I Love Love

Lots of fun things have been going on in the past few weeks, but since I apparently only blog once a week (or less) it seems the blog is turning into a bulleted list of the happenings since the last time I blogged. This post will be no different.  So here's what's been going on:

Valentine's Day!!! I love this day. I love to make people feel loved. I made little heart Valentine's and brought them, along with chocolate to my work book club. Over half the women in the book club are single, and really appreciated the Valentine's love, which made me really happy.

We also decided that Fondue Valentine's Day will be a tradition, and made our cheese fondue and steak that I shared about last year. This year we invited some friends over who have a chocolate fountain, which is basically fondue, so we added that to the menu. Also, our friend Andy was staying with us for the week, so the 5 of us enjoyed all the fondue goodness and there was still lots left over.

Also, I got the best Valentine's gift I could have hoped for.

After watching Pitch Perfect on our girls weekend, I decided it is most likely my new favorite movie, and I was really hoping that Derek would get it for me for Valentine's Day. But I didn't want to come right out and ask for it. Not because I am above that, but because sometimes Derek and I share a brain and I wanted to see if he could read my mind. I wouldn't have been at all upset if I hadn't gotten it, this was more of just a fun little experiment on my part. And Derek came through like a champ!

And I updated our collage wall for V-day.

Lent has begun. We went to Ash Wednesday service again this year, something that is also turning into a tradition. You can read a little more about last year's service here, but again it was such a powerful reminder of our identity in Christ and what this season is about. This year I didn't decide to give anything up, but instead commit to the discipline of prayer every day. So far it has been really great being intentional about spending specific time in prayer every day. (Although I have already totally failed on a couple of days!)

Soccer. Some friends at church have started playing soccer in the gym on Sunday nights and Derek and I have joined the past 2 weeks. I haven't really played soccer since high school, and for a couple days after our first night, I could barely move. And I wasn't very good. But after our second time playing I think my skills are already starting to improve and I'm much less sore this time around, which is a win! Unfortunately my legs are accumulating bruises, which isn't very pretty, but it makes me feel tough!

Young Life. Last Friday, new young life leaders were placed at the various high schools and middle schools in Lexington. LCA got 3 new leaders, which we were super excited to meet, pray for and encourage. Even though we no longer lead young life, we still love LCA and deeply care for the students at the school. We got to have the new leaders over to our house Friday night and share with them fun stories and some of the lessons learned from leading young life at LCA, and pray for them. I'm excited to see the way God uses this next group of leaders to change lives!

House. I've also been slowly but surely re-decorating our 2 guest rooms. One has been re-painted, and I mostly just need to add finishing touches like window treatments, a new duvet, wall hangings, etc. The other has pretty much turned into a holding space for random things. I'm hoping over the next few weeks to be able to keep making progress, and hopefully share some photos. {I'm including this so that it will hopefully be motivation for me to finish what I've started!}

Juicing. So Derek has decided that we need a juicer, so that we can make our own juice. I bought the juicer, and have assembled it, but have yet to actually make juice. Maybe tonight? I'll let you know how it goes. This is the latest in our attempts to be healthier. Who knows, maybe a juice cleanse is in the future. We'll see!

So I think that mostly hits the highlights of the past couple of weeks. We have fun plans for the upcoming weekend, so I'll be back with a fun post or 2 next week!