See a Pattern?

Our photographer from our wedding, Rachel, and I have become friends. She's now taken me and mom's picture at 3 weddings. I joked with her this weekend that I hope she takes our kids' senior pictures. My wish is that she takes our family's pictures for many years.

~Leslie's Wedding~



~Jamie's Wedding~



~Our Wedding~

Mrs. Moore

Our fall wedding season has officially begun. Leslie's wedding was this past weekend. It's funny how things work out and that we ended up getting married in the same year.

Our Plans

I saw God's work in action this past week in reference to our verse for last week about submitting to one another. It's amazing what you see when you're looking.

This week, it's about the plans for our life. A nice reminder that He is in control and already has our plan mapped out for us. The only thing we can do is trust Him. Here's something I took away from the sermon today in church. God gives you what you need which doesn't always translate into what you want. I must remind myself of this!

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."~~Jeremiah 29:11

"Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails."~~Proverbs 19:21

We finally got rain. Not much, but a good 15-20 minutes of good rain. A few of our neighbors had big tree limbs snap since the trees are so dry, but luckily I didn't see any on houses.

Come on Fall

This morning I started a pot of chili in the crock pot. I don't know if we'll ever get fall weather so I figured it was as good a day as any to have chili. Neal and I had a "discussion" in HEB yesterday about whether or not to put beans in the chili. I know that true Texas chili isn't supposed to have beans but I grew up with beans in my chili over a bed of rice (which was another discussion).




I won, we got the beans, and Neal was introduced to Willie's Chili. He thought it was too sweet, I thought it was perfect. To compromise, I'm letting him add some more spices to his liking for our second round tonight.

Praying God's Word

I came across this blog post a while back. I'm not sure how I found but sometimes I blog stalk. I'll click on a friend's blog and then click on one of their friends and so on which leads me to sometimes read complete stranger's blogs. Is anybody stalking me? Hi there if you are!

Anyway this girl did some research and decided to start praying for a specific part of her life each week and praying a scripture that relates. She has kids too so she worked them into the plan. Here's the link just in case anyone wants to see it. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me how to make it clicky.

http://thepoefam.blogspot.com/2011/01/join-me-in-praying-gods-word.html

I've decided to give this a shot. I'm going to pick and choose from her list since not all of them apply to our family.

This week I'll be focusing on this verse which is for our marriage.

"Submit to one another out of reverance for Christ."~~Ephesians 5:21

Marriage is about compromise but this does not mean that we have to give in to every little thing that the other wants. There are "dealbreakers" and things that we should both stand our ground on, but the small, petty things shouldn't be a big deal. Today was the first day I started praying this verse and I have already seen it in my life. That's the thing about God. Sometimes he delivers immediately and sometimes he makes you wait. Something I've struggled with in the past has been passive aggressiveness. Holding my feelings in instead of communicating why I'm upset about something. There's always room for improvement, but we have gotten so much better at this in the past couple of years. I read this verse to Neal earlier and we talked about our interpretations of it.

Ten Years Ago

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. May God be with all the families that were affected on that terrible day. May God be with our country that is still hurting. May God be with our enemies that one day they may realize what an awful act they committed. May God be with our politicians that don't seem to be doing the right thing lately.

Ten years ago, I was in graduate school at SFA. I thought I was in a happy place in my life but I had no idea how miserable I was. Thankfully God had other plans for me and helped me move to a better place (physically, emotionally, spiritually).

Ten years later, it's hard to even count the ways my life has changed. I have a better relationship with God. I'm married to a man who shares my faith and values (and even helped me clean the baseboards and ceiling fans today). I'm in a better place financially. I'm healthier. I guess you could say, I'm happier.

I could try to predict where I'll be in 10 years, but that's a waste of time because only the big Man upstairs knows that. Of course, I have some hopes and dreams. The big one is that I hope we have our family complete. I hope all our family members are happy and healthy. I hope I continue to walk the walk with Christ.

On this day, all the mundane day to day trials in my life really don't seem to matter as much. This has already been the most trying school year I've started to date. More kids with more difficult issues, less staff to help, not enough time in the day. These things aren't really going to matter in 10 years. It's hard but I trust in God to help me handle stress. One day at a time!

p.s. I have no idea why this whole post is underlined. Guess blogger thought it was pretty important!

It's All Cool

I love our house. I really do. With our house came a AC unit from 1989. We knew this when we bought the house. We got a little break and it lasted us a year. Over the summer, it hasn't been running efficiently and finally bit the dust this week. Turns out our home warranty isn't as good as we thought it was. It only covers a very small percentage when the whole AC unit needs to be replaced. I think its good to have for the condo but maybe not so much for the house. We'll be deciding soon if its really worth it. It's helpful to have a AC man in the family. Neal called Ite to see what our options were. Last night Ite drove to Houston with a new unit and a couple of helpers to change out our unit. It still costs us a significant amount of money, but a couple of thousand less than if we would have had to go through a local AC company.

Here's our 21 year old AC unit that has screamed at us constantly for about a week. I'm sure our neighbors loved us.
Magically, this.....
...turned into this.

RIP old AC. 1989-2011. Here's to a good 20 years with our new friend. Wonder if we'll still be in this house. Doubtful, but anything is possible!

The Boy is 3!

We were in San Antonio this weekend for Coleson's 3rd birthday. It was priceless to see him so excited. I guess 3 is the magic age that kids actually realize its their birthday.
We sported our ears for the Mickey Mouse party.

This face was what it was all about. He loved having everyone sing Happy Birthday to him.
The birthday family. Our baby is not a baby anymore. I'm glad we're getting to see him grow up, just wish it were more often!