Fun times babysitting

I always look forward to getting a phone call from my friends Joey and Courtney asking me to babysit their kids. I always have such a great time with them. I can always count on Brax to meet me a the door to tell me what movie he has picked out for us to watch. The I know I can count on Bri to be at her little table making a craft of some sort and little Bear to be close to his mom. We always have such a great time. Her are a few pics from the other night.

Little Bear is such a happy baby. He was laughing at everything.

Me and Bri
(Thanks Brax for your wonderful photography skills!) Me and Brax being silly

It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing!

Well, it's been nearly 3 months since I've been able to go swing dancing with the girls and Noel. We always have so much fun. If you want to come join us sometime we would love to have you! It's at Otter Creek Church of Christ in Brentwood. It's great clean wholesome fun that and the best part is that you can come even if you've never done this before. They have a lesson from 7:00-7:30 and then after that you put your newly learned moves into practice. Plus it's only $7! They have a live Big Band that comes every other time to play so that's always cool. Here are a few picks from our latest swinging experience.

Amy, Me, Jessica, Katie D and Katie P

Me and Noel doing the Hip Dip
(Poor Noel, he is worn out by the end of the night because he rotates dancing with 5 girls all night)

Noel trying to explain to me how we were going to do the Floor Spin...it was tried and failed due to me being scared to death.

Me and the roomies, Amy and Jessica

When we were getting ready to go home, Jess was having some car trouble so we all gathered around to see what was going on. As far as me and car repair go, I'm not your gal, obviously!

Unfortunately we weren't able to fix Jess's car that night so all 6 of us squeezed into Amy's Vibe!

I look forward to the next Swing Dancing adventure with the gang! We would love for you to come too!

Can We Talk?

For the past 7 weeks I have attended a Bible study with some ladies from my church called Can We Talk? by Priscilla Shirer. Last night was the final night. This was my first time to attend a group Bible study before and I absolutely loved it. It was such a great group of ladies. I really only knew one of the girls prior to coming to the group so this was also a good time for me to meet knew people in my church. I can safely say that Lord spoke to me so much over the past 7 weeks in so many different areas. I feel like the Lord knew that this was the particular study I needed to attend out of all of the others that were offered. From day one it seemed like each topic and scripture that Priscilla coordinated for us to read was exactly what the Lord knew I needed to read, hear, think about and evaluate my life. After each passage of Scripture there were 5 things we did with the verses: Pore & Paraphrase, Pull out, Pose and Plan & Pin. This method in general has given me a whole new way of doing my devotions. I learned how to really dig in and disect each verse and then turn around and see what I am doing or not doing in order to continue to grow spiritually. I recommend this study to everyone because it can really make you think about things in a way you may have never thought of it before.

Here is most of the group on the last night of the study.

One of those days

Do you ever have one of those days? One of those days that you wish you could just call-in at work and take a day off and catch up on sleep. Today has definitely been one of those days. I don't know why I've been so tired lately. I think it's because it's starting to get dark earlier which makes you sleepy earlier. It's not like I do like I used to do in college and run on 3 hours of sleep per night.

I am reminded of the Seinfeld episode when George starts sleeping under his desk. Even though I do have the perfect office space and desk set up to do this, I am going to refrain and just go get some caffeine to keep me going for the rest of the day!

Weekend Update

This weekend my mom came up to visit. It was very last minute. Thanks to Ms. Peggy (whom I've never even met) for playing the piano at church so that Mom could come up. We got up early Saturday morning and went to downtown Franklin to look in all of the shops. Then we went to eat an early lunch at Meridee's Bread Basket. It's such a great little place and Mom LOVED it. That afternoon we continued on and wend shopping around in Cool Springs and Brentwood.

That evening it was finally time for me to make my Amish Friendship Bread that my friend from work gave me. She gave me 2 starters and you are supposed to do something to it every day for 10 days. Well yesterday was day 10 so me and Mom added the rest of the ingredients and finished the bread. The 2 starters made 4 loaves of bread and 8 more starters for me to give to people. I must say that I was impressed with how the bread turned out because I'm not that great of a cook. I have 2 starters left so I'm going to try it again and add a few things to it the next time.

It had such a fun time with Mom this weekend. It seemed like it went by so fast. I'm glad you had a good time Mom!

She's the one that...

Have you ever had someone that you can always count on to be there for you?
You know, that person that you know is going to be cheering you on in everything you do.
Well, I have been so blessed throughout my life to have many of those people in my life. But the one person that comes to my mind numerous times every single day is someone who probably knows me best.
She’s my best friend.
She’s the one that I talk to by phone or email every single day throughout each day.
She’s the one that I can call and many times don’t even have to tell her I’m having a bad day because she can hear it in my voice even when I’m trying to act like nothing’s wrong.
She’s the one that always calls me to tell me about a new great recipe I need to try.
She’s the one that encourages me to use my talents to the fullest of my ability.
She’s the one that will give me her honest opinion about things even if it’s not what I wanted to hear.
She’s the one that I love to go shopping with because we love to find great sales.
She’s the one that I confide in to tell things to when I just need to vent.
She’s the one that I call first when I have big news to tell about.

She's the one that let's me try new things on to her hair (such a brave soul!)
She’s the one that has made more of an influence on my life than she’ll ever know.

She's the one that can make the me laugh so hard I can't breathe.

She's the one that just knows where I coming from when no one else quite does.
She’s the one that I watched growing up and tried to be just like her, even if I didn’t want to admit it.
She’s the one that strives to be the best wife each day.
She’s the one that lights up a room when she walks in and everybody loves to see.

She's that one that I could go on and on about to tell you what a godly woman she is.
She’s the one that I admire and am so honored to have her as my sister and my best friend.
She’s my sister, Ashlee!

Sis, you mean more to me than I can ever express and I just want to say thank you for being my best friend and I love you!

Em

A Spicy 21st Birthday

This past weekend me and my roommates celebrated our friend, Katie's 21st birthday. I must say that this was one party that I will never forget because it was the Spice Girls theme. Katie's best friend Jenny flew up from Florida to join us in the festivities. Now I am all about having a good time and acting crazy as many of you know; however, I must admit the day before the party I was getting cold feet. It's not really my cup of tea to go out in public and We all got dressed up in our designated Spice Girl costume and met up with some friends at Mellow Mushroom for pizza.

After that we ventured on down the Centennial Park and took pictures and made a video. It was fun to run around and act crazy in the park. I think we gave the original spice girls a run for their money!

Katie--I hope you had a very memorable 21st birthday! Love, Em

I'll be home for Christmas...

...you can count on me! I just got the best news today. The Lord worked things out as usual. Why do I stress myself out when He has it all under control. I found out today that I am going to be able to go to Mississippi to be with my family for Christmas for 5 days now instead of the 36~hours that I was expecting due to the day that Christmas falls on this year.

My Adopted Family

This past Sunday afternoon I went to visit a family that has become very special to me. I used to go to church with them while I was in college. The Balthrops were pretty much my adopted family while I was in college. I would go out to there house on the weekends and stay with them. Mrs. Sandra is such a great cook and has even taught me a few things over the years. She even made me fried pickles on Sunday and they were delicious! There is no telling how many loads of laundry I have washed at there house over the course of 3 years! It's also fun because me and Linda shoot guns a lot when I go out there. It's really fun because we make our own targets (which can get really creative sometimes). I always love going to their house to visit because they live way out in the country and its such a beautiful drive. Sunday's drive was really nice because it's beginning to look like fall. The leaves are beginning to turn and also the tobacco barns are smoking and its such a wonderful smell. One of the reasons for my visit was because Linda had called me a few weeks ago and told me she got a new gun and she wanted to try it out. She got these new targets that are really cool--they are black and you can just stick them on whatever you are going to be shooting at and the place that you shoot it, it turns orange. So we shot at that for a while and then her mom had some pumpkins that she let us use as targets. So we slapped a sticker on the pumpkin and blew it to smitherines!!! It was cool because there were pumpkin chunks flying everywhere each time we shot it! Needless to say, we had a great time and I look forward to my next visit.

Fall is in the air!

I am so excited because it's Fall! This has always been my absolute favorite season. I love to see all the trees turn as they turn shades of firey red and burnt orange. My absolute favorite smell comes in the fall~burning leaves. Someone should make a candle with the scent. At my house in Mississippi, we have this HUGE oak tree that can shade the majority of our yard. We have had so many tires swings hung from that tree I probably couldn't count. The only thing I didn't like about the fall when I was growing up was raking all of those leaves from the oak tree. My mom would always try to make it like a game for me and my sisters or even try to act like it was going to be the most exciting thing for us to do as "family time". I could think of a hundred different things I'd rather do than rake our yard. However, many times we would spend all day raking the leaves into the ditch forming this massive pile of leaves so that when we were done we could take turns on the swing and jump into them. This was one of my favorite 'games' we played as a kid and me and my sisters had it down to a fine art of the whole process. There were three positions for this game: The jumper, the pusher and the raker. Obviously the jumper had the funnest part. But if you were going to be the pusher you knew you had to do a good job so that the next person would push you on the swing so you could get really high for the jump. The the raker was in charge of keeping the pile together.

When we were kids, my mom was always so crafty with us and we would help us make the coolest Halloween decorations and she always made our Halloween costumes. Me and my sisters have been skunks, bumble bees, little red riding hood, pumpkins and so much more all made by Mom. I am so thankful for Mom taking time to do all of this with me and my sisters. She would take time out from doing house work or many other things she needed to do and spend quality time with me and Ashlee and Laura. I look forward to doing that with my children someday too!