Asta la vista Target

We are not fans of Target anymore. I used to love it and shop there exclusively during my single years. We even registered there for one of our wedding and baby registries. That's when it all started. It's their return policy that has made me decide that I will not shop there anymore. They are very strict.....too strict. I prefer a store that gives better customer service. So, asta la vista Target! (Is that the right expression?) : ) There might be a few things I will still get there here or there but it will be few and far between.

The Best Husband in the World

.....That's Matt. I am amazed everyday at how God has blessed me with Matt as my husband.

He is...

patient

loving

kind

compassionate

honest

understanding

in love with God

committed & trustworthy

real

funny

polite

a gentleman

a leader

an individual as well as a team player

creative

handsome

fun

an amazing father

gentle

giving

a people lover

hard-working

responsible

adventurous

a good listener

a good foot massager : )

a prayer

considerate

a helper

a trooper when it comes to our challenges in life and together as a married couple

a friend

a brother
an example for me to follow

I love you Matthew. Thank you for sharing life with me. I adore you and treasure every moment spent with you.

Mohawk Missy

Merrae's hair is getting long enough to where we can play with it! This is one of Daddy's hair styles for her.

Freedom Experience

Because of God in my life (see my previous post), I now want to share God with others so they can have Him the way I have all these years. Some friends of mine from college are doing an outreach called Freedom Experience all over the U.S. It is awesome. Matt has done some promotional DVD footage for them and while he was working on the first promo I had a chance to watch one of the outreaches. This is part of what I saw....

http://www.freedomexperience.com/ Click on the video

After seeing this I knew it would be an effective way to share God with the youth I had been teaching for 8 years in an elementary school. They were now in middle school and high school and some were graduating. This all happened a year ago and Matt and I have been trying to get things lined up for the outreach to come here. I wanted it to be this past fall but it takes longer to get something of this size put together. We are hoping for this coming fall 08. I am in the process of meeting with people to get a high school gym reserved. Please pray that the reservation would go through and that it would be at the right location. You can also be in prayer that we would be able to raise the funds necessary to bring this outreach to town because it is free to the youth that are coming. One more thing to pray for: That the people who come would understand that they need God/ Jesus Christ, would make the decision to follow Him, and that the churches that are helping would be committed and able to continue to teach these people for years to come.

God in my life...

Since I talked about Angels in the last post I wanted to share my experience with God with you.

When I was a little girl my mom would take our family to church every Sunday and I would sit next to them, my Grandparents and Aunt Elaine. We would also go to "Sunday School" before or after where I would be with other kids my age and learn about the Bible as well as learn songs about God. Sometimes I was bored and felt like I didn't know anybody because they didn't go to my school, but overall looking back on it, I learned more stories and how to praise God by being there. I had one teacher who I loved, Bruce. He was a laid back kind of guy who would just let us hang out and talk, draw on the chalkboard, and laugh. Then, he'd teach us a short story from the Bible, and then we'd hang out again. One day he took a polaroid picture of us with another friend in class and let us bring it home. I still have that picture. I always looked forward to going to church while he was my teacher. Here's that picture. : )
Just like it is for any child, it was hard to sit still during the actual church service and my mom would let me draw, my Grandmother would pop me peppermints, and I remember even sleeping on her lap a few times. Even though I was bored because it wasn't on my level, I remember the love I felt by being there with them and the other people at church as we sang beautiful songs to God and about God. I remember joining hands across the isle at the end of the service and tearing up because it was such a moving and loving moment as we sang the end of the Lord's prayer "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, a-m-e-n." The Lord's prayer is a prayer that Jesus prayed and the same prayer that He taught us to pray. My grandmother taught me the entire prayer when I was in about the 2nd or 3rd grade. I am forever grateful. She also taught me many other Bible stories using a children's book/ Bible that I only know becuase of her taking the time to do that. I now know that it was God that I was sensing through the people and through praising Him there at church.

After church we would eat with a bunch of people there at the church, or we could go out to eat, or we would go to my Grandparent's house where they would cook and we would play with our cousins. Fun times.

One day when I was 9 while I was sitting with my mom up in the balcony, at the end of the service, I saw several people walking down the isle up to the front of the church while everyone else was singing and praying. I was real curious about why they were doing that and asked my mom. She said some of them were joining the church and others realized they needed forgiveness for their sins. Well, I began questioning more and she explained that because we all sin and do bad things, we need Jesus Christ, God's son, to forgive us. When we ask Him to forgive us we will get to go to Heaven with Him instead of hell. Those weren't the exact words she said, but pretty close. I can't remember the exact ones. When she told me these things it made sense to me and I immediately wanted to go down the isle and ask Jesus to forgive me of my sins so I could go to Heaven. I kept telling her I wanted to. She said ok but that first I needed to talk to my Granddaddy more about what it means. He was a preacher for many years. So, that day I believe, I stood next to him as he sat in his reclyner and he explained things to me similar to how my mom explained them to me. I don't remember his exact words although He gave me more details about what God tells us in the Bible about us, Himself, and His son Jesus Christ.

(For those of you that don't know about God, He says He's created man and gave man a choice to follow Him or not follow Him. At the very beginning of time, man chose to follow his own desires instead of God's and because of that, God had to separate Himself from man because He is so holy and pure. We would have been forever separated from Him and ended up in hell because the penalty for this sin is to die and be separated from Him. But He loved man so much that he had different plans. It started with man having to make certain animal sacrifices to make up for his sins, otherwise man would have to die. Shedding of blood happened so that man would be right with God. (Not totally sure why, but I'm learning and God has a good reason for it). Then, God took it a step farther and decided instead of man having to sacrifice animals, He would send His son, Jesus Christ, to die for man's sin. The Bible also teaches that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all the same person with different functions. So, basically, God came to earth to die for us through His son Jesus. He came and taught for a while and experienced what we experience but He still did not sin. He then died for our sins once and for all, and then rose from the dead and went back to Heaven eventually. Because He rose from the dead it proves that He defeated sin and death and when we believe that He has done this for us, we are not separated from Him anymore. He becomes our father and we are His children. Even if we sin more, His death makes us right with Him if we've believed Him. If we don't believe He is who He says He is and that we need Him, we will still be separated from Him. He gives us a choice. He would never force anyone to follow Him, but there are consequences, which is being separated from Him forever, even after death). If you have more questions about this, ask me.

My Grandfather asked me if I understood that I was a sinner and that I needed Jesus to forgive me so I could have a relationship with Him and go to Heaven when I die. So, after talking to him and my mother, they decided I understood well enough and the next Sunday I walked down the isle, told them I wanted to ask Jesus to forgive me of my sins. Someone up front sat me down while the music was playing and led me in a prayer repeating after them as I asked for forgiveness of my sins. Afterwards, we stood up and told the rest of the church what I had done, along with another couple who had walked down to join the church. Everyone clapped and encouraged me and I left happy that I was now going to get to go to Heaven and I was now a Christian.

Shortly after that my Granddaddy baptized me up at the church because the Bible teaches that when we trust Jesus to forgive us, we also are submerged in water symbolizing that Jesus has washed away our sins, and symbolizing us dying to that sinful way of life, and we are now a new person walking along side Him. I hope I explained that right. : )

So, I knew I was a sinner and had been forgiven and was going to Heaven, but as I got older I learned even more about God and His son Jesus. I was sitting in our new church at a youth function when I was in the 8th grade. This was a 2 or 3 night deal where other churches came to our church as well. It was a big event. There was a band and a speaker named Jay Strack who explained that asking for forgiveness of our sins and getting to go to Heaven was not all that it meant to be a Christian. He told us that in the Bible it teaches that being a Christian means that when we ask for Jesus' forgiveness, we are making the decision to die to that way of life that God hates, and choosing to follow His leadership and teachings. That's repentance. We turn away from our sin and walk in the opposite direction, following Jesus' way of life.

The biggest thing that stood out to me that night was when he said something like, "Being a Christian means giving God EVERYTHING.....giving God ALL OF YOUR LIFE and letting Him be in control. Wow. I didn't know that. I had been still making all of my own decisions instead of looking at His teachings in the Bible and following them. Jay Strack said that it might mean we have to make some changes in our life. He said if we wanted to re-dedicate our lives to God we could ask Him to be in control of ALL OF OUR LIVES for the rest of our lives.

So, that night, that's what I did. I had a more mature understanding of what it meant to be a Christian.....it's being a Christ follower and dying to our sinful way of life. Up to that point in my life I was very unhappy and around a lot of people who were not following Christ, just like myself. I had a friend who was very controlling, treated me bad, had a bad mouth, negative attitude, talked about other people in a horrible way, played really mean pranks on people, and she was disobedient to her parents. This was a horrible influence on me. Of course, I chose to hang out with her and do some of the things she did, so it was just as much my fault as it was hers, but I was tired of this way of life.

Commiting my life to God came at just the right time. It was hard at first. I had to break close ties with this friend and change things in my life so that I'd be obedient to Christ. But, once I let God help me make those changes, I was so much happier. I started becoming all of who I was created by God to be. I was at peace knowing that God was in control and everytime I was obedient to what He taught me through the Bible, things worked out and went so smoothly.

This is kind of funny to think about but I used to cuss like a sailor while I hung out with that friend I told you about. When I committed every part of my life to God, I was able to stop cussing pretty much immediately. That was shocking to me. I thought it would be hard but He gave me the desire to stop and it just stopped. I got involved with our church youth group and started reading my Bible daily. I made friends with people who committed their lives to Christ too. As those things happened, my life was totally changed. I was a new person becoming more and more like Christ. It was beautiful.

Because I had learned to trust and follow Him, I was able to avoid things that were harmful and He protected me from wrong decisions. Not all wrong decisions, I was still an imperfect person, but because I was focused on Him He protected me and helped me. The things that stand out are that I didn't get involved in the "party" scene in High School doing drugs or alcohol and I never had premarital sex. As I continued to follow Him in college and as I began my "career", He continued to protect me as well. Sure, sometimes different areas of my life were tempting but He gave me the strength to be obedient to Him when I started to slip. As a Christian I've had so much more confidence in who I am and have been put in leadership roles that I would never have been in had my life not changed. That still continues today.

In college my relationship with God was put to the test because I was out on my own and wanted to make sure that I believed everything I was raised to believe. As I questioned God in college and into my early adult years, He proved to be the God He says He is....the one and only God who is faithful and loving even when it doesn't seem like it. Everytime I question Him and challenge the idea that He is really a loving, kind, God, He always proves to me that He is those things. Of course, sometimes I have to just trust Him when I don't understand and may never understand certain things, but He has proven to be trustworthy in more ways than I can name here.

He has changed my life, has been so good to me, is powerful and amazing, and if you want to trust Him with your life, He will take you in just like you are.....sinful and all. Just ask Him to forgive you and tell Him that you want to follow Him only. Then, start doing it. He says there are no other God's except Him. He is the only true God. There is proof. He can be trusted.

UFO Sitings in Stephenville, Texas

I don't know if you've heard, but in Stephenville, Texas a lot of normal people are thinking they saw what appears to be a UFO. You should google it.

Have any of you read the book "Angels" by Billy Graham? He describes what all the Angels in the Bible are like. There are a ton of different types of Angels. One of them happens to be similar looking to what people have been thinking UFO's are like. If you haven't read it, I recommend it. So cool. So cool to think that what these people are thinking is a UFO could have really been an Angel in our midst. I wonder why it was passing through Stephenville?

We're Back!

The pictures are at Stephanie's request. : ) We're back! Not back from out of town....We've just been busy with life. As I was figuring out how to do this blogging stuff it was taking a lot of my time. I now have more of a hang of it but I think I got a little burnt out and just wanted to spend some time with Matt, Merrae, and doing life. Not, that I didn't do that while blogging before, but I just didn't want to spend time blogging.

Anyway, I didn't realize it has already been almost a week since I blogged. I did get a lot done. We looked at our budget and tried to once again get organized with that setting some goals. We still need to fine tune it. We got our first new paycheck from the church now that Matt is on full time there. It was nice. But, knowing that God's people gave that money in the church and it is now going to us is very convicting. All of our money is God's whether we work for a church or not but this has gotten our attention more in that way. We want to make sure we are using it the way He wants us to because He is good. I'm glad we are refocusing on our budget and setting goals. In the end it is so freeing and rewarding. We are blown away at God's provision for us. It's not like we have a whole lot of extra but we have enough to meet our needs and some left over to help other people if we are careful.

I also did some scrapbooking in Merrae's baby album. That was fun. I scrapbook with a bunch of crazy ladies. There are about 30 of us who meet once a month. I really don't like scrapbooking, I'd rather put my pictures in regular albums and maybe journal a little. But, it all started when I wanted to do a scrapbook of Matt and I's courtship years. I didn't realize I had so much memorabilia. Well, I guess after courting for 7 years and knowing each other before that, that makes for a lot of stuff. I wanted to tell our story because it is a beautiful one, so that's when I started scrapbooking. I don't put all the stickers and colorful paper on all my pages. I just stick down the pictures and keepsakes and journal a bit. Then, Merrae came a long and so I decided to do another book for her 1st year of life. After this, I am just doing family photo albums unless another sweet baby comes along....then I'll have to do another baby book. I worked on our family album for 2007 this past week. I finally finished picking out the digital pics that I wanted printed and got them all burned onto CD's. That was time consuming to say the least. We take a ton of pictures and I had to weed out a bunch.

Merrae started saying 2 words together, is dancing more (she stands in place and turns in a circle), she gives lots of kisses (after doing so, she bobs her head as if she's saying, "There ya go!"), she asks for things she wants real sweet using one word, she has started expressing her disappointment at times with loud cries (some would call these tantrums) : ) , her hair is growing, she loves to talk and talk on her cell phone and to our dog Lehya, and has gotten more snuggly.

Matt went on a retreat with our church staff near Austin in a big cabin. He'll be back tomorrow. This past week he worked hard as usual for the church, his video production company, and for his film company. He's gotten a chance to do a lot of writing for new films. We are enjoying some of our shows coming back on the air for a new season. We are both disappointed that the Dallas Cowboys lost the playoff game the other day. Boo Hoo. I actually surprised myself that I enjoyed watching football. I guess since the Cowboys were doing so well I took interest. Now I even watch games the Cowboys don't play in. It's funny. I've always hated football before.

Let's see, what else can I tell you....

OH! Freedom Experience. This is something I feel like God has been leading me to do. Some friends of mine from college do a youth outreach called Freedom Experience and I am trying to bring it to the Dallas area this coming fall. I worked on that this past week and I'll tell you more about that in another post.

Fire Safe

Do all fire safes stink? Ours stinks soooooo bad. We have it in our closet and when we open it up it nearly knocks us over.

Christmas Eve Service

Here are some pics Matt took from the video booth of the Christmas Eve service he helped in. You can see some of the video work he did on the screens. There were scenes of Mary and Joseph too but he didn't catch those. In a couple of the photos you can see a close up bright screen. That's the Dallas Cowboys game playing during practice! : ) Such a heathen.... : ) No, I'm just kidding. There were a ton of practices the week before the performance and it just so happens that the Cowboys were playing one night. At the time we were undefeated so that night he glanced at it during part of a practice.

Weird Sleeper

For those of you that know Matt this won't come as a surprise to you. This is the way Matt slept the other night. He put the feather down blanket underneath him to help cushion the hard bed, his pillow is a towel to get it just the right height to sleep on, his real pillow is over his eyes, he only sleeps with a sheet but he tucks it under his feet which are side by side, his arms are up on his chest (all making him look like a mummy), and then he has the decorative pillows tucked in between the pac-n-play bed that Merrae naps in during the day just to have pillows next to him. He is definitely the type of person that knows what he wants and has strong opinions.

My speed

Well, a while back I posted about my Christmas cookie nightmare. I have finally found a cookie to make that is more my speed thanks to Matt's mom!

All you do is take a pretzel, stick a rollo candy on top, melt it in the oven slightly at 250 or so. Then, stick a pecan on top of it!

THANK YOU BETH!!!! You are my hero! : ) By the way Beth, as usual, you have inspired me once again to keep cooking! When we visit you always make such a wide variety of great food and always have great ideas. Love ya!

When I was looking online for a picture of this rollo pretzel cookie, I found the other picture with the pretzels that are shaped into Christmas shapes. I didn't know there were pretzels out there like that. It's official. This is now one of the cookies we will make as a tradition every year. : ) I also read about someone who puts dry roasted peanuts on top of the rollo and they taste like snickers. I think I'm on to something here. : ) Only problem with those rollo cookies is they are very addicting if you aren't careful!

Thanksgiving

Before the holidays get away from us I wanted to share our Thanksgiving with you. We headed out to Bastrop, Texas where Matt's great aunt has a little cottage on some land. It's really pretty located right in between two state parks. We drove through a state park to get there on a tiny road through tons of tall pine trees. It reminded me of driving on the trails in Colorado where all you could see was aspen trees and nothing else. I've never really liked pine trees because they make such a mess but driving through them like that was beautiful. Going there is like a family reunion for Matt's family because a ton of his extended family gathers. Matt's "Memo", his mom's mom, had 3 sisters and they decided a long time ago that they would all get together for Thanksgiving out in Bastrop. So, most years, we drive out there, getting lost pretty much every time : ) and bring our pot luck dishes. The food is delicious!!!! For the most part everyone uses recipes from the "sisters" and they are oldies but goodies! Whew! Afterwards there are pies and sweets galore. Some of the guys always smoke the turkey outside and it's always delicious. Great tradition and sweet people. It's fun to hear all the different stories about those sisters and the rest of the family. I've included some pics. I didn't get any outside. It was freezing cold!!! But now I regret it. We did, however, get some video footage outside. As soon as I figure out how to transfer our video footage that will be fun for you guys to look at!

I also included some pics of our time at Matt's parent's while we were down there as well as a few pics of Merrae and my Aunt Elaine, my mother's sister.

New Years Resolution #1

Right now our New Years resolution according to Matt is to eat all our left-overs! That cracks me up! We are bad about not doing so. So far so good! Tonight we both ate left-overs.

Christmas with the Stevens

Here are the pics from Christmas at Meredith's brother's. The previous post had pics from the Coleman's if you haven't seen those! We had a great time. John, Mer's brother, and Ashley, sister-in-law, hosted us and did all the cooking. Their newly renovated home is so beautiful and festive. Thank you for so graciously hosting us John and Ashley! Again, click on "View all images" to see the captions.

Christmas at the Coleman's

It's been a long time since we posted! It has been a busy time of year. We headed to Houston to visit both families. We didn't leave until Christmas Eve around 8:30 p.m. because Matt helped with the service at church that night. It was a great service showing the birth of Christ as well as his crucifixion. Matt did some video work for it. When the actors were up on stage, he did the backdrop as a video. So when Mary and Joseph were traveling, his video was a dark sky night with the stars and moon. During the worship he had video behind the words of the songs showing different images to help bring you into worship. It was a very unique service and I've never been to anything like it before. I loved it! Matt will be possibly editing some footage of the entire service and if he does, I'll post it so you can see it.

We, as usual, went back and forth from each of our families. It's nice that both of our families live close by. We spent Christmas Day at Matt's parents with his family and then the day after Christmas we were at my brother's with my family. We stayed at my mom's for a few days after that and then we headed back to Matt's parent's for a few days.

I'm including a slide show from Christmas at the Coleman's. My next post will be a slide show from Christmas at my brother's. Click on "View all images" to see captions.