A Wedding on our Farm

Our friends’ wedding was absolutely beautiful this past Saturday.

I made the wooden signs on Friday and they turned out pretty great, but unfortunately they ended up not needing them after all. Any body want/need three rustic wooden signs that say wedding? I’ll give them to you if you pay shipping. Otherwise, they’re headed for the trash because it will be at least 30 years before our daughter gets married (based on when her daddy will probably let her start dating) and no sense storing them for that long!

Here are some pictures from the happy day:

 

This is where the tent was going to go. We took out a lot of scrub trees, dried them, burned them and bulldozed it level to make way for things.

This is that same area on the day of the wedding. Looks so different. 

The scrub trees ran all the way back to the wood line. I think it was about 7 huge piles of brush we burned. Didn’t they have a gorgeous sky on their wedding day?

This is the parking area a few weeks ago.

This is the parking area on the wedding day. We brought in too many piles of woodchips to count.

 

Inside the tent.

The bride’s aunt made the delicious cakes.

The groom’s mother made all the centerpieces and favors. I loved their color choice of deep purple.

Some friends from church.

 

More friends from church.

 

Handsome hubby and me. He’s seen this dress come full cycle now. I wore it on our first date over 7 years ago. I weighed the same then that I do now at 7.5 months pregnant. Scary! In hindsight I should have worn a necklace but I was running late because I got sidetracked crafting all morning, and of course I ran out of foundation that day too.

 

I love the color of the soybean field against the bride and her bridesmaid.

 

The grooms’ kids. His oldest daughter on the left, middle child on the right and his son in the back right (not looking).

   

The Mr. & Mrs. waiting to be introduced. I’m not surprised at all that he must have done something funny to have her crackin’ up.

It was a great celebration. The reception started at 3pm. We left around 8pm and we hear from some of our friends that it ran well past 10:30pm. They sure knew how to party!

An Update on Sonja

I wrote about my friend, Sonja, and her battle with cancer here. She is still bravely fighting and leaning on our Lord and Savior.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t seen her since she moved from the East Coast a few years ago because each time hubby & I are in town working on the house, she either was recovering from surgery and I was sick and couldn’t be around her or she was out of town. However, I did get the most recent update this past Wednesday and wanted to share for those of you who may be praying for her.

She has gone through the chemo treatment and unfortunately, it did not work. She also had radiation treatment that had no effect either. About a month and a half ago she had a mastectomy. This next week she goes in for a complete hysterectomy because they discovered a lump in her uterus. In addition, they learned that the cancer has eaten a hole through her spine causing it to collapse and putting her at risk for paralysis from a simple trip or fall.

But, through it all, she remains POSITIVE and strong in her faith in GOD. They’re still giving her 3-5% chance of living another couple years. Her daughter has started her senior year of high school and is the Senior Editor of her yearbook and the President of the Christian club at her school so I was happy to hear how she’s doing.

In addition for continued prayer for healing for Sonja and wisdom for the doctors as they treat her cancer, she is desperately in need of prayer for her marriage.

She recently discovered some things that have been occurring for all but the first 5 months of her marriage and there are other much more serious spousal issues (that make me so livid) I can’t disclose here, but she feels like she’s between a rock and a hard place because she depends on her husband’s insurance for her cancer treatment. She is an Air Force veteran so that’s a possibility, but all these are decisions she shouldn’t even have to be considering at this point. Without being able to reveal anything more, please just pray for comfort, guidance, encouragement, etc as she makes some tough decisions over the next couple weeks.

I’ll keep you updated as I know more.

Cold Feet

This is my footwear choice for today. Obviously I forgot to check the forecast before I got dressed:

Hopefully the SNOW will hold off until I get home and can put on some socks and slippers.

On a much happier (and warmer) note...we're having our wonderful new (and soon to be moving out of state...boo!) friends over for dinner tonight. Can't wait!

What's on the menu?

Chicken with Grapes and Couscous

Roasted Asparagus

Spinach Salad with Toasted Pecans, Craisins, Apples & Goat Cheese
Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Filling and Chocolate Ganache

It's going to be an AWESOME night! And tomorrow is even more fun because hubby and I are travelling to Havre de Grace, MD for the first time to hang out with another great girlfriend and met her new man. Fun times!

A Fabulous Day!

I hope you all are having the same glorious weather we're having here. I think the mid to upper 70s is my absolute favorite temp. Hubby and I needed some cheering up today because we found out that our good friends from church (who we just really got to know the beginning of this month) are moving in a couple weeks...to Lexington, KY :( We are so sad!

I think God sent us this glorious weather today to lift our spirits. I spent some time collecting different brown and green themed nature items to make a mantlescape this weekend for spring so hopefully I'll have something to post from that this Tuesday.

Oh, and I made the Pioneer Woman's pizza dough last night for dinner. It is GOOD! If you haven't tried it yet and you regularly make pizza at home, I suggest giving it a whirl. It's super easy to put together and good tasting too.

Off to enjoy more gorgeous weather and get ready for dinner with friends.

Another Fabulous (but unproductive) Weekend

Hubs & I had the BEST time Friday night! We had dinner at the home of some new friends from church, and I knew she and I would get along as soon as she served us PW's lasagna. As the 5 hours of laughs rolled on, we discovered just how scary it is how similar our husbands are. Definitely think we have found some new quality, and hopefully life-long, friends. We're looking forward to many more nights of laughter in the future.

Saturday we made a trek out to PA to tour a modular home factory. It's amazing how fast those homes are built (6 days in the factory; about 3-6 months from start to finish) and how well-made they are. We're hoping to meet with a builder this week to see if our lot is conducive to modular home building and then to get pricing. It's so exciting! On the way home from that we stopped by some family friends of hub's family and had a great conversation and meal with them. It was a long day (left house by 10am and didn't get back until after 9pm), but a very fun one.

Sunday was another awesome morning with everyone at church (can I just say again how much we're LOVING our new church family!) and then a fun-filled afternoon 4-wheeling around the property. We got a little lot of mud on us, but that's half the fun. Can't wait until it dries out and we can go exploring in the woods instead of just the fields.

Hope you all had great weekends too.

This week my goals are to tackle my house. Our busy lives lately have resulted in one messy bedroom and bathroom, PILES of paperwork to be filed (and tax forms to be located so we can file those), and a couple baskets of clean laundry that have been waiting to be put away for a couple weeks now. We've banned TV during the week, so hopefully we'll get back to being productive around this joint!

My Tiresome, but Fun Weekend

It all started Thursday with an awesome night at with my hubby to celebrate my 29th. Dinner at my favorite Mexican joint was just as yummy as I remembered. I even got a birthday cheesecake complete with candle and song from our waiter and guacamole maker. It was a lot of fun! After that it was off to Lincoln Center to see South Pacific. I had heard of this musical but didn't know the story line at all. Let me just say, I LOVED it! The only problem is that now I can't decide if I rank it before or after My Fair Lady in terms of my favorite musical of all time.

Friday night hubby and I were planning to go to a garden expo. My hubby LOVES gardening (thank goodness because I don't have a green thumb at all) and lately has really gotten in growing things from seeds in a little greenhouse. For Valentine's Day I bought him a magazine all about that subject and some packets of seeds. He was in heaven. When I heard about the garden expo I thought it'd be right up his alley. But, it was over an hour away and by the time I got home from work we were both pooped so we decided to pig out on cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory (red velvet for me; caramel pecan turtle for him) while watching our tivoed olympics instead.

Saturday was another fun, but long day. In the morning I scrambled to finish up my nephew's birthday gift so I could get it in the mail in time for his 1st birthday (where has the time gone little Caleb?) this coming weekend (pictures to follow tomorrow) and then in the afternoon hubby and I met up with some of his clients to tour a home expo. We were expecting there to be different presenters with classes and diy tips as well as tables of vendors, but it ended up being just vendors. Don't really understand why you have to pay to go and pick up information from people when you could have found it for free on the internet. Guess we know not to go next time. But, we did meet a few perspective modular home builders that we're looking into for the guest house on the land.

Saturday evening one of hubby's college buddies hosted us for a delicious homecooked dinner and UFC fight night so it was back to the city we went. Only problem is that on the fights didn't start until 10pm EST time and hubby and I had to be up at 6:30am the next morning to head off to church. But, it was such a great time that it was worth getting only 3 hours of sleep!

Sunday was a fantastic day because the church plant we volunteer with and attend officially launched! It's so exciting to see how God is already working in this body and the friendships we're already forming with the people there. We can't wait to grow more with this body of believers. After church we made some delicious homemade pizza and crashed for a few hours before getting up to take hubby to the airport for a business trip.

It was an exhausting but very fun weekend. Now if I could just get caught up on my sleep....

I Love My Followers & Commenters

Just wanted to send a big thank you to those of you who follow this blog and take the time to leave comments. There have been so many times where I wanted to reply to your comments, but there are a few things that have often prohibited this.

The first matter is this is a “semi-anonymous” blog in which, per my hubby’s request, I don’t use my last name and just post the general area of the country where I live. In fact, it was only recently that my hubby give me permission to no longer block his face out of photos.

There’s one tiny problem, though. The only e-mail addresses I have are linked to where I work (which would reveal where I live) or have my full name in them (which would obviously reveal my last name). I know you can easily set up other e-mail addresses, but I need to get the password info from my hubby to add another e-mail account that would not have my last name in it and would work seamlessly with my Outlook. I just received my laptop back with a full upgrade so hopefully this weekend, this issue will be resolved and I’ll have a “semi-anonymous” e-mail address.

The second matter is that often I want to reply directly to a particular commenter, but there is no e-mail address associated with their blogger profile. Personally, I don’t go back and check the comment section of a blog once I leave a comment, so if the author was to respond there, I would never see it and thus I don’t like to respond via the comment area. Plus, I like e-mail because then it’s possible to carry on the conversation further if interested.

So, if you’d like to start receiving replies to your comments (which I would love to be able to do!), please either leave an e-mail address where I can reach you in your comment (you can use (at) instead of @ and (dot) instead of . to cut down on spammers) or go to your blogger profile and under the “Privacy” section, check the box that says “show my email address”. This way, when you leave a comment, instead of saying “no-reply@blogger.com” it should show me your e-mail address.

Also, I currently only have time to read blogs in my downtime at work, but now that I have my laptop back, I’m going to try to make a more concerted effort to visit all of your blogs at least once a week.

Lastly, as a way to thank all of my followers/commenters, I’ll be having a giveaway shortly. Nothing grand, but something as a way to say thank you for joining me in this journey called life.

News From a Dear Friend

Today I heard from my dear friend, Sonja.

We met in 2006 when she was looking for a place to live out east. She and her daughter had moved from Colorado to be closer to her fiancee who lived near Philadelphia. She was also a Christian. In fact, she was an answer to a prayer that I didn't even know I prayed. We roomed together for the year before I got married and in fact the four of us (adding my hubby in the mix) lived together for a couple of months after we got married until her wedding. Sonja became like an older sister to me. Us two Colorado girls had grand times out here on the east coast.

However, shortly after she got married, her hubby got transferred to Chicago and we were sad to part ways. A few months later, hubby and I bought the house we're remodeling in a city a few hours drive from Chicago. Well, a few weeks after that, she called to let me know that her hubby now got transferred to the same city where we bought the house! Does God work in awesome ways or what? Once again we would be able to have our "sister" times and raise our children together like we always wanted. We were super excited and anxious for hubby and I to move there full-time.

We took this picture the day before my wedding in October 2007. We were hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park and enjoying a fabulous day back in our home state.

This picture was taking in January 2008 at Sonja's wedding in Costa Rica. Her daughter, Jamie, and I were the bridesmaids. I was so happy to be there to witness Sonja marrying the man she had been waiting for for many years. She had Jamie at 19 from a prior marriage while she was in the Air Force and due to some personal reasons, ended up raising Jamie as a single mom for the next 14 years or so.

This past year Sonja and I lost touch for various reasons and a couple days ago, God laid it on both our hearts to contact the other. She sent me a text message, but I never received it because I don't have text messaging on my phone. I sent her an e-mail a couple days ago and when I didn't get a response, I figured I must have the wrong address.

Well, today as I was heating up my lunch, my cell rang and it was a number I didn't recognize. I answered it anyway (which I normally never do because I'm cheap and don't want to waste minutes!) and I'm sure glad I did because it was Sonja.

We settled things between us and then she broke the news. I thought she was going to say she was pregnant and I was going to be very happy for her but sad at the same time because we wanted to be pregnant together. At this point, I'd gladly take the news that she's pregnant because the news she shared with me is scary.

Sonja has Stage 4 CANCER.

Her chances are 3-5%.

It started in her breasts and metastasized to her lymph nodes and bones.

Barring a miracle from God, Sonja won't be on this earth much longer.

But, SHE BELIEVES IN MIRACLES and so do I.

Her outlook is so positive right now as she is going through radiation and chemo. Next week she is shaving her hair and starting to wear a wig. She is trusting in our Lord to heal her and use her healing as a witness of His strength and power. She'll never be able to carry children again, but she and her hubby were undergoing fertility treatment and they do have one embryo waiting to be carried by a surrogate once Sonja wins this battle.

She has so much to live for and yet at age 35 she's been given a death sentence from cancer. I definitely do not understand the ways of the Lord, but I know his ways are good. I know he can heal. I know he can work miracles. We need a miracle now.

If you feel so inclined, please be praying for Sonja. She's in a lot of pain right now since it's in her bones. Please be praying for her daughter, Jamie. She's a junior in high school. Please be praying for her husband of less than 2 years. Please be praying for her mom, who already lost her other child to cancer at age 19. Most of all, please be praying for a MIRACLE and that more people would come to know Christ as their Savior as a result of Sonja's cancer.

This photo is of Sonja and her husband and daughter. It too was taken in October 2007. We now know that they're pretty sure she had the cancer long before this photo was ever taken.

Oh, and remember, NOTHING is more important than friendship and love. Never go a day, let alone a whole year, without letting those who are important to you know you love them and care for them.

I'm back (for now anyway...)

So 2009 isn't shaping up to be a good blogging year so far, but hopefully we'll get better as time moves on.

Hubby & I travelled to Colorado to spend time with my family for Christmas. We had the opportunity to enjoy Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas breakfast with his family before we left on a jet plane. Besides the 4 kids constantly screaming in French behind us and kicking the back of our seat, it was a pretty smooth flight.

My mom's dad and his wife had already arrived in town by the time we got there so we had a couple days of just my parents, us and them until my nephew, Braden, and his parents (love ya too guys...but let's be honest you know we all are dying to see Braden!) arrived on Saturday night the 27th. Shortly after they got to our house from the airport, my mom received a call on her cellphone that brought some very devastating news. The husband and father of our very, very dear family friends was in a serious accident and death was imminent. We called my brother and had him and his girlfriend drive over to the hospital because they were right in the area, and then my sister, parents and I started out on the 2 hour drive north. We got to the hospital around 10:30pm or so and finally got the story.

Jim (who's only a year older than my dad) was ice fishing with their second oldest, Adam (who's my sister's age). It was really windy so they decided to pack up and call it a day. Adam had taken the first load to the truck and turned to go get more when he saw his dad lying flat on his back on the ice further from the truck. He thinks what happened was that some of their gear got blown away by the wind and Jim went after it only to slip and fall flat on his back, fracturing the back of his skull on the ice. This and the combination of being on blood thinner for his heart caused a bleeding on the brain and uncontrollably hemmoraghing of the brain stem. Due to the conditions and remote location, it took over three hours to get him to the emergency room. He never woke up again, but was put on life support in hopes that he would. From the time he was brought in and through several tests later, there was never any brain activity so the doctor finally pronounced him dead around noon on Sunday. They hoped to donate his organs, but when they did the autopsy they discovered that his spleen was three times the normal size, so they were only able to donate his corneas.

It's such a freak accident and so hard to believe Jim's gone. My heart breaks for his wife Linda (one of my mom's best friends), and their children Justin (27) and his new wife Vale (we just went to their wedding the end of October), Adam (25), Larissa (21), and Evan (18 and a senior in high school). The Hirt's aren't just friends...they're family. We grew up together from the time Justin & I were 1 and 2 years old, having sleepovers at each others houses. I can't even begin to fathom the loss and grief they're experiencing right now.

Back (L to R): Evan, Jim, Justin, Adam
Front (L to R): Justin's wife Vale, Linda, Larissa

Jim was an amazing man. A man after God's own heart who wasn't afraid to demonstrate that love to those around him. In the short time he was on earth, he made more of an impact than many people who live much longer than him ever will. We don't understand why God called him home at this time, but we can rest knowing that it's all part of God's perfect plan and that Jim is with his Heavenly Father.

I leave tomorrow to fly back to Colorado for the memorial service on Saturday and will be back sometime next week. If you remember, please keep the Hirt family in your prayers.

If you want to read more about Jim from his wife and children's perspectives, check out the blog they started in his honor here.

For now...

read this blog and please pray for this family.

I will update more when I return from spending time with my family in Colorado on Monday.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Out of Town...Again

This weekend we're on our way to Colorado for a wedding of one of our lifelong friends. His family was one of the first we met when my parents moved from Michigan to Colorado when I was one and a half, and we've been friends ever since.

Here are a couple pictures of me and him from back in the days when I think our parents were still dreaming that maybe two of their kids would marry each other (they have boys where we have girls and vice versa), but alas never happened.

Congrats Justin & Vale! Looking forward to celebrating with you guys!