My First Day!

Today was my first day at my new job at the church! I had a great experience. I got my HR orientation in the morning and then got the tour of the offices and met tons of people. (I still have lots more people to meet since some people don't work on Mondays.) My department took me out to lunch and then in the afternoon I started learning my actual job!

Jonathan asked me if I was overwhelmed. I wasn't overwhelmed with my job...I think the most overwhelming this is how many names and faces I have to learn! :) Everyone was sooo nice though.

My parents sent me this pretty arrangement that was waiting in my new office for me! (Sorry the picture is blurry!)

As I sat at my desk working, listening to Air1 on the Internet, I just thought about how God had been preparing me to work here through my 6 years in banking. All of that hard work and so much unhappiness...God had a plan that entire time! Wow. Pretty cool huh?

So, all in all, it was a wonderful day and I can't wait to go to work tomorrow! (I have some decorating to do in my office:) Thanks for all of your prayers for me to get the job and also for my first day! :)

Pumpkin Carving and a Surprise!

Wednesday night Tim and Lindsy and Billie and Derek were planning on coming over to carve pumpkins. We have a tradition to get together to carve our pumpkins...we've been doing it since before Jonathan and I were even married! It's so much fun to have traditions like that with friends. I made some White Chicken Chili and was waiting for everyone to get here when I got a call from Billie telling me she thought her water had broken!! Wha??? A week and a half early on your first child?? So, they were headed to the hospital! How exciting!!!

So Tim and Lindsy got to the house and we ate and carved our pumpkins...the entire time wondering how things were going and how far along Billie was and oh my goodness she's having her baby!!! We had a great time with T and L! Our pumpkins turned out cute. Jonathan did the witch, I did the ghost, Lindsy did the cat, and Tim did "Tool Time" (because they were decorating their trunk for trunk-or-treat as an old TV show so they did Home Improvement.)

Here are some pics from Lindsy's camera. I loaned mine to Billie and Derek, so I haven't downloaded the pics from pumpkin carving yet.

Billie labored all night and Eli was born Thursday morning! (I skipped work on my last day at the bank so I could be at the hospital...well worth it if you ask me!) She did so well and Eli is so precious. I'm so happy for Billie and Derek!

Feed My Starving Children

We attend Southland Christian Church and are so blessed to be a part of such an amazing community! (And I'm so blessed to be able to work there...starting next Monday!!) The leaders have such wonderful vision for the church and what we can do to make a difference in our city and in the world. How can we show God's love? We started a "Hungry" Series last week that really got us thinking about all those who are physically and spiritually hungry in our world.

This week our church partnered with Feed My Starving Children to package meals for hungry children in poverty stricken countries. All of the normal sporting events at the church were cancelled, so instead of going to play volleyball tonight we met our volleyball team at church to volunteer together. It was amazing to hear about what FMSC is all about and what they do to help so many children!

We all put our lovely hair nets on to enter the room and learned how to make the meals, then started 2 hours of work! It was great! Everyone had great energy and they played fun music! We filled rice, soy, dehydrated veggies, and flavoring with nutrients into plastic bags, sealed them and packed them. The guys were all on "warehouse duty" lifting the boxes. Billie was putting the bags on the funnel and I was in charge of measuring the nutrients and veggies into the bags! (They had at least 80 different stations doing this same thing)

Here's a really lovely picture of us! LOL! (Who would think that a 38 week preggers would be volunteering on her feet for 2 hours...ahem...in heels!! Billie is superwoman!)

Sorry the picture is grainy but what can you expect with a phone?? :)

The church has morning and evening shifts Monday through Friday this week for people to volunteer. As of last week the online volunteering sign up was full! I'm guessing there were about 800-ish volunteers during our shift and we ended up making 157,032 meals which is 430 kids who will eat for a year! Wow! That's a serious impact! Did you know it only costs 17 cents to feed one child one meal?? It makes you think about how many starving kids you could feed with your extra change laying around. Kinda makes you rethink the dollar menu too (if the nutrition facts haven't already done that.) The church's goal is to pack over 1 million during this week and I'm positive that we will surpass that! Just to think of what this food means to these kids. It's not just a meal, it's a chance at living.

I just feel so blessed to be a part of such a wonderful, giving community with a heart for the less fortunate. What a great way to spend our evening! Can't wait to do it again next year!

Applesauce and Pumpkins

I love fall! I love the colors and the smells and the decorations and going to the orchard and making applesauce and and and... The last couple days have been overcast and rainy, which is the part of fall I don't like! My parents came in town on Friday and we had plans for the weekend to go to the orchard and to make applesauce. Well Saturday was supposed to be nasty so we decided to make applesauce and hold off on the orchard until today.

Billie (and Eli - only 2 more weeks!!!) came over to make applesauce too!! (Tim and Lindsy were out of town for Lindsy to run a marathon today!!) My parents brought the apples in town because they found an orchard that sold bushels of "seconds" (the apples that have fallen) for $8!! So they brought 3 bushels for us to make...that is a WHOLE LOT of applesauce!!! 56 Ziploc bags to be exact:)

This is 2 bushels because each of these bags was a half bushel, so you get the idea of just how many apples were in 3 bushels...

Billie and I hard at work!

Here is a pic of all of us except Jonathan...he preferred staying behind the camera instead of making the applesauce.

The applesauce turned out well after a bit of an accident. The apples that Billie and I used for our last batch of applesauce were very tart so we had to add a cup of sugar to it to sweeten it up. After we got our bowl about half filled with applesauce, I added a cup of sugar and then we tasted... I will always taste first in the future! The apples we used this time were sweet apples and we didn't have to add ANY sugar to it! Oops!

Today was a beautiful day. Blue skies, sunshine and a great temperature so we headed out to the orchard after church. We ate a hot dog lunch there and had delicious apple dumplings for dessert. Yum! We strolled through some of the orchard to get an apple to eat, picked pumpkins, bought homemade cider, and took pictures. What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday!

Here we are looking for the perfect pumpkin...everyone was giving me a hard time because it took me the longest to find the perfect pumpkin to carve!

We think we found the right ones!

All of us couples trying to get a great portrait...too bad the sun was shining right on the sides of our faces making some shadows!

Pretty Flowers

I have to share the picture of this beautiful arrangement that we brought home from the funeral last week. It's still beautiful on my dining room table. It has this wonderful citrus scent! I thought the way they put the lime and orange halves in the water was so creative and beautiful. There are even orange peppers in between all of the flowers! I wish the colors in the picture would have turned out closer to the actual colors. Maybe I need a new camera:)

My parents are coming in town this weekend to make apple sauce. Yes, they are bringing 3 bushels of apples...THREE!!! I think we have our work cut out for us! We're also going to go to the Orchard and pick pumpkins, so we've got a full weekend ahead of us. I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures to post! :)

Good News!!!

And NO I'm not pregnant! HA! I had you all going didn't I? My good news is that I gave my resignation today at the bank!! I have known for a while that banking is not my long-term career...it's just not for me. Now, I've been working at a bank since I graduated college in 2003 and I feel like I'm good at it, but when I look at my life and what I'm doing, I just didn't feel enough worth. It was kinda one of those things where I looked at my life and said, "I'm almost 30...is this all there is to life? What do I want to be when I grow up? I thought I'd know that by now in life!!" I felt like I could be using my skills for so much more. Also, after a merger I found out a couple months ago that my position at the bank as an office manager would be eliminated so I needed to choose a different position (none of which were particularly interesting to me.)

I sent my resume to my church back in August for a finance job. (My church is large and when I say large, I mean 15,000+ members.) So it was more than a month before I heard back for an interview because there were so many applicants. After 2 interviews I was offered a job as a Financial Associate Director last week!!! Can you tell I am excited??? Should I use more exclamation points??!! :) I won't go into what my job responsibilities are, but just know that all of my banking skills will be used and I feel like they are finally being used for a good purpose...not for just hitting sales goals and a positive profit margin like at the bank!

So, even in this time of turmoil, God has provided for us. He has a plan! Next Thursday will be my last day at the bank and then I will start at the church the first of November. I'm just so excited. I might have to do some fashion posts though, because my entire closet of dress clothes are no longer necessary since most people wear jeans at the church! Sounds like some time for celebratory shopping!! :)

CASA 10K

Yesterday Lindsy, Courtney, Nevada and I ran the CASA 10K (6.2 miles)! It feels so good to finish a long race. Ok, well it was a long race for me...not for everyone else. Lindsy and Courtney have been training for Lindsy to run a marathon next weekend, so they actually did 4 miles BEFORE the race! Hardcore!

It was 39 degrees and not really raining, but it was kind of a spitting type of rain. Pretty much COLD! When we decided to run this race a few weeks ago, we didn't know it would be this cold already in October! Billie and I ran this race last year on the first weekend of October and we were in shorts and tank tops!! Of course, today is blue skies and sunshine...that would have been nice yesterday!

Nevada and I had a goal to finish in less than one hour, but we ended up at 1 hour 4 minutes (5 minutes faster than last years time). Oh well. Maybe next time. I really hadn't trained much in the last couple weeks, so I can't complain. I will be running the Nike Human Race 10K next Saturday, so I have another chance do it in less than an hour.

Billie is such a good friend! She came out on this yucky morning to cheer us on! How awesome is she?? She also took some pictures during the race. Here are some pics.

Courtney, me, Billie, Nevada, and Lindsy. We had to get a pic with Billie and Baby Eli in it to show that Billie was running with us in spirit! :)

Nevada and I still running! Lindsy and Courtney were way ahead of us as to be expected:)

All of us after the race. We always have to get that really "lovely" after race pic! They had strawberry smoothies for us after the game! Yumm! Too bad that didn't help warm us up!

All in all we had a fun time together although we would have enjoyed warmer weather! :) Always fun to run with friends though!