One final bang

We celebrated Brittany's last few days as a single lady shopping at Easton Town Center in Columbus a couple weekends ago. We had a great time shopping, eating, shopping, eating...you get the idea :) Easton is an outdoor shopping area that was one of the biggest I had ever seen. They had the biggest Forever 21 I had ever been to and stores like Pandora, Lego, and Puma that I don't ever see at the malls back home. We ate lunch at California Pizza Kitchen and had dinner at Bon Vie. We ate dinner around 8:30 and when I eat late I never feel very good so I opted for dessert. The waitress described to me the dessert and in my head I thought it was going to be really big {like most restaurant desserts are} but this one came out in a little espresso glass and was itty bitty. I was the talk of the dinner table after that, everyone kept asking me if I was full :) Enjoy some pictures from the trip.

Some of us before we left

Pretty picture for taking it at a rest area :)

We decided to do some photos to make the 2 hour drive go by faster

They had this at the mall

We had to wait a loooong time at Victoria's Secret for Brit :)

This is what happens when your camera does not like you

Me and the Bride-to-be

From Ms. to Mrs.

My dear friend Brittany is getting married TOMORROW! I am ready to wear a pretty dress, watch the beautiful bride walk down the aisle, catch up with friends, and dance the night away with Kyle. I am in for a beautiful fall wedding :)

I will share some of her DIY ideas soon since I may/may not have told her she HAD to do all these cute ideas we saw since she was having an outdoor fall wedding :)

I'm Pinned

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I have patiently waited for my inbox to say "Welcome to Pinterest". Now I can pin to my hearts desire!

Pinterest=BEST.IDEA.EVER

My nose in a book

Friday after work I picked up The Help at the library and have been sucked in ever since. I got the book on CD which helps make my drive go by faster since the radio can get old after awhile. I have been listening to the book non-stop since I got it. I was intrigued since I heard the movie was great and wanted to read the book before I saw the movie. I loved the book so much that any spare moment I had I was listening to it. I listened to it while I cleaned the house, on the computer waiting for Kyle's parents to get home, made unnecessary trips so I could listen to it in the car. Kyle came home and I was staring at the blank TV listening to the book. He gave me strange look and just shook his head. He does not understand how a book can be "that good" that I would want to listen to it all the time. I am excited to see the movie and see how they compare. Besides The Bible or a Beth Moore book, this has been a really great read for me lately :)

Here are some  funny quotes from the book {really the whole book is filled with great stuff}. The characters all have a unique personality and without seeing the movie I can picture how they are going to be.

"Prayer is like electricity, it just keeps on going" Aibileen

"I waited on white ladies who walk out the bedroom with nothing on but their personality" Aibileen

"That old dusty Bible she keep out for show" Aibileen

"Benny, go tell daddy he better get his fool self out of that bed" Minny

"I can see Mrs. Celia in the backyard in a pair of hoochie pink satin pants and black plastic gloves. She's got dirt all over her knees. I have asked her a hundred times to quit digging dirt in her dress up clothes. But that crazy lady never listen" Minny

Our YL Journey

My journey began at Sayre where I had an awesome time leading with Jen, Clinton, and Kevin. Thinking back on my time there was really amazing. I was really blessed to have a team that would make time to come see me at EKU {all the other leaders were from UK and EKU was about half an hour from UK}, let me stay at their apartments if I needed somewhere to hangout after visiting Sayre, and had great fellowship with them. From leading at Sayre I knew what a YL team was suppose to look like and the community of believers in Lexington is something I will treasure. I was able to help out with Cheerleading where I got to meet some great girls and had an "in" into the school. It was great going to a basketball game {since they did not have football} and be able to hang out with the cheerleaders. Since Sayre was in downtown Lexington they did not have room for an athletic center so they had to put it right off the highway. This worked out great for me because it was only a 15 min drive from EKU. My sophomore year the Lord put it on my heart that it was time to come home. After many tears of thinking about leaving EKU and coming back home for college I decided that was what God was telling me to do. I think this was the first time that after I made a decision God gave me peace about it. It was not easy telling my parents I was coming back, leaving my great bible study at  EKU, or leaving Sayre.

"The humble will see their God at work and be glad. Let all who seek God's help live in joy"

Psalm 69:32

Once I came back home I got placed at Wyoming HS and got to lead with my YL leader Theresa. I was just starting to come around to YL and Theresa was leaving Taylor to get married so we never really hung out when I was in high school. At Wyoming I was blessed to see kids have a heart for their friends and want to share God with them. I also was able to coach middle school cheerleading for one year and help with the high school team. I meet some very special and rambunctious cheerleaders, but my time with them is something I will never forget. I  also got close to quite a few girls that came around often and I loved meeting with them and discipleship. My team was amazing, I had such a great time at our team meetings. At one time there were 7 people on our team {two married couples}, Wyoming was extremely blessed to have leaders sharing Christ, their lives, and meeting kids where they were at. Wyoming was in the same league as where I went to high school so it felt very homey.

Sayre and Wyoming were both smaller schools but after Kyle and I got married we started leading at Oak Hills, where Kyle had been leading since he got placed. I was extremely excited to do ministry together and where we lived. I was also nervous to be leading at such a big school {2,716 students go there} and I was also going to be the only girl leader a little bit after I started. There were some girls already coming around which was great since I could no longer go to the school when it let out {since I have a big girl job} and cheerleading did not work out {the coach never responded to my emails}. It seems at Oak Hills when students become Juniors and Seniors if they don't make YL their ministry they stop coming, which is what happened to most of the girls that I meet at the end of the summer. As a team, it became very discouraging when there was only one or no kids that would come. We would go to games, musicals, helped at After Prom and would see kids we knew but the relationships would stop at the surface. It's hard to get to know kids when you can never meet with them. We wanted to get parents involved but the students we knew parent's were also busy and could not usually make it to our parent meeting {we did have two parents that came with great ideas}. I had mentioned here how after much prayer we are now leading at Taylor High School.

Kyle's YL journey {from my perspective} had always been at Oak Hills. He had faithfully been there for four years and honestly I don't know how he did it. In those four years they have had few {if really any} kids make the ministry their own. When Kyle first got placed he started running with the Track team where he got to meet a guy that we still see every once in awhile {now that he has graduated}. Kyle did go to camp one year with three guys which was a highlight of his time at Oak Hills. There were a few guys that came around that "got it" but they did not know/want to share it with their friends. The past two years have been the most difficult for Kyle. It has been discouraging to not "see" {since we know he is} God working/not knowing what God wants for YL at Oak Hills. It is always hard when you make friendships with kids and then they become too cool to hang out with you anymore and the choices they make are so upsetting {which could be said about one guy that Kyle got close to}. I sometimes feel like Kyle has not really ever had the "YL

Kyle's faithfulness at Oak Hills shows alot about his character and us going to Taylor has been harder for him. Our flesh wants to make us feel guilty for leaving the school but we know that we are not suppose to be there anymore.  Romans 15:4 is our hope for Oak Hills, we want the strong hold there to be broken so that God's love can be shown and want to keep encouraging Derek and Matt.

"Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. They give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God's promises"

I went to my first campaigners at Taylor Monday night {Kyle had to work so he has not been yet} and it felt so good. I have a YL journal and when I got to campaigners I realized I had not used it since I was at Wyoming. I am so excited that we will be sharing the truth with high school kids again. It was also weird being the "new leader" since this obviously is not the first school I have led YL at. I am really excited for this new chapter in ministry for us.

Too good to be true?

Back in July I went to Bridal Rama with my friend Brittany to help her get ideas for her wedding {which is one month away!}. While I was there I registered for a free trip. Out of the blue, I received a phone call for Smart Travel telling me they were doing a promotion and that I was picked to go on a three day Royal Caribbean cruise to the Bahamas with a guest with air fare included. The only thing we would have to pay was port fees and taxes {which was about $200 usually}. I was skeptical at first since I did not really believe this could be free and the only catch was that we would have to go for a one hour meeting to hear about there company. I had saw a special on 20/20 where these people would register for all types of sweepstakes {like this was all they did in there spare time} and get all kinds of great gifts/trips. So in my mind I thought I was about to get this great trip to the Bahamas that we could use for our anniversary next year {to quote Kyle "so young, so naive"}. When Kyle got home he was completely skeptical and I convinced him to call to see if he believed it. After talking to the sales people he was still not sure but agreed to go to the meeting {which was suppose to be tonight} because I really wanted to go. He also called his mom to find out her opinion on the whole thing and she gave us some great tips about how we should know if it is a scam. When I got to work today I wanted to find out more about the company but all I found was bad info like this and this. So I decided that this really was a scam and I did not want to waste our night being lured into buying trips that we don't want.

Lesson learned: if it is too good to be true it usually is :) Kyle lovingly said "I told you so". Maybe one day we will make it to the Bahamas :)

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A New School

This will be Kyle and I's fifth school year doing ministry for an organization that means so much to us, Young Life.  Our backgrounds in where we started leading are different and we have both loved kids from different schools over the years. My journey began at Sayre then Wyoming then Oaks Hills but Kyle has only been at Oak Hills {I'll share more details about our YL journey in another post}. For the past few months Kyle and I had been praying about Oak Hills & leading.  Oak Hills has been a hard school to lead at for many reasons and for the past year we have not really felt like we have been "leading". We have been praying at the school, going to football games, plays, swim meets, trying to build relationships with kids but they have not developed into anything or the kids have stopped responding. There was one girl {really the one kid coming around for the past year} that came around consistently but does not have a vision for her friends and did not want to make YL her ministry to reach out to others. Since Kyle has been leading at Oak Hills longer than I have he wanted to meet with YL staff this summer to ask there advice/get encouragement on what we should do because Oak Hills has been in this same situation for the past couple of years. After meeting with staff and discussing Oak Hills an option came up of us leading at Taylor {where we both graduated from}. We prayed for a month and after making the hard decision of leaving Oak Hills we knew Taylor was where we were suppose to be leading. We have felt like we are giving up on Oak Hills since there are only two leaders there now {Derek and Matt} and we both love the school but staff shared this verse Matthew 10:14 at our meeting and it has been our on our hearts every time we think about leading at Taylor. We feel like maybe as much we want to be at Oak Hills and see it succeed that God has other plans and that means leading at Taylor.

We are excited to lead at our alma mater Taylor and to lead with three great leaders {one of which was our YL leader}. We feel like we are still a part of the community{Kyle is a firefighter for the township, he coached youth BB, we live 15 mins away, our parents still live in the district, Kyle's sister is the cc coach and his brother graduated a couple of years ago so we know his friends, Kyle sometimes works at Skyline which is where everyone goes, I still talk to my cheerleading coaches and could probably help} even though we have been out of high school for five years. We are continuing to pray about what the future is for Oak Hills and for our new journey at Taylor. We have our first team meeting tonight and first campaigners Monday :)

Taylor High School