Holy Week

It's Holy Week this week - the last week of Jesus' life. So, this week I have been reading this account in the book of Mark. I started on Sunday with Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey - Mark 11:1-11. Then, I divided the rest of the chapters leading up to His death on Friday as follows:

Monday - Mark 11:12-33
Tuesday - Mark 12
Wednesday - Mark 13
Thursday - Mark 14
Friday - Mark 15
Saturday - nothing (Mark 15 ends on Friday and Mark 16 begins on Sunday)
Sunday - Mark 16

And that takes you through the account of the last week of Jesus' life.

When I was looking to begin on Sunday and trying to find the account of Jesus riding into Jerusalem, I was surprised how far back it was from the end. I've read through the book of Mark several times before, and saw so many familiar stories that took place after Palm Sunday. For some reason it never registered to me that all this took place the last week of Jesus' life. (Probably because I usually just read one little section at a time and try to focus on that and miss out on the bigger picture.)

Anyways, it has been interesting to re-read these things in the light of knowing that it is Jesus' last week on earth, and knowing that He knows that. If you knew that this was your last week on earth, what would you do? How does that compare to what Jesus spent His time doing?

I heard a teenage-ish aged boy speak during a sermon that I was listening to once. He was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. And he said how everyone always feels bad for him, knowing that he only has so long to live. But he said that he felt bad for the rest of us, because we don't know when we are going to die, so we live as if we will live forever, with no sense of urgency, when in all reality, any one of us could die before he does. And he at least will die knowing that he did what he felt was important with his last days, and we may not. I thought that was interesting.

Anyways, I look forward to reading through the rest of the account of the last week of Jesus' life and really thinking about the significance of it, as well as how my life would look different if instead of looking forward to my day off work on Friday and going to see one of my best friends, I knew that that would be my last day here on earth. Kind of interesting...

Sunshine

The sun has returned, and like many of you, my mood automatically picks up when the sun comes out. So today being Friday and the sun being out - here are a few things I feel happy about:

1. We finally decided on a vacation! In May, Derek and I will be heading down to Marco Island, Florida! This has been such a blessing. A very nice person who helps Derek out running the I am Third program, has a condo down there and is letting us stay there FREE! There is nothing like a free vacation. We still have to pay for food, flights, etc.(and we still have to book our flights) but you can't beat a free place to stay.

2. The Cats have made it to the Elite 8! Love March Madness and love that UK is playing so well.

3. I think I am going to have a garden this year! My parents are talking about coming back down here (they were just here last weekend) in a few weeks to help me til up the soil and get it started. Even if they aren't able to make it down I'm hoping that with their guidance Derek and I can make it happen. I am probably only going to plant a few things this year, but just the idea of starting one makes me happy!

4. It's almost Easter! Please pray that I can be more excited about celebrating the resurrection of Christ than being able to eat sugar. After all, the whole giving up sugar thing was hopefully to remind me to go to Him to fulfill my desires when I want to use sugar to do that. Still I am really excited about eating a chocolate covered glazed doughnut. I hardly ever eat doughnuts, so I'm not sure why this is what I am really excited to eat once I can, but it is.

5. My sister is going to be in Cinncinnati this weekend, which means that Derek and I get to go have dinner with her and her boyfriend, Jeff. I've seen Julie once since she moved out to Colorado in October, and just met Jeff when I was out there in February. Derek has yet to meet Jeff, so we are really looking forward to getting to see them on Sunday.

6. I spied this down the street:

You know what that means - spring is about here!

I feel like there's more but that's all I got for now. Hope that it stays warm and sunny here and that everyone gets out and enjoys the sunshine!

Our Weekend

We had a busy weekend this weekend, and luckily were able to accomplish what we set out to do. My mom and dad, along with my grandparents showed up Friday afternoon here in Lexington. We spent some time in the attic formulating a game plan for the floor. After dinner we went to Home Depot to get supplies, then got to work early on Saturday. Actually everyone but me got to work early on Saturday. I had to run 8 miles Saturday morning as part of my half marathon training, so I missed out on the fun in the beginning.

We had quite a system going though. My grandpa was manning the saws out in the garage, cutting all the wood to the correct size, while my dad and Derek were sweating their brains out in the attic moving insulation and hammering down boards. Everything was finished by 4 pm on Saturday and we already had boxes and things up in our attic. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures. I'm not sure why because it looks awesome now - I just didn't think about it at the time. But I love that we have plenty of storage and don't have to take up closet space to store things that we only use once a year or less.

As far as the organization of my closet goes - well, I have a new plan. I moved all of my clothes out to the guest bedroom closet. I have decided that that is where they are going to stay until I wear them. Once I wear them, I will hang them up in my closet (after they have been washed of course!). Any summer clothes that are left in that closet in 6 months will be given away. Any winter clothes that are left in there by this time next year I will get rid of too! I'm excited about all the space I have in my closest right now! Check it out.

I also got a little scrapbooking done this weekend. When I was at my parents house over Christmas I went through all of their pictures and took out all of the pictures that were mine, that I had taken from family vacations, college and even some more recent pictures. There are 2 scrapbooks that I want to do. The first is a smaller one of family vacations that I went on in college. My mother-in-law got me a cute little scrapbooking kit for Christmas, which is the perfect size for the family vacation scrapbook. I got 8 pages of the 20 that are in the scrapbook finished this weekend! Hopefully I can finish up the rest of it, and then move on to the big scrapbook of me and Derek that I made finishing one of my new years resolutions. I have soooo many pictures and really want to get them all organized and I feel like I got off to a good start this weekend. Here's a little sample page:

All in all, a very productive weekend! I think I am ready to tackle our downstairs coat closet! Remember these pictures from this post?

Well, I have been brainstorming some ideas as to how to organize this closet and I think I know what I want to do. And I think it involves using my Target gift cards. Hopefully I can get my act togethr and get going on this mess and have some fun before and after photos!

A Little House Project

Happy Thursday! Happy beginning of March Madness! I figured that today was one of the very few days where I could get away with wearing a t-shirt and a UK hoodie to work, so I did. Today is also my last day of work for the week. I usually have every other Friday off, but because of work, meetings and travel, I haven't had a Friday off (at least one in Lexington) in quite a while. So I'm loving the short work week.

My parents and grandparents are coming down to visit us this weekend and I'm real excited to see them all. In addition to just coming for a visit, they are also coming to help us with a little project in our house that we have wanted to do since we've moved in.

Derek and I like to take on little projects around the house. We get burnt out kinda easily though (and also have crazy schedules). So typically we will take on a project, finish it, and then take a break til we get motivated again. I think the last project we did was to redo our downstairs bathroom - nothing major, just take out a mirror and light fixture, paint, put in a new mirror and light fixture and redecorate. The redecorating part is still not done. Anyways, that took place about this time last year, and we are now feeling motivated to do something else. Unfortunately for you all, this something else is not all that fun. It is, however, something that we need to do. And that is build a floor in our attic.

Our attic runs the length of the second floor in our house, so we definitely won't floor the whole thing. Just enough so that we can store stuff up there. Like I said, not very exciting, but our closets throughout the house will thank us. Since we don't have a basement, this is really our only storage besides the garage, and we like to park our cars in there - especially during the winter.

So my dad and grandpa are going to bring down probably way more tools than we actually need (but I don't mind - I would rather have more than we need than not have the 1 thing we need) and we are going to build a floor.

The access to the attic is in our closet. And since there is insulation up in the attic that will likely get tracked down as we are going in and out of it, that means I need to get all of my clothes out of the closet. But I am thinking this will be a good opportunity for me to go through my stuff, pack up my winter clothes and get rid of stuff I don't wear, and generally organize the closet. Our closet is actually in decent shape because we are pretty good about going through stuff and getting rid of what we don't use on a regular basis, and we only use the closet for clothes, not tons of other stuff, but I still think it will be good to take it all out and get it nice and organized. I would love it if I could make my closet look like this:

But let's be honest, I have way too many clothes, shoes, etc. for that. But I am going to try to make it as clean and neat as possible. So that is what I will be doing with my day off tomorrow, and then family fun for the rest of the weekend - plus hopefully watching a couple of UK victories!

Reverb

I found this blog through the Pioneer Woman's blog. The author is pastor Ryan, who is a pastor in Cincinnati. Sometimes he does guest posts on the PW blog (apparently he is a good cook). She linked to his blog last week I think, as he was in Kenya with Compassion International. He is back now. I highly recommend you click on his blog and read through all the posts of his experience in Kenya. Unbelievable. I want to sponsor a child. Or 12. You will too. That's all.

Still Nothing...

Well, I have a little time on my hands, and I want to update the blog, but I am still lacking inspiration. I'm excited because it's Saturday, and I get to hang out with Derek, who I haven't seen all week. He has been at work every night this week getting the I am Third soccer league set up. I guess with this job there will just be some busy weeks where I don't see him much. Luckily for me, I don't have a hard time filling up my schedule with other things to do while he is gone. But I am glad that today we will spend the whole day together. I'm not sure what we will do. I think I will let him pick because he will likely have to go back to work tomorrow, so this is probably going to be his only day off.

But first, I need to go run 6 miles. I feel nervous. That is a lot of running.

In other news, I think we are getting closer to figuring out where and when we will go on vacation this year. The last time just the 2 of us went anywhere was for our 1 year anniversary, we took a long weekend trip to Gatlinburg. The last time it has been for an entire week was our honeymoon. (Don't feel too bad for us, we have been on lots of trips to visit friends and vacations with family, it's just that it's not usually just the 2 of us, which I feel like you need one of those every once in a while.) So I thought I would share some photos of our Gatlinburg trip with you all, since my posts often times lack photos.

And of course you have to eat the top of your wedding cake. It was delicious!

I think it would be fun to go to Gatlinburg with a group of friends and rent out a big cabin and chill for the weekend. Who's in?

Eeek!

So I've kind of fallen off the wagon as far as blogging is concerned. I guess things have just bee pretty busy around here.  I got back from Colorado and was sick for a while, so that didn't help things, then as soon as I was better (actually before I was better but I couldn't afford to put it off any longer) training for the half marathon started. Training has been going well, but its amazing how difficult it has been for me to fit running 4 times a week into my life. I work til 5:30 every day and last week the weather was no good so I had to go to the gym to get my running in. By the time I got off work, made it to the gym, ran, got home, got showered and got dinner, there wasn't much time left. Add to it young life and celebrating Derek's birthday, my in-laws coming into town, etc., it has just been really busy.

I've wondered if this is really worth it if it is really so hard to fit all this running into my schedule, but the race is only 8 weeks away, so I feel like I should be able to stick with it, even if it does mean not having as much time for other things.

This has been a really good lesson in discipline and prioritizing, because there are things that I have to say no to, times when I have to make myself do something I don't want to, and just the practice of planning out my week in advance so that I make sure that I can run on the days that I need to. This has been interesting. Becuse 13.1 miles seems like such a far distance to run, I know that if I have any chance of actually doing it I need to stick to the training schedule I am on and make sure that I get all my runs in. I am willing to sacrifice and plan ahead because when I think about what would happen on the day of the race if I wasn't diligent in my training, it scares me.

I wish I had this kind of motiviation in my relationship with Christ. I am not very good at waking up in the morning, so I am usally more of an evening or during the day quiet time kind of girl. But it frustrates me how easily I can let other things take the place of my time with Christ. I don't plan ahead to make sure that I will have time to spend with Christ, and I don't say no to other things so that I can make sure that I get my time with Him in. It is so frustrating. With the race, I see the very real consequences of what will happen if I don't get my runs in. But in my relationship with Christ, if I don't get that time in, I think it's no big deal, I will do it another day. And that is so NOT true - at all! My time with Christ every day is way more important than whether or not I go for a run or if I even run this race. But my brain for some reason can't comprehend the negative impacts that will result in my not spending time with Christ every day. I wish this were not the case. It makes me so disappointed with myself.

I feel like I should note that it's not that I don't ever spend time with Christ - because I do. I just let it slip way more than I should and as I see how disciplined I am being in order to run a race, it just really sticks out to me how not disciplined I am in my relationship with Christ. So frustrating. You can feel free to pray for me, because I feel like I could say that I will try to do better, but on my own power it won't happen. I need the power of the Holy Spirit to get it into my brain that my time with Christ is the most important thing I could do any day.

I should also note that I can't totally blame my lack of blogging on running. I don't run that much. It has mostly been a lack of inspiration. Hopefully that will change.