I am a huge advocate for working 4 10-hour days and having a 3 day weekend every week. Talk about incredible! You can do so much more stuff with that extra day...
And you can still run a Mon-Fri business because half the people can work Mon-Thurs and the other half Tues-Fri. I think I'm going to start a business with that concept. Everyone will want to work for me!
:)
Anyhow, about all the weekend spectacularness... Camping was awesome! The weather was beautiful and the fellowship superb! we had lots of smores (even gourmet smores made with apple and andes mints. yumm!!!!) we say Xmen III and MI:3. Both good. Yesterday I spent all day with Kate while my hubby was off galavanting in Toronto. We had fun swimming and playing taboo and baseball and frisbee and making root beer floats and lots of other cool things! It was so great to have to to relax and spend time with family and friends (my brother even hung around all day on saturday which was awesome!).
Now it's back the the grindstone, but after a long, wonderful weekend, that doesn't feel so bad.
And last night I stayed at my parents house which meant a number of things:
1. I got to sleep in my old bed
2. I got a big bed all to myself (well, besides Spaz-mutt!)
3. I got a HUGE fan that blew nice cold air on me all night
4. I got to use expensive shampoo
5. I got to get up at the same time as usual and get to work an hour early because it' s so much closer than where we live! woohoo! :)
6. I got to see my family
7. I got to WRITE MUSIC! (I'm always more inspired at my parents house, for some reason.)

That's all. Today is going to be a busy, and I image a long day --- with a preplacement and an admission.
BUT it's beautiful out so i'm gonna take a little time and get some walking in! wheeew! :)

Things have been running fairly smoothly, lately. The wedding last weekend was nice (although it was freezing and raining.) But it still was one of the most fun, simple, laid-back and beautiful weddings I have been to. I wish I could have been at both that weekend. Charles and I had a great time! The hotel was nice, the pool was heated, and I got to see "Back to the Future" for the first time. We also had a fantastic dinner at a really, really nice restaurant. All in all, very good. This weekend (starting tonight) we are going camping with my family and some families from church. Loads of fun. Then Chuck is leaving me for a couple days to go and do some fun things and since I can't go because work calls, I'm going to spend Monday with my best friend doing a little movie action, a little swimming action (if the chemicals are at a decent level) and a little eating action! Woohoo! I haven't had a girls day in ages. It's about time. And I'm gonna stay at my parent's house and save me a little gas money going to work tuesday. I'm pretty excited about all this. I'm up for a little fun action.
Charles got his license this week. That was wonderful. My car got new brakes this week and that was wonderful (looking at it from a very positive stand-point) and we got it much cheaper than we would have at the garage thanks to my very favorite father - who is also wonderful! :)
We watched "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "Sandlot" which are both good, got our Mac, which Charles thinks is wonderful and I"m sure I will too if I ever get a chance to learn how to use the blasted thing... I got sick on Tuesday but was better by Wednesday (thanks to Gatorade) which was nice and... let's see... OH! Taylor Hicks won American Idol instead of slutty Katherine McPhee, and that was very wonderful too! It's nice to know that a decent, soulful, not-your-typical-famous-person, who can actually sing can still win the hearts of American's everywhere.
Lastly, I get to eat Nathan's soup and cheese bread for lunch today. fAntastic!!! :) And I am on phones so I have a little bum time. Sweetness. It's been a great week.
I'm learning a lot about joy these days. Joy is certainly not dependent on happiness but it's hard to take hold of the Joy that comes from Christ alone when you really feel in the depths of despair. And it's amazing how quickly you can get to the place where you lose sight of your joy, even due to seemingly insignificant circumstances. We, as humans, can be so stupid.
That's all I have to say.
Have a wonderful weekend!

So I had another crazy dream last night. I"ll try to keep it short since I have quite a bit of work to do but I didn't want to forget.
So i was sitting in this park and Gary Hoyt (who lives upstairs) comes driving up his this cherry red '69 Corvette Stingray. Super sweet. And in my dream this is his prized possession. But he asks me if I want to drive it. So I get in and it' s so cruched that I can barely reach the gas pedal cuz my knees are crunched against teh steering wheel and because there is no way to reach the brakes, there is a hand lever for the brake. And the stick shift was on the dashboard as well, so that you had to shift and brake with the left hand, and it was very difficult.
So anyhow, i'm driving this car the best I can, and I decide to swing by the hospital to visit Charles. (dont' ask why he was in there... I don't know.) So i'm in there telling him about the car and stuff and the nurse and doctor walk in and tell me that I have to leave because visiting hours are over. So we start explaining that I don't have to leave because I am his wife. So the lady makes us take off our wedding bands so she can inspect them and make sure they are legit but the doctor was being strange and still wouldn't let me stay. So I got stubborn (and a bit suspicious of the whole thing) so I decided that if I couldn't stay, then he was coming with me. So when the nurse left the room I snuck up behind the doctor and throat punched him, and when he was incapacitated, I shoved him down these stairs, locked the door, then went into the bathroom, turned on the water and locked that door. When the nurse came in I said that the doctor was in the bathrooom. When she went out to grab something else, I grabbed Charles and we ran as fast as we could toward the car (by then the nurse was banging on the bathroom door, asking if the doctor was ok.) On our way out we came to a room with my mom and my friend's mom and someone was commenting that they didnt' look old enough to be in the nursing home section. We realized that they weren't supposed to be their either, so we grabbed them and we all (somehow) managed to squeeze into the little 2-seater convertible. Then we noticed people chasing us so someone in the car yelled "step on it." Well, we were in a convertible so when I stepped on it, we really flew. I looked down and we were going 180mph. I got really scared because we were on this winding bridge with no guard rails. And I was trying to slow down and get control but i couldn't figure out how to work the brake, the gears and the steering wheel at the same time. And I was so worried that Gary was going to be mad at me for wrecking his prized car. Then just as we started to lose control, I woke up.


On to other important things (for me anyway):
Today at approximately 1:30pm we begin our weekend romantic get-a-way. :D I'm so excited! We're going to a hotel and swimming in the indoor pool, and going out to a nice dinner tonight and tomorrow is the wedding (and I got a killer new shirt!) and the wedding feast of chinese (yum!!) and then home for more adventures on Sunday. I'm pretty darn excited!
AND Charles got a job at Hillside - 2 days a week, same hours as me! Praise God! It's nice to have company in the car, that's for sure! Hopefully people won't be stupid about it!

Have a great weekend, all! :)

We talked in Sunday School yesterday about fasting and the reasons for it. And one of the reasons for fasting is to reiterate that man cannot live on bread alone “but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” So I got to thinking that one can eat everyday and remain alive, but if you don’t live on the words of God, you can never truly live at all – “life to the full” will mean nothing to you because you will only experience temporal satisfaction. And I don’t believe that living on every word that comes from God means that you just skim through the Bible each day. That is like staring at a plate of food and expecting it to fill you and nourish your body. Just smelling the wonderful aromas will not keep you alive. It is the same with the word of God. In order to live as God intended, we can’t just read the word but we must meditate on it, digest it, assimilate the truths into our lives and put them into action through our attitudes, thoughts and actions. I love how Jesus so often uses the food allegory to show the pleasure that comes from living for Him. He says “taste and see that the Lord is good.” And so when it comes to fasting, we give up the pleasure and nourishment of food so that we can truly understand and appreciate the pleasure, nourishment and life that we receive from God alone. I am still learning how to “digest” God’s Word and “live” by it. But when we learn, we will never take for granted the sweet goodness that it brings us as we really and truly live!

Graduation was great. It was good to see Chuck’s friends and some of my own college buddies. It poured on us a couple times, but all-in-all it was a good day. And mother’s day was super fun! I am blessed to have such a great mom. If I could be like any woman in the world when I “grow up” I’d want to be like mama. And so Charles, Nate and I got to spend the whole day with her – we did some hiking at Mendon Ponds and some other cool place and had a picnic and Nate and I gave her some beautiful pictures that one of Nate’s friends took at Letchworth…
On one of the hikes we saw a beaver dam and some really big spiders (which were super gross) and took pictures and laughed a ton. I have a great family and I love to see how well my husband fits in with us! We have both been blessed with great parents and I know that so much of who we are is credit to them, and their faithfulness to God, the values that they had and the examples they were to us. God has blessed us so abundantly. I hope that when it’s our turn (and hopefully that won’t be anytime in the near future), we will be as loving and caring as our parents were to us.

On a sillier note – I had this one super long dream last night where pretty much everyone I knew died… and we were all trying to escape this war but as soon as people found out that we had escaped one disaster, they would try to get us with another one. It was like a sci-fi movie with laser guns and purple, sticky, quick-sand-like lava, bridges falling into the chasm below, flooding houses and hiding behind pianos (trying to get away from one of my college profs) --- all over some “eye” that was supposedly the key to the rule of the universe that some college kid found and was trying to keep for themselves.
So bizarre.

In another not-so-great moment last night, Charles was dreaming something about “Robert being obnoxious” (sorry Robert, it was just a dream - but don’t worry, I took your punishment) and kicked me really, really hard in the stomach. It actually knocked the wind out of me (and woke me up from a pretty decent sleep) and I couldn’t get back to sleep for a long time because my stomach hurt so badly.

Next Sunday the new pastoral candidate is preaching. He is a fairly young guy who just got his MDiv from Princeton. Should be good!

Well, I guess that’s all the current updates and the inner workings of my mind for today. Back to work!

So I shall be the first to share to good news, since Charles hasn't blogged yet! God is so good and so faithful to us in even our stubborness and stupidity!
Anyway, we have been saving money for a new laptop (Charles wanted an iBook) for a very long time. He sold his last laptop and other things to save money. Well, I had my own reservations. I don't like to wipe out the savings account so I said that we had to have whatever the computer cost OVER a certain amount for emergencies.
Well, last night we hashed everything out and Charles agreed to look on ebay and I agreed to consider going over the amount we origally talked about. So today Charles found a PowerBook (a step above an iBook) for only $100 dollars more what we originally agreed on. And when we figured out the $$ situation (which, when you're married you will understand what a strenuous, pain in the butt task this is), we had enough so that we had the "cushion" that I wanted (with a little left over for our mini-vacation next week) and Charles got everything that he wanted!
Praise God!
He is so good to us! And his hand is so evident in our lives and he provides for us in amazing ways. And it goes to show, too, that when you compromise and work things out together, that God honors that. I wasn't sure if anything good could come from last night, but it most certainly has!
And I thank God for all He does for us - big and small!

On another note - we got our background checks yesterday and neither of us have a criminal record. That's good. But we couldnt' get fingerprinted because 1) the first time they were bringing in a prisoner and 2) they neglected to tell us that we have to bring in our own fingerprinting cards. So that is next on our checklist of thigns to do before AUSTRALIA!
But things are looking hopeful, and it is said that this next step doesn't take near as long as the first one. So I'm hopeful. And glad. Waiting is just so hard.
AND, because the Hoyts were going to Warsaw yesterday too, we rode with them and all went out to dinner at a Chinese Buffet! (yum!) And we didn't even have to break into our rent money! ;) it cost the exact amount that we had in our wallet! Once again, God shows up in a wicked cool way!!!! :D

if our background checks are going to show that I have some kind of horrible criminal record?? :)

...but life has been busy. And work has been busy so i haven't had much extra time to sit and post. This month is seeming to fly by with all the things we have going on. FIRST OFF - Charlie Eddie and I received word this morning as we were getting ready for work that... OUR SPONSORSHIP HAS BEEN APPROVED!!!! Praise God from whom all blessings flow - and much thanks to the Australian gov't for finally putting that through. Now on to step #2 - sending in the visa application itself. Hopefully this will not take long, but one never knows. In the meantime we'll keep plugging away with life here. This is so good for our spirits, though. I feel like things may actually start moving again. For awhile it was almost as if we were wishing to be denied just so we could get on with life and get out of this blasted waiting period. But sometimes God has those to prepare us for the incredible work that is ahead. I'm pretty psyched! :)
Also, the weather the past couple weeks has been beautiful, so we have been outside reading and playing a lot of catch, which is fun fun fun! Of course, the weekend got chilly and this weekend it's supposed to rain (sigh, figures) but still, sunshine is good! And every weekend in May is packed full, which will make the month fly by and gives us a lot to look foward to. Last weekend = my good high school buddy, Corinne, came over for the night, Sunday we lounged around and went to an early b-day party for a military guy in our church. That was fun. This weekend is Houghton's graduation, Mother's Day and the Mother-Daughter banquet at church, next is a wedding in PA (and we are making it a romantic weekend at a sweet hotel with an indoor pool and stuff! - something we haven't done since we got married, and never with a pool!) and the weekend after that we are going camping. Sweetness! Lots of good stuff to look foward to!
And the absolute best news ever is to be told (besides that of Christ's resurrection)...
MY BROTHER CAME HOME!!! :)
That's right. I walked in the house on friday and Chuck was sitting on the couch with Nate! He is looking very good and very, very tan and it was so great to talk, and laugh, and have dinner together and hear about his adventures and just have him home!
So life is good. All are together again and that makes me ridiculously happy!
On a down note (it's small) - for some reason I can't access my gmail from work anymore. Weird. But that's all.
:)
Keep praying for our visas (we aren't through with this process yet)!

I have been at work for most of the day today, but here are some of the things that I have managed to do:

- answer phones for hours on end
- complete 12 of 18 pages of a referral packet for RTF
- eat lunch (leftover chicken and broccoli casserole! yum!!!)
- received some major encouragement from a co-worker
- make room reservations
- take a blanket, lay in the sun and read a chapter in my new book ("Madame Bovary")
- walked around the reservoir at Cobbs Hill (it's beautiful!)
- wrote the last 2 thank-you notes that need to be sent out
- had a good long chat with my Savior
- learned an important lesson that I am determined to put into practice;) (you'll have to ask
me about it in person!)

All-in-all, it hasn't been such a bad day! The weather is still warm, the sun is still shining, my life is still full of blessings, and God is still and always is Good!

that every day you set out to make a conscious effort to put God at the center of your life, and integrate him into every part of your day, and have a good attitude are the days that you manage to blow it and lose your temper over something ridiculous and stupid not 1 hour after committing your day to the Lord?

Why is it that you can get so much sleep at night and still manage to be sleepy on your way into work? (an hour later than usual)

Why is it that you can know in your heart and believe fully the joys and rewards of following Christ and becoming like him and yet still can be so apathetic about it?
Why is it that the best thing you can ever do is sometimes the hardest?

I just don't get life sometimes.