Busy Busy

With this being the last week before school starts, we've got a lot going on as we try to fit in last minute hang-out time with the students before they're tied up with school and extra-curriculars. One of the best parts of all this is that it's forced me to clean our home and keep it that way.

Summer weather finally arrived in Oregon in August, so a lot of our time has been spent outside. Last Sunday, we went to 2 cook-outs in one day. That meant no cooking all day and lots of delicious free food! I'll take that any day.

Tuesday night we had our high school swimming party at this AMAZING house:

Tonight we'll host our young adult small group at our apartment since the usual hosts are out of town. They're also about 7 months pregnant with twins, so we're praying about finding a new location to meet beginning soon. I'm very torn about whether we are able to host or not. I love having people over and my apartment will be cleaner this way, but with all the youth group activities we're already involved in, we're trying to decide if it will be too much to take on.

Tomorrow night we're having a couple over for dinner and then we're all going to watch Inception again. The husband is on staff at the church and works with Kory, so we were visiting with them at a church event recently and all decided we wanted to see that movie again because it is THAT incredible. It's worth watching many times.

Saturday, I have two baby showers to attend. One is for the daughter of one of my co-workers and the other is for our small group friends who are expecting twins. I have bought diapers and wipes for both of them because apparently the new trend is to ask people to bring those and then they enter you in a drawing to win prizes. The number of entries you get is based on the number of diapers/wipes that you bring. Then, you're supposed to bring a gift on top of that...very tricky, I tell ya! After seeing the price of diapers recently, I totally understand the need for other people to buy diapers for you. Wow they're expensive!

Sunday, we'll have the High Schooler's over to our apartment for dinner and Bible Study. We did this two weeks ago and had 25 people to fit in our little apartment! It was insane, and awesome at the same time. Here you can see all the people crammed into our living room...there are even a few people beside and behind me when I took the picture that you can't see here.

Redeemer's just purchased a new building for the youth group, so hopefully in a few weeks they'll be meeting there for youth group activities. I love having kids over, but the lingering stench of that many sweaty teens was a bit much for me to handle. All the Scentsy in the world can't overpower that smell!

Honeymoon Days 1 & 2

So a few months ago, when I returned from my honeymoon, I promised my dear friend Rachel that I would post detailed blog posts about each of our stops...I have been waiting until we had fast, reliable internet at home to do these posts and we finally have that, so I'll get started on these honeymoon recaps now.

The morning after the wedding (Sunday May 29th) we woke up at 4:00 a.m. to get to the airport and start our journey to Miami (after arriving at the hotel after midnight the night before). With the wedding over, I finally lost my adrenaline I'd been running on for the past week and was totally and completely exhausted this day. I could hardly stay awake in the El Paso Airport long enough to get boarded on the plane. I'm pretty sure we both sat down on the plane and went to sleep within 2 minutes, after taking a picture for the blog, of course. We were pretty much out until we arrived in Miami at 1:30 p.m.

When we arrived in Miami, there was a man from Carnival waiting at our gate to escort us to our bus outside. I'm not sure why we got the VIP treatment, but this guy carried our bags for us and when we got outside to the bus, there were probably 50 people waiting outside in the heat and they took us to the front and loaded our luggage and allowed us to get on the bus before they even let anyone else check-in. I booked our tickets for the transfer from the airport to the cruise ship a month or two ahead of time, but surely I'm not the only person who did that? Anyhow, it was a great start to the week of relaxation and fun!
 
When we first got on the ship and found our room, we were surprised by how small it was and were afraid that the lack of window would make it too dark and not fun to be in the room. We ended up booking a room without a window because someone suggested it would help with sea sickness. We left the room to walk around the ship and see what was going on.

Waiting for the boat to take off

Shortly thereafter, we sailed out of Miami and we hung out on the deck for a while before heading to dinner. The warm weather was SO nice after 7 months of rain in Oregon!

We went to a show that evening after dinner and it was so corny, we didn't stay long at all. We didn't even make it a seat actually, we stood there for a few minutes and quickly decided we had no interest in staying there for an hour or however much time was left.
 
We had an early morning excursion the next day and I was completely exhausted and wanting to go to bed early. I held out until 9:00 p.m. and could not keep my eyes open any longer. Kory went to the deck to watch Despicable Me and to regret the fact that he had married the most boring woman in the world!

However, that small dark room was JUST what I needed. I slept 13 hours that night and woke up the next day feeling amazing!! Monday was our first day at sea and we had a very relaxing day. We ordered room service, laid out on the deck, played in the pool, ate way too much at all the buffets, watched a movie in our room, ate some more ice cream and I know there was a lengthy nap in there somewhere also. It was such a perfect day!

Camping Day 2B

After we left the beach Saturday afternoon, we decided to drive about 1/4 mile to get back into town and see the sights of Ocean Shores. We hit up the first tourist shop we saw and filled up on delicious salt water taffy. After pondering which hilariously bad souvenir to buy, we decided our money was better spent basically anywhere else in the world.

Entrance to Sharky's

We had driven by Sharky's a few times and I was really pushing for us to eat dinner there Saturday night. It would have been a great idea, had Sharky's actually been a restaurant. It turned out to be just another tourist shop, so of course we ventured inside. These shark masks were pretty great and I'm fairly certain a few small children wanted to try them on but we were hogging all the masks and having too much fun taking pictures. 

The next items we found are truly disturbing. These are...baby sharks. Real ones. And, NO, I don't know why on Earth anyone would ever buy one. Maybe for dissection/teaching purposes?! I don't know...it's all I can think of. Anyhow, it was weird...and not cool enough to pay twenty-something dollars to buy one.

After leaving Sharky's, we found a few more shops and wondered around through the town. We spotted a Christian bookstore called "Mustard Seeds of Faith" (or something like that...) and decided to check out the goods. Oh my word, I am fairly certain less than 1% of those books were written during my lifetime. I considered purchasing the book pictured below, but again decided the joke wasn't worth the money I'd spend.

I did buy Kory a Holy Bible Crosswords book that cost me $0.81 because we've both really been loving Crossword Puzzles lately, but once I got it home I realized it was all King James Version and SUPER hard. Plus, a lot of the clues are someone's name and the clue reads something like "And the LORD said to M______h ..." so I'm pretty sure we aren't going to be having much fun with this book after all.

Saturday's dinner was an integral part of the "Weekend of Disappointment". Most every restaurant we saw looked pretty sketchy but we finally found one that looked like a winner. We had outdoor patio seating, which was great because the weather was in the upper 70's and perfect. However, the 3 of us immediately saw they served breakfast all day and were very excited to have breakfast for dinner.

The cook came out to see if we had questions and let us know they weren't serving all of the menu that night and breakfast was one of the things they wouldn't be serving. So, we picked alternate meals only to be told by the waitress that only burgers, sandwiches, salads and appetizers were available that night. We all found a yummy Panini sandwich that we wanted to try so we each ordered that. When the waitress turned our order in, she found out he (the cook) was only doing burgers, not sandwiches. So now we were all supposed to find a burger we wanted and that didn't sound good to any of us.

In the meantime, we overheard the cook (a male in his early 20's) ask his boss if he could make us a free plate of bruschetta (sp?). We were planning to order this already, but if he was going to give it to us for free, we weren't going to object. However, we really wanted to leave the restaurant and go eat dinner somewhere else by this time and it was getting tricky. We didn't feel like we could take the free appetizer and water and then leave without getting dinner. I think this guy was pretty desperate for female attention because when we said we didn't really find anything else we wanted, he agreed to make sandwiches for us.

He had turned off his machine to make Panini's however, so he asked if we minded if he just grilled them. At this point, we were starving so we told him that was fine. Basically, we each ended up with a $10 grilled cheese sandwich! It was a bit ridiculous, but the clam chowder and spinach/strawberry/bacon salad we all shared was delicious and made up for the terrible service experience.

We swung by the beach and got to watch the sun set there so that was beautiful, of course.

After dinner, we made a couple stops to get ice cream, firewood and ice and head back to the campsite for the evening. Oh, I must mention this disgusting flavor of ice cream they were serving. Maybe other places serve this, but it's the first time I've ever seen it. It was called "Everything" and it's literally the leftovers from every other type of ice cream all thrown together in a bucket. Ew. Ew. Ew! Strawberry cheesecake, on the other hand, was yummy!

We spent hours chatting around the fire that night. We told hilarious embarrassing stories on ourselves, opened up about real struggles in our lives, talked about our husbands (in a positive way) and agreed that they'd never spend so much time talking about us on a guys camping trip. It was so wonderful. I miss girl talk with friends like this. I am making friends here in Oregon and even have quite a few close to my age that are in my small group from Redeemer's, but there's just something special about college friends.

The weekend wasn't quite over, so soon I'll wrap up our Sunday adventure at the beach which involved getting a car stuck in the sand and refusing to seek help from a male to get out of it.

Camping Day 2A

Saturday morning we slept in until about 8:30 or so...probably the latest I've slept while camping ever. Those clouds came in handy as they blocked the early morning sun for us. When Jessica and I got out of the tent, Allison already had a fire going for us. Talk about good service!

After breakfast, we sat around the campfire talking, reading books/magazines and snacking on powdered donuts all morning. It was wonderful! I always appreciate time to just sit and do nothing and have no expectations of my time. Allison made us lunch (corn on the cob and baked potatoes over the fire--delicious!) and then we finally changed clothes and got ready to head to town/the beach.

We drove to the beach after lunch and it was still cloudy, but little bits of sun were starting to peek through the clouds. The rest of these pictures were taken on my iPhone while walking so the quality is terrible, but hopefully you can at least get an idea of what I'm talking about here.

There were a lot of crazy things happening in this town! First of all, apparently you could rent these 4 person bicycles and ride them all over town. I first thought you could get someone else to pedal you around but then quickly realized you all had to pedal to make the bike work. Pretty much everyone on a bike thought it was a great idea to go on the beach and in the sand. So, of course, pretty much everyone on these bikes got stuck and couldn't make the bike go and were in the road holding up traffic. It was not a great situation.

These mopeds (I think that's what they are?) were also available for rent in Ocean Shores. The main problem with that is that you did not have to have a driver's license to rent them. We saw children around age 10 on one by themselves. So these people were also falling off their moped/scooter things and almost crashing and hitting cars/pedestrians. There were way too many close calls and I was certain we were going to see a major wreck as a result of these things. Thankfully we never witnessed it, but that's not to say it didn't happen.

Probably the most bizarre thing of the day was that this beach is also a parking lot. What I mean is that everyone drives out to the beach and then parks right on the beach. Like pretty close to the water and right where you would want to relax and enjoy the sand. It's very weird. We had to walk quite a ways to get away from the cars and find a place to set up our chairs.

The best entertainment of the day was all the kites being flown everywhere. There were some really cool ones (jets/planes, Buzz Lightyear, Jellyfish, etc.) but of course I have no pictures of those. (Side note: the reason I don't have good pictures on my camera is because I gave it to Kory to take to church camp.) However, here are some kites so you can imagine we're in our lawn chairs on the beach, feet in the sand, books in hand...it was a wonderful afternoon!

Since Saturday was quite eventful, I've broken up this post into 2 segments. Stay tuned for Part B! I know you can hardly stand the anticipation.

Camping Day 1

I interrupt this wedding coverage to bring you an update of my super fun girls camping weekend!

I went camping in Ocean Shores, Washington this past weekend with two of my Northwest/Texas friends, Jessica and Allison. Jessica and I went to college together and Allison and I grew up going to church camp together. Allison also married a guy who I went to LCU with and who was the youth minister at my home church for a couple years, so we're all very connected!

Anyhow, Jessica now lives in Portland and Allison lives in Seattle, so it's great having them up here in the Pacific Northwest with me! Originally, this was supposed to be a trip with all of our husbands, but youth ministers get very little time off during the summer so it evolved into a girls trip.

We nicknamed this the "Weekend of Disappointments" by Friday evening, but it was still SO much fun! There were a lot of things that went wrong or didn't turn out like we hoped, but we made the best of it. After all, being together was the real goal and that turned out great!

Headed out the door with my huge pack...and crazy smile.

I took off work Friday and drove to Portland Friday morning to meet Jessica and head north to WA. We arrived in Ocean Shores about 4:30 and it was overcast and pretty cool. Not exactly the beach weekend we'd hoped for, but at least we were on vacation.

As soon as we got to the campsite and checked in, we realized we got the short end of the stick when it came to campsites. Some of the sites around us had entire RV's parked in them with 2 tents set up. This is what ours looked like:

Worst Campsite Ever

What you see here is a VERY small space that has been used as a course for off-roading, most likely by teenage boys. So this is the space we have to set up camp and live for the weekend. We weren't too thrilled about it so we headed back to the ranger station to find out why we had not only the smallest site ever but also one covered in mud. Did I mention that all the sites cost the exact same amount?

Well, Mr. Ranger informed us they were completely sold out and there weren't any other sites available. He did offer to get a tractor and drag the picnic table out of there for us. I let him know we probably didn't need any more tire tracks and mud, so we'd just leave the table alone and set up our tent right beside it on the only piece of flat land with grass available.

We checked back later to see if anyone had cancelled and Mr. Ranger's friend suggested we bring a tractor in to level the ground out. What is it with these people and tractors?? My guess is they got a new toy and they really wanted to use it. This was also the time we found out the entire campgrounds had been built on a wetlands/swamp area and that by modern standards, it would never pass code to be built. Mr. Ranger told us they never should have been built back in the 1960's...so have a nice stay! Weirdo.

Though we were never officially told so, we decided it was only fair that we didn't have to pay for parking since our campsite was so awful. So, we didn't pay and they didn't ask us to. We assume that means they agreed.

Jessica and I set up camp and then headed to see Ocean Shores and the beach. I thought we were camping on the beach before arriving, so I was initially disappointed to find out we'd have to drive a few miles to the beach. I would later be very grateful for this distance...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The actual town of Ocean Shores seems to be still stuck in the 1970's. The buildings have clearly not changed in 40 years and the whole place seems very retro/horror movie-esque/just plain weird. It's hard to describe and clearly I'm not doing a great job of it here. Anyway, it was not the cute little tourist trap we'd hoped for. It was a tourist trap alright, just a pretty sorry one.  I have much to say about the beach, but it's better described with pictures, so I'll wait for the pictures that come with Day 2 to explain.

After picking up some firewood, we headed back to camp to make dinner (fajitas! yum) and wait for Allison to arrive. She had worked that afternoon, so she made it to camp about 9:00. This is probably a good time to mention that Ally is almost 7 months pregnant and was camping. As in sleeping on the ground. She's amazing!

After Allison arrived at camp, we made a fire (big feeling of accomplishment! It was a first for all of us), ate some s'mores, talked until way past quiet hours and then finally went to bed many hours later than usual. All in all, a successful first day.

Coming up next...mummified baby sharks, beach front parking and a whole lot of doing nothing.

Dessert Buffet

One of my favorite parts of planning the wedding was thinking about this dessert bar! I spent many hours dreaming of the tasty goodness that would be found here. However, the reality was that I got one bite of my wedding cake at the reception and nothing else!! I know! More to come on that later. 

Anyhow, hopefully everyone else enjoyed these yummy treats at the wedding. Warning: you will probably be hungry after looking at these photos. At least I know I am right now!

This cake topper is one I found online and then got someone on easy to make for me. I think it turned out SO cute and I'm going to have to find a permanent place for it in our home!

Ceremony Reading #2

The Blessing of the Hands (read right before we exchanged rings)

"These hands you are holding on your wedding day are the hands of your best friend, strong and full of love for you. These are the hands that will work alongside yours, as together you build your future. 

One of Kory's best friends, Kelly Futrell

These are the hands that will passionately love you and cherish you through the years. With a gentle touch, they will comfort you and hold you when fear or grief fills your soul. 

These are the hands that will countless times wipe the tears from your eyes; tears of sorrow, and tears of joy. These are the hands that will tenderly hold your children. 

These are the hands that will help you to hold your family as one. These are the hands that will give you strength when you need it. And lastly, these are the hands that even when wrinkled and aged, will still be reaching for yours, still giving you the same unspoken tenderness with just a touch."