Fall Flowers

This past weekend my wonderful parents came to visit, and Lori too!  I was so excited to get to see them, and for the three of them to get to see our house!  It felt so weird to buy a house without getting "approval" from my parents.  They are always involved in all my big decisions, and I have been waiting for the chance for them to "approve" our house!  They came up friday and spent the whole weekend with us.  Luckily for us, they did approve of our house, and really seemed to like it.  They helped us with so many little (and big!) 

items on our "honey do" list, like unsticking stuck doors, sewing patches on our jeans, and they even bought us flowers and flower pots to landscape our yard for fall!  What a wonderful surprise!  We got two large flower pots to go underneath each window in the front yard, and pansies to fill those, plus the big bed in the back. We had soo many flowers that we almost didn't fit all of us and them in the car!  It was like a botanical garden on the ride home!  

Our backyard looks so cheerful and pretty, and they say pansies are frost resistant and will last through the winter!  It so nice to look out the window and see beautiful shades of purple, white and yellow instead of a big dirt area!  Neil and I also planted some bulbs last week and two crepe myrtles.  So if our pansies make it through the winter, the bulbs should come up in the spring and we will just be set!  I'll have to add some "after" pictures later.  My sweet family spent their vacation time helping us plant the flowers in the back yard, but Neil and I just planted the rest in the front yard pots.  We had such a wonderful weekend, I wish that my family and my Oldham family could see each other every weekend :)

Showing Love

So I've been feeling a little under the weather lately.  Just the usual, sore throat, coughing, runny nose thing.  I'm just not feeling great but not bad enough to stay home from work.  So I've been going to work all week and driving my co-workers crazy with hacking, coughing, sneezing, nose blowing and the like!  I have been so shocked at how gracious they have all been.  For me, if someone is sick, I go into quarantine mode.  Its like that one time with the saran-wrapped remotes!  But sweet Neil has been playing my doctor all week, prompting me to take my medicine and drink more fluids (ha doesn't he know that "camel woman" doesn't need liquid?).  He is constantly asking how I'm feeling and urging me to go lay down and rest.  

My boss keeps asking me if I would like her to get me some hot chocolate, and when I came to work on Wednesday my co-worker had left two packets of airbourne on my desk to help me fight of my illness!  

On one of my sickest days, I was in my office dreaming of some hot green tea to soothe my parched throat, and realizing that I must be feeling pretty bad to actually want some green tea, when out of no where my friend Tara came in and said, "do you feel ok? do you want me to make you some tea?"  It was like telepathy!  When I told Neil about the kindness of my co-workers he said, "what kinda of place do you work at?! Seriously, people don't just do that kind of stuff!" And thats the truth.  I am blessed to be surrounded by such a loving wonderful office full of people.

When we got home from work, Neil sneakily told me not to come to the back of the house.  He was back there for quite a while, and when he came to get me he walked me into a spa retreat!

  A full steaming bubble bath, surrounded by flickering candles!  Mood music playing and comfy clothes set out for me.  He said, you relax and take as long as you want.  No rush.  I'm going to go cook you dinner :) 

Little did he know that  all day long I had dreamed of soaking in a hot tub and relaxing my weary bones.  When I got home from work I had planned to just jump in the bath and be done before he even got home.  But for some reason, when I did get home I just plopped down in the chair and didn't even make it to the tub.  

As we speak, Neil is in the kitchen making me a wonderful pancake breakfast, complete with bacon!

All week long I have been so deeply appreciating all these acts of service and kindness, and I really feel like it is God showing his love to me through these wonderful people who strive everyday to be His servant.  They are just walking around, looking for ways to show His love, and what a blessing they are to me and so many others.  

I wanted to take this moment to brag on them, leave me a comment and brag one someone who has shown you love recently.  I'd love to hear about it!

Follow Up

Well we got our guts up and invited two neighbors.  One lives next door to us and is a news anchor so we invited him since we thought he might be intrigued that we were having news anchors coming to speak!  When we got to his house he could only crack the door open because Fred his beagle was about to escape!  So we talked through a cracked door, him hunched over holding on to Fred's collar, me and Neil trying to stoop to match his height, while not looking stupid for bending over for no reason!

I don't think we freaked him out (we tried to play it real cool) but he didn't seem super interested either.  We also invited our backyard neighbors.  They just got a new tiny poodle puppy and so Tulia kinda dominated our visit experience.  But we did invite them and they seem hopeful!

So when Sunday morning rolled around I wasn't too surprised when neither one of them ended up coming.  That's ok, hopefully we at least planted  seed.  And now they can't say that they don't come to church because no one has ever invited them!

I think the event was a success, we had about 20% higher attendance than normal and the guest speakers did a great job!  Neil's worship service was so powerful to me, he ended the worship set with "Amazing Grace, My Chains are Gone", and I started crying when I heard all the voices around me singing out in beautiful harmony so loud! It is rare that our congregation sings louder than the mic-ed voices on stage, but this time was was no competition (and we even had our "powerhouse" team on stage)!  It was such a cool "God" moment and I really enjoy those times of overwhelming corporate worship.  

God is so incredible that He can take a time of Worship, which is supposed to be a time of me pouring out my heart and love and gratitude as a blessing to Him, and make it a blessing to me.

Biker

On the way home from work today I saw an old school biker in my rear view mirror.  He was really hard core!  He had the long flowing ponytail, huge white beard, brown leather jacket and fringe on his handlebars!  He was really hunched over, like he was trying to be more aerodynamic, and as he came up behind me I felt a strong need to get out of his way!  

"get your motor runnin'

da na da na da na da na

head out on the high way!

da na da na da na da na

lookin for adventure

da na da na da na da na

or whatever comes my way!"

Before I knew it I was singing this man a theme song!  Out loud! To myself in the car!  I wonder if he saw my lips moving as he speed past.  It was so funny because I didn't even realize I had started singing, and the correlation for a few seconds!  Then I cracked up for about 5 minutes on the way to the recycling center!

Yes, we have decided to start recycling our plastics.  Its a start!  We just bought a second trash can and put it in our utility room.  Whenever we have plastics that we would usually throw away I just put them in that trash can instead!  Then I took them all to the center today.  I was surprised how easy it was! And it really didn't take much time at all!

Well tonight, when Neil gets home, we are going to walk across the street and yard and backyard and invite some of our neighbors to church.  Our church is having a big "invite a friend" event this Sunday, and we are having some local news anchors who are Christians come in to speak.  So this is a good opportunity to invite new people.  

I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous! So is Neil.  But the worst they can say is no!  And who cares if they think we are crazy, (which I'm sure they won't - or at least won't think we are any crazier than they already think we are!) it could save their life :)

I'll let you know how it goes!

"Deuce" of Cakes

I tried my hand a cake decorating this weekend!  My friend Kimberly's birthday is tuesday so we made a cake for her!  I started mixing together the ingredients and half way through discovered that I only had 2 eggs, instead of 3!  I quickly put the entire mixing bowl in the fridge and made a mad dash to the store for the eggs.  Well anyone who knows me knows that I did not stay on task and just get the eggs and leave.  No I decided to get a few things while I was there, which turned into getting my whole list, and picking out candle holders!  Wow!  Talk about easily sidetracked!  Anyway, I did finally make it back home and I finished the cake.  I don't have any round cake pans, and I only have one square one and since I didn't want to bake the cake twice and wait for it to cool, I just made one sheet cake, cut it in half and stacked it up!  I thought it turned out pretty cool to be rectangle, plus it fit wonderfully on my rectangle tray!  So while it might not be "Ace of Cakes" quality, I was still pleased with my first real cake decorating experience.  Happy Birthday Kimberly! You are the best :)

Marty Party

This weekend, Neil's life long friend Marty came up to visit us!  We had a full weekend.  He came up Thursday when we were both at work (poor guy!) so there was no one home to greet him! Then he went to the church to hang out with Neil, but since Neil leads worship practice on Thursday nights, so he had to get ready for that.  When I got to the church Neil was practicing with the band and Marty was reading his book! So we headed on home and started dinner for Neil.  

(yes, Neil is carrying my purse)

I like hanging out with Marty.  He and I clicked easily from the first time I met him.  It feels like he and Neil are brothers because they grew up together and even when Neil moved to New Mexico, they still stayed close and went on family vacations together.

Since Neil and Marty are both men of the kitchen, I was sittin' pretty for the whole weekend!  They cooked for me, we went out to eat several times, I had two boys opening the door for me and we even went antique shopping!  Can you believe that?!  I think Marty should come visit more often *laugh*

Last week, Neil and I received a huge blessing in the way of an entertainment center!  A couple from our church had recently moved here from California and they have found that their furniture doesn't fit in this house like it did in their other house, just because of the difference of sizing in the rooms etc.  They called us and said that they were going to be getting rid of their entertainment center because it was "competing with their fireplace" and would we be interested in it.  I immediately thought - oh no, its 'competing' with their fireplace? Dear me, this must be mammoth and gaudy! I told Neil, don't get your hopes up!  It is probably huge and ugly or else why would they want to give it away?

Not to mention that after countless shopping trips and many measurements Neil and I had finally pieced together an entertainment center that was not very expensive and that we were happy with.

We went to their house to see it with low expectations.  I was trying to get Neil to work out a signal with me so that if it was questionable we could alert the other that we weren't pleased without saying a word.  

I was overwhelmed when I saw it - it was so beautiful!  This set is the kind of center we wanted but would never have been able to afford!  And even way down the road when we might have been able to afford it, I can guarantee that the frugal Oldham's would not have justified buying such an expensive piece!

So on Friday (with our newly acquired man power) we went to get the entertainment center. We borrowed a truck from Simmond's Loan and Trust (not a bank, just our awesome neighbors!) The boys did such a great job being so careful not to scratch anything (the truck or the furniture)!  We got it home and they set to work unhooking all the wires from the old set and plugging them into the new one!  

It was a lot of work - for them!  Thats right, I was sittin' pretty again! *smile*

When we finally got it all in place I told Neil, ya know I kinda think its competing with our fireplace as well.  He quickly reassured me, there's no competition - The entertainment center has won!