Great Time with the Brown Family!

Nor­mally when I take pic­tures, I am asked to fig­ure out the per­fect spot, but not this time! Lori had all the spots mapped out and I really enjoyed tak­ing their pic­tures, plus I was intro­duced to new fun places to take pic­tures. My cam­era and I were not coop­er­at­ing with eachother though. I have been so used to tak­ing por­traits and haven’t played around with large groups too much…I have also found that I really need a new lens that I can do both! It is really aggra­vat­ing to have the per­fect spots and the instruc­tion and the pic­tures do not come out like I want…not even close! There are those spe­cial fam­ily moments that you want to cap­ture and either you or your cam­era can’t cap­ture them per­fectly. Here are a cou­ple of ones I like, but am going to have to get some peo­ple together and prac­tice more!! Lori — thanks for let­ting me prac­tice with your fun fam­ily and the next time you want pic­tures, any night or day they will be on me!!

Happy Holidays

Just the other day I com­mented on how this year I really didn’t want to put up a tree and just not feel­ing extra hol­i­day­ish this year. Actu­ally my dream was to pack up and take off with my fam­ily and spend Christ­mas alone with them…something I haven’t felt like I have done for a while. It wasn’t until I received this extra spe­cial note from my sis­ter that put my life back into per­spec­tive and showed me that even all the effort I put into mak­ing the hol­i­days extra spe­cial that there are peo­ple that actu­ally appre­ci­ate my efforts. If not for any­one, I need to give my chil­dren spe­cial mem­o­ries that will last their life­time and not con­sume myself with all the work it entails. I hope that every­one in a Hol­i­day funk will know that all of the time they spend will make the hol­i­days that much more spe­cial to oth­ers. I hope my sis­ter doesn’t mind me post­ing this…but it seri­ously touched me and I love her!

I want you to know how much I appre­ci­ate you Har­mony. You have been an amaz­ing sis­ter. I always look back on all my trips to visit you as so much fun. Thanks for all the times you went out of your way to be there for me and for all the lit­tle things you do to make my life bet­ter. Every hol­i­day was bear­able because you brought life to them. I never really told you that and I thought you needed to know. You gave up your child­hood to be a ser­gate mom to us and I thank you.
Pray­ing for strength and wis­dom for you daily.

All my love,
Your lil sister

Photography — Leah & Rob

We had fun tak­ing pic­tures at the Gaylord…

Prailines

Yummy

If I could turn back time…

If I could turn back time
If I could find a way I’d take back those words that hurt you…Cher

Albuquerque he’s my Turkey!

Logan was super adorable singing in his Thanks­giv­ing Day Pro­gram. He was a bit shy…possibly because Luke and I got front row seats. He still was very entertaining!!

Albu­querque Turkey
– Anony­mous
(Sung to the tune of ‘Clementine’)

Albu­querque he’s my turkey
Oh he’s feath­ered and he’s fine
He wob­bles and he gob­bles
And I’m awfully glad he’s mine.
He’s the best pet
You could ever get.
Bet­ter than a dog or cat.
Albu­querque he’s my turkey
And I’m awfully glad of that.
Albu­querque he’s my turkey
He’s so cozy in his bed
Because for Thanks­giv­ing din­ner
We had scram­bled eggs instead

I can’t

I sim­ply can’t com­pete with a damsel in dis­tress! Note to all you guys: You can’t save a damsel if she LOVES her dis­tress! Def­i­n­i­tion: The help­less­ness of the damsel in dis­tress, who can be por­trayed as naive, young along with her need for others(mostly men) to res­cue her.
Is it that guys like to play hero? Do they need to find woman to res­cue so they can assume the “knight in shin­ing armor” role? Does it make them feel masculine…or just needed. Who doesn’t like to feel needed and appre­ci­ated?
You might be a damsel
…if you need a man to save you.
…if you feel depressed when you are sin­gle.
…if you dump a guy and have another lined up.
…if you are not happy with­out a man.
…if you have a strong need to have chil­dren — maybe they’ll stick around

Some men like needy women because men like to FIX things. So they look at this poor pathetic mess of a woman and fig­ure they can make it all bet­ter and she’s just been with the wrong men. When real­ity is that she prob­a­bly made some poor choices and it may not be totally the men in her life that were at fault.

So as I was research­ing this info from the internet(which has to be true right? LOL) it tells me that since I am mar­ried to an aries I should:
Let Him Res­cue YouAries men are chival­rous at heart; they love noth­ing more than to find a damsel in dis­tress to res­cue. Give an Aries man some­thing to do, then lav­ish him with praise when he comes through to save you. Then find another way for him to prove his worth; Aries thrives on meet­ing the needs of oth­ers and being praised for it.
Guess I can’t com­pete with one…I just have to be one. LOL

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. ~Mignon McLaughlin

I am amazed at how much can hap­pen in 16 years, and how quickly it can all roll by!
Lit­tle his­tory on how we met: We were both work­ing at Golden Cor­ral, he was a cook and I was a server. I thought he looked like the guy on The Princess Bride. I got the nerve to ask him if he saw the movie and all he said was, “NO!” and went along his merry way. So that was that. I think the next day I called in to go to Sea World and he had thought I quit. When he found that I didn’t quit he told me he would like to see the movie with me. While we were watch­ing the movie at my apart­ment, we held hands. He was the sweet­est guy and still is! On our first offi­cial date, his cat knocked his phone off the hook…yeah he had one of those! LOL and his alarm clock didn’t go off — that was his way of say­ing he didn’t want to go the Bay­lor vs. Rice Foot­ball game. ;) We ended up going to a movie and he had to call in and let the boss know he was going to be a bit late. It turned out to be like a three hour movie! I fell in Love!
A suc­cess­ful mar­riage requires falling in love many times, always with the same per­son. ~Mignon McLaugh­lin
I am falling in love with you all over again and I intend to a ton more times. Love you — You’re the best!!

Luke — Advent Conspiracy

GoatSpeak­ing
Novem­ber 8, 2010
Let me start by say­ing I’m not a big fan of stand­ing in front of the church and speak­ing. It ter­ri­fies me more than just about any­thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve spo­ken in front of peo­ple before so it’s not com­pletely a fear of speak­ing. I’ve stood in front of 60–70 guys in the shop and it didn’t bother me. I know my job. I know I’m com­pe­tent and con­fi­dent. You aren’t going to ask me a ques­tion about my job or what I’m speak­ing on that I won’t know the answers to. I’ve stood in front of some pretty large Bass tour­na­ments and Bass Clubs and was fine. I could hold my own. I could stack up against any­one stand­ing there.
But…. Church… Man that’s a whole other story. It ter­ri­fies me! I’m scared to death! I feel like as I stand there every­one in that church can see every sin I’ve ever com­mit­ted, thought of com­mit­ting or even heard of. Its like there is a sports ticker going over my head read­ing out the time, date and offense.
Well a few months ago Mike was preach­ing on Advent Con­spir­acy. I thought it was kinda silly for him to be doing that in Octo­ber. The last thing I was think­ing of was Christ­mas. That’s months away. Well then to top it off he starts list­ing off the things North Point spent money on last year and he says “Goats and Chick­ens”. Really? Goats and Chick­ens? So after laugh­ing about him say­ing that it kinda stuck with me. It com­pelled me to follow-up on it and see exactly what in the world we would spend money on that for.
So I found out the orga­ni­za­tion that we worked with on this, World Vision is who North Point used. It took me all of about 20 sec­onds on their site to fig­ure out there isn’t the least bit of humor in these “Goats and Chick­ens”. There is noth­ing funny or cute about them.
Every 15 sec­onds a per­son dies in this world from hunger! So in the time it took me to snicker at the thought of “Goats and Chick­ens” Some­one DIED!
Every 7 sec­onds some­one dies from lack of clean drink­ing water! 7 sec­onds! We take longer than that to take a swig of the clean water we have from our sinks in our house. It takes you longer than that to pour out the water from your bot­tled water that you no longer want because its warm.
So as I looked at pic­ture after pic­ture of peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing and DYING from lack of some­thing so sim­ple and expected from us. I can’t wrap my hands around it. I can’t fig­ure it out. I don’t under­stand how a God that can bless me with so many bless­ings. Bless me with so much food that I couldn’t begin to need it all. I don’t under­stand how He can let that kind of suf­fer­ing exist in the same world that I’m so blessed in.
I don’t have the answers. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. But just like I felt com­pelled to see how God could use “Goats and Chick­ens” to effect a change in oth­ers lives. I want to explore how my bless­ings and their suf­fer­ings can co-exist in the King­dom.
I’m ask­ing you to help fund Advent Con­spir­acy. Help fund some­thing big­ger than your­self and your needs. God is big­ger than our igno­rance. He is big­ger than our doubts. He is big­ger than our fears. He is so much big­ger than our lit­tle world that we like to think we con­trol. Make the sac­ri­fice. Not out of guilt but out of under­stand­ing that it is how we show a love like no other love this world knew until it was lived on the cross.

Crazy Bays Explore Possum Kingdom

We had a great time camp­ing with a large group of friends! Here are some of the high­lights!
I love to go hik­ing and along the trail Logan found a stick that he claimed helped him walk faster and the good Lord knows he needs that, he is slower than a tur­tle. He said, “Dad, do you know who I look like? I look like Noah with a stick, all I am miss­ing is a long white beard!” Too cute! The one good thing is he stops to smell the roses. Luke was help­ing him dis­tin­guish ani­mal tracks and they found a fos­sil of an ani­mal. Logan thought for sure it had to be a baby dinosaur, but Luke told him that he thought is was a rab­bit. He said, “Nope! It can’t be a rab­bit, because a while ago I was watch­ing this show with grandma and it was another ani­mal eat­ing a rab­bit and they showed the bones. A rab­bits bones are not pointy, so it can’t be a rab­bit. Luke said, “Oh yeah, I guess I need to watch that show then.” You can’t it was on a long time ago and they won’t show it again. Logan was real upset on our drive home when he real­ized that he had left his bones at the park. I almost for­got, Kyle insisted on hav­ing his bike on that trail…I am sure he will never do that again!
The crazy bays boys wanted to go swim­ming, that is all we heard about for an hour or so. They con­vinced us that it would be okay for them to swim in NOVEMBER in a LAKE! Con­nor had found a inter­tube he knick named “LIFE SABER.” They put it in the lake and it began to drift off. Every­one called to Kyle to go after it. When it got too far away, I jumped in clothes and all to save it. The water actu­ally wasn’t too ter­ri­bly cool! I stayed in there as long as I could.
We loaded up in the back of a truck and began our scout­ing for ani­mals with a spot­light. We saw some deer and an armadillo, but NO pos­soms. It was Pos­sum King­dom after­all! Now we have to go home and fig­ure out why it would be called Pos­sum King­dom and NO pos­sums!
They played ten­nis­ball with a carved stick and sent the ten­nis­ball into the Lake, which Kyle had to save in his under­wear on the Life Saber.
The food was awe­some – who could think you would be able to eat that good camp­ing. Erin and Chris made potatos from the boys scout recipe they had! It was a keeper.
When are we going again?