Home

It's good to be home. Even though we stayed in a plush, comfortable amazing hotel this weekend it's so good to be home.

Some days I'm so homesick. Not for my earthly home but for my heavenly home. To be in the presence of our heavenly Father, Jesus, my Savior, my Friend! To worship God and no longer have tears or pain or sadness. Talk about amazing!

Do you have a reservation at the Father's House? Are you 100% confident that when you die you will be going to your heavenly home? If not, send me an email and I'd love to visit with you more.

I'll share more about our weekend later.

Beating the Odds

Sorry for the scary picture. That was me and Hubby last year at his work's Christmas "Prom" party. Ya! 80's all the way!

Anyway, I'm so excited for this weekend. Hubby and I are attending the Weekend to Remember marriage conference AND we splurged and are staying at a hotel even though the conference is in our home town.

Our marriage didn't start out so hot. We were both unbelievers. I was running from my first marriage and Hubby was running from being alone. We were hurting which caused us to be hurtful and low and behold getting married didn't solve anything. About 6 months after getting married I recommitted my life to Christ and things just got worse. About 6 months after that Princess got saved and then Hubby was really in a bad situation (or so he thought!). I eventually learned to keep my mouth shut (most of the time) and show Hubby the love of Christ instead of my own selfish love. It was actually a fight between me and Princess that brought Hubby to his knees and he accepted Christ as his savior.

And things didn't get better. Not right away anyway. I remember hearing Dr Phil share that marriages that start the way ours did, only about 10% of them last. Sorry Dr Phil, you got nothing on us because our God is bigger than 10%!

On New Years Eve we'll be married 5 years. Every year since we've gotten married has been better than the one before and God has shown His mercy and grace to us in so many ways. So I'm thankfully able to say we are not attending the Weekend to Remember conference because we're struggling in our marriage. However, we both learned the hard way that marriage takes work. It takes committment. It's not about feelings - it's about being committed to each other through anything and being committed to Christ makes that journey alot easier.

Plus we figure that Lord willing we'll have a baby soon so we won't have a chance for a weekend getaway for awhile. Hope y'all have a great weekend. I know we will!

How To Make A Fleece Blanket

I was struggling through trying to write out the directions for making fleece blankets when I figured someone must have already done all the hard work. So I googled something about fleece blankets and found this cool site...

http://users.pld.com/rbriggs/blanket.htm

Go there and it gives you pictures and everything. You can make your very own fleece blanket. Have fun!

100 Things

I can't believe I missed my 100th post! In bloggedy tradition I've been preparing my 100 things about me for my 100th post. And then I missed it. Oh well. For my 101st post here are 100 things about me.

1. I was born in Redfield, South Dakota
2. Most of my growing up years were spent on farms
3. We raised sheep for many of my childhood years
4. I wanted to be a veternarian when I grew up
5. I have a step-daughter, Princess
6. I have a step-son, Prince
7. I have a God-child who's 3 1/2 and lived with us for one year and now he lives in FL with his mommy and it's way too far away!
8. I love drama
9. I was Sandy for a community production of Grease
10. I help direct our church's drama team
11. I have 3 dogs
12. This is my second marriage
13. My hubby's name is Pat and he's my best friend
14. I went to college at SDSU
15. I have a degree in Sociology
16. My first job was at Alco
17. My second job was Dairy Queen
18. I worked at DQ for 6 years through high school and college
19. I also worked at Dominoes (for 4 days)
20. I also worked at Blockbuster Video (for 2 weeks)
21. I love animals
22. I delivered a lamb when I was in 5th grade
23. My favorite childhood memory is butchering chickens and other disgusting farm chores
24. My second favorite childhood memory is spending summers at Gradma Harriet's house
25. My favorite color is blue
26. My eyes are blue
27. I have naturally curly hair
28. I played the french horn in high school and college
29. My senior year of HS I went on a band/choir tour to Europe
30. I wish I still had my french horn
31. I gave my life to Christ my junior year of college (1994)
32. Hubby and I were married on New Years Eve (5 years this year!)
33. I currently work for our church as a ministry assistant
34. I used to work for JDS as Training Manager/Assistant Manager in the call center
35. My best friend from high school and I held the record (unofficially) at our high school for the most consecutive bumps (volleyball) in a row (over 1500).
36. I punched my sister when her and her friends tried to initiate me when I was a freshman in high school
37. I love crab legs
38. My favorite movie of all time is Anne of Green Gables
39. My brother and I applied to be on the Amazing Race (we were denied!)
40. I have a tatoo, a "nice" dragon on my ankle
41. I drive a Chevy Malibu, which I hate. Ok hate is a strong word. I don't like it at all because it's so low and I'm already short and it makes me feel shorter.
42. We recently sold my Jeep Cherokee, which I miss dearly.
43. I'v written a number of skits and human videos
44. My favorite football teams are the Washington Redskins and the Green Bay Packers
45. I ran a 1/2 marathon in Green Bay, WI
46. My mom and I started a ministry for women called A Day Spa for Women
47. I absolutely hate doing dishes
48. I type 60 wpm
49. I've bungy jumped
50. I've always thought I was 5'4" but recently found out I'm 5'3" (Tragic! Am I shrinking or was I just wrong all this time?)
51. I like chips (plain) and dip (french onion), preferrably together.
52. I had back surgery when I was a sophomore in high school
53. I'm a speed reader
54. I have this little problem of stealing Princess's Dove chocolates
55. My favorite book of the Bible is Psalms
56. My life verse is Ephesians 3:14-21
57. I wear size 9 shoes
58. I like to sing worship music at the top of my lungs in the car
59. I like raw carrots but not cooked carrots
60. My favorite soda is Mt Dew although I've cut back alot and now mostly drink just water
61. I love to jump in puddles (and preferably splash Hubby or Princess)
62. I sleep on the left side of the bed
63. I prefer showers to baths
64. I love to cook and bake but I'm not a good griller
65. I talk to my mom or dad almost every day
66. I have one sister, Danelle
67. She's the oldest, then me, then my two brothers
68. My youngest brother is 5 years younger than me
69. My other brother is one year younger than me
70. He lives in the same town as me so we get to see each other alot
71. My mom, dad, sister and youngest brother all live 2 hours from us
72. We love to drive the Jeep to visit them and go muddin'
73. I have double jointed elbows
74. I'm an early to bed, early to rise person
75. I hate the dentist
76. I love to garden
77. I don't have a garden, hopefully next year
78. I don't sew - well maybe buttons, but that's about it
79. I do enjoy making fleece blankets
80. Our family has "family night" every Tuesday night
81. My favorite color of clothing to wear is black
82. I've been to every state on the west side of the US
83. I raised my hands on a roller coaster for the first time at DisneyWorld this year
84. My favorite card game is Shanghai Rummy
85. My real name is Melissa
86. My dad's nickname for me is Miss Muffet
87. When we were kids my uncle would call my sister and me Ding Bat and Doe Bird
88. I taught myself to plan bass guitar when I was in high school.
89. I no longer play bass guitar. I can kind of play piano (that means I don't play well!)
90. Ten to go - I'm normally a patient person but this 100 Things list is driving me crazy. It's really hard!
91. I write on 4 blogs (this one, www.dayspaforwomen.com, the youth group blog and the staff blog where I work)
92. I have a very good memory
93. I spend every Sunday night with 8-10 teenagers (and I love it!)
94. I can fall asleep just about anywhere
95. I learned to drive a stick shift when I was a teenager
96. I was in volleyball, basketball and track in high school
97. I once scored 13 points in a basketball game. I think that was the only game I played
98. Every day I'm thankful for the amazing faithfulness and mercy of Jesus
99. I'm so thankful I have such a wonderful husband, step-kids and family
100. I love Jesus with all my soul. He is my all and all, my everything and my life would be nothing without Him.

I Just Can't

I tried. I really tried. Just couldn't do it. Not even a pair of socks or some candy.

I've talked to so many people that say they have already started their Christmas shopping, in fact some that are done with their Christmas shopping. So I told Hubby last night ...

"I'm going to do it. I'm going to start shopping now for Christmas, a little bit each week."

Hubby responds, "ok".

Gee, thanks for the encouragement!

So I went to Wally World tonight bound and determined to purchase some wonderful Christmas treasures. I couldn't do it. This little person or something kept yelling in my brain "IT'S NOT EVEN THANKSGIVING YET! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? ARE YOU CRAZY?"

Yes, I am crazy. But that still doesn't explain why I can't shop until Christmas Eve at 2:00 pm. Laziness? No, I was out there, in the trenches, trying my hardest. Procrastination? Maybe a little of that - but again I tried.

I think I enjoy the challenge. It's Christmas Eve Eve and I've bought nothing. I have about 143 things to buy and I enjoy the thrill of accomplishing that ridiculous task. For some reason my brain hasn't figured it out yet that I'm probably paying twice as much but ya know I'm still young, maybe some day I'll figure it out.

Until then - Happy Thanksgiving folks! There's no shopping going on in this family!

I Hope I Didn't Say Anything Stupid

We had our first meeting with our social worker yesterday - working to complete our home study. It went well. I asked Hubby afterwards if I said anything I shouldn't have and he didn't think so but I've spent all night going through our conversation in my head... did I give too much information, not enough information, how will she interpret that, did I talk too much?

Hubby is so calm, cool and collected - it's really annoying. I wish just once he would freak out and start crying and question every little thing he says and does. Hhmmm, that would be scary - then there'd be two of us!

We have two more meetings with our social worker, one which will be at our home. We're working on our profile books - we have to make 6 of them! Trying to figure out what pictures to use is overwhelming sometimes but again I need to follow the example of Hubby and try not to worry about it.

My Amazing Rooster Fleeing Brother

My brother has been running since he was 3 years old. You see, we lived on a farm and we had this psycho rooster. My older sister and I would throw rocks at it and run away before getting pecked to death and then when we couldn't find it we would send our little brother out into the yard to try to find it. He'd come back running, hollering and screaming for his life. It was hilarious!

Every since then he's been running. Running from the rooster. Running from his two older sisters. Running from his younger brother. In high school he put that running to good use and joined cross country and the rest is history!

Today he finished 127th place in the New York City Marathon with a time of 2 hours and 43 minutes. That's just riduculous running for over 2 hours! Anyway he was the 60th American male to finish. We're so proud of him!

We never dreamed that the rooster torture we inflicted on our brother would help him get where he is today. You're welcome bro! It was the least we could do!

I don't have a pic yet of him at today's marathon but here's one after he finished the Seattle marathon last year. He ran in memory of one of his students.



p.s. Lance Armstrong finished with a time of 2 hours and 49 minutes. Hee hee. I love Lance and all but it's sweet to say my brother beat him! :-)

It's About Time

All this talk about adoption and we've never even completed our home study yet! Well, finally we'll be starting the process of 3 meetings with our social worker. The first will be tomorrow and we'll meet at our church. One of the meetings has to be at our home but we thought we'd postpone that as long as we could considering all the little things we still have to do.

The thought of getting our home study done is exciting, something tangible we can actually say we've done to work toward adoption. At the same time it's nerve racking and frustrating knowing how our lives will be an open book in order to be parents. Our social worker is an adoptive mom herself so that brings my heart peace in knowing that she really has been in our shoes.

We appreciate your prayers and we'll let you know how it goes!

This Bloggy Giveaway Closed!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Fall 'all Bloggy Giveaway. It was a blast!

The winner of the fleece blanket is Emily. Congrats!!! I'll send you an email with some other fleece designs for you to pick from.

A few requested instructions on how to make the blankets - it's sooo easy! - I'll post that tomorrow for ya.

Have a great night!

Bird On A Wire

So I'm on my way to work this morning enjoying the beautiful day the Lord had given me. I'm sitting at a stoplight looking around at God's marvelous creation. My eye catches some birds sitting on the telephone wires at the intersection. Then I see this one little bird farther down on the wire sitting all by himself. As I watch him I realize he keeps scooting closer to the other birds sitting together farther down the wire.

What in the world!? Seriously, he scoots, looks around, scoots again. I even say to him "What are you doing little birdy?" Unfortunately he doesn't tell me or if he did I couldn't hear him. He keeps scooting, looking at his birdy buddy wannabes farther down the wire.

I say to Mr Bird "Uh, you can fly over there ya know!"

Then it hit me. Not only am I an idiot for talking to this bird but I realize that we do exactly what Mr Bird was doing. We sit on our little wire and we have this goal in mind or some place we think God may have called us to. But instead of using the gifts God has given us and flying right on over we take little baby steps, fearful of what will happen.

I wonder if God's looking at us saying "Uh, you can fly over there ya know!" Nope, we have to scoot scoot scoot and miss out on the many blessings that spreading our wings and leaping off that wire will bring.

Ok, this whole birdy talk is getting creepy. Morale of the story: don't be such a chicken! :-)