Snapshots

Collin and I were both feeling well enough to actually enjoy this weekend! Nothing too terribly exciting happened but we did have a good time. Friday was my day off so I ran some errands and bought myself two cute new tops from JC Penney with some Christmas money! That evening Collin and I had dinner at Red Robin which is always a delightful treat! Saturday we ran a few errands together and then after dinner our friends Jeff and Jeannie came over and we watched The Invention of Lying. It's such a funny movie if you haven't seen it yet! Sunday was a good day, too. We finally had a full band at church again. It had been like a month since we were all there! Work travel, Christmas vacations, and illness prevented us from all being together for so long. It was great to play together, all of us, again! After church we had lunch at home, watched Seinfeld and snuggled with the babies on the couch. Then we decided it was warm enough for Collin to do an oil change on his car so we went to my parent's house to use their driveway. And after leaving there we went to his parent's house and had dinner and watched the Redskins vs. Seahawks game with them. I don't really care about football, but it was on so I had no choice but to watch it. It was a good weekend though! I'm going to get the recipe for the beef my mother-in-law made last night because it is so, so good! And when I get it I'm sharing it here because it's totally worth sharing!!

Silly kitties taking up the whole couch. I get up for just a few minutes and my seat is gone. lol

This picture is kind of hard to see but Seabass squeezed his way through the arm hole of Collin's old jacket. hahaha!

Dinner on Saturday was home made gravy fries. Leftover Red Robin fries, mozzarella cheese and beef gravy. It was good!

One of the best chocolates, ever.

Seabass was laying atop my feet and was purring so loud that he was making me vibrate. lol

I hope you had a great weekend yourself! I hope that it was relaxing and fun and that it adequately prepared you for this new week!

Cindy

(Semi) Wordless Wednesday

This past weekend we were sick. Ick! Collin came home from work on Friday evening feeling chilly and achy. I took his temperature and it was 101.8. Poor guy caught the flu from his boss at work. =/ Not sure why his boss came to work with the flu, but oh well. Anyway, Collin was down for the count Friday-Sunday and started feeling better Sunday afternoon. However, Sunday afternoon I started feeling bad. I definitely didn't have the flu like Collin but my sinuses had been acting up since a week before Christmas and it finally decided it wanted to settle in my chest. Monday I felt horrible. Yesterday I began feeling better though and today we're both doing much better! So it wasn't too exciting of a New Year's Eve for us. We stayed home by ourselves in our PJs and watched TV, movies, and played video games. Collin wanted to watch the ball drop but since we don't have cable he streamed a program online. I went to bed around 11 because I was tired and didn't feel like staying up any longer. =) Some celebration we had!

The only pictures I felt like taking this weekend were of our kitties. They most definitely knew that we didn't feel good because they were extra lovey and sweet to us! I love that animals can sense when you don't feel good and they just want to be with you to make you feel better!

Happy Wednesday! I hope that you enjoyed a much more exiting (and healthier) New Year's celebration than us!

Cindy

Welcome, 2013!

Happy New Year, friends! I am so excited for 2013. I love the idea of a new year with new things to accomplish and places to visit.

It's this time of the year that everyone makes Goals and Resolutions. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just not right for me. I almost never stick with my resolutions and when I fail at keeping it, it just makes me kick myself and feel really bad and that's not something I should be doing.

So this year, instead of creating lists of goals and aspirations or lists of things I want to improve about myself, I'm going to give myself to God and let Him accomplish in me what He wants! I think that's a pretty great way to spend a year!

I'm not sure what this year has in store, but with my life in God's hands, I know it will be spectacular!

I hope that you'll put your year in God's hands, too! Let's begin 2013 filled with peace, love, joy and belief in The One who has control over all!

Cindy

Christmas Weekend!

Hello, my friends! What a truly wonderful Christmas "break" we had. I am so, so glad that I was able to have five full days off to enjoy the holiday. I think it really put me in the mood to celebrate and it allowed me to be completely prepared. What a blessing!

Friday I spent some time with my good friend Kaitlin, catching up and eating delicious scones. It also consisted of "date night" with Collin. We cooked dinner in (so good!) and then went and got frozen yogurt because we have a gift card!

Seabass actually climbed into my lap to snuggle. I think as he's getting older he's calming down and wanting to snuggle more and more.

Chicken marinated in Italian dressing, oven-cooked asparagus, and honey butter rolls.

Frozen yogurt topped with chocolate covered raisins.
Saturday I went to an open house for Kaitlin's ministry job. She works for EdgeCorps at Penn State mentoring and leading college students to Christ. Fantastic work that girl is doing. After that I went to Kohl's and helped my dad finish up his Christmas shopping. After running errands, that evening Collin and I stayed home, watched some Seinfeld and played video games.

My babies sleeping so peacefully Saturday morning while I read on the couch.

I finished this book before leaving for the open house. I'm gonna review it soon on here!


The sky was so pretty all day on Saturday! We deserved a nice sky though after the massive rain we had on Thursday evening/Friday.
Sunday was a great church service and afterwards Collin and I had lunch and then ran some more errands. After hitting the "chain stores" we decided to check out one of the local thrift stores. What a great decision that was! I got two pieces of clothing for $5 total, a Tommy Hilfiger, green gingham button down, and a pretty black and white dress. We also got an apple peeler/corer for $3 and a 7' artificial spruce Christmas tree for $3! And we got The Invention of Lying on DVD for $2! I think we made out really well! That evening we drove around to a few neighborhoods in the area and looked at Christmas lights. What a neat way to get in the Christmas mood!


We saw this at one house driving around... a little creepy, no?

Monday (Christmas Eve), Collin had to work for about 5 hours that morning. I went to the chiropractor and finished getting stuff ready for the next morning. Once Collin got home though we watched Die Hard since it's a non-traditional Christmas movie and Collin is discussing it when he podcasts tonight. After that we played some video games until it was time to get dressed for church. We went to a 6pm Candlelight service at a church other than ours. My parents always host an Open House gathering on Christmas Eve that starts at 7:00 and we're usually still there or just leaving close to 11:00. Those are both the service times for our church. So the church across the street from my parents' house was very accommodating with their service times. And I'm glad we went. It was a great service! After church we spent the evening at my parents' house visiting with family and good friends. What a great evening we had!

Watching Die Hard with these handsome guys.
Christmas morning was fantastic! I was so excited I woke up about 5am and couldn't deeply fall back asleep. So Collin and I got up around 7:15. We opened presents (he did really well and I love my gifts!!) and then had cinnamon rolls for breakfast while finishing Die Hard. Around 10:00 we headed to my parents' house to help make lunch. Once my sister and brother-in-law arrived about 12:45 we had a turkey lunch which was delicious! Then we opened presents and were all so spoiled! After present time we played my mom's new game, "Bubble Talk". If you've not heard of it, check it out. It's similar to "Apples to Apples" only you are captioning a picture instead of determining nouns to adjectives. We laughed pretty hard at some of the pictures and captions. About 4:30 we left my parents and heading to see Collin's parents. When we got there we had a delicious ham dinner. And afterwards we opened presents and got spoiled by Collin's parents also! After dinner we watched Christmas Vacation; it was only my second time seeing it!

The tree at my parents' with the presents waiting to be opened.

The new shirt I bought for Collin.

Lunch ready to eat on the table!

My parent's cats sunning themselves while we opened presents.

The in-laws' tree we gazed upon all evening!

All in all I would say it was a pretty fantastic Christmas!! We had such fun and it was filled with lots of family and friends and love and good food!

I hope your day (and weekend) was just as good as ours was! And may you carry the Christmas spirit with you all year through! After all, Christ is with us all year through!

Cindy