Day #2

DISCUSS: WHERE YOU'D LIKE IN 10 YEARS

Hmmm...10 years from now, I will be 34. I will have been married for 13 (almost 14) years. Matthew will be almost 13! (his birthday is July 31st). Wil will be 10 and we will most likely have one or 2 other kids. Hopefully they will be 8 and 6 (a girl and boy...I want one girl, but mostly boys). I know its not up to me, obviously, but just wishful thinking. If it was different I'd still be happy! I'm a go-with-the-flow type of person. Hopefully we will be in our house we have just purchased. Haven't moved yet though. Our close date is Monday! (Super super excited!!). I will be a doula, having maybe 2 clients a month and most likely watching kids at my house for extra money. Shaun will hopefully still be teaching at Cardinal Middle School in Middlefield and coaching basketball in the winter. Maybe Shaun will be the pastor of a planted church. Our pastor (Shaun's uncle) and the congregation are very passionate about planting churches in different cities and towns instead of expanding one church building to be huge. We feel like it's hard to get plugged into church activities if it's too big. Its just overwhelming then. Maybe I'll even be on the praise team and provide them with input on more modern songs. (Our praise team tends to do older songs, around 10 years old, and they don't introduce new songs very often).

Well, that's all I can think of discussing for this topic.

WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE IN 10 YEARS???

30 day(?) challenge

So, I stumbled across this 30 day challenge when I was looking at random blogs today. I think I would like to use it as a guideline for what I write about, but I KNOW I will not be able to write everyday. Maybe over the summer, when my husband is done teaching in another week, but don't want to make any promises since I'm a busy mom. Okay, so here's #1: "Discuss your current relationship..."
Shaun William Spence is my husband, best friend and the best Daddy to our 2 boys!
Want to hear the (short) story of how we met? :) Of course you do!
Well, it was 2005, the fall right after I graduated high school. It was his last year attending the local community college and my first semester. He was the Campus Crusade for Christ bible study leader and I was very intimidated by him at first since he was so smart (and serious). I was used to dating guys who were 'jokesters', if you will, and so I can't say I was immediately attracted to him, although now we joke with each other all the time. The 2nd or 3rd time I came to the bible study, I was the only person to show up besides him, so we just sat there and talked for a couple hours. We soon found that we liked some of the same bands, both love to play tennis, and even loved the movie 'Clifford' with Martin Short. (I know very few people who have seen this movie from the 80's, and if they have seen it, they usually hate it for some reason). Then we found out we had some mutual 'friends' we knew. The rest is history :)
Here are some pictures of us over the years:







Thank you God for blessing me such a godly man who serves You and puts others before himself! I am truly blessed!

Living

I came across a strangers blog today that really inspired me. It was about all the hype about the rapture. The writer didn't say whether or not she believed the rapture would happen yesterday or not, but she used it as a moment to teach her sixth grade son. She talked to him about how we should live as followers of Christ on a daily basis. I hope that this will be me in 9 or 10 years when my older son is that age.

I leave you with this scripture from my devotion:

The scriptures say: “Do what your king commands; you gave a sacred oath of obedience. Don’t worryingly second-guess your orders or try to back out when the task is unpleasant. You’re serving his pleasure, not yours. The king has the last word. Who dares say to him, ‘What are you doing?’ Carrying out orders won’t hurt you a bit; the wise person obeys promptly and accurately.” (Ecclesiastes 8:2-5, MSG)

Osama bin Laden

I know some of the hype about Osama bin Laden's death is over, but will it truly be over? His name and story will forever be in history textbooks. So, since I haven't blogged in a while, I choose this topic. I know it is a difficult subject for Christians, so my husband and I talked about what we both thought about his death.
First of all; is it really fair to expect God to extend grace to us, but not to someone else who was created to bring glory to God? I know you and I never have and will never will kill innocent people, but what if, what if you had a family member who was a murderer (or did something else horrifying) and they confessed at the end of their life that Christ is Lord and they were extremely sorrowful about the things they have done. Would you also think that God should not extend grace toward them? There are rewards in heaven for those of who have done God's will for most of our lives. And I'm not saying that Osama confessed Christ on his death bed, or toward the end of his life. I'm just saying that it isn't fair, or Christ-like to judge others or celebrate someone's death when God mourns their life here on earth. We should be mourning because we know that he isn't with our Heavenly Father. In an article I read (http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/current-events/op-ed-blog/25463-should-christians-celebrate-the-death-of-osama-bin-laden), the author says we should instead be relieved that he cannot harm anyone else. After all, he was responsible for so many deaths. The author's last sentence is this: "Yet even as our spirits lift knowing that this man will do no more evil, our eyes should burst forth with weeping knowing that bin Laden will likely spend eternity like he spent his life: separated from the true God. " Let us leave justice to our all-knowing, holy God!

P.S. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT read the comments after the article on relevantmagazine.com unless you want to get very angry at some people. I just did. Why do atheist and Christian haters have to comment on things like this?? Im pretty sure that most Christians, or at least REAL Christ-followers would never seek out atheist articles and leave nasty comments on them! I know people are going to disagree in this world because of sin, but can't we all just have respect for each other??

Sorry to get all serious on everyone :) I'll try to make the next one a light-hearted fun one.

January

My cousin Brittany and her new husband dancing

My beautiful little sister

My cousin Christen with Wil

Our friends Kelsey and Micah got married!

Wil is 2 months old!!

Matthew and Uncle Baxter at the airport on our way to Florida for the wedding

Wil Kenneth - Nov 2nd

Birth story to follow soon....

Can't get focused...

"Even in her thinking place, she still couldn't get focused."

Well, I don't want to make any promises, but I'm going to TRY to make an effort to blog more often. Even if it's just once a week, I'd be happy with that! The problem is that my husband takes the laptop to work with him, so the only time I would be able to do it is in the evenings or on the weekends! Not to mention that he's usually using the laptop for his sports things, or lesson plans, or even things for coaching basketball. Then, if he's not on the laptop, I feel guilty for being on it because thats time we could be spending together. Basically the perfect scenario for blogging is if he's playing with Matthew (like right now), not here, or watching something on TV that I'm not interested in. Because, sorry blogging friends - but my husband takes priority over blogging :)

So, if you couldn't tell...I'm having a hard time being focused today. I have this free time to blog since Shaun is upstairs (probably fell asleep since Matthew is now down here, unless Shaun is playing with trains or puzzles - haha) but yet I can not quite figure out what to write about...

Sure, I could write about the fact that my due date for baby #2 was and my doctor wants to induce me on Wednesday, which I'm not thrilled about c

onsidering I'm a huge advocate for natural birth. I almost feel like God wants me to go through the experience of getting induced so that when I'm a doula (taking classes in March), I can speak to other women about it from my own point of view. Wow, I'm really staying positive here, aren't I? I think a little too positive. Part of me want to argue with my OB about being induced, but I know she is the professional and I do trust her. So, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pray that this baby decides to come before Wednesday! I do have an appointment again on Monday to test the baby's heartbeat for 15 minutes and test me for contractions too. The most annoying part of not having this baby (besides being excited every time I get contractions then being disappointed when I realize they are just braxton hicks), is feeling like I'm ready for the birthing process one day, then the next day I'm really nervous and scared, and back and forth.

Okay, so maybe I do have a lot on my mind right now, but I'm just kind of tired of talking about the fact that I'm past my due date now.

Anyways,

Because I love pictures, here are some randoms since I haven't posted any lately:

- Shaun and I on our anniversary date in August

Matthew's new fascination - rides like these...he says "coins please" and..."ride?"