Cocoa Beach!!!!

   Saturday morning we woke up and headed to the beach. It was only around a hour and a half from our condo. We had so much fun and are so thankful we had time to go and enjoy the sun. Here are some pictures from our day at the beach.

A sneak pick at a few Vacation Pictures

Our Condo at Liki Tiki Village in Orlando, Flordia.

Living Room

Kitchen/dining room

Stairs

Mine and Jeremys bedroom

Dustys Room

Washer and Dryer

About to eat at Joes Crab Shack for the 1st time!!!

Nellie

My Mamaw Harmon brought in this doll one day when we were kids. I can't rememeber where she got her, but we named her Nellie because she has curls like Nellie on Little House on the Prairie. We thought she was cool at the time, but now I think she is a little creepy. Anyway my Mamaw sent her to my house for Emmy to play with and I thought Emmy is gonna be scared of her.

  I was wrong. She loves Nellie. She played with her ALL day the first time she saw her!! Alaina  ( Emmys big sister) said she (Nellie) was weird. So Emmy will probably think she is creepy like the rest of us when she is older, but for now Nellie is a big hit!

Dear Montana Friends.........

Dear Montana Friends,

We miss you and are praying for you daily. Cannot wait until we can come visit. You made our two years in Montana some of the best years of our lives!!  As I was going through my camera I realized I dont have many pictures of all our friends in Montana. Guess we were too busy making memories to take pictures. Just know that even if your picture is not here you are included we miss you very much!!!!!

Soul Searching. . . . . . . .

      Tomorrow we leave for vacation and it could not have came at a better time. Lately I have been so stressed and just confused. I was sure my role at The Fellowship Church was to work with children. That is what I have always done. Working with children is my gift. However, now that I'm here I feel totally different. I feel like that is not what i'm suppose to be doing. I'm not sure why or what my purpose is. I am helping with the praise team and want that to continue, but beyond that am very unsure. I hope that I can do a little soul searching on this Vacation. I know that if I pray for Gods direction He will lead me to the answers in His time. 

      Things are going well though and I cannot complain. God has poured His blessings out on us. We have a home to rent and a wonderful church family. God has no doubt provided it all and we are so thankful. Please continue to pray for us. We do still have bad days and miss Montana and our friends their very much. Transitioning is not easy and it will continue to be a struggle for awhile, but things will get better. God has a plan and its for our good. 


   

Fire on Railroad Ave

          I woke up last night to what sounded like a explosion!! Jeremy went and looked out the window and said the house on the next road over from us was on fire. Of course the fireman were there and fire trucks everywhere. Of course I had to walk out on my porch like a true redneck and gawk (why do we do that?)            My heart instantly sank when I saw bright orange stretching toward the sky. I cannot imagine the heartbreak that last for months maybe even years. I cant imagine picking through the rubble that was once your home to find anything salvageable. I cant imagine standing on the side of the road in your pjs watching your life go up in smoke. I dont know what they are feeling, but I know my heart broke for them. 
      I am asking everyone to pray for this family. I dont know them, but I know they need our prayers. 

Restored Relationships.....Forgiveness

I have a daily devotional that I read every morning on my phone. This was my devotional yesterday morning!!!!  It definitely struck a nerve in me. 

Genesis 45:14-15
14 Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept, and Benjamin embraced him,weeping. 15 And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterward his brothers talked with him.

RESTORED RELATIONSHIPS

Families function in very different ways, but by any comparison, Joseph’s family was far from typical. He was the preferred son out of twelve brothers, and his favored status stirred up in his brothers a jealousy so intense that his siblings sold him into slavery. Later, after God had brought Joseph into prominence as a ruler in Egypt, he had his brothers at his mercy. He could either pay them back for the years of pain they had caused him, or he could forgive them and restore their shattered family relationship. Joseph chose to forgive.
Only a soul refined in the fires of adversity can react in such a way. Throughout the years of slavery, and later imprisonment, Joseph found solace and strength in his relationship with his heavenly Father. When opportunity came to bless or curse those who had wronged him, Joseph chose blessing.
Look at your personal family relationships in the light of Scripture. Have you allowed old grievances to separate you from the very people you are to care for? Spend time with God, like Joseph, and allow God’s love to change your heart.

Lord, you know my family. Help me to forgive. . . 


  We all have folks we need to forgive. We all have been hurt at some point in our lives. Unfortunately its those closest to us who normally hurt us the worst and that more often than most is family members. We could all learn a lesson from Joseph here. If your holding a grudge leave it at Jesus feet today. There is freedom in forgiveness. 




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Support. . . . .

     First off I wanna say a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us these last two years while we were in Montana.  Whether it was money, prayers, or both. You are the reason we were able to do what we did while we were there. You are the reason we have so many precious memories and lifelong friends. I could never ever thank you enough. I cannot put into words how grateful I am that you believed in us and were a huge part of our ministry.
   As most everyone knows we are now back in Tennessee. We are helping with a church plant in Sweetwater, Tn. Jeremy will start work at Amazon soon and I started babysitting at the end of July. So comes the question everyone is pondering on and wondering about, and wanting an answer to. To support or not to support ( meaning money. Please please please keep the prayer support coming. You dont have to ask we always need prayer.) The answer is do what you feel God is telling you to. We did not quit we are still working for our Lord and Savior, but at the same time yes we do have jobs. I totally understand the hesitation in continuing to support us. We understand that eventually support will stop and its ok. Its all part of it and we are not upset or mad we understand completely.
   Jeremy and I are doing great we have a place were renting and jobs. However Jeremys job does not start until August 29th so it will still be a few weeks before He actually receives a paycheck. Again not begging for money or having a pity party just answering questions that everyone is wondering. If you would like to help us until we get on our feet we are very much appreciative if you feel so lead. Please no matter what keep us in your prayers as we transition into life in Tenneesse again and away from so many we came to love in Montana. Again thanks so much for your support and prayer!!!

  We would love to hear from you :) 

1914 Palos Street

 Athens, Tn 37303

Dear Baby

      Everyone around me is pregnant and although I dont feel bitter. It is still hard at times. I feel like maybe God is teaching me to be patient and trust Him and possible not to covet. I know you will come at the perfect time. I just wish the perfect time was now, but I trust God and know that He sees the future and knows whats best.
    Daddy and I moved into a house were renting. I wonder if you will live here. I walk in the bathroom and wonder Will this be the room I hold a positive pregnancy test in? Of course I have no way of knowing. I even wonder if I ever will or if you will grow in my heart and not in my belly. Adoption is a beautiful thing and I wonder if it could be Gods plan for us. I know that no matter how you come we will love you with all our hearts and give you the best life we can. You will be our everything. I am working hard not to covet and to be patient, but I cannot wait until the day I can hold you in my arms. I love you so much.

Love,
Momma 

No more boxes!!!

      So we are finally settled in and loving the new place. It is great to have our own space. We moved in monday and we unpacked and cleaned ALL day long literally!! Then tuesday I unpacked ALL day long. I was so exhausted, but it was all worth it because I am done and can enjoy the weekend!  No more boxes and we had so many!!! I got on a role and even unpacked our winter clothes. All our pictures are on the walls and it is really looking and feeling like home. Our landlord came by tuesday and even he said it looked great and very cozy!  We have met our neighbors and they are so nice and speak everytime were outside. Unfortuntely now a days that is rare to find. We love the location and being right in town, and it is gonna work out perfectly for the kids I babysits parents it is close and convenient for them. 
        Things just fell into place and I know thats because God had a plan all along. I am in awe of Him and how he has provided for us our entire lives. Anytime we didnt know how we would pay a bill  it was not long before the phone would ring and problem solved. Its just been amazing to see Him work. Jeremy starts at Amazon the 29th and we are so thankful that God provided him with a job so quickly, and provided me with kids to babysit.  The Fellowship Church is doing good. Right now we workers are getting to know each other and are figuring out our roles and what we feel led to do. Things are going well and we are so excited to see what the future holds.

For those who married young this is a must read!! ( I did not write this)

                      I wanna say up front that I DID NOT WRITE THIS.   This story is written by Addie Zierman I do not know her, but a friend of mine on facebook shared what she had written and it is so true and so beautifully written. As most of you know I had just turned 19 when we got married and Jeremy was 23 ( about to be 24). We know all to well about people thinking your crazy and betting that you wont make it. We know what its like to grow up together in our marriage and so I wanted to share her story.

FOR THE ONE WHO MARRIED YOUNG

08.08.13

My husband Andrew and I celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary tomorrow. We got married when I was barely 20 and he was barely 22, and everyone shook their heads and smiled knowingly.

Of course, I had to write something for the occasion.

This one’s for the completely smitten college kids – the ones who got married at 19 in the church basement. It’s for you who sat on your parents’ couch, hand in hand, while they looked at you, completely panicked.

For the young lovers – and for the older ones – who figured out marriage is much more beautiful and terrible, simple and complicated than you ever could have imagined. This one’s for you.

You should know – first of all – that you will regret those light-pink bridesmaid dresses. The ones with the sequins on the bodice that seemed exactly perfect at the time. You’ll also wish you’d hired an actualwedding videographer instead of just asking a buddy to do it.

You’ll remember exactly two of the things on your plate at the reception. You won’t remember, probably, what you eventually settled on for centerpieces, unless you stayed up all night making them with your Mom.

You’ll choose friends to stand next to you who are incomparably significant to you in your life right now. They will be there, sequined and smiling. They will be elbowing each other in their black tuxedos and grinning wide.

And maybe they will stay in your life for all the years ahead, bolstering this marriage with their friendship and love.

But maybe they won’t.

Maybe they’ll move away or move on. Maybe your friendship will change, drift apart, fall quietly away. And if that happens, it’s okay. It doesn’t mean that their witness of this moment, this marriage, didn’t matter. It does. This is all just part of growing up.

Maybe your friends will stay but will move into their own Hard Times, and they won’t always know how to be there for you. They won’t know what it’s like for you as you navigate the narrow waterways of your own married life. They’ll nod and listen as best they can, but they won’t be able to really understand.

Marriage is like that. In some ways, it’s so universal – all of us battling the same basic struggle as we try to communicate across the threshold of our vows and between the boundaries of our souls.

But in so many other ways, it’s not universal at all. Each marriage is as different and unique as the people who join their hands together.

When you marry young, you’ll know the delight of building a life together out of garage-sale coffee tables, relatives’ old couches and thrift store mugs. You’ll stop your car in the middle of the road and reverse half a mile to pick up an old, falling-apart-desk marked Free. You’ll laugh all the way home, high of the unexpected treasure of all of this.

There’s a good chance neither of you will really know how to cook, and you’ll make the journey together from Macaroni and Cheese to Betty Crocker’s corn flake-crusted chicken. When the apartment fridge starts reeking for some mysterious reason, you’ll have to tackle it together. You’ll learn how to keep track of your bills and stay in a budget and make your own space.

The car will break down. The rent will go up. You’ll have to figure out whose parents’ house you’re going to for Christmas. You’ll both be entirely sure it should be yours. Your arguments will burn red-hot, and then you’ll learn the slow love of making it right. You’ll learn, together, what it means to be grown up.

When you marry young, you’ll change and he’ll change, and in the midst of all of this growth you’ll realize that you can’t change each other. There will be moments and days and seasons that are really hard. And you’ll be tempted to think it’s because you got married young, but really, it’s just because you got married.

Some nights, you’ll turn the lights out and you’ll turned away from each other in bed, and you’ll wonder about this life you’re living. You’ll stare at your wedding photo hanging on the wall, and you’ll think about how young the two of you look there – all dressed up and playing at love.

You’ll feel so far from the person you were then. You felt so grown up, but now you know you were still so much in process. Your mind will drift to the other twenty-somethings, the imagined glamor of their unencumbered lives. Apartments downtown without his giant TV-Playstation combo. A bachelor-pad where no one leaves the bathroom sink strewn with makeup or clogs the drain with long, blonde hair.

You’ll be tempted to invent an alternative life for yourself, the one that you might have had if you hadn’t married young. It will look simple and glittering from where you sit, surrounded by laundry and all the other miscellany of normal life. But this is a mirage; a trick of the mind.

Life is hard no matter where you live it, no matter who you live it with.

If you are to keep it, you’ll have to work hard for this love. You will have to fight for it. Some nights, you’ll have to choose to sit there on living room carpet in the silence of a dragged out argument instead of walking away.  You’ll have to sit there while the night grows dark and you both get tired, and you’ll have to chip at the barrier of misunderstanding one bit at a time.

If you hit a snag that you can’t untangle by yourself, don’t be afraid to get help. Go to counseling – together and alone. Do your own work, and then do work together.

When you get married young, you’ll be tempted to hold onto decades’ worth of careless words, hurtful actions, and missed opportunities. During the lowest moments of your marriage, it will be easy to stack them up in a con column and use them to excuse yourself from the daily work of love.

Don’t.

You hold in your heart each other’s worst and best, the awkward movement from child to adult. You are the witnesses of each other’s most sacred lives. Be careful with one another.

Every year on your anniversary, go out. Even if all you can afford is McDonalds. Remember it all. The honeymoon trip to Mackinac Island, where you wore your prettiest dress and sipped demitasse at the Grand Hotel. The white canopy over your garage-sale bed frame and the giant speakers he hauled from his parent’s house – your first “sound system.”

Remember the random moments, the funny ones, the hard ones, the precious ones.  Line them all up on the table between you until suddenly you find yourself remembering toward the future.

Talk about it all over again until you’ve closed down the place and the guy comes by with the broom and the bottle of cleaner. Then take each other by the hand and go home.

Author’s Note: I publish this post with humility and care, knowing that sometimes a marriage is too fragile to hold together. There are instances when, no matter how hard you fight, you can’t seem to save it from that hard, inevitable crumbling. If this is your story, your experience — grace and peace. May you find beauty and redemption in the hard journey toward wholeness.

Well Hello there!

       Guess I was wrong about being away for awhile because here I sit. We are settling into the new house well. I finished unpacking today and began hanging pictures on the walls and it finally feels like home. We have had a crazy week and I really hope we get to sit around and relax more next week.
        We leave next  thursday for Flordia and are so excited for some time away. Jeremy has orientation at Amazon on the 29th and will start sometime shortly after. So we can really start settling and getting use to life in Tennessee once he starts working.
          Anyway just wanted to drop in and let everyone know we are doing good. We are so thankful for all God has done for us. He has and continues to pour out his blessings daily. God is good!!

See you Later!!

   Tomorrow is moving day!!! We are so excited!!! We will be without internet for awhile so I wont get to post. So there will be no silly saturdays for awhile. I will be back as soon as possible to update you on our new beginning :)

Silly Saturday #26

             God still answers prayers!!!! Monday will be a busy day because we are MOVING!!!! YAY!! We found a place of our own. I cannot even explain how excited we are to finally start our new beginning in Tn together in our own place. 
         Lets back track Jeremy found a few rentals in the paper one being a double wide 3 bedroom 2 bath. Jeremy called the number and the guy said we could come look at it, but He was waiting on someone to bring the deposit and only if they didnt was it available. So we went and looked and fell in love, but I tried not to get excited or even hopeful. So the guy said He would call them the next afternoon and then call us and let us know something. Well all night I prayed and prayed and asked God to have his will. If we were suppose to live there let us get it and if not then dont let us get it. I even twitted that I had a unspoken and asked everyone to pray. The next day around 9:30 am Jeremys phone rang and the other people had fell through and Jeremy went right then and wrote a check for the deposit. We get to move in Monday!!! We are so thankful and excited.
   Last night we went and bought things we would need and after we had bought everything and paid Jeremy still had the same amount of cash in his pocket that He had started out with. Aint God good!!!!!!! We are still scratching our heads for a logically answer, but sometimes when God works there is no logically answer!! He has poured out His blessings on us and we are so grateful.
  Also Alaina started school this week and I was worried Emmy would cry especially when her Momma dropped her off. She didnt! She was such a good girl, and even hugged me friday and said I was the best babysitter ever :) 

 God is good!!!

  

Silly Saturday #25

           I know I know its only friday, but I will be out of town for a few days so silly saturday will just have to be early. This week has been my first week babysitting Alaina and Emmy since being back in Tn. It has been a crazy week. Towards the end of the week we finally began to get in a routine. Alaina will start school next week, and it will be just me and Emmy until September when Jacob will be with us full time too.
      Speaking of Jacob the girls got to meet him tuesday when I kept all three of them!! That was a hectic day, but a fun day too. The girls were a little disappointed that Jacob is too little to play. I think even though I had told them he was a baby they expected a toddler. Alaina loudly stated "You mean he cant even crawl?" They still thought he was the cutest thing ever and were very excited that he was here.
    Even though things are going well I have had a tough week. I just REALLY miss Hungry Horse and all our friends there. I knew starting over back home would be hard, but I never imagined how hard. So much has changed in the last two years, and even though this should feel like home It feels more like were adjusting to living in a place we have never lived before. No time to be a debbie downer though not with God pouring out so many blessings on us. Which reminds me I have not mentioned that JEREMY GOT A JOB!!! Thank you to everyone who prayed!!! Not only did God provide him with a job He went above and beyond. Do you ever have those wants that you dont pray about because they are only wants, but deep down you hope you get them? We had a few wants

1. We had a vacation planned for a week in August. It wasnt a deal breaker, but if possible we wanted to go since our friend had reserved and paid for everything!
2. We have bible study on tuesday nights and really hoped Jeremy could be off for it.
3. I hoped Jeremy would not be on night shift. Since I am babysitting it would be extremely hard to get the kiddos quiet enough where Jeremy could sleep during the day. 

Then of course we had needs

1.  A good paying Job so we can pay our bills and get our own place.
2. Insurance 
3. Sundays off 

 Guess what?? God met every need and want!! Jeremy will work Wednesday through saturday from 7-6:30. He will have insurance from day one. He wont be working sundays. He doesnt start until the end of August so our vacation wont be affected!! God is so good and we are thankful that He has provided for us once again.

Things to pray about:

• Safe travels 
• A place for us to call home
• Beyond Borders For Christ
• The Fellowship Church
• Several unspokens
• Those who have lost a loved one ( My family in Illinois and a friend of ours in Montana both have experienced loss this week)