Appetizer
Which keys do you have on your key chain?

One car key, four church keys (front door, side door, baptistry door & playground padlock), Kroger plus card, 2 library cards for me, 1 library card for Travis, CVS card, Disney keychain with an "S" on it that my friend Jen gave me many moons ago. :)

Soup
What is the most spontaneous thing you've ever done?

Get engaged - six weeks after we started tentatively dating. For me, HUGELY spontaneous.

Salad
Who is the best cook in your family?

Depends on the dish. For example: grilling, my Dad. Coconut creme pie and cookie sheet cake, my maternal grandmother and my Mom. Homemade pizza, me.

Main Course
If you were to write a "how-to" book, what would the title be?

Ummmm, I don't know. I don't feel like I'm much of an expert in any area. :-)

Dessert
Name a recent fad you've tried.

I don't know that I've tried anything recently. I'm so un-hip, if I did, I probably didn't even know it!

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

From Cheri

How many hours of sleep do you get in a day?
Right now, I'm averaging probably 8 hours a night - in bed by 11 p.m. and up around 6:30 or 7 a.m. My FAVORITE routine is to go to bed at 10 and up at 6 or so before Noelle gets up but that hasn't been happening lately.

How often do you bath your baby/kids?
Usually just once or twice a week. Now that she is outside more, I have run her through the shower. Noelle has eczema on her legs and the Dr. has suggested no more than two baths a week so we have lots of little sponge baths. :)

How often do you do laundry? How many loads a week?
Right now, I can managed most of the laundry by doing about 4 loads on Monday and then 2-3 loads on Thursday or Friday. It's not unusual for Noelle to go through 3-4 outfits a day with being outside, messy meals and diaper issues (don't get me started on the diapers I bought recently - I'm going back to Pampers!!)

How often do you and your husband get out of the house for a date?
Ummmmmm. I had to look on my calendar - January 7th was the last one. We watch movies after Noelle goes to bed some - maybe go out to eat every 2-3 months. We're already looking forward to Star Wars III coming out - big date night for sure then! :)

How often do you grocery shop?
I was doing once a month shopping with weekly runs for eggs, milk, etc., but I've gone to every two weeks now. I try and keep more produce and fruit around and you just can't buy that only doing majoy shopping once a month - it gets naaaaaasssssttttyyy.

How often do you go out to eat?
As a family, not often - maybe once every 2-3 months. I do have a standing lunch date with my Mom and my sister every Tuesday. Every few months I'll go out to dinner with girlfriends to celebrate a birthday or because we all need out of the house . . . but that's about it.

How many diapers a day do you go through?
Eight-ish.

How often do you clean your house?
Basic cleaning a little bit every day and every 2-3 weeks have a big Saturday clean out/throw away/overhaul day.

What are your favorite household cleaning products?
Whatever cleans the best in the least amount of time! :-) Love lysol wipes for the bathroom and a regular old broom for basic sweeping in the kitchen.

How often do you watch television?
Hardly ever. Sometimes we watch Law & Order on Wednesday night, but it's not set in stone.

How often do you have alone time?
During Noelle's afternoon nap, I have about 1 1/2 hours to get stuff done or rest and then I have from 8:30 p.m. until I go to bed to be "alone" (hanging out with husband, reading, relaxing, etc.) Enough that I shouldn't complain if I'm not managing my time wisely! :-)

So Surprising!

You Are a One Piece! Surprise! You're not a bikini at all ... and chances are you don't wear one in real life. You're a tad on the modest side, but your modestly is not going to keep you from summer fun. You know that the right one piece can be as sexy - or even sexier - than a bikini. What Kind of Bikini Are You? Take This Quiz :-) Find the Love of Your Life (and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.

*sigh*

Noelle is getting so big. She says Daddy all the time now. It's so precious. She calls for him and says it to get his attention now. (She says Mama a bunch now, too, but it's just really cute when she calls for her Daddy). :-) This morning we were playing and I was stacking some of her blocks and they would fall over. She watched me do it once or twice and then she took over playing with them.

She has several new words popping out: chair, "hoh" (help), "eeee" (eat). I'm so glad she can now say "eat." She can tell me when she's hungry - I love it. Her teething seems to be going a little better - she's really not ever that fussy. I just hate it when she wakes up at night just whimpering in her sleep. Last night she woke up as we were getting in bed around midnight so I took and rocked her for about 5 minutes and she went right back down. I've been giving her a little Motrin and some Triaminic for the perpetually runny nose and I that's has helped her sleep better. She took a couple big naps yesterday so I think we're starting to kick it. She even went down for a bit this morning which is good - even if she just naps for about an hour it will make a huge difference.

We have stuff poking up in the garden! Travis spotted it last night - it looks like some of my green onions are through the soil. Pictures will be taken but not today - it's rainy and bleah outside. At the moment I have a chicken stewing on the stove and the house smells so yummy. I'm going to freeze the meat and the broth for some recipes and then I need to cook a 2nd chicken later this afternoon. It's so much cheaper for us to buy whole chickens and me stew them instead of buying either the boneless/skinless to stew or buying it canned. We do buy some of the boneless/skinless, but I can make them last a lot longer if I don't waste them on chicken salad and stuff. Plus, you get such great flavor from the stewed chicken.

I've updated my books list recently - fyi. I'm going to try and cut back on fiction (specifically Christian) a bit. I've been binging on it while I've been sick and Noelle's been sick and that's never good for me. God so convicts me when I read too much Christian fiction. I don't know if anyone else struggles with this, but I start to read these good Christian fiction books and romance novels and then I find fault with everything my husband says and does and how I respond to him. The characters in so many of those books are WAY to perfect. The man always knows when flowers are needed and is the perfect husband - down the best massage and mushy card that he slips his wife/girlfriend. And the woman always has the right Godly counsel to give another woman in her time of need, while solving whatever mystery/love triangle/problem contained in those 350 pages or so and looks good doing it. (And she gets the guy in the end). < /soap box > Anyway, they mess with my mind. Not that it needs any help... :-)

We're going to get out in about 20 minutes to meet my Mom and sister for lunch today at Jason's Deli. I love lunch there because I can get soup and salad. Very Weight Watcher friendly. We have to run by Lifeway, too, and pick up Bible study books for the ladies' group at church and the Bible for our one high school graduate this year. The women are doing When Godly People Do Ungodly Things by Beth Moore in the Fall. (Why am I ordering the books so early? I needed to get one for the woman that is leading it and I went ahead and just ordered them all so I won't have to worry about them being in stock later.) :-) I did this study last spring with some of our youth girls and it was eye-opening for me. Satan is the master at deceiving and luring believers into patterns of destructive sin and you CAN guard yourself against him. I cannot handle sin on my own - there is no way humanly possible to do that - it will beat me ever time. But there is a DIVINE way to beat sin - Jesus Christ. Can I get an Amen?! :-)

As requested...

by Leann, here are some pictures of my garden as of Sunday evening. I'm hoping my little plants are okay because we had a cold weather weekend here.

From the front - it's 6 ft x 12 ft.

Here's one of my little cherry tomato plants that we started inside - hope the little guy is doing okay...

My big tomato plant, which was started for me by a precious octogenarian at my church who knows much more about gardening that I do.

Noelle is cutting teeth like crazy so it's been one short night after another around here - she just wakes up whimpering because her teeth hurt and seems to do better when I'm rocking her. Last night I was luckily able to get her back to bed after only about 20 minutes, but it just makes me a little draggy in the morning.

Planning on a regular newsy post tomorrow. :-)

Noelle was up at 1:15 a.m. this morning and stayed awake until 6:30 a.m.

There has been a definate lack of sleeping around here.

Managed to feed her breakfast at 6 a.m. and down for a morning nap around 6:30 - slept for 3 hours.

I slept for 2 hours. :-)

Am feeling behind, behind, behind.

Need to go water my garden, but it's hot outside.

Don't like hot.

And I get sun-poisoning if outside too long.

Did I mention we planted a garden? It's small - 6 feet by 12 feet.

I've planted cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, sugar snap peas, eggplant, cucumber, green onions and maybe something else. I can't remember.

Oh, yes. Leaf lettuce.

It's mostly an experiment this year - we aren't expecting to have much come up since it's our first try. :-)

Tonight it's music team at church.

Tomorrow night friends come over for dinner - hamburgers on the grill!

Pray for my friend Cheryl please. She's hurting. :-(

Any my friend Nattie - she's sick.

There are so many more . . . I'm tired of the hurting.

Off to water outside and then rest a bit.

Fairly productive day today around the house. In our big room that we live in I have a table covered with my scrapbook supplies. For months it's been a disaster. I've cleaned it up when I have needed to work on it or when we've had company coming over, but otherwise, it's been my piling spot. That has been bugging me like crazy! And I have needed a serious chunk of time to tackle it and make it useable again. On Saturday, I was inside while Noelle was napping and thought that I would work on my scrapbooks for a bit. It just wasn't fun. My pages were boring and stupid and I couldn't get into it. I told Travis that I thought I was a little burnt out on my scrapbooks and needed to just put all of it away for a bit. And I really wanted to have the table clear so I could spread out my Bible study material on it - up and out of sight of tiny hands. So yesterday I started tackling the table. I put away everything that was on the table. I sorted random pictures and got them back in order. I put a bunch of pictures in regular albums just so that Noelle can be looking at them and they aren't in a box gathering dust. (I'll go back and scrapbook them, but at least they are out where we can enjoy them!) While N. napped this afternoon, I finished cleaning. My desk was clear and useable again. Like I said, I thought I was burnt out on my scrapbooks, but once was desk was clear and useable again, I was in the mood to work! I made two (simple) pages this afternoon - basically mounting two 8 x 10's that I want in her baby book instead of leaving them to gather more dust. Amazing when you have a clean surface to work off of how much more productive you can be.

Kinda like my relationship with the Lord. If I'm covered in gunk and sin and yuck and I try to make my self presentable and useable for him - it isn't going to work. He's just going to shake his head at me and say, "some other time, you're not ready for me." I need to be ever-ready for him to use me - just like it is so much better when my table is ever-ready for me to use it. Just by spending a few hours on it, I was able to work on my Bible study lesson for tomorrow and work on Noelle's baby book. Surely the same applies to my relationship with the Lord, just by spending some time cleaning up myself - praying, reading the Word, studying, and listening, I can be so much more useable to him than the dirty, messy state I normally present myself to Him and present myself for service thinking "I'll catch up on the clean up later." You know what? It doesn't ever get clean if you just leave it - the dirt just piles up and the stuff piles up and you have MORE to sort through when you find you aren't getting anything done.

Major parallels for me here with my God-walk. Who knew I could learn something so profound cleaning house today! God is good. :-)

Silly Quiz Monday

This really isn't that much of a stretch... :-)

Which stereotype do you fall under? Geek You're very intelligent and always do your best in academics. Some people call you a geek, nerd, dork, etc. But always remember, you're probably smarter than them anyway, so just take those comments with a pinch of salt.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Your Irish Name Is...

Maeve Dunne

What's your Irish Name?

I've stepped back some this week and done some thinking. Part of it was having this cold and eye infection - I haven't felt like doing much. The cough that I've had has kept me up a bunch at night so my energy level (as well as my poor husband's) has been low. But also, I've been watching myself slip back into my old patterns - overcommitting to too many things, not taking time to refresh myself, having a to-do list with too much on it. For the unfamiliar, my 2005 year is all about simplicity. Slowing down, cutting back and more enjoyment of the good things.

But my old tendencies are slipping back in . . . wanting to do more, be more. I've committed to a second intense Bible study when I was already committed to one from my church. Our ladies group (I think I've mentioned this before) is going through 2nd Samuel / 1st Chronicles in a Kay Arthur precept course. If you have never done one, they are a LOT of work. Then the opportunity came up to start this second study - a study that I have wanted to do for several years - and before praying about it, I just jumped in, both feet. I'm feeling buried with the heavy work load for both and rotate from getting caught up in one to caught up in the other one. At the rate I'm going, I'm not going to finish well at either, and that's what I want to do. Be able to really give 100% to each one and absorb what God wants me to learn.

Anyway, just trying to regain a bit of balance. Yesterday helped. Noelle and I had an at-home day. Not that those are all that rare, but I took the day off. Got up early after Travis left for his 6 a.m. Bible study at Cracker Barrel. Spent some time working on one of my studies and getting my work for day done on the computer and then, other than the occasional email check, didn't sit back down at my desk for much of the day. Noelle spent almost the whole day out on our deck and I rotated from the deck to the kitchen and puttered around the house, usually with a book in one hand and something cold to drink in the other. Much needed downtime.

A few photos from yesterday and then I'm off to get us ready to go run a few errands. Tonight's pizza night around here so looking forward to a good evening just hanging with my husband and sweet girl.

Wearing Daddy's shoes:

Our cool kid!

Semi-half done journalling erased by small precious baby who turned off computer.

Mama suffering from cough and eye infection hath not the heart to retype.

More later...

Not just because everyone else is doing it...

I took this quiz. I'm not that surprised how it turned out. :-)

1: Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist (100%)
2: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (96%)
3: Congregational/United Church of Christ (77%)
4: Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God (76%)
5: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (75%)
6: Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic) (62%)
7: Church of Christ/Campbellite (55%)
8: Seventh-Day Adventist (55%)
9: Presbyterian/Reformed (49%)
10: Eastern Orthodox (44%)
11: Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England (41%)
12: Lutheran (41%)13: Roman Catholic (25%)

Our weekend in photos

Loaded up in the car to go to cousin Jordan's soccer game!

Daddy stopped on the way and got us Sonic's.

Jordan scored two goals!

Saw the baby while there.

Wore ourselves out.

A Little Nonsense

You are half baked !!!
A mellow medley of emotions and a pleasant
personality. You get even the busiest of bees
to stop and smell the roses. Rock on !


What Ben and Jerrys ice cream flavor are you ?
brought to you by Quizilla

Your Icecream Flavour is... French Vanilla!

You're a smooth and silky suave type! You exude class and you believe in tradition. A classical taste who doesn't like things to be too flashy or showy. Climb the Eiffel tower of taste with a spoonfull of you! Oui Oui!

What is your Icecream Flavour?

Find out at Go Quiz

Both quizzes from BeckyA.

Believing God

I've started working on my Believing God study. I'm very excited about it and a little nervous. This study is about learning how to believe God - not the believing that comes with salvation (believing that Christ died for my sins so that I am assured of a home in heaven), but active, continual, persistent seeking after God that I need in my life. Last night the section I was working on ended by asking me to write down all my "but's" for this study - what I felt would hold me back, what my obstacles were, etc. I tend to get discouraged easily when it comes to Bible study. It comes so easy to others and sometimes it takes me much longer to grasp sections and wrestle through portions that I tend to feel left out and behind. Add that to the stigma and the (sometimes) incorrect assumption of being the Pastor's kid who should know all about the Bible, and you get a girl who tends to be more than quiet in a Bible study setting. I start to compare myself to others and how they are responding and being moved by the study and only see how far short I fall instead of what I am learning.

But - and this is a positive "but" - God is going to meet me where I am while I do this study. He promises in Scripture that He gives wisdom to those who ask, and I have. He promises to reveal Himself to those who are seeking, and I am.

The lesson ended with Isaiah 54:10:

For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but my loving kindness will not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace will not be shaken, says the Lord who has compassion on you.

Lord, whether You move the mountains of struggles before me, or You shake up my world even more, You promise that You will NEVER remove Your lovingkindness - Your loyal love - Your covenental love - from me. And that's what we are in, Lord - a covenant. Even through the ups and downs you promise Your covenant of peace on me - I can be sure You are with me through it all! You have compassion on me Lord - You see that I struggle with actively believing. Meet me here, Lord. Teach me how to be silent and quiet before You and to hear the words You speak to me.

From Sunday Brunch

1) What state were you born in?
O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A, Oklahoma, OK, yeah! :-)
2) What state do you currently live in?
Tennessee
3) How many states have you been in? (and yes, driving through counts!)
25
4) If you had your choice regardless of cost, which of the 50 states would you choose to live in?
Hmmmm, I don't know. I love where I am now, but I think I would enjoy any state but Florida/Georgia/Mississippi - those in the deep south. I hate being hot.
5) Which of the 50 states would you rather die than live in?
See question 4. :-)

We had such a relaxing weekend. On Friday night we saw Travis play in his show. The lead guy was VERY good. And the bass player was way cute. Really. I'm not biased. :-)

Here's a picture of the whole group...

And one of the handsome bass player...

Noelle did fabulous at the concert - ran around during the opening act and then sat on my lap almost all of her Daddy's set. She was pooped, too. We got out of there about 10 p.m. - Travis went out to dinner with some friends and I took N. home for bed.

As for Saturday, we didn't end up going to Mule Day or the zoo - it was too cold outside on Saturday, Noelle's nose with icky and Travis was working on a sore throat. But we had fun family time. A trip to buy food for the dogs, a trip to Lowe's where I bought seeds for my first-ever garden!!, a huge nap on Saturday afternoon, and then Travis grilled out and we watched a movie. On Sunday, we had church and then lunch at Las Palmas (local Mexican) with my family, and then were outside almost the rest of the day! We took the dogs to a large enclosed dog run a couple miles away. We had never taken them there before and they had a BLAST! It was an area probably 3 times the size of our backyard and there were 20-25 dogs in there running around and playing without their leashes on. Our two went in and after running for a few minutes, we to the large wading pool full of water and laid down in it. We were cracking up at them. Then, they ran some more and laid in the water some more and had so much fun - and were exhausted when we brought them back home. Travis then took me and Noelle for a drive - one of my favorite things ever - sun shining in the car, cold drink, baby snoozing in the back, etc. When we got back to the house we all played outside while Travis did some yard work. We were pooped by the end of the day and Noelle's little cheeks were flushed from the sun by bedtime. :-) Good stuff.

She has her 18 month old check-up this afternoon. Her nose has been pretty runny & icky the last few days so I'm going to ask them about that while we're there. We've almost gone all winter without a major cold or bug!