Peaceful Tuesday

Today was the day before the storm at work. Water bills were mailed out yesterday, a few faithful ones were in today (the day they received their bill) to pay but the rest of the week will probably be a bit busier. Thankfully, tomorrow is my Friday! I am taking off Thursday and Friday and we are going to Amarillo to just have fun. Thursday night will be spent camping out at Palo Duro Canyon and then we have other events planned after that. Blogs of events will be sure to follow.

When I got home from work today I found 2 happy kids in the back yard playing on the trampolene with the water hose. They were soaking wet as well as the backyard. Duece was inside the screened in back porch because he is not a fan of getting wet. Smart dog. My sweet babies asked me to come sit outside with them, so I went in and changed clothes and went and sat out on the back deck. I love sitting outside in the backyard with my family and Duece.

Tyson is cracking up because he is irritating Justin and he always gets such a kick out of irritating him.

Karisty trying to chase the ball and get it away from Duece.

Justin had finally had enough, so he got up to tackle Tyson for the ball and bounce it off of HIS head.

Duece is such a sweetheart of a dog. I just love him so much. I have such a sweet and beautiful family. I don't know what I would do without them. Now we are about to go get a snow cone from Bahama Mamas...they have a lemon berry ice that is to die for!

Living by Faith

You know, Justin and I have never had any issues with living by faith, at least that is true for the last 8 years when God got ahold of our lives and turned our world upside down.

Well, now we are at a point where - we have lived by faith for the last 8 years - but are now taking it up a notch! LOL

Justin is a pastor but is also a full time carpenter and owner of his own business. Well, after 8 years, business is slower than it has ever been - practically to a dead stop. So what are we doing? We are trusting and believing that God is going to take care of us and provide our every need because that is what He has promised us. And God is not a liar, correct? So that only means one thing - no matter if we can see it with our physcial eyes or not, God has plans to take care of us and provide for us. So we are just taking it step by step right now, praising, worshipping, trusting, and believing.

We serve a wonderful and magnificant God and couldn't imagine ourselves doing anything else at this point in our lives. It is times like these that God uses to open our eyes and help us to re-evaluate our goals and purpose and to lean on God 100%. If we know we are in the perfect will of God then that is all there is to it.

I just want to take this opportunity to thank God for where He has brought us, for what He is doing in our lives and in the lives of the people that we have contact with. I want to tell Him how much I love Him and trust Him and how nice it is to be able to completely rely on Him for everything.

May everyone who reads this be blessed and know in your hearts that God adores you and longs for a personal relationship with each and every one of you.

The below picture has nothing to do with this blog - it is just a random picture of my shmoopie. However, if I have learned anything from Stephanie, it is not to post a blog with no pictures!! LOL :)

Sanity Secured

As most of you know, I grew up in Amarillo (picture to the right is of Downtown Amarillo) and I love Amarillo.

However, we have lived away from Amarillo for the last 8 years. 5 of those years were spent in Lamesa with a population of 11,000 (including the inmates of the Texas Prison) and the last 3 years have been spent in Littlefield (picture to the left is of down town Littlefield) with a population of 6,500. The first 4 months of living in Lamesa I did nothing but cry practically...yes because I missed my family...but more because adjusting to a smaller town was just down right hard to do! However, after 8 years I must say that I have adjusted, I have discovered the beauty in a small town that I never knew was there.


With that being said, I have to get into a "big town" at least every other week or I find my sanity hanging by a shredded thread. Which brings me to our outing today. Today made 2 weeks of being in Littlefield with no escape. -On a side note - whatever is said here is not meant to make anyone think that I do not like Littlefield or that I do not like where God has placed us, please don't get the wrong impression -. Anyway, today was the day that I knew I had go to Lubbock. Even if it meant driving to Lubbock and sitting in a crowded Wal-Mart parking lot and watching all the people go by - that would have been good enough for me - I would have had my fix and would have rescued my sanity. Thankfully though we had a little more on our agenda than that.

Our morning started out with the kids and I playing in the back yard with Duece.

Then we went with Justin to the church and got it all cleaned up and ready for church tomorrow. (We also unloaded Justin's truck that had a ton of stuff in it from VBS). Then off we went to Lubbock. Our first stop was a Wal-Mart on Frankford because Justin had to get some Insulin (and if you've ever known Justin when he needs insulin, you will understand why that was our FIRST stop...lol). Our next stop was Barnes and Noble.

This is a game that I saw that I thought was a must have:

I have determined that this is indeed my favorite store. Tyson always loves to go here too and he was the reason for this visit today.

Our third stop was Home Depot...I was so excited about that let me tell ya...but Justin was working a job that he was having to get figures for, thus the reason for our visit.

Then it was time to go eat with our friend Kenneth Presley. He is so fun to be around. He goes to Christian Life in Lubbock and has such a giving heart and truley a servant's heart. Anyway, we went to Olive Garden and I had the Shrimp Rissotto with Asparagus. After that we went and watched G-Force in Digital 3D and it was AWESOME!

Karisty and I are cool enough and secure in ourselves that we dont mind taking pictures of ourselves in the dark movie theater with our 3D glasses on.

I can't say the same for Justin and Tyson though and in the below picture you will see them fleeing for their lives as I am trying to beg them to let me take their picture. You can see that I did not win.

And that about wraps up our day - the sanity saving day. :)

Reflection of a Busy Week

It is time to reflect on the last 6 days. We have been preparing for this last week for 6 months now and it has finally come to an end. The week kicked off on Sunday with Jesus Fest and then the next five fun filled days were a Community Wide VBS hosted by 7 churches in Littlefield. Jesus Fest consisted of live worship/christian bands playing from 3:00 to 7:00 (because we ran long...was supposed to end at 6:00) and then the service began with live worship from Jacob's Ladder who is a worship band from Midland and Andrews and consists of 5 AWESOME people ranging in age (stair step) from a Sophmore in high school to a Sophmore in College age (they are in that order in the below picture but from right to left.

Then after the worship, 4 Pastors from the Ministerial Alliance each took turns speaking (and no, believe it or not, it did not last ALL NIGHT...lol). The below picture shows the 4 pastors and another associate pastor who is also an AWESOME translator. In order from Left to Right (this time) is Translator Pastor Johnny Cruz, Pastor Rueda (Temple of Adoration), Pastor Andy Melton (Trinity), Pastor Justin Hopper (Life Church) and Pastor Tracy Spencer (Cowboy Church). Then it was off to Monday....the first day of VBS...we were expecting 400 - 500 kids this year. I think we made it to about 400 kids on Thursday, but the rest of the days were a little lower than what we expected. That's alright though because it we had a blast. I unfortunately was unable to take any pictures of VBS because I was always so busy with Bible Story and Registration that I never remembered to bring my camera! However, thanks to Johnny Cruz, he took some pics that are shown below. Plus, unfortunately Karisty ended up with tonsilitus this week, so we had our ups and downs with her in that area. But overall it was a wonderful week. (I got to play Security on the last day at the end of the day and sit in a golf cart in the parking lot directing traffic - it was awesome! LOL). VBS consisted of Registration, opening session under the big tent, Crafts, Snack, Bible Story, Games, and Closing Session. It inlcuded kids ranging from Pre-K to 6th Grade. We ran Monday through Friday from 5:30 to 9:00. It was awesome (this was Littlefield's 3rd year to have a Community Wide VBS).

The above pic was from the Bible Story Part...this looks like some of the 1st and 2nd grade group.
The above picture is Justin in character (Outback Jack) during part of the Bible Story and below is an upclose and personal picture of Outback Jack.

This is a random picture of some of the kids at craft time, not sure what they are about to do.
This is the tent we had set up outside where all the kids would come together for the opening session and then the closing session.
Kids starting to gather for the closing session...

So there you have it...and now I am sitting on the couch on Saturday morning after having slept in until about 9:30a.m. We are now going to take it easy today!!! :)

My Wonderful Husband

After speaking with a few women today and learning all of the trials and problems they go through with their husbands, it really does make me so THANKFUL that I have such a wonderful husband. The problems these women have are just "something that comes along with being married" to them. Some of these problems are problems that I could never even fathom in my wildest imagination and some of these problems are little things but something that I have never had to deal with. But to them, they are just something that happens - its not pleasant but it's life. Well, to me it's not life - it's not something that just happens and I am discovering that I am so incredibly blessed to have Justin Hopper as my husband. I will admit - sometimes I take him for granted, sometimes I don't realize how good I have it until I hear stories like I heard today. These stories are not uncommon, infact, there are more women with husbands like theirs than there are women with husbands like mine.

When Justin and I were planning our wedding while in high school we didnt see the faintest thing wrong with that. (Now that I look back I can see how INSANE that was). But neither one of us thought twice about it. We knew we wanted to get married and there was just nothing else to it. Most people warned us that we wouldn't make it 5 years if we got married that young. We didn't pay any attention to those people. Now I have to admit, we had our rocky parts there a few years into it, but thankfully both of us allowed God to come in and change our lives and we couldn't be happier and more in love today. I just want my husband to know how much I love him for so many reasons I choose not to list, for so many reasons that I take for granted and for so many reasons that he will never know. When I sit and try to think about something I would change about my husband, I literally cannot think of anything. Justin - I love you shmoopie!

First run at blogging!

Well, this is my first try at blogging. I have never really had an interest in blogging but Sarah and Stephanie and my husband have inspired me after reading theirs. :) I am 31 and have finally come to grips with begin OLD. I will turn 32 years old on October 1st of this year and on August 3rd, Justin and I will have been married for 13 years. So what if I still feel like I should be 23? So what if I feel like I have just graduated high school a couple of years ago. That is just not reality. I am officially middle aged and I have got to come to terms with it some how - some way. When did it happen? I honestly have no idea! How did it happen? Well, I am an intelligent individual, and logically I can tell you how it happened, but most of the time I am not a very logical person. :) Thus the hard time I am having with this age thing. My son is 12 and my daughter is 10. In just 8 short years Justin and I will be on our own! My little babies will be in college, living their own adult lives, and at the age of 39/40 Justin and I will be all by our lonesome. How crazy/sad/freakin out/ is that? I don't know, and honestly I cant even stand to think about it.

Speaking of my babies, here they are:

Yes I know, they are so gorgeous, both of them. :) I met Justin in the 6th grade at Fannin Middle School and Tyson has just completed the 6th grade!!!??? How did that happen? I don't know. Maybe that is why I have pink hair - maybe I am rebelling against old age. Oh well, again, I am really trying to come to grips with it because if I don't face reality I will have a nervous breakdown in 6 short years when Tyson graduates High School!

Well, this has really been fun. I think I am going to really enjoy blogging. Those of you who think I am crazy, well, you don't have to read. Those of you who love me even though I am crazy, enjoy. :)