Father's Day, a little late

I meant to post this on Sunday, but had trouble uploading all of the pictures, but since today is my Dad's birthday I thought I would troubleshoot through the picture issues to bring you this post I began writing on Sunday.

"Sunday in church one of the elder's talked about Father's Day as a day that people feel one of three emotions: celebration, anger, or indifference. These emotions are in response to our relationship with our fathers, the earthly one. He spoke of these emotions in conjunction with forgiveness and asking God, our heavenly father, to give us forgiving hearts towards our fathers. I sat in church in a row with people who all feel a good bit of all three emotions towards their fathers, and I was moved to tears. I am thankful for my father, and although no relationship is perfect, and I am grateful for the man that God has made my father to be. One thing I love in particular about my father is that he prays for me every single day and he reminds me of that every time I speak with him. Thanks for your faithfulness, Dad. I love you.


Matt and I were in a celebratory mood on Sunday afternoon and so we took our only dependent (I can't quite cross the line to call her a child) to the beach and it was great fun! Matt and I joke about how Keller thinks she is the most important girl in Matt's life. I thought these were some fun pictures of Keller and her daddy. :-) P.S. I hope that posting all of these pictures of Keller doesn't cause me to cross the line into "doggy dork-dom"...you know, 'the speaking of one's pets as if they were beloved human children.' But....she is precious and maaaaaybe sometimes we wish she could talk to us. Yikes!

Can I get an Amen?!

Matt preached his first sermon this Sunday, and it went great. I was so proud of him being that it was his first sermon ever! There was a time not too long ago when Matt never wanted to work for a church again, much less be the guy up front preaching. He never considered preaching to be something he would be good at. But with some healing, a lot of work, and the Holy Spirit, Matt brought a message to the church this week. A lot of people had encouraging things to say to him afterwards. Today he received a postcard in the mail which said how much they were blessed by the sermon and can see how God has gifted him. I share this with you guys to share the amazing work of what God is doing in my husband's life. I prayed for years for healing and a sense of direction for Matt. We don't always see it happening, but it is beautiful when Jesus lets us watch that process. The picture above was taken on Sunday at a friend's house after the sermon.

Andrew's visit

It's been too long! No, really...we must catch up! The month of May goes on record as being a hard month in my books. I don't want to expound upon it much tonight as it is getting late and I am exhausted, but I did want to make a reappearance as a blogger. I find it impossible to blog when I am having a hard time, in part because I don't want to sound like Eyor (sp? the gloomy donkey on Winnie the Pooh) but also because I tend to feel very uninspired during hard times and I usually only write when I'm inspired. So here I go getting back on the blogging saddle again! I did want to post some pictures from my brother Andrew's visit to California. He has been here since Monday and is leaving on Saturday. It is nothing short of delicious to have family and old friends visit us all the way out here on the west coast, so I don't take these kind of visits for granted. I hope to write more about what is going on in our lives, but until then I wanted to leave you with these pictures of our week thus far. Have a great weekend.


Behold my California husband, donning his west coast tan and new glasses and new weight loss--he is awesome, dropping 15 lbs. in just one month.




I love this picture of Andrew and Matt looking out on Pacific together. The picture melts my heart! These are two very special boys in my life!