WHOO-HOO! VACATION!

I’m going to the beach with my family this week. We’re leaving tomorrow (after Adam and I get our taxes done–yawn) and coming back Wednesday night. I’m pretty excited, because this is the first vacation my family has taken together in at least 10 years. Daddy’s a homebody, and we have a lot of trouble getting everyone’s schedules aligned. Huge difference from Adam’s family, who goes on vacation every few months.

Adam’s not coming to the beach with us because of work commitments, which is pretty sucky. He’s a part of the family now, and I hate that he’s going to miss the first vacation all together. Technically, I shouldn’t be going either, because his “work commitment” is the volleyball league that he started, and I’m the coach for the church team. However, we’re doing so pathetically that I don’t feel bad abandoning them for the tournament, which is Tuesday night.

Disciple Now was last weekend, and I didn’t have too much to do with it. I cooked for one of the groups, so I wasn’t able to attend the events. I did get to hang out with the kids at mealtimes, and went to the host homes with Adam after all the events were done for the day, so I got the awesomeness of our youth without the exhaustion of DNow. It was pretty cool!

Since I last posted, one of my sisters has taken a leave of absence from college (Gallaudet University in Washington, DC), and the other has been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Two pretty huge events, both with life-changing effects. Leah’s diabetes is a pretty big pain in the butt for her to manage at this point, doing 4 insulin shots a day, calculated based on how many grams of carbs she’ll have with each meal. Abbey’s LOA hasn’t really changed much, except that my parents’ empty nest is no longer empty!

April is going to be absolutely bonkers. We have court several times that month, plus some special set hearings, during which the Court Administrator will be out of town at a conference. This is pretty terrifying, because it means that the two assistants to the court administrator (one of whom is yours truly) will be handling court those days. EEK! I usually only do traffic court, so delinquent acts and deprivation cases are WAY out of my league!

Aside from that, life is pretty normal, or at least the normal for ministers and their wives. We’re busybusybusy all the time with church, and when we’re home, we’re being snuggled and climbed on by puppies.

Hope all is well with everyone reading!

The craziness of Disciple Now

The life of a youth minister can best be described sometimes with the word insane. This weekend is one of those times. We had our county wide disciple now this weekend with 9 other churches. The weekend was straight up awesome. It did get off to a rocky start. This past year I had trouble finding host homes, and leaders for the weekend. That being said God was really in control and provided us with everything we need. I received a phone call on Friday saying that one of my female leaders would not be helping this weekend because she was sick. Fortunately, the Paulson family stepped up and took control of that group. The first 4 days of that week are always stressful. It seems that something is always going to come up last minute. Last year we had a host home need to cancel the night before. This year it was a female leader. No matter how nuts it was God always provided just enough for us.

We kicked off the weekend with an awesome taco dinner at the church and headed to Heritage High for the first joint session. All the madness seemed to fade away when the students arrived. Friday passed and an early Saturday morning arrived. Saturday seemed to fly by. Perhaps it was the busy schedule or the intense dodgeball tournament in the Afternoon. Needless to say sleep seemed to come easy Saturday night. Unfortunately, Sunday morning seemed to get here much earlier than it needed to (note to self: never plan a major youth event when you loose an hour). Everyone arrived at church and managed to stay awake.

The weekend was nuts, awesome, and totally worth it.

take a deep breath…

…and then jump back in. The holidays turned out to be just as crazy as we expected. We were so busy that we hardly had time to enjoy our time off work together.

The ski trip went well. Adam’s boots were too tight the first day, so all of the subsequent days were very painful for him. I twisted my knee on the first day… Tried a few runs down the mountain on the second day and realized that I couldn’t turn right, which made it very hard to slalom, which made me a very dangerous skier. So I turned my skis in and sat in the lodge for the rest of the trip. It was nice to get away, even if it was freezing and snowing the whole time. Brrr!

We brought the cold weather home with us, unfortunately. We were already congested and sneezy from the trip, and the cold in Georgia only exacerbated that. We lived on Benadryl and hot tea for about a week. Lovely experience, really.

Our anniversary is January 1st, and we spent most of the day laying around the house just trying to recover from the ski trip. Of course, both of our college allegiances had bowl games on the 1st, so it was a very emotional time for us. Auburn won, so I was ecstatic (after the heart attacks that the end of the game induced!), but LSU lost, so Adam’s mood was kind of spoiled for the rest of the day.

After so much time off, I was very bored and tired of laying around the house. I was very glad to be going back to work on January 5th, and got a lot done those first two days back. We have traffic court (which is my baby) coming up in a couple of weeks, so I had to get summonses out and subpoenas sent. The forecast called for snow on Thursday the 6th, and sure enough, it started falling. For any Northerners reading this, I know that Southerners are true wimps when it comes to snow… Just keep in mind that we don’t keep a supply of the little chains y’all use on your tires to make driving safe. Our office closed at noon and we didn’t open at all on Friday, so yet again, I was housebound and going stir crazy. The roads really were unsafe since the temperature never got above freezing to help clear off all the ice, so Adam and I both had a pretty serious case of cabin fever.

All this time off has reminded me that I could never be a housewife. I need something to do to keep me busy and contributing to the household, and not just laundry and dishes and sweeping. The dogs like it when I stay home (snuggle time!), but they’re the only ones happy about it.

Hopefully this week will return to normal and we’ll be able to be our usual busy selves instead of the unusual things that have kept us running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Let’s all cross our fingers!

and now for the female perspective

So yes, Christmas is crazy. Two years ago was the first time in a long time that I got excited about Christmas. I think living on my own and having my own house to decorated spurred that on, and I really enjoyed the festivities. Last year was a very different experience. I was away from my own family for the first time on Christmas Day, and spent it with my soon-to-be in-laws. This Christmas will be back with my family, and I will have my husband with me, but it will still be very different.

With my grandmother’s death in January, the family dynamic has changed drastically and I, being a good little Southern Baptist, am terrified of this change and the way it will affect our Christmas get-together. I still won’t get the traditional turkey and dressin’, half the family won’t be there, and my grandmother’s house is bare bones in preparation to sell it.

So with all this difference, I am not excited about Christmas this year. I am stressed out and fearful and upset that I feel this way, when I know that this season is meant to be a time of joy and thankfulness and fellowship. I am trying to frequently remind myself that I have an amazing family (two families now!) and an absolutely out-of-this-world wonderful husband. He is keeping me grounded and doing his best to keep me calm. What his verbal reminders (“breathe… breathe…”) don’t do, a little bit of snuggling takes care of.

I will be very glad when this Christmas season is over and we can celebrate our anniversary and begin a new year.

Crazy time of year

It’s been abosultly nuts here in Fort O. It seems that we’ve had something goin on every night of the week. We’re both pretty tired after hosting a lock-in for the youth this past weekend. It was nice to have a Sunday night off to just spend time together for a little bit. We’re gearing up for the holidays and Rachel is starting to go crazy. We have about 4 more people to purchase Christmas presents for and I think that’s what fueling this. After Christmas we’re leaving to go skiing in West Virginia till the 31. I’m really stoaked about it, and Rachel is starting to get there. I’m sure we will have many more updates for during the remainder of the week.

Adam