Whining.

Our next door neighbor has a dog. Actually, she has a few dogs. Currently one of them is whining which is detestable in a child, but downright annoying in a dog! The whining from the dog next door reminds me of when we were in Africa and of the puppy that lived next door to the missionary and yapped all. day. long. (Incidentally, I just found out the other week that the little puppy in Africa died when it was bit by a poisonous snake. Sad ending.)

Whining. If I can't stand it when a child or animal whines, why do I think it's ok to do it to God, my husband, friends, and so on?

My pastor preached an excellent message on Sunday evening about praise. He used Paul and Silas as his reference point and was pretty dramatic in describing all the horrible things about their situation. A dark, dingy dungeon. Whipped back, feet in the stocks, no snuggle blankets or fuzzy socks (ok, I added those last two in there:D). Pure torture.

Yet Paul and Silas decided to praise God. There was plenty of room for a pity party and some whining. "Oh woe is me!" would also fit, but the choice Paul and Silas made is permanently recorded as praise and prayer.

Wow.

Whining. Leave it with the next door neighbor's dog and praise the Lord!

Come On In!

Nat and I have been married for roughly 15 months, and although the promises were many, I never actually showed my blog readers around our humble home... well that needs to change. :)

We've really enjoyed making our cozy apartment into our home, especially because we know it's not going to last forever. In fact, it's not even going to last more than a couple of years! We can't take our stuff with us to Thailand, so we were determined to do the best with what we had and just enjoy today. Lord willing, someday we will own our own home, but for now we get to enjoy this apartment!

Ok, let's start in the kitchen, shall we? The kitchen is my favorite room (like I have a bunch of rooms to choose from!) and I love making things for Nat since he loves to eat! We also enjoy having people over, which becomes a bit of a challenge when our expectations exceed our space. :) The most we've had was 20 people for a New Year's Day party, which was really fun!

People always ask where the garbage can is and usually can't believe it's tucked away in the corner with the apple label disguising its real purpose!

In case you can't tell, we really like the country theme! We've enjoyed picking up things one at a time for our home and pulling the theme together.

Ok, I'll admit it. The buffet is my favorite piece in the whole kitchen! That's my pantry as well as a really cute decorative piece. :) When we got married, my sister-in-law gave us the towel on the oven which says our names and that we were "established" July 10, 2010. Cute idea!

Now we move into the living room. I love the spaciousness of this room and the fact we can extend the kitchen table into the living room when we have company over. Last Thanksgiving Eve we had my family over which made for a sit-down dinner of 14. It worked!

The coffee table, the trash bin, and kitchen buffet were all hand-made locally. We have really enjoyed using them!

Now don't laugh, but yes we have had our snowmen pictures up since last year! We liked them too much and couldn't find seasonal replacement pictures for them (and didn't want the wall to be bare!) so we just left them there... and now they're just about back in season. ;)

Our little entry way:).

Bathroom... any explanation necessary? :)

We love our bedroom! It is huge (as you'll see) and works nicely as a bedroom and office.

God's been good to us! We're grateful for a place to stay and for the opportunity to use our apartment for God's glory. Stop on by anytime... :D

Video Clip:).

Recently several different people in my church have had their testimony recorded and so my turn came on Wednesday. Nat and I went with a friend to a local park to record. I was so grateful it only took one try and it was under the time allotted:).

Monday Blessings...

#1 ~ I went to the laundromat this morning and noticed two dryers had 13 minutes still left on them! Not quite a big deal to most, but that was one less dollar I had to spend on drying our big bath towels and hubby's jeans:).

#2 ~ Bottom Dollar and Weis were running some amazing deals this week! You can't beat a $10 off of $20 coupon, nor a host of other coupons that came in the paper on Saturday. (Yeah, Sunday's paper now comes on Saturday... hmmm:D). I enjoyed seeing at the bottom of one of the receipts 80% total savings. Yay! Coupons really are worth cutting; they save a lot of $$$!

#3 ~ My husband was asked to drive the girls' volleyball team to their game today (1.5 hours away) and so I got to go along and enjoy the game too:). On the way home I had a wonderful chat with one of the ladies in my church which really encouraged me. God is so good!

How are you doing today? Any recent blessings?

:)

Happy Fall!

My candles are burning, there's cooler weather outside, yummy pies in the fridge for later with friends... and a delinquent blogger finally blogging. Yeah, that would be me. :)

A friend recently asked me about my blog (with the subtle hint of hey, are you going to blog again in your lifetime?!?) and I realized that my blog has been neglected because of an answer to prayer. Wow, that sounds like I don't like blogging, but I do! About a month ago I began to ask the Lord to fill my time because I was fast slipping into the boredom stage. Working one day a week, no children to take care of, and a small apartment to maintain wasn't quite filling all those hours in a week. :).

The Lord really answered that prayer as opportunities began exploding out of everywhere (so it seemed) and like I told a friend this morning, I feel like I'm on a roller coaster!

So the one thing that did get neglected is this poor blog of mine. Oops.

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I'm attempting to stretch myself in a few areas, including learning new things. Nat and I are eventually heading back to Thailand, so I've tried to start learning Thai. My friend Pookie would probably fall over laughing at my pathetic attempts at writing the Thai alphabet, but I needed to start somewhere!

I also started piano lessons, which is a b-i-g stretch for me! I played the cello for four years in middle school, but that was a looong time ago. Thankfully I have a really nice teacher... so now it's practice, practice, practice!

Recently I've been trying lots of new recipes, thanks to Taste of Home! I really missed cooking while in Africa, so now I'm making up for it. :) Last night I made an apple pie from a recent ToH magazine, but tweaked it a bit. One of the ladies at church gave my husband and I a bag of organic apples so into the pie they went! Mmm, mmm.

So that's life in a nutshell. Our days are busy and long, and we're tired at the end of each day, but it's a good tired:).

And now it's time to get ready for the Christmas cantata practice. Nat and I have some lines to memorize. :)