Highlight of my week (or maybe even my month)

So tonight we had a mall scavenger hunt for young life. For those of you not familiar with the mall scavenger hunt, basically us leaders disguise ourselves and hide in the mall and the students have to find us. The first group to find every leader wins. So here is the cast of characters normally (along with the beautiful Kari Corsi who we all miss lots!)


And here we all are disguised:


I threw on a hat and glasses and just tried to blend in, Derek tried to dress skater-ish, he pretty much is always going to be the easy one to find, Keith put on a suit and sat on a bench reading a paper and laughing as kids walked right past him, and the highlight of my week: Megan dressed as a man!! Here's a close up for you:


I laughed for 5 minutes straight when I first saw her. She put a mustache and side burns on with mascara. People were staring, no one knew if she was a guy or a girl. And the best part: when she was in the bathroom, a girl walked in and asked if she was in the wrong bathroom! When she saw Megan, she thought she was in the men's room - hahahahahaha! Highlight of my week, or maybe even my month (we'll see how the rest of the month goes).

Unfortunate Aspects of Work Part 2.

I guess I jumped the gun on my last post, because I didn't realize that today another unfortunate thing would happen. Today at work, I had to go to webinar on methods of determining when roadway signs need to be replaced based on their retro-reflectivity. I know, you all are wishing you had my job right now.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of adding the word retro-reflectivity to your vocabulary, let me explain. You know how at night when your headlights hit a sign and it becomes brighter so you can actually see what the sign says? That's called retro-reflectivity. And the MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices - the book that regulates all roadway signs - yes I have one of those too, it lives a few shelves up from my safety vest along with some other exciting reads {see below}) has just established minimum standards for retro-reflectivity of signs. So today, I got to sit through an hour (it was actually 2 but my boss and I left halfway through it - thank goodness for lots of work to be done back at the office) of different methods to determine if your signs need to be replaced.

Seriously. The only redeeming thing about this hour was that I got free Jimmy Johns. Now I promise no more posts about work for a good long while, so you all will continue to read my blog.

Unfortunate

As most of you know, my 9-5 (or 7:30-5:30 in my case) is spent in the world of traffic engineering. As someone who likes to have friends and be social, I try my best not to talk about my job outside of work. This past week however, my job brought my nerd status to an all time high. About a month ago my computer at work died. I came in one morning and it wouldn't start. No blinking lights. nothing. totally dead. The part that was needed to fix it was apparently on back order, so they decided to buy me a new computer. It came in at the end of last week. I set it up Monday. Turns out, it came with two monitors. So now my desk looks like this:

Confession: I am beginning to like having two monitors.

I've also had to wear one of these 3 times in the past week:

Confession: I didn't have to borrow one, I have my own. It lives in my office with my dual monitors.

Please still be my friend.

Held

A little over a month ago tragedy hit my office at work. One of my coworkers and his wife lost their baby days before she was expected to deliver him. I remember when I found out, it was right as I was getting ready to go home. I got home and balled my eyes out as I told Derek what had happened. They were so excited. They had been trying for several years to have children and this was to be their first. It didn't seem fair that this was happening to them. He was literally dancing around the office earlier that day, so excited for the arrival of his baby boy. There aren't words to describe this sort of devastation.

One of the most frustrating things for me was not knowing what to do. As an office we bought them gift cards, sent flowers and wrote notes of encouragement in a book of prayers for them, but I wanted to be able to do something to really show them how much God loves them, and was frustrated because I didn't know how to do that. I am the girl whose most significant loss involves my cat Sam running away while my family was on vacation when I was little. I'm being serious. I have grieved with many friends who have lost loved ones, but I myself have never experienced that loss personally. I don't know how you approach someone who has just lost a baby and tell them that there is a God who loves them more than anything and will be with them and hold them through this horrendous time, even though that same God has the power that could have prevented it from happening in the first place. If someone who had never truly experienced loss came up and said that to me I would probably want to punch them in the face.

So I prayed for them, because I didn't know what else to do. And then the other day I stumbled across this: www.audreycaroline.blogspot.com. The blog of a mother who lost a baby girl 2 hours after she was born. And she loves Jesus. The blog begins soon after they found out about midway through the pregnancy that their baby wasn't going to survive. This blog chronicles how they deal with that and their faith in the Lord through it all. How they know that the Lord is good and has the power to prevent these kinds of things from happening, and how they choose to continue to love Him and allow Him to heal them when he allows it to happen. It's incredibly sad but incredibly encouraging at the same time. I urge you all to go there and read from the beginning.

So this is how God answered my prayers. He gave me this blog to share with my coworker and his wife. He showed me someone who could express everything to them that I wanted to, but it's someone who actually knows exactly how they feel and is able to beautifully put into words what I would stumble over. I pray that they would know how much God loves them and how much he longs for them to take their sorrow and brokeness to Him and let Him carry it for them and just hold them. If you want you can say a prayer for them too. And one more thing to leave you with is this song by Natalie Grant, Held. It's one of my favorites and I think its appropriate.

Some Highlights

This past weekend was wonderful because for the first time in a long time I was in Lexington (at least for the majority of the weekend) and I didn't have a whole heck of a lot to do. So here are some highlights:

1. Of course, another wedding. This weekend was Brent and Karin's reception (they had the gorgeous wedding in Florida), and although it was out of town, because Derek had to work all weekend we were only out of town for Saturday evening. I love seeing our northern kentucky friends - so fun!

2. I saw someone steal gas! I was waiting for the person in front of me to finish and the guy at the pump next to me finished pumping his gas, laid the nozzle on the ground and drove away without paying. The attendant said she got his license plate number and was calling the police. What I don't understand is why he chose to steal gas from the pump closest to the attendant. It was at Kroger and the attendant is in the middle and he was at the pump closest to the middle. You would think if you were going to steal gas you would at least do it at the pump furthest away where the attendant can't see your license plate.

3. I finished reading Harry Potter. I had lots of free time so I lounged around and read ALOT. The last Harry Potter book was sooooo good. I LOVE Harry Potter.

4. I met Jules Camara, kind of. Remember Jules, he played for UK a few years back? Well he and his girlfriend were at the dog park this weekend when I took Moose. Well Moose loves the dog park more than anything. He loves all of the people and dogs and will make friends with anyone who will throw a ball with him. Well Jules' girlfriend had 3 bright new tennis balls and there is nothing Moose loves more than a bright new tennis ball. She also happened to be in the shade, which Moose, being a black dog likes to hang out in the shade. So he wouldn't leave them alone. They threw the ball for him once and he was their best friend. So I figured since my dog would not leave them alone I should go over and be friendly. And they were really nice. Jules even said he thought my engagement ring was pretty! I just hope they weren't too annoyed that Moose had decided they were his new best friends :)

Just Dance

Disclaimer: Sometimes I feel wierd writing about stuff going on with young life and our high school friends becuase I feel like it may come off as me trying to make Derek and I sound like we're really good young life leaders or good people or whatever. So please know that when I share these things with you it is only out of the joy I have in my heart for what I get to see God do, and not at all for tryiing to make anyone think myself or Derek are great. We understand that without Jesus we have nothing to offer our high school friends, so if any of my posts make you think good things about either of us, please redirect those good thoughts to God.

Ok, so that was a long disclaimer, but last night I came home from Bible Study and Derek had his LCA boys Bible Study earlier in the evening. I asked him how it went and he told me a few of the things they talked about. They are reading through John and last night they were talking about what it looks like to step out in your faith. One of the guys made the analogy that its like homecoming. They had homecoming a couple weeks ago and not many people were dancing. And he said that when you aren't dancing, the people who are look foolish, but when you get up the courage to go out there and dance, the people who aren't dancing are the ones who look foolish. Basically, it may seem foolish to step out in faith and do something, but once you do, you realize the foolish people are the ones who aren't stepping out in their faith. I thought that was a great analogy and I love hearing some of their insights because I am so impressed by their 16 year old faith. But then....

Derek proceeded to tell me about what they did after Bible study. In honor of the dancing analogy, they had a dance party! That's right, 5 juniors, 1 senior in high school and my husband had an all guy dance party for the rest of the night. Y'all, it cracked me up. I know that girls love to have dance parties with each other, but I never imagined a 7 person boys only dance party. Derek got out the i-pod player and they just danced like crazy. It makes me smile just thinking about it - how funny!

Anyways, this story brings joy to my heart, it may not be funny to anyone else, but I love it, and so I had to share. Happy Friday everyone!

Another Pumpkin Patch....

I told you - this is all my fall consists of - weddings and pumpkin patches. And this past weekend did not disappoint. On Saturday Derek and I invited some of our LCA friends over to go pumpkin picking at Boyd's Orchard, and to come back to our house to carve pumpkins and eat Chili. Here are some photos from yet another trip to the pumpkin patch:

This is everyone on the big chair:


They had a DJ there, and someone requested the electric slide. So here we are, the only ones doing the electric slide while everyone else watches.


This is Nate carrying all the pumpkins in his wagon. This is one of my favorites.


And here is Neil carrying around Myranda and Lauren in one of the Wagons.


This is Maddie holding Dereka, the pumpkin. Derek always jokes with people about naming a future daughter Dereka. He does it to get a rise out of me. So in his honor, Maddie and Joe named their pumpkin Dereka.


Back at the house we had a few different things going on. We had some folks carving pumpkins:

And some just hanging out.

I got some Martha Stewart glitter and some of the girls and I glittered pumpkins! I got the idea from my friend Rachel's blog. Here we are glittering.

And here is the finished product. So pretty. (Although it looks like I may have missed a few spots!)


All in all it was another great fall weekend! And don't worry - I have another wedding to go to next weekend, so the pumpkin patches and weddings theme will continue...