Ten things...Monday

1) Saturday night we were leaving Orlandos and a sweet cocker spaniel popped out in between some cars. She had a collar, but zero tags. We were heading back to the I am second training (i will explain later), Teddy and I were riding with another person, we don't have a yard & live in an apartment with dog rules....all things against us taking the dog/rescuing the dog. I cried. I was terribly sad! I've had cocker spaniels all my life and people had rescued our dogs over the years. I wanted to save this dog. We did see a little boy holding on to the dog when we were driving away & a car stopped with him. I'm choosing to believe they rescued the dog. She was BEAUTIFUL...looked a lot like the dog on the right, but more puppy like.

2) Tech Cru officially partnered with I AM SECOND. Go to www.iamsecond.com to check out the videos. I AM SECOND groups (bible study) are going to start on Tech's campus & the staff of Tech Cru will coach those leaders. It's just another tool for us to reach the entire campus with the gospel! For real though, check out that website & watch a few of the videos (5-7 mins). There are many high profiled people on the website saying they are second & God is first.

3) I have thoroughly enjoyed the warm winter climate Lubbock has experienced. But this week, well today at 4pm an awful cold front is hitting Lubbock. We will have wind chills of -20..-10 degrees. The actual temperature will be 3-9 degrees (the low). BOO!! Last week when we had a little bit of snow & ice I couldn't find my ice scraper. I use this cone thing that I found in my car & went to work. I have now found my ice scraper, so i'm ready for this snow/ice.

4) So last time I wrote I said we were starting the couch 2 5k. I'm officially starting today. Teddy started last week, but I did not. :( I'm going to go run & lift weights. It will feel good, I just know it!

5) I have today off from work. We worked 9:00am-10:30pm on Saturday for the I AM SECOND training. I'm meeting with one student for lunch, but other than that I'm doing laundry, going to the grocery store, bank, working out, and hopefully catching up on the bachelor. I'm two weeks behind.

6) Friday night Teddy and I watched The Notebook. I love the movie, but I cry basically every time. Friday was no different. I just cried and cried and cried. We haven't watched the movie since we got married, and I just feel like it means something so different now that we are married. :)

7) I THINK I'm going to try to grow out my finger nails again. First of all, all this sickness is going around & I need to keep my fingers OUT OF MY MOUTH..sick. But second, I just like longer nails. This time last year my nails looked AMAZING, because my motivation was to have my natural nails for our wedding. SUCCESS! But I munched them right off the day Kim got engaged. I was nervous all day executing all the things we had to to make sure the day was perfect. Since then, I haven't had pretty nails. I also like that it makes me feel girlie. :)

8) We are close to valentines day & our one year anniversary (march 14th). I'm excited about both of those. :) I can vividly remember the emotions I was feeling this time last year as we approached both of these days. Valentines marked one month away from our wedding & obviously March 14th was the day my life was changing. I was so excited!!!!! I'm just as excited this year! What a lovely year it has been!

9) I'm growing my hair out again. Although, I'm going to get it trimmed hopefully this week. I haven't done anything with my hair since I cut in June. That's sad! I need to trim & layer it up, and keep it growing!!!

10) I found out last week that my grandma's house is officially going on the market in April & she is moving out in March. I'm really sad about this. I have grown up going to that house every year in Denver. My dad said that we would be able to take some things, if we want, after the kids (my dad, uncle, and aunt) have picked out what they want. But, we won't be able to get up there before or during March. So, Christmas 2009 was my last time to be in that house. I'm grateful that Teddy was with me and he got to experience that house. So many memories have been made there. My dad grew up in that house. My grandma & grandpa lived in the house for well over 50 years. I know it will be good that my grandma is moving into a retirement/old person housing. It will be good for her...but I'm sad to see that house go. :(

Time to start errands & such!
-Kells

weekend update!

my job is pretty legit. some of you might not understand what I do day in and day out, I will explain that on this blog someday soon.

Friday night was spent in the wonderful canyons of Floydada, Texas. We had our M29 retreat. It was only one evening & LOTS of fun. We spent a little of Friday studying the Bible & discussing things about unity & diversity. Then had hours of laughing, huge group games, story telling, domino playing, dance parties, frisbee throwing (indoors), and singing at the top of our lungs. I stayed up until 1:15am, while some students stayed up until 4:30am.

We woke up & ate breakfast. Had a devotional time in Luke, cleaned up and made our way back to Lubbock. It was quick, but really really fun. I had so much fun just being silly, dancing, and singing with our students. They probably think i'm nuts. I'm ok with that! :)

When I got home Saturday afternoon I was SO excited to see Teddy. He left for our at 5:30am on Friday & I didn't see him until Saturday at 1:00pm. Plus, we only talked once during that entire time. I missed him! We spent our afternoon relaxing, went to church at 6:30pm, came home to cook dinner, and went to play 11:15pm bingo. We had a lot of fun doing that. I was actually close (2 away) to winning. We were there until 1:00am. Another late night. But we slept in until 11am this morning :)

We just lounged around all day. Doing a little bit of laundry, watching a lot of football, and just hanging out. Later on we will do our marriage book we are going through every Sunday. It's called Starting Your Marriage Right by Dennis & Barbara Rainey. FABULOUS book we received from my job. We do one chapter each Sunday & would highly recommend it to EVERYONE. go here if you want to buy it or check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Your-Marriage-Right-Lifetime/dp/0785268030

off to continue laundry (aka drive down to our laundry room area & move clothes from washer to dryer)
-Kells

random things

this is all random. but it's very rare that my post aren't random...

first of all, it's really hard to start eating healthy once you have gone bad again. I mean seriously, all I crave is fast food. That dumb stuff IS addicting. MUST EAT AT HOME...bleh.

second, one of my favorite things to do daily is checking the mail. confession! :) And I genuinely get kind of sad if we don't have any mail. I don't care if it's bills, letters, coupons, work stuff....i love it all. It's very rare that I find nada in the mail box...marriage has helped!

third, i heard this on Air 1 today and thought it was great. "If you face your fears they will dissolve. If you bow down to your fear it can embed itself in bondage & generational curses/sin." I heard it twice, but I still think I'm missing some words. Hopefully you get the picture. I spent a few moments both times I heard that today reflecting on the "fear" in my life now & previously. What did I did in the past? What will I do now with fear? Just good things to think about!

fourth, i keep this "new" (november) apartment a lot cleaner then our first apartment. I don't know if I just didn't have even room to hide clutter at the old place or what. But I would be totally fine if people came over to our apartment on a whim. It's fairly clean around here. It probably helps that I REALLY love our apartment. I'm still waiting to put up our last shelves, then I will post pictures.

fifth, i love that I forget about taxes every year until January. I'm sure one day it won't be pretty & we will have to owe taxes. But I'm pretty positive this year we will still be getting taxes $$ back. That's the part I love about forgetting...it's like surprise money...that for this year will go towards the truck. SO CLOSE!

sixth, i think Teddy and I are going to start the Couch 2 5K again. We did it during our first year of dating and made it to the 6th week & quit. I don't even know why we quit...I can't remember. But, that was the last time we did really well with working out with a plan. We discussed it briefly last night, but I believe we will probably move forward and do it. Shoot, we have a free membership to Body Works...why not use it? Then we can run a 5k together!

done. gotta run to market street real fast!
-Kells

100th post!

I've been apart of the blogging world since Summer 2008 & finally have reached 100 post! woohoo! I didn't actually come here to blog about that.

One of my favorite things about marriage thus far is getting to spend time with the Lord together but separate. Meaning, we are sitting in a room together but studying/praying on our own.

It brings me JOY!

We continue to learn how important it is to cultivate our relationship separately & together. We pray nightly together, do a Christian study book (about marriage) on Sundays (one chapter per week), but spend time with the Lord doing separate studies.

Currently I'm going through a book called LIVE from my church, doing a Bible reading plan called the Essential 100 (50 stories from NT & OT you need/should know) to help me to be in the word daily, and I'm also reading about Joseph's life in Genesis (we are doing a character study on him in CRU...but I wanted to read on my own too). Occasionally, I throw in Women of the Bible study (a book I own that is GREAT).

I've learned that I need structure in order to actually spend time with the Lord. So structure it is...if you can't tell. :) I just need some direction when I'm jumping into the Word. The Bible can be overwhelming!

Marriage is about walking with Christ. Period. (this is a constant growing point for both of us)

1) How do you remain focused on Christ & relying on him, when we both depend on each other too?
2) What do you do when you are spending time with the Lord?
*give me your feedback, for real.*

-Kells

low key

This weekend was very low key. I really enjoyed it.

sidenote: I just saw a weather clip on the TV...our high today is 70 degrees & Thursdays high is 37. LUBBOCK CAN'T BE CONSISTENT. It really does drive me nuts. I have had a mild winter so far, I definitely enjoy that.

Anyways, back to our weekend update.
Friday night Lori & Rich came over & we watched Inception. I was excited to see it finally. Very interesting! We had to debrief after.

Saturday, Teddy had to work 6-2:30pm. I slept in & just relaxed around the house. That evening we went to Stella's to celebrate Katie Bearden's birthday! After, we went to her house to have cake & hang out more. I really enjoyed the evening!
heading to dinner at Stella's


Sunday, we went to church at 10am. LOVED the service. We grabbed lunch, got gas, and went home. I took a 2 hour nap. I didn't sleep well the night before. We brainstormed our grocery list & new recipes to make this week. Made a trip to the grocery store & purchased mostly healthy stuff! We went to dinner over at the Jones's apartment. Lori ccoked tilapia, rice, and vegetables. YUM! Then we watched social network. I was also excited to see this movie! It was good!

Today is MLK day. I have the day off. Which means running errands, making my schedule for the week, doing some work stuff from home, and laundry. :)

Hope you have a wonderful week!
-Kells

Experience Life

This time last year I posted about our church we go to Experience Life. http://handswideopen.blogspot.com/2010/01/blessed.html I was excited about 2010 and I'm just as excited for 2011. I wanted to share you some of the goals for 2011 & Praise God for what He did this last year.

The prayer from the very beginning has been 10,000 new believers, 1,000 lifehouses, 10 west Texas church plant.

Here is where we are at right now:
-This past year it ended up being the 2nd fastest growing church in America.

Prayer:
-2010 goal: 300 people would come every Monday to pray for the community & church. We ended up have an average of 350 people praying every Monday night! how cool!
-2011 goal: triple prayer...850 people praying every Monday

Membership:
-2011 goal: 1,000 new covenant members

Lifehouses:
-2010 goals: 80 lifehouses...we ended up with 60 lifehouses in 5 different cities in West Texas
-2011 goals: 120 Lifehouses in West Texas

Church Planting:
-2010 goal: Planted a downtown campus in Lubbock Texas
-2011 goal: Plant a new church in a new city

Giving:
-2010 goal: Raised $3.3 Million in a year
-2011 goal: praying for $4.5 million

Volunteers:
-2010: 900 people got plugged in
-2011 goal: 33% of the church is volunteering weekly

Baptism:
-2010 goal: 600 people to be baptized, we had 560 baptized!! HOW COOL!
-2011 goal: 1200 people to be baptized

New Believers:
-2010 goal: 1,000 New believers...we had 958 new believers! PRAISE GOD!
-2011 goal: 2,000 New believers

I love being apart of a church that is HUGE on praying for things that seem out of reach. We need God to move in order for any of this to happen.

Want to know more:
www.experiencelifenow.com

-Kells

sweet sweet Lord

This past Saturday night Teddy and I went on a dinner & movie date. This isn't a usual date plan for us. Dinner yes...movie no. But we haven't been to a movie in a while & that is what Teddy planned for me. :)

For a couple who is on a small budget for life you might think doing a dinner & movie date is out of the question. Well, it usually is. But, because of the craziness of the holiday, we had not been on an official date for a little while. So our date/entertainment budget had almost enough. Then we still have a little Christmas cash left, so we thought it would be wise to use it on a fun date :)

Date: Olive Garden (our first date place) & True Grit

Here is how this played out...& why the Lord is so SWEET! (now I understand that for some of you the word sweet probably doesn't resonate with you when it comes to describing the Lord. But, it does resonate with me. Hopefully you understand. Fill free to enter your own choice word :) )

We got to Olive Garden by 5:50pm...not really expecting a CRAZY wait because it's 5:50pm...pshh we were wrong. We had a 45 minute wait ahead of us. Something we learned last time we went to Olive Garden (6 month anni) is you can sit in the "cafe" (tables by the bar) and it's first come first serve...and you get waited on there. So we decided to scope out tables and we were sitting down within 25-30 mins. Our food took FOREVER to come out. When it finally did, Teddy's steak was practically RARE. He asked for it to be medium. So after waiting a long time for the food, he was going to have to wait longer. End result: They comped (however you spell that) his $15 plate...SCORE. We didn't even ask. The Lord is sweet!

Then we headed to the movie theater. Growing up we didn't go to the movies often & when we did you just went to the movie..period. No popcorn/cokes/candy. When I started dating my hot husband I quickly realized that his childhood was different. He ALWAYS has popcorn & a drink. We now always get popcorn & drink...even after we just ate dinner. I guess you can say that I compromised :) Tonight was no different. We were full, but wanted popcorn. We were standing back from the counter just looking and a woman approached us & said, "Hey! Do y'all want popcorn?"...we were a little puzzled, but said yes. She said, "I have this large bucket that gets a free refill, do you want it?" UMM YES! We were only going to get a junior size popcorn because its cheaper & SMALLER. But instead we took this lady up on her offer & got us some free popcorn.

I just think it's sweet of the Lord. We don't often get to go on "fancier" dates because of $$. And the night that we had saved up a little to be able to do so, we didn't have to spend extra cash. We kept smiling at each other, knowing that it was only the Lord. Just amazed.

The Lord really does care about little things.
Even dates between husband & wife :)
-Kells

weekend fun!

As I told you last time, we were going to build a mantel this weekend. WE DID IT! :) It was about a two day process with staining, glossing, waiting, & building/putting it up. It was a fun project to do together. I love the finished product. I think I'm going to add a few more nick knacks to it...but for now, I'm satisfied!


The bare wood & the 3 pieces


Blank wall/no mantel

Putting on the finish/gloss

Finished product!

Today in Lubbock there was a "starving artist" paint show. My grandpa & grandma Smith have always had TONS of paintings in their house in Colorado. They love paintings. After my grandpa died we began the process of slowly cleaning out their house. My grandma would tell us "yes" or "no" to things we could take. There was one particular painting that I have loved forever...and we have it. It's a beautiful painting of Italy. It's definitely not a cheap piece. It will always remind me of my grandpa.

We bought one painting today. I really like it. It's going to hang in our bedroom on a white shelve. :) This is just the start of our collections of paintings! We didn't have enough $$ for a frame...but for now I think it looks fine!


All of our Christmas decor & the tree came down today. booo! I will say, it makes the living room even more spacious. But that tree has been up since we moved into this apartment end of November/beginning of December. It was my pride and joy. But, it did force a cleaning session. I've really enjoyed having a vacuum now. I went crazy today vacuuming while Teddy cleaned our kitchen. (LOVE HIM!)

We hung our curtains & ordered 2 more panels for our bedroom. The window is just wide enough that we need 4 panels. The last thing we have to do for our apartment is hang some shelves in our bedroom & add little things (frames & new painting) to the wall...then we will be ALL DONE. We tried hanging up the shelves...but we don't have the small nails we need any longer (lost with all the other nails). So we need to either get some from friends or buy some. I'm so excited to have the whole place finished!!!

Once we get the very last finishing touches done I will post pictures. I kept thinking multiple times today, i just love our apartment. I'm very happy to stay here until next February!

-Kells

getting settled

Teddy and I had made a goal that we would have our house completely in place by the time I start work back up again Monday. We are SO close to being done!

Yesterday, we went shopping with some extra Christmas money. I really wanted a mantel over our fire place. We were going to buy a shelve from hobby lobby, but they didn't have any long enough for our fireplace. So, plan two was to go to home depot & expecting they would have something that would work. Well, we thought we had the perfect plan by buying a piece of plywood that is already painted/stained, buy brackets to hold it & done. Well, again...nothing really worked for the size we needed. So plan #3, we will make our own.

That's right people. We bought a piece of nice wood, had them cut it down to our size, bought wood brackets, stain, gloss, and screws. We have a little project on our hands & we are excited. Home Depot is so helpful too. The guy that helped us & gave us plan #3 talked us through tons of things & options. Today we will probably stain the wood & gloss it. We have to do it outside & today is the last day of pretty weather...then comes the cold

Also, in the midst of our move we somehow lost a glade ware bucket of nails/screws/curtain rod holder. Literally, can't find this thing. All boxes are empty. No where to be found. FRUSTRATING! We had to buy curtain rod holders at HD too. They were pretty inexpensive. So, we will have our bedroom curtains finally hung by the end of this weekend!

When we went to hobby lobby for the shelve/mantel thing, we discovered all their Christmas stuff was 90%. If you know me at all, i LOVE christmas decorations. I slowly but surely have been collecting over the years. We needed to buy more ornaments for the back of our tree. Originally, $7.99....90% off makes math DANG easy...we got them for .80 cents. BAM! love me some sales! We bought 3 things of ornaments, a solid mini tree (for my new mantel)(.80), gift tags (.30)....$40 worth of product for $4.33...YES! I LOVE IT!

we had a productive day yesterday. I expect the same today! :)
-Kells

random things

--So my brakes got a Christmas present too. The most expensive present we gave anyone, by a FAR FAR FAR stretch. Solid $235 spent on that gift. goodness! I knew that I needed brake work done, just didn't realize how much. They got fixed last Friday! Now I feel safer! :)

--We are SO close to being done with our debt. If you are new here, we've been doing this snowballing plan (live with only $1000 in an emergency saving fund & put EVERYTHING extra towards debt...it include other steps too...ask if you want to know) to get rid of debt. We had two debts coming into marriage, we are down to one (Teddy's truck) & are REALLY REALLY close. I think we really will be done by our 1st year anniversary (March 14th). We originally set up a plan to be done by June...but we literally put everything extra towards the truck & have been living on a tight budget...allowing us to be done 3 months earlier. yahooo!!! We calculated the other day that we have put $3700 towards the truck since we started this budget in September. Since we've been married around a total of $6000 has been sent towards that dadgum truck. Cannot wait to have breathing room in our budget, start saving again, and enjoy more activities. It's been a really great process for our marriage & really helped us put finances into a different perspective. :)

--Today I went to lunch with 4 girls from my small group at church (lifehouse). I enjoyed our conversation greatly!

--Went to Walmart to grocery shop today too. The lady in front of me had apparently shopped only in the Christmas area. (P.S. ALL CHRISTMAS IS 75% OFF...THEY HAVE TONS LEFT) But, majority of this "christmas stuff" didn't ring up 75%. She literally made the checker change every little thing. The best part of the story is that I had to be the price checker/calculator woman. Anytime it rang up wrong, all eyes on me to help the checker & the customer. I don't know how I got put in that position...but I felt weird. I wasn't sure all that stuff was Xmas, but she certainly got 75% her entire ticket.

--We are almost done with Seasons 1-4 of the office. We have one more disk of season 4. I can't wait to get season 5 & 6 so we can continue on! It's pretty funny how into it we are now. We laugh a lot.

--I bought cake mix & icing today at the store. Basically, a splurge. I just really wanted to make a cake. I'm going to get on that :)

-Kells

happy new year!

oh well! I didn't hit the 50 mark, but it was fun trying!



It's 2011! We spent New Years Eve with two couples (Tatum's & Willess') from our life house! We went to Rosa's & ate/chatted there for almost 2 hours. Then went back to the Tatum's home and just hung out. We "rang in" the new year at 11pm (new yorks time) & at midnight our time :) We didn't know if we were going to make it until midnight, but we did. So we said yay & kissed two times, pretty thrilling! Mostly, we just hung out & laughed a lot. We planned on playing games, but just talked. :) We had a fun night with them!

We spent majority of the day on Saturday cleaning our apartment. Our bedroom is the cleanest its ever been. Looks GREAT! We finally got the old TV moved away from our apartment & the new one is all set up! Things are coming together! And I counted that we now own 17 DVD'S. Pretty good! :)

-Kells