Valentine's Day Postponed

The first day Neil ever talked to me was February 7th 2007. He wanted to meet me on Valentines Day, but I wanted a little more time to get to know each other before meeting. We set our day to meet for March 2nd and decided we would celebrate Valentines that day instead. Well wouldn't you know it, that smooth talkin' man convinced me to meet him early, Feb 23rd. But we still celebrated Valentines day on March 2nd. Ever since then, it has been a tradition to celebrate Valentines day late, which works great for our budget! I get twice as many roses for half the price!

This year we were in OKC the weekend before and Neil took me out to eat at my favorite restaurant Johnny Carino's. It was sooo good! We planned to celebrate in Springfield just one day late, Feb 15th, but I was feeling kinda sick, so we postponed it further to Friday Night. As it turned out, I was feeling even worse by then, so Neil modified our night out on the town to dinner at home. Delivery pizza on the snuggler (yes that is really what our chair is called) is my idea of a perfect date!

When I asked Neil how much we were spending on presents, he told me that we would just go on a date and that would be our gift. However, I think this was the plan last year and when he took me out to eat at Hemmingway's, he surprised me with a video slide show set to Dash Board Confessionals song Stolen and then he gave me a backup wedding ring! I am getting off subject here, but last year at this time I was working in the warehouse, packing and shipping. I was so worried to wear my ring for fear it would get damaged or that I would accidentally ship it to some lucky customer! So Neil got me a back up ring to wear to work! How glad I am now to have a cushy desk job and get to wear my real wedding ring :)

Back to Valentines day 2010, even though Neil told me that we weren't doing presents I expected that he had some trick up his sleeve. So planning on this I decided to make him a present, that way I would stay within our present budget, but not come up short like I did last year! However, when Neil discovered I was spending long amounts of time shut in the office, he found out I was crafting his Valentines gift and revealed that he didn't have a gift for me! Poor Neil! So instead, he planned our date and he took me to dinner in OKC and he bought me roses! And he had a surprise present for me after all!

He is my dream man :) Did I mention that he has been waking up early and making my lunch and sending me to work with hot tea all week? Now that is a true Valentine!

You have stolen my heart

I Am Yours

Happy Valentines Day! We hope you had a great one!

p.s. you may have to jump start this video and move the bar over a little, it seems to be shy to start on its own.

p.p.s. If it sounds like I hit a terribly wrong note at the end, Neil made me! He said I had to do the dissonance and then resolve it. Sorry!

p.p.p.s. even though i don't remember the exact conversation (it was several months ago) i am not actually evil like she makes me sound... -Neil

Saturday Morning

I love Saturday mornings with Neil. The day is so full of anticipation! I love waking up to a sunlit window with no alarm, just the natural rhythm of life. We always sleep in, usually till 9:30, because I have to be up by 10:00 to catch my favorite show, The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross! I am captivated by the way he creates incredible landscapes in only 30 minutes! This week he made a sunlit forest, fresh after the rain. The clear puddles reflected the light shining through the leaves of the dense canopy, and tender green moss covered the forest floor.

I started making Banana Bread to surprise Neil for when he woke up. Last night was the 24 hour prayer vigil at our church and Neil and my time slot was 2:00 am. I fell asleep around 10:00 but Neil stayed up the whole time! He prayed and then was asleep immediately after.

I woke back up around 1:30, got ready for bed, prayed for 30 minutes and then laid in bed for hours! My mind was full of craft ideas, creative projects, organizing the office, my office at work, lots of fun exciting projects! I think I finally went to sleep around 5:00 and slept soundly till 9:30. In all I think we got the same amount of sleep, we just went about it in different ways!

Neil woke up with a craving for pancakes (which is a rare occurrence that I wasn't about to turn down!)

The day is full of possibilities and I am anxious to see what will unfold :)

*Transform*

Neil and our youth pastor Jon co-preached on Sunday. I thought it was an incredible sermon and well worth your time if you get a chance to listen!

http://www.connectequiptransform.com/files/1264441188_Transform.mp3

A Good Ol' Fashion Christmas

We had such a wonderful Christmas Vacation! Here are some pictures from our trip down south.

Neil and Dillon

Spending time with our wonderful parents :)

Apparently it was a little bright in the room.

and at one point, kinda smelly (vinegar I believe).

A big Christmas dinner.

Kip and Spence, oh I mean Dillon and Krystin :)

Christmas Time!

A family of LSU fan's.

and they love the Saints!

And on the way to OKC we stopped to meet Neil's cousin's baby, born just that day!

We had a great trip down south and then headed up to see my folks in OKC! That was a wonderful trip, but I didn't take any pictures :(

You can see photos from the event here or here :) Thank goodness for sisters!

Christmas in Missouri

Neil and I had so much fun decorating our house for Christmas for the first time. When he brought in the tree I had visions of "The Grinch".

Here is our best Grinch impressions:

I made mine and Neil's stockings

A holiday basket

Our Holiday Hearth

My Christmas wreath that Matt got me from Starbucks!

Welcome to our home!

Merry Christmas 2009

We want to wish all our friends & family a very Merry Christmas! This is our Christmas card for 2009. You'll notice that the zillion little snapshots (slight exageration) attempt to tell the story of our year together in clockwise order from the purchase of our new home at the start of the year all the way to Christmas decorating! Below are a series of links that will take you to blog entries that tell the stories behind the pictures:

Picture 1: We bought our new house at the very, very end of '08 and spent all of January moving in :) No links for this one because the blog had yet to begin!

Picture 2: A little St. Patrick's Day cheer as we got ready to celebrate Julie's birthday.

Picture 3: I got this one out of order! It didn't happen until the summer. Nonetheless, we took a trip to St. Louis and got to hang out with Kenny & Karen.

Pictures 4 & 5: We took a trip to Angel Fire, NM with friends from our "Barbarian" transformation group. Neil's parents also met us there.

Picture 6: We got to spend some great time with the Phillips for the 4th of July.

Picture 7: Neil got to sing with his Dad at one of our church's Gospel Homecoming.

Picture 8: We met Mimi & Papa in Little Rock and had a great visit! No blog entry here...how did we miss that?!?!

Picture 9: Baby Griffin has arrived!!!

Picture 10: We celebrated our 1st Anniversary by heading to Branson for some big-time Ozarkian fun :) (this blog is continued in a second entry)

Picture 11: Neil got to speak at Camp Sharon's Middle School summer camp. He & Jon baptized about 8 students in the Lake of the Ozarks! No blog entry here, either...it was a VERY busy summer ;)

Picture 12: Marty came for a visit! We were so glad to spend some fun times with him.

Picture 13: Paul, Freda, and Lori all came to see our new house and to hang out with us for the weekend.

Picture 14: Thanks to Mimi & Papa we got to spend our vacation on the beautiful white beaches of Florida. We also got to spend some way-too-rare quality time with our cousin, Krystin! (this blog is also continued in a follow-up entry)

Picture 15: Mimi & Papa told us that we should check out the Blue Angels since they practice just a few minutes away from the condo. It was awesome!

Picture 16: We went to Estes Park, CO to lead worship for a youth retreat there. Added Bonus: Getting to spend time with college friends who live so far away now.

Picture 17: We really had fun "Decking the Halls" of our house for the first time. While Julie has blogged about our Fall Decor, the Christmas Decor blog is still "Coming Soon" :)

Note from Neil: I just want to thank my wonderful wife for her work on this blog. It is a blessing to me and I know it's a blessing to many of you, too! I did not reference the blog when I first put together our "Christmas Card" and I just tried to pick some pictures that described our year. I am so impressed to look back and find that there is a blog for just about everything that's happened to us over the past year. Thank you, Julie Ann, for being the historian of our adventures! All the memories with you are my favorite part of 2009 and I can't wait to spend another wonderful year with the love of my life ;)