Christmas 2012

I figured I should probably do a quick Christmas recap, since we're already well into January.

Derek and I had a wonderful Christmas season. Here are some highlights:

• Making paper snowflakes and decorating the house for Christmas

• A whole weekend devoted to baking Christmas cookies and treats
• Work Christmas parties
• A Christmas party with our church home group, followed by a nerf gun war

• A Christmas party with our LCA kids who are now college kids

• Time spent catching up with old YL girls and getting to hear about all the ways God is moving in their lives
• Exchanging gifts with Derek at home before we left to visit family

• Spending the weekend before Christmas with my family in Columbus
• Frisbee golf in the freezing rain
• Snow throughout the holidays
• Children's Christmas Eve service that lasted 35 minutes
• Christmas Eve and Christmas day meals with my family
• Opening gifts in Columbus - I got a Dyson vacuum cleaner, which may not sound exciting, but when you have 3 long-haired pets, it was for sure a highlight!
• Spending time with Derek's family 
• Watching our nephews open their gifts
• A non-highlight was that we couldn't get the entire family together due to illness :(
• Opening our gifts - I got a new 50 mm/f.18 lens for my camera and lots of other fun gifts!
• Christmas dinner with Derek's family
• Running last minute errands with Derek to prepare him for his trip to London
• Going back up to Columbus to spend the weekend with my family while Derek was in London
• Stopping at Derek's parents on the way up to see Kevin, Kayla and Connor and watch them open their gifts from us, since we didn't get to see them when we celebrated Christmas with the rest of Derek's family
• Relaxing in Columbus with not much on the agenda for 4 days!
• Being reunited with Derek after he was in Europe for a week and seeing all 1200 pictures! One of our goals is to go through and whittle them down to a manageable amount and have a little party with the friends who went with him and their families. I'm also hoping to share some on the blog in the near future :)

So there is a fairly exhaustive list of all that our Christmas season entailed. After a year filled with many ups and downs, lots of joy, but lots of heartache and disappointment as well, I think that this Christmas season I understood better than ever before our need for a Savior, and eagerly anticipated and enjoyed every opportunity to celebrate the fact that God did not leave us in this broken world, but sent His very Son to save us. To take all of the brokenness and heartache and restore us with hope and a promise that one day, all things will be made new. I hope to carry that truth with me into the new year, and rely on it, whatever 2013 may bring.

Happy New Year!

We're four days into 2014. My Christmas decorations are still up, I haven't blogged about our Christmas or what we've been up to the past few weeks. I haven't looked back at my 2012 goals and resolutions to see how I've done, nor have I made any goals for 2013. But all of those things will come. I just need a little time.

Until then, read this post. It is helping me evaluate last year and look ahead to the coming year.

I'll be back with more substance, hopefully soon. It's just that I've been out of town a lot over the past 2 weeks and need to get my life in order.

On Tragedy and Christmas

It seems the world is filled with tragedy recently. From Newtown, CT, to tragedies much closer to home, to events in our own lives that maybe don't seem tragic to most but are tragic to us, the world is a crazy, sad and confusing place sometimes.

As I was reading an article about Newtown, a man there said that he had bought a Christmas tree before the shooting, but hasn't put it up because it doesn't feel like Christmas. As I read that, I felt so sad, because events like Newtown, and the tragedies that we all experience in life, are exactly why we need Christmas. The sin that caused this is the reason God sent us a Savior. It is the tragedies such as Newtown and others that we are experiencing right now that make us realize how much this world needs Jesus and should cause us to celebrate Christmas all the more.

Jesus came in a time of hopelessness in Jewish history. The people had not heard from God in 400 years and were under Roman rule. They likely thought that God had either forgotten about them or didn't have the power to do anything about their situation. And it was in that moment of hopelessness, that the chasm between Heaven and Earth was bridged, and a Savior was born to make a way for God's people to return to Him.

And so, in this time of tragedy, this is exactly why we can celebrate Christmas. Because God did not leave us or forsake us, but came into this world to save us. So that these tragedies are not the end. So that we can still have hope even in the midst of the worst that life has to offer. God made a way. We are not forsaken.

One of my favorite lines from I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day:

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.

In the wake of the recent tragic events, let us celebrate the birth of our Savior with more joy and love than ever before, as it has been made explicitly clear the evil that He came to save us from.

A Fun Little Trip to DC

The week after Thanksgiving I got to go to Washington DC for work. I've had the privelage of serving on the core committee of our company's Proffesional Growth Network (PGN). The general idea behind the group is to engage people who are in the first 10 years of their career in the company, and help them to grow in their careers. There are several committees that make up the PGN and I amthe co-chair for corporate citizenship. We encourage people to get involved in the community through competitions and other fun events. I won't go into the details, I just say all this to say that the reason I was in DC was for the PGN's yearly strategic planning meeting.

I don't talk very much about work on my blog, mostly because it probably wouldn't make for very interesting reading material, and also because I don't want this blog to be mistaken as any sort of represantation of my company or any of the projects I work on. But I did want to put up a quick post about the PGN and my trip to DC because getting to be a part of this group has been such a great experience for me. I'm a big proponent of community service and volunteering and I love that our compnay supports that, and that I get to be in a position where I encourage people throughout the country to go out and get involved in their communities and do things that will make the world a better place. I love getting to work with people in our company across the country and to have the opportunity to meet and work with senior management to figure out how to make our company a better place for young professionals and how we can encourage our young professionals to make our company better. It as really been a unique experience that I am so grateful for, and I am really looking forward to getting to serve on this committee another year.

Our trip to DC was jam packed and I unfortunately scheduled my flights so that I arrived right when the meeting started and left as soon as it was over. I basically just saw our hotel, the office and the restaurants we went to, and the White House, thanks to my good friend Keith's brother who works there. After dinner one evening I hightailed it over to the White House (after initially heading the wrong direction and getting lost) to meet Scott for a tour of the West Wing. It was so cool to get to see where all the business of the White House takes place, the Oval office and the room where the cabinet meets. Unfortuantely pictures are only allowed outside and in the press room, so here is all I have.

This is Scott, who gave me the tour.

Here I am, holding my own press conference.

I also had so much fun getting to know the other people on the committee. We had people from various cities in California, Seattle, Chicago, Indianopolis, Baltimore, New York and New Jersey. It's so interesting and fun to talk with people who are in a similar career and time in their career as I am, who live in other parts of the country. Also, I don't really have any friends who work in a corporate setting like I do, most people either stay at home with their kids or are teachers or nurses or counselors, so it's really cool meeting people who I have that in common with and talking about life with them. Especially because we have work in common, but so many other parts of our lives are different. I wish we had more time together and am already looking forward to the next time we're all in the same place.

So...I'm not really sure what the point of this post was, other than I just felt like I needed to write about my trip. And share my awesome White House pics. And I guess give a little glimpse into my work life that so rarely gets discussed here on the blog!

Thanksgiving 2012

I'm a little late, but I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

We went to nky to be with Derek's family and I made my first Thanksgiving dinner! Luckily I had been to Columbus a couple weeks prior and my mom and I made a practice turkey, and my mother and sister in laws were super helpful the day of, but dinner was a success and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. I may or may not have had dreams about things going horribly wrong and dinner being ruined, or the turkey still breathing while I was cooking it.

The only potentially bad thing was that the turkey innards were not contained to a bag but instead were just sitting there inside the bird and needed to be taken out. I got hot and kind of nauseous when I saw them, but Linda came the rescue and took them out for me. I think I would have been able to do it, I just might have needed to go outside and get some air and work myself up to it. Maybe next year :)

Anyways, here is the finished product, my first turkey.

We also celebrated out nephew Connor's birthday over the weekend. We got him a lumberjack shirt that matched Derek's and a toy chainsaw so he could be a little mini lumberjack.

Oliver wanted to get in on the toy chainsaw action. He even was a fan of the safety goggles!

All the grandkids with grandma and pap pap. 

We are blessed with wonderful family and are so thankful for them. We're thankful that we were able to be with half of our family for Thanksgiving and look forward to seeing the other half at Christmas. We're also thankful that Linda is halfway through her chemo treatments and is doing well. (Doesn't she look great in the photo above?) She was even able to help pull Thanksgiving dinner together on Thursday! We have so much to be thankful for, most especially our Savior whose birth we anticipate as we wait to celebrate the moment in eternity when God entered the world in the form of an infant to save us when we were helpless to save ourselves.

Halloween

A little late, but I didn't want to miss out on posting pictures of our Halloween.

 We carved pumpkins with some friends on Tuesday night. Moose loved eating the pumpkin guts. Who knew? Is there anything he won't eat?

Here is a picture of my pumpkin and Charissa's. Charissa is an art teacher. It is obvious in the quality of our pumpkin carving. Derek carved a pumpkin with a mustache.  He was so proud of it. And so psyched when trick or treaters and/or their parents commented on the mustached pumpkin.

We dressed Moose up as a squirrel. My real dream is to get a little dog and name it Squirrel, so we can have Moose and Squirrel. But dressing Moose up as a squirrel will have to do for now. He tolerated it fairly well.

As always, we had a great time passing out candy to all the cute little trick or treaters. And they all loved that Moose was in costume. Some of them even tried to come into our house! No fear, those little crazies looking for candy!

Life

It's been a bit quiet around here. I'm not quite sure why. After the very busy weekend of celebrations things at work were real busy, but I made my nearly impossible Friday deadline, and now work is manageable. It's good to not feel rushed.

We finished up our fall soccer season. We had such a great time coaching our little girls. Practices and games were always a highlight of the week, even when little ones had a hard time paying attention or didn't quite pick up on what we were trying to teach them. I think they made great progress this season, and we have some really sweet girls on our team who brought lots of smiles and laughs to our lives each week.

We also got to spend a few days watching the 2 youngest boys of an LCA family. They really aren't that young, 10th grade and 6th grade, but young enough that they need someone to take them places and feed them. Old enough however to put themselves to bed, wake themselves up, get their homework and make plans with friends. We didn't need to entertain them, just make sure they ate and slept. But, let me tell you, we were only with them for about 4 days and keeping track of the schedules was no joke. Since one is high school and the other elementary school, they had to be at school at different times, got home from school at different times, had different football practice times, and then in the brief time we were there a senior football dinner, early morning football workouts, football pictures, a game, practices and the making of a Spanish appetizer for class were also thrown into the mix. Neither Derek nor I remember being that busy growing up. We think kids now are much busier than they used to be.

We had a few pretty low key days last week, and then this past weekend capped off wedding season 2012 for us. Our good friends Alex and Laura tied the knot on Saturday. Derek and his brother Kevin were both in the wedding party, which meant that we had the treat of Kevin and Kayla staying with us, as well as getting to go to the rehearsal dinner Friday night.

A few people came over after the rehearsal on Friday and we didn't make it to bed until 3 am! I can't remember the last time I was up that late. Luckily Kayla and I had no where to be until Saturday evening, so we went to Windy Corner Market for some breakfast and then laid on the couch and watched Friends while we dozed in and out of sleep. I can't remember the last time I did nothing all day, but it was pretty glorious. We met some friends for a little pre-wedding snack at Drakes and then headed to the church for the ceremony. The reception was at the Lexington Country Club and was absolutely gorgeous. They had delicious food, cake and other deserts, and the reception even included some square dancing - a Young Life favorite! Angie and Micah had a little after party, and it was another late evening. It was great to spend time with so many friends this weekend.

Sunday consisted of church and small group, as well as christening our fire place for the winter. I love cozy fires! Yay for being lazy all weekend long!

I think Derek may have some pictures of these things on his phone. I'll try to find those, but for now, just words. Sorry, I'm a bad blogger!