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.