Christian Women's Retreat

This past weekend, our Christian Women group from church went on a retreat to Camp ToKnowHim in Pisgah. It was nice to get away (even though I missed Zach, Daisy and Cosmo very much!), and spend time with friends. It was especially nice to not have to fix up and dress up the entire weekend!! (You can tell this from our pictures of me with my curly hair! haha) We had a great time of worship, singing and chatting with each other.

We arrived there on Friday, which was my and Amanda Shirey's birthday, and the girls all sang to us after our devotion that night. We had cake and then sang a lot of songs around the piano, which I loved! We stayed up talking for hours that night. On Saturday, we had two devotions by Janet O'Neal (who did a wonderful job!) and spent a lot of time in our small groups. We ended the night by having a Communion service and listening to Susan Downey sing while LaRae Thurman played the piano- both incredibly talented ladies.

Our main lesson for the weekend was to not expect so much of ourselves. Try to be a good Christian woman, wife, mother, friend, co-worker, etc., but don't push yourself to be perfect. This really helped me to realize that I cannot be the perfect person. As a new wife, I feel like I have to have the house spotless, dinner cooked perfectly, the laundry always done, and so on, all the time. This won't EVER happen! There are always times when we sacrifice time spent with our families to work instead, whether it be with our jobs or work done at home. Sometimes, we should just try leaving that laundry in the hamper while we spend quality time with our husbands and/or children. I'm not saying NEVER clean house or get anything done, but we shouldn't make it our top priority as we sometimes (almost always) do! Not only should we spend time with our families, but we should give our time to God. I realized this weekend how we can always make time for what we want to. For example, I've said before that I didn't have time to start going back to the rec center, yet I always find the time to watch my favorite TV shows!

I was really blessed this weekend by the music and by everyone sharing things about themselves. I found out just how much we can learn from each other if we just open up. I'm also glad I had the chance to get to know a lot of women from church on the trip. I'm already excited about going next year!!

We Love Our Babies!!

I just happened to take pictures of all of us with our dogs on Christmas day. The first is me and Daisy, the second is Zach and Cosmo, and the third is Jonathan and Ellie.

More Christmas Photos

I have been meaning to post more Christmas photos, and I have finally gotten around to that. The first photo was taken at my grandparents' house after breakfast on Christmas morning. The next two photos are from Zach's sister's and our brother-in-law's on Christmas night. I had to include the last photo of Gordon with Ella, because it's just too precious!

Happy Birthday To Me!

I'm having a wonderful birthday so far! Thanks to everyone who has sent me birthday wishes!! I got home late last night from Bunco at Aunt Gail's, and Zach and I ended up staying up later. Before we knew it, it was midnight and at 12:01, he said he was going to go ahead and give me one of my birthday presents. He played a slideshow on our TV that he had created of pics from our honeymoon. Our song, "Steady As We Go," by Dave Matthews Band, played in the background. It's really special to us because it was played during our first dance as husband and wife at our wedding. My other gift from him was tickets to La Nouba- Cirque du Soleil at Disney when we go on our trip in March! I have ALWAYS wanted to go to one of these shows! This would have been enough, but the tickets just happened to be front and center row seats! He definitely set the bar high for birthday gifts now that we're married!!

As if all this weren't enough, I got to work this morning and had gifts waiting on me. I got gift cards to restaurants from Bud, Mary Ann and Chris, and Mom, Dad and Jonathan got me a new Brighton watch! This afternoon as soon as I get home from work, I'm getting everything together and going to meet all the girls at the church to leave for our women's weekend retreat! I'm really looking forward to this and hope to post some great things about it when I get back!

Christmas with Friends

Last year, some of my friends and I got together to catch up while everyone was home for Christmas. I'm so glad we had the chance to do that again this year! We met for dinner and then went to Brittany Reed's house for dessert. It was wonderful to see everyone again! I had not seen Megan since last year at our get-together! The first picture is (from left to right): Me, Megan Lindsey, Mattea (Crow) Pavlick with her cute daughter Addison, April Fox, Heather Godwin with Britt's dog and Brittany. I had to include the last picture showing Heather laughing at the dog licking her hand! It's too funny!

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, we continued our tradition of spending it with Mamaw Ruth at her house. We had dinner, opened presents and had a great time with her. I'm including our usual picture of me, Zach and Jon, and some of her opening her gifts.