
The theme of the week was get konnected and everyone went around giving high fives
Cameron talking to Reggie!
Our crazy youth..... and Rebecca haha
And now brings me to the saddest part of all.... this summer is ending and I am becoming a grown up! I have been working in my classroom all week and now the kids come on Monday. I need a lot of prayers for patience and perseverance! Oh and for sleep, because I keep thinking of lesson plans in the middle of the night and wondering if my kids will enjoy the activities I have planned.... sleep isn't a priority at this time. This summer has been full of endings and beginnings and God has shown us how to rely on Him in all things!
