new years resolutions have clauses

Conversation that ensued this morning:

I say something (don't remember what) to Patrick at 8:45 am.

Patrick: Not now, I have 15 more minutes before I have to wake up for my New Year's resolution!
Me: What New Year's resolution?
Patrick: I have a New Year's resolution to wake up by 9:00 am every Saturday.
Me: I didn't know that. And you've already broken it before.
Patrick: No, we were cuddling, there's a clause for that.
Me: I didn't know there were clauses for resolutions.

His alarm goes off at 9:00 am

Patrick: Ugggggh, put your head on my shoulder so I don't have to get out of bed.

I couldn't make this stuff up, kids.

here and there

Patrick has been working some long hours here lately.
He's been (hopefully) wrapping up a project.
He's really good at his job. He gets a lot of affirmation about this.

Things have been changing at work some for me.
I don't do well with change.

Patrick is coaching a hike for Team in Training to the Grand Canyon.
It raises money for cancer research.
It's a big time commitment. I'm proud of him.

I've been in need of a pedicure for months now.
Hopefully Leslie and I will remedy that this week.

I'm trying to branch out in my cooking skills.
I love crockpot meals.
I pretty much only cook chicken still.
The 'branching' is still a work in progress.

Patrick's birthday is in 6 weeks(ish).
He has an ever-growing birthday list.
Yep. That's typical.

We still haven't made any decisions about the house.
It's a lot of money to consider.
I wish Houston wasn't quite so huge.
I wish we could put everyone we knew and our jobs in one neighborhood.

Our small group is switching to Thursday nights.
I'm undecided on this.
So far, it's worked out ok. It's only been one week.
I don't know what to do with myself on Sunday nights.

Patrick's mom joined facebook.

I've been halfway through the laundry all weekend.
It's still laying all over the floor.
It will probably still be there tomorrow.

Tomorrow night is date night.
Is it terrible that sometimes we are tired on date night and stay home?
I don't think so. It's still 'us' night.

Every week I decide to go to work earlier so I can come home earlier.
Every week I don't.

Baby Witt is having a rough time.
It's really REALLY hard stuff. Much prayer is appreciated.

We still don't know how Sterline is.
Patrick is still fasting from pie.
He didn't eat it on National Pie Day.
I was impressed.

That's all for now.

Homeowners to be? Who knows.

For those of you who don't know, Patrick and I have been in the midst of home buying discussions for sometime now. I'll be honest. Arguments have ensued. We just don't completely agree on a lot of things home-related. Like location. Or cost. Or single family versus townhome. Or fixer upper versus completely redone. Or when. :-) Those are small things in the decision making process, right?

Apparently not, thus the slight tension. But that's ok. We're in it together. We'll figure it out. It's exciting, even with the unknowns.

One major goal of mine that is hopefully a result of our pending move: I want to have company more often. So if you know me, come over. Please.

Happy Tuesday!

Haiti

Good morning bloggers! I know... I have majorly dropped the ball on blogging. It's pretty terrible. I'm still not going to do much to rectify the situation. But here are some of my my thoughts for the day.

Our Compassion child is Sterline Zephir. She lives in Haiti. She has some crazy pigtails. :-) As you know, Haiti suffered serious damage from the recent earthquake. We have not heard yet how Sterline was affected by the earthquake... we are told by Compassion that they are working on getting in touch with their partners in Haiti and will let us know as soon as they hear something regarding our child. We covet your prayers for Sterline and her family.

Here's some information about her:

Family Duties

Washing clothes

Cleaning

Carries water

Buying/Selling in the marketplace

Kitchen help

Hobbies and Sports

Dolls

Group games

Hide-and-Seek

Art/Drawing

She also loves to draw us pictures. I should share some of them with you all sometime.

But for now, we rest in this:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor.
Isaiah 61:1-3

Dear November, I am so glad you are over!

Phew. I can breathe again! November was an insane month for us at work. December will be busy, but I am so glad November is over.

I don't have much to say, except that I have totally dropped the ball on a Christmas countdown this year. So instead I will let you see some pictures of the Houston snow! Enjoy!



(If the pictures are big enough, you can see how hard it was snowing when I took these.)

August 8, 2002 was a looooong time ago.

The other night, Patrick and said something about Meghan (his sister) being too young for something. And I said 'Well you were just a year older than her when we started dating.' Holy cow... she's in 10th grade. So actually, he was less than a year older than her. It was the summer after 10th grade for him (11th for me) when we started dating the first time. August 8, 2002. It didn't last very long the first time, and a year later we started dating again, August 9, 2003. That one lasted. (For the most part... there were certainly some ups and downs.) Can you believe that? 2002. It seems like so long ago. And it was... we're certainly completely different people today than we were 7 years ago. Hopefully everyone is somewhat different than they were at 16. Care to hear the story? Well, ok!

(This memory of our conversation a couple days ago and now the blog post was inspired by Courtney's post, and you should really read hers because it's better written and a slightly more grown-up story. :-) )

In May/June of 2002, I had recently broken up with someone I had been dating for a long time. (Yeah, I was 17. I don't strongly recommend having dated someone for a few years when you're 17. At least not the way I did it... it was a little too intense for my age and I knew the whole time it wasn't someone I should marry.) Anyway, it was sort of a weird time for me after we broke up because I was so used to being around that person all the time, SO I made what turned out to be a fantastic decision. I started spending every waking moment at church. Turns out, Patrick decided that summer to do the same. Which meant we spent every waking moment together. At first it was nothing... we just happened to both be up there, with mutual friends, spending a lot of unplanned time together. Then, we started doing things together, just the two of us, and by the end of the summer it had sort of turned into dating. (I'll let you in on a little secret... dating for us didn't mean much at that time. We went shopping together for some nice clothes we needed for a student leadership trip we were going on together, etc. But we started CALLING it dating, so it counts.)

I can't skip telling this story as I recall the first times we did stuff just the two of us. We were on the aforementioned shopping trip. It was raining. Patrick locked his keys in his car. (Managed to grab his palm pilot though. He loved that thing back then.) He called his mom to see if she would bring him an extra set of keys. (He drove a white Saturn at the time... it wasn't his favorite. Looking back it wasn't a bad car at all. Mine was. Anyway, that's a different story.) She just happened to be at the mall also, and so she met up with us to do some shopping. He was not at all excited she was doing this, just for the record. It was our first "date." :-) I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing... you'll see why. So she met up with us, and we went into a department store to look at dress pants for him. He went in and tried some on and came back, out, and she sort of pulled on the waistband and said 'Is there enough room in the crotch?' Ohhh it was so funny. I thought he would die of embarrassment. There are a string of embarrassing stories regarding our first initial 'dates' but I will spare him the rest of them. And yes, I did check with him before sharing that with the blogosphere.

I want to make it known that he was a perfect gentleman the entire time. He was incredibly sweet, always opening doors and getting me little gifts. If we got to one of our houses and our parents weren't home, he wouldn't even go inside. Isn't that sweet? Very un-sixteen-year-old-boy-like. He has said that it's very strange to think that we both, unknowingly, went on our last 'first' date at 17 years old. Weird that a decision that we made SO young would impact our lives so far down the road. But it's been good.

And on top of being a fantastic 16 year old boyfriend, he's an even better husband. I am a very, very lucky girl.

Patrick's Pie Shop

(The babies were gingerbread men to go with the theme. Is that amazing or what? And do you see the CUTEST little hot dog ever?!)



Yeah. We have the best small group. Of all time.