Counting Blessings

Remember that old hymn, "Count your blessings name them one by one.  Count your blessings see what God has done."?  I don't remember the rest of the words to that, but I've been really blessed by some great things lately and wanted to share.

Blessing 1:  Last week I came home to find out Spencer and Preston had cleaned the whole house since Spencer's parents were coming.  I didn't EVEN ASK.  These were also on the table.... for no reason.

Blessing 2:  Last week our microwave broke.  It hummed.  It grunted.  It clicked.  It died.  Spencer's parents came to visit us last weekend and bought us this awesome brand new microwave.  Thanks in-laws!

Blessing 3:  My mom-in-law also bought me these beautiful flowers and helped me work on my flower bed (which I was horrified to do by myself after seeing not one, but two snakes in/on my flower bed).

Blessing 4: (I have no pictures of this.)  I got to be a very last-minute part of a fun women's ministry event @ StoneBridge called Sweet Treat.  It was very fun.  I got to play piano for worship.  That was the first time I'd done that at StoneBridge.  I was glad I could help my friend Lisa by doing this.

Blessing 5:  We have found a cheaper insurance agency and will be saving money!

I have been blessed in so many ways and just wanted to share a few of these blessings with you!  Bless and be blessed!

Was any one else in suspense?

One of my dear friends from small group (shall remain nameless) read my blog post from yesterday and immediately tried to figure out what I had learned at small group.  She then jumped to the conclusion that possibly I was pregnant- I'm not of course.  This has given me a chuckle all day long.  Can you imagine discovering you were pregnant while at small group with like 14 other people?  What a shock that would be!

I'll tell you what I really learned at small group.  We read Luke 8:1-8 which is the story of the persistent widow.  This widow had a problem and went to the judge.  The judge was unfair.  He didn't want to deal with her and kept sending her away.  Time and time again that persistent widow returned the judge.  Eventually she wore him down and he granted her what she had asked for.  (Read it for the more accurate version.)  I've been in a situation lately where it seems that there is just no way to get the "unjust judge" to understand what I need.  I felt encouraged after reading that passage that if even the unjust judge in the parable had compassion on the widow, maybe my "unjust judge" will eventually have compassion on me.

Next topic- Fun things I saw today:
     3 kids jumping in a puddle at Target while their sweet mom hollered "wa wa wa wa waaaaaiiiiittt!"  Her hollering did not work.
     Several staff members in superhero costumes (come to the volunteer appreciation event May 6 to learn more.)
     (This one's from last night.)  The overly excited face of a precious 8 year old girl as I baptized her!
     The most beautiful rain.
     My grocery bill... $15 under budget!

G'night!

Here we Come!

This is such a fun time of the year.  Spring has sprung and summer is creepin' this way one sun-shiny day at a time.  I spend each day with the windows open loving the scent of spring as it blows through my curtains.

I spent last weekend planting a few bulbs and now have daffodils, hyacinth, and tulips in full bloom.  Beautiful!

I think it's called spring because it just make you want to spring into action.  Spencer and I went and got a quote on redoing our kitchen, cabinets and all, last week and were shocked at how inexpensively we could do all this.

We sprung into action when it comes to actually figuring out what we want to do with the family room.

We are springing into action to finish collecting money and figuring out the final details of our trip.

It just seems that there are so many things to be excited and joyful about this time of the year.

My friend Heidi wrote on her facebook way back at the beginning of the year that she was choosing to believe that 2010 would be a year of joy.  A month later she found out she was pregnant!  I'm positive 2010 will be a year full of joy in their family.

I think when we choose to have a positive outlook its easy to realize all of the ways God blesses us each and every day.

I also learned something really cool at small group last night... I'll share that next time.

Trading in the cow for the turkey

I'd say you can safely assume that the large gaps (particularly this one) in my blogging also mean slips in our healthy eating goals.  Now we haven't fallen off the wagon completely, but we haven't necessarily been counting each calorie either.

Here's the struggle.  Once we revamped all of the foods we already loved by giving them a healthy makeover, it was hard to count the calories because we knew what we were eating was good for us.  It's not bad to NOT count calories, it is bad to not care about what you're eating.  That's a learning thing.  We still don't really eat beef.  Yeah I know!  Maybe I never mentioned that before but we pretty much gave up red meat.  We'll eat it on occasion but not even weekly.  We much prefer the protein rich, light on fat poultry options that chicken, turkey, and even ground turkey provide us.  And no, it isn't any more expensive to eat this way... trust me.

We've already begun to think and make some decisions about how we'll eat over seas.  While in London we want to taste the local fare, visit the pubs, and grab fish and chips from a local stand on the street.  Knowing good and well these will not all be healthy things, we want to really take in the culture while there.  For a portion of the time that we're in Scotland we'll be staying at Dad's cousin's place.  He's loaned us his chef (yeah you read that right, he has his own chef) for the few days we'll be there.  We had to send off a list of foods we refuse to eat.  I tried not to be too overbearing knowing that I'm much pickier than most (I simply listed that I won't eat cheese, pate'- chicken liver ground up, pickles, or bananas).  I've decided that I'm at least willing to try anything else.

Speaking of our trip, we both got our passports in now.  We owe mom and dad a little more money (they've bought our tickets for everything and we've been paying them back) and then we just need to get Spencer some new clothes that actually fit, pack, and fly out!  It's going to be very fun.  We'll take lots of pictures and I'll do my best to post some of them here.

In other exciting news we got a "new" car.  We traded in our Element for a Civic which we like much better.

The weather is nice, the sun is shining, it's my day off... what a GREAT day!