ASM Senior Float Trip

Nathan and I have survived our first trip with some of our ASM students! Friday evening we loaded up the church bus with 11 of our seniors from the student ministry, along with a few sponsors, and headed to Hardy, Arkansas to float the Spring River. We were so excited about taking this group because they are seriously an amazing group of kids. I have watched several of these seniors grow up for many years. When some of these girls came into the youth group in 7th grade, I had the opportunity of leading their small group. It was such a blessing to have lead them then and to be with them now as they prepare to go through their senior year and graduate high school soon! 

We worried a little bit about the hot weather in the forecast, but God gave us an absolutely beautiful day out on the river with a cool breeze and even cooler water! The float was a success with no injuries, but a few canoe flips. Those senior boys enjoyed seeing who they could get in the water!

Loaded up and ready to hit the road!

The cool tanks ended up running a little small, so we enjoyed seeing the guys' reactions to them.

Missing a few who couldn't make the trip, but this is such a great group! I am thrilled to see how God uses them this year.

Our fearless leader :)

Courtney and Thomas came along for the trip, too.

The senior girls with Courtney and I!

Caleb and Paul were the canoe flippers for the day, thought I think they flipped more than anyone else!

Besties looking like grumpy old men!

One of the many canoe fights.

Nick feeling victorious after he and Allison dominated the river.

Kaitlyn, Addie, Nick and Allison

Madelyn and Sarah protected the ice chest and themselves from getting flipped!

Love these girls! We spent quite a bit of time watching the guys try to master a rope swing off of a huge tree. Videos to come!

He wanted to take in the full canoeing experience :)

It was such a beautiful day!

Along the river we found a huge tree with a rope swing attached. Of course those adventurous guys wanted right out to try. It took them a while to figure out how to handle it, while Katelyn jumped right out and nailed it! Emily also faced her fears and kept up with those boys!

Caleb was the first up to try.

Paul attempting..

Richard figured it out really fast!

I think Katelyn showed up all of the boys!

Proud of Emily--the rest of us girls were a little too scared.

Great fellowship with a great group! Thankful for the time we were able to spend with these seniors and looking forward to watching them serve and grow as they get ready for college this year.

It's Olympic Time!

Yesterday in my Random Mid-Week Thoughts post, I talked about my excitement for the Olympics. I'm not sure I really communicated the extent of my absolute love for the Olympics. In the last Olympics four years ago, I was in college and living with one of my best friends, Jordan. I decorated our house with red, white, and blue. Flags and beads and ribbons everywhere! I made everyone who watched the olympics with me wave a flag and wear beads and all! We ate Olympic cookies (special ordered from Ed's bakery) and watched every event, even into the wee hours of the morning! This year with all of the social media following the Olympics, I've kept up with the happenings even more! However, I was not planning to go all out and decorate our house because of the busyness that is our lives these days. I've been in literacy training all week and we are leaving this evening to take the seniors in our student ministry on a float trip, so I haven't had any time to decorate. 

BUT, I married the most amazing guy on the planet who knows me way too well and will not settle for a boring Olympic experience for his crazy wife. I came home from training today to find two sacks full of decorations, flags, a balloon, and a rather large Ed's bakery box full of Olympic cookies like I had ordered four years ago (Nathan said they knew what he was talking about when he ordered them--I guess not many people order these :)! We spent the afternoon decorating the house and getting pumped for the next two weeks!

Piper is even excited!

Aren't these so fun?!

My fourth of July wreath fits right in!

Of course, Piper will cheer on the USA too :)

We will be missing the opening ceremonies and some of the events tomorrow due to our float trip (which is going to be a blast!), but thankfully DVR was installed this morning and all will be well with my soul! Enjoy the Olympics, folks! 

Mid-Week Thoughts

So the summer is beginning to wind down. I can feel the days ticking by and the beginning of school getting closer. I am trying to get a head start on school year life before August hits so that I am not stressed down to the last second. However, my internal clock has decided to wait until this week to kick off, making it extremely hard to get up and around to be productive. Hopefully that won't last long :)

I've had all kinds of random thoughts/suggestions/needs running through my head this week, so I thought I would compile them in a catch-all post.

1. My brother is getting married in exactly 15 days! I cannot believe that it is already here. I am so excited that I get to not only be a sister on his special day, but also a bridesmaid! The wedding is in Dallas (where Jessica is from), so this is leaving me with a small predicament. I cannot do hair. I have no abilities to style my hair or anyone else's. This is why my hair always looks the same :) Being in Dallas, I don't know of any particular stylist to use for the big day, so I have been searching online for simple ways to do simple up-do's. Any hair pros out there have any suggestions?

Aren't they precious??? (Ivy Photography)

2. My mornings are always so rushed during the school year. I tend to sleep until the very last second, leaving little time for extra activities. When I started running back in the spring my morning got even more busy. At the same time, I HAVE to eat breakfast. I will literally fall out if I don't eat. I was so excited back in the spring to find this recipe for Oatmeal muffins that can be made in bulk and frozen for easy breakfasts! I know your first thought may be, "Oatmeal? Gross!" Trust me, these muffins are so good (my husband even likes the ones with chocolate chips!) , filling, and easy to warm up in the microwave for a breakfast on the go! They are very simple to make and are very nutritious. You can find the recipe over at Brenda's blog. I spent the evening making another batch of these last night in preparation for school starting soon!

3. My FAVORITE time of the year begins in exactly in a little over 24 hours! The Olympics!! I am a sold out fan to team USA and absolutely love to watch every event I can. In 2008 I was about to begin my sophomore year in college--seems like yesterday! I went all out for the Beijing Olympics: flags everywhere (even on the dog and in my hair), cookies from Ed's bakery with olympic rings on them, red white and blue on everything! This year will be even better! We visited London on our Europe trip last spring break, so it is so fun seeing landmarks on the olympic coverage that we've been to. I've also already started digging out my American decorations and DVR is being installed on Friday just for these amazing next two weeks! I am so impressed with NBC and their coverage of the games even before they have begun. For all you fellow Olympic fanatics, you can check out amazing videos, blogs, and photos of all of the London happenings at NBC. They're also tweeting lots of good updates from @NBColympics.

4. Is anyone into Geocaching? We spontaneously took some of the students last week after getting fro yo and I was amazed at the places these things were hidden! Who knew there was a little treasure in a light post behind Walgreens and a tree in the middle of the bike trail? It was quite fun hunting them down and I'm thinking we may need to try finding more in the future! (This may come off as a nerdy thought!)

5. Speaking of students, our new Junior high student pastor and his wife will be making their way to Conway this weekend! Stephen and Ashley Castleberry are awesome, awesome people who love the Lord and students. They are some of the most genuine people I've ever met and I am SO excited that they will be joining us at Antioch!

6. The youngest member of our family is going through her "terrible two's" right now. Our sweet, not so little dog, Piper, is stepping out a little and showing her personality these days. I never thought a dog could have a personality, but my goodness she sure knows how to talk back when we tell her to do something that she is not fond of! She's also starting to enjoy chewing, hiding under beds, refusing to go outside in the heat, and running us around like crazy! We love her to death, but my goodness, she knows which buttons to push!

Notice the stuffing of the dead toy all over the place???

7. Speaking of dogs, I was reminded recently of a very funny dog encounter I had with Jordan one time. My mom used to have a little white Maltese named Zoie. Zoie now lives with (and torments) our pastor and his family, but at one time she was one of Jordan's biggest enemies. Zoie was and still is a yappy dog who has more energy than any other living creature. We were dog sitting one night for my parents while they were out of town and Jordan decided she wanted to have a little fun with crazy little Zoie. So, we colored her hair hot pink. Now, common sense tells you that a dog with white hair is not going to take so well to pink hair dye. But we didn't really think about that. Long story short, we dyed Zoie pink, she hated it, the dye got in her eyes resulting in swollen shut eyes and a $100 vet bill for me and Jordan to pay. It took a while for the pink tint on her skin to go away and we felt pretty bad for putting her through such pain, but the pink fur was pretty funny for a few minutes!

We weren't real sure how to tell my mom...

8. Speaking of Jordan, her and her husband Marty will be celebrating their 2nd wedding anniversary on Tuesday, July 31st! I cannot believe that it has already been two years since we celebrated their wedding day! They were the first in our group of friends to tie the knot and now they have little Miss Morgan (who will also be 1 next month! So crazy!). I'm so thankful for their friendship and excited that they will be celebrating their second anniversary with so much joy!

I'm not sure why all of us white girls thought we could do the Thriller at the reception--I think we provided lots of laughs :)

And those are the random thoughts in my mind this week! :)

A New App and a New Recipe

I went to an iPAD in the classroom workshop today and made an AMAZING discovery. The class was obviously to help with using the iPAD at school, but we got off on sharing favorite apps and someone mentioned "Food on the Table". I had never heard of this app, but decided to see what it was all about! You have to get it right now! It is an amazing resource that links you with your nearest grocery store, connects the foods you like, aligns those foods with the sales going on this week, supplies you with recipes that include your favorite foods and sale items, AND makes a grocery list for you! Talk about a life saver! The cool thing about the recipes is that they only use 4-5 ingredients that are very common. 

After finding this app, I had planned to make a Mexican Stuffed Chicken Breast dinner, but was going to have to pick up a few items that we were out of. I got to thinking about the recipe and how I could adjust it using things I already had {I'm constantly trying to be thrifty!}. So, using the recipe I found on the Food on the Table app, I created my own recipe! Of course, it took a little thinking because of the picky eater who lives in my house. Luckily, he loved it! And when he loved it, I knew I had to share with all of you!

Italian Stuffed Chicken Breast Dinner

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Ingredients:

4 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts

1/2 cup Butter, divided

1/2 cup Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

1/2 Cup Shredded Parmesan Cheese

1/2 Italian Bread Crumbs (or regular bread crumbs)

2 Tablespoons of Zesty Italian Dressing Mix

1 Jar or Prego Spaghetti Sauce

Your Choice of Noodles

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 9x13 glass dish with Pam cooking spray.

2. Cut fat pieces off of chicken. You don't have to do this, but I don't like to eat the fatty pieces, so I always trim them off.

3. If you are using large chicken breasts, I would cut them in half. Then, use a meat tenderizer and pound the meat until flattened.

4. Melt half of the butter in a small bowl. Add mozzarella and parmesan cheese to the butter and stir together.

5. Place a spoonful of the cheese-butter mixture at the end of each piece of chicken. How much you put is really up to you!

5. Roll the chicken pieces up, tucking the cheese-butter mixture in as you go. Place the rolled up chicken pieces in your glass dish. I placed mine close together so that they would hold each other together.

6. Melt the other half of the butter in a small bowl. Add bread crumbs and zesty italian dressing mix. Stir together. Spread this mixture over the top of each chicken roll. I had to use my fingers to make sure it covered the entire top of each piece, but what's cooking if you don't get a little messy???

7. Poor jar of Prego spaghetti sauce around chicken breasts. Place a few spoonfuls of sauce on each breasts.

8. Top with parmesan cheese and stick it in the oven for one hour!

9. When there is about 15 minutes left for the chicken, boil your chosen type of noodles. I used wheat rigatoni noodles tonight, but any kind will work!

10. When the noodles have cooked and been drained, add a tablespoon of butter and several tablespoons of shredded parmesan noodles.

I was so excited that the first recipe I ever created turned out as a success! Hope you enjoy! :)

Jessica and Taylor's Wedding Shower

We are now midway through July and summer is starting to wind down for me! School prep is about go begin and summer relaxation will be gone. This means that a very big day in my family is coming up: My brother's wedding! Taylor and Jessica are getting married on August 10th in Dallas and we are all so excited that it is less than four weeks away! To celebrate, my aunts and I threw Jessica a bridal shower today for family and a few friends. We started planning this shower a couple of months ago and I knew right away that I wanted to try and pull out my inner designer to decorate for the occasion. Now, I am not very creative on my own, but thanks to Pinterest and other blogs I follow, I knew I could get some ideas and run with them. I had a blast over the last few weeks visiting flea markets and finding beautiful treasures that reminded me of Jessica. I wanted to reflect Jessica's personality in every way possible and I think I succeeded as best as I could! Jessica loves to be girly, but is also very simple. She loves tea pots and old heirlooms. She has an obsession with reading and loves old books. So, put it all together and you get a vintage tea party shower! I took lots of pictures to share the day with all of you!

The table that our guests saw right as they walked in the door. 

Guests wrote marriage advice for Jessica and Taylor on wooden spoons to make the Recipe for a Good Marriage!

I wish I had taken a picture of this area after all of the guests arrived--they were extremely blessed with MANY wonderful gifts for their apartment!

My aunts, mom, and grandmother did a fabulous job of putting together our snacks for the day!

This was my favorite piece out of all of the decorations!

This one runs a close second!

My mom bought the decorative plate from Etsy as a gift, but it was too cute not to use as a decoration too!

Yummy petifores from Ed's bakery!

My favorite tea cup that I found in my flea market shopping!

Another favorite tea cup! I think my own tea cup obsession has started...

The kitchen table decorations. I loved getting to incorporate some of the doilies that my grandmother used for years and years. They were beautiful additions!

I had tea pots and rose glasses everywhere I could set them :)

Mom and mimi make the BEST punch on the planet!

All of the decorations for the shower came from shopping through wonderful Flea Markets in Greenbrier. I would highly suggest these to anyone looking for good finds! They were filled with so many beautiful items and I will definitely be going back to add some pieces to my home and classroom! Here are the ones I visited:

Country Time Flea Market

Through the Years Flea Market

Midway Antiques and Fleas

Collector's Cove

I think she enjoyed her vintage tea party shower!

Jessica and her mom

Jessica's mom, Jessica, and my mom

Our moms are quite the goof balls!

I hate that this picture turned out blurry! Me, Jessica, my Aunt Donna, and Aunt Renee--The hostesses with the bride!

Guests filled out this "How well do you know the Bride and Groom?" sheet while we ate and chatted for a while. Then, I asked the same questions to Jessica to see if she could answer them in the same way that Taylor did before the shower. If she answered a question incorrectly, she had to put a large piece of bubble gum in her mouth! By the end of the game she had 8 pieces of gum in her little mouth! It definitely gave us a few laughs :)

The bride and all of the many presents loaded up and ready to be stored until the big day!

We had such a great day celebrating the upcoming marriage of my little brother to the love of his life. I am so thankful for Jessica and her family and excited to see all that God does in this wonderful new stage of life!