Tuesday Treasure

In my Sunday fellowship group we've been going through a dvd series by James McDonald called Gripped by the Greatness of God. It is such a great study. I've been challenged every week by the focus on God's greatness. One of them that hit me the most was the week when we talked about how awesome God is. Awesome is a word that is commonly misused. I misuse it all the time. Only God can be awesome! I've become very aware of how I use that word.

Today I'm treasuring how awesome God is.
In science I'm teaching my students about the solar system. We had a great discussion the other day about how awesome God is. With just a word He created so many things that we can't even understand. I can teach my students little bits of information about the solar system, but our awesome God knows so much more about it! How cool is that!

I love that I serve such an awesome God!

Tuesday Treasure

Just pulled this up while I was looking through some pictures. I very much treasure this picture. It represents a very fun day and a great friendship. So thankful for this wonderful friend!! 

Lovin' the Haircut

It has been a while since I got my haircut, but I still haven't posted a picture of it. Not the best picture of me, but here it is. I love my new hairdresser. She is great! I will definitely be going back to her.

Today was a fun day. Started out with some nice fellowship with ladies from church. Had some coffee and a muffin and listened to A close family friend share her testimony to the group. I love time of fellowship with my church family.

Next I went to my parent's house. As I arrived my dad was just leaving to go to an estate sale that had some tools. (my mom and sister had called him to tell him he should go to it) So instead of driving himself he hopped in my car and we went together. It was nice spending some time with just the two of us.

Elvis is in the building!

The afternoon was topped off with a family trip to the Sonoma County Harvest Fair. We were all excited to see how my dad's pumpkin did at the fair. We weren't disappointed. He got second place! Dad and Danika went on some rides while my mom, sister, and I found "treasures" in the vendors hall. We were pleasantly surprised with how much we found. One of the things I'll have to wait until Christmas to get, but oh well it will be fun when I get it. :)

It was a fun day. Finishing off the day with an Alfred Hitchcock movie (North by Northwest). His movies always remind me of college. My friend Kelley and I would have marathon movie nights where we'd watch a bunch of Hitchcock movies. It was the best! Nothing like a good suspense movie! Good times.

And there you have the random ramblings of Jamie. Lol!

Happy Fall!!

I love my fall wreath! It makes me happy when I get home. 

Next I need to make a Christmas one. But I have a little time to get that one done. 

What do you think, Steph? Project when you are in SR next?

Tuesday Treasure

I love my mom!! 

It is such a blessing when people tell me a sound, look, sing, and act like her. 

What great compliments!

Saturday = Sewing Day

I love it when I have a free Saturday. I tend to work on a sewing or craft project when I have this kind of free time. This picture is from a project I finished this summer. Today I've been working on two different quilts. One is just a scrap quilt. It is totally random and very colorful. Not sure how I'll feel about the finished project. It is a little crazy. The other is a gift for someone. I love giving quilts to people. :) 

A Quiet Friday Night

After a long week I love being able to come home and relax. Drinking tea from my Stephanie mug (and praying for her while I drink from it), watching a movie, and working on a scrap quilt I started a few weeks ago. Nice quiet evening.

Tuesday Treasure

I really want to get back into blogging! I've been slacking in that area. So I'm going at least try for every Tuesday posting something. Part of my problem is that I feel like posting when it has been a rough day and I need to vent. So in order to avoid that I've decided to create "Tuesday Treasure." Every Tuesday I'm going to post something...a quote, a picture, a blessing. This will be good!!
Here we go!

God loves us to infinity and beyond! :) 

Anxious

Do you ever have random moments of feeling anxious?
I'm feeling that way right now. Not sure what brought it on.
Trying to think on what is true and real now. Lord, help me to keep my focus on You!

Kolaches with Grandma

One of the things I love about my grandma is that she loves to cook. After staying with her for a week and a half I really came to appreciate her love of being in the kitchen. I've been really into learning about my family history so I spent my time in Wisconsin asking about my grandparents' childhood. One thing I asked my grandma was if her mom loved cooking too. I figured she did because my grandma liked it so much. I was wrong. My grandma was number 7 out of 9 kids. When she was old enough she took over the cooking for her mom. They lived on a farm so there was a lot to do and my great-grandma had other things to get done throughout the day. My great-grandma also didn't speak or read much English. That made it difficult to follow recipes. One of the main reasons though for my grandma's early use of the kitchen was because she had to have glasses. What? Glasses? What does that have to do with her cooking at a young age? Because glasses were so expensive back then her family didn't let her go into the barn to do chores. My great-grandparents didn't want her glasses to break. 

As time moved forward cooking and baking became her thing. She doesn't feel like she is great at cooking (something I disagree with), but she finds it relaxing. If her blood-pressure is high she bakes something and it helps bring it down. Every day I was there I offered to wash dishes, but she refused because she likes doing them. 

On this visit I had the joy of helping her bake a few things. It was so fun. We spent a lot of time laughing. Especially when I unknowingly gave her a hard boiled egg when we were making cookies. It took us a few seconds to figure out why it wasn't cracking right. A few days before I left we made kolaches. They are similar to a danish. This is a treat I always remember her making when we came to visit. I loved waking up to the smell of them in the morning. They were so good. 

I'm so thankful for the sweet time with my grandma last week. What a wonderful blessing. 

Uncle Don

My grandparents, mom, and uncle Don

Two weeks ago my family had quite a shock. Very suddenly my uncle went to be with the Lord. It was a bitter-sweet week as we did a lot of traveling, remembering, laughing, and crying together. I'm so thankful that I was able to fly out right away to stay with my grandparents. My family and I were very concerned with them being alone during such an emotional time. After 2 days of being there with them we drove from Wisconsin to Illinois in order to join the rest of the family for a visitation and memorial service. It was a very nice time.
I was so blessed to hear all of the wonderful things said about my uncle at the services. What a wonderful man of God. He had a servants heart. He loved the Lord more than anything and loved his family. I'm so thankful for the time I had with him. He was always so fun to be around. I will miss him. But I know that he is in heaven right now worshiping our Savior and loving it.

Joyful, Patient, and Faithful

I'm trying to remind myself of these words this morning. 

My frustration from last night has carried into this morning and it has great potential to completely ruin my day. I really don't want that to happen. So right now I'm making a choice to change my attitude on the entire situation. It's ironic because choosing to change your attitude is what we talked about at day camp yesterday. I have two choices - a) I can grumble about my issues all day and have a terrible day or b) I can be patient and see how God is going to work it all out. 

I'm choosing option b. 

And really already God is working it out. 

So my job today is to be joyful, patient, and faithful. 

Sorry for the vent session.

Needing to vent.
I'm so frustrated right now. I've been excited for the last few weeks because I bought a tv on 1saleaday.com. It wasn't a huge screen or anything, but it would mean that I wouldn't have to watch movies on my computer anymore. Yay! Well it came today and as I was setting it up I realized that the dvd player I bought didn't have hdmi, which for this tv it had to have that cord. So I packaged the dvd player back up, drove all the way to walmart and exchanged it for a higher end dvd player. Only $10 more, but then had to buy a hdmi cord. That was a little frustrating because they are not very cheap. So I get home set it up and the dvd I put in is playing, but there is no sound. I'm sitting in my living room looking through all sorts of manuals and websites trying to figure out the problem. Finally I go onto samsung's site and chat with a support guy. It turns out (!) that I bought a monitor and NOT a tv. (I want to cry) So yes, it can hook up to my dvd player, but it won't work on a remote and there are no internal speakers. Ugh! The guy said that I could probably get something to hook speakers up to the dvd player. Oh look more money to spend. And the glorious thing about 1saleaday is that there are no returns. So I have a monitor that isn't a tv and I can't even hook it up to my computer because it is a mac and I don't own a pc.
So what I had hoped to be an exciting evening of having my own tv has turned into a frustrating evening of being back on my computer.
Ok I'm done complaining now. Sorry that you had to hear me spew all of that out.

Current Favorite Hobby

I love quilting! I have to say that this is my favorite way to relax right now. I sit down with my rotary cutter, fabric and sewing machine put on a movie and have a ball! There are moments of frustration, which comes with any hobby, but for the most part it is so relaxing to me. Many people look at a sewing machine and get stressed out. To me it is a way to unwind. 

I've made 7 quilts so far. At least I think it is 7. I haven't been so great at taking pictures of all of them. 6 of them are baby quilts and 1 is a twin size. They've all been gifts. I have several quilts in mind for myself, but haven't gotten around to it. Hopefully someday soon. 

My sister is the one who got me started on making quilts. When I knew that my niece was on the way I decided that it would be special to make her a baby quilt. It is something made by me that she can keep for a long time. Once I did that one I knew that this would be a great gift for my close friends who were having babies. Just this year I've branched out to making bigger quilts. I'm hoping to make one to use as my bedding in my room. 

The most resent quilt I made is the one pictured on this post. It is the biggest quilt I've made. I was so excited to give it to my wonderful friend, Stephanie. I didn't tell her I was making it and I just picked out fabric I thought she would like. The best part is that she loves it and it totally matches her bedroom! Awesome! I was so glad that I could make this special gift for her. 

I'm no where near being an expert at quilting, but I feel that I'm getting better with each quilt I make. I'm really thankful for activities like quilting to help me relax. And it is fun to give the end result to a friend. 

God is good like that. :) 

4th of July Fun

My parents hosted a great 4th of July BBQ. A lot of her great ideas were from pinterest. We all had a great time. I picked up this frame from an estate sale a few weeks ago. This is exactly what I bought it for. Great for photos of who came to the BBQ. 

 We all drank out of these mason jars topped with patriotic cupcake holders. Genius!

 Sidewalk chalk added an extra touch of decorations on the patio. 

This had to be the best pinterest idea my mom used. She froze water with food coloring in layers. Inside were 8 little plastic frogs. We were all given little squirt guns to work at melting the ice. (Somehow my dad ended up with a big one... convenient) This very quickly turned into a water fight. Thankfully they were small water guns. It was fun and refreshing. Dani eventually got out her play-dough hammer and began pounding on the ice. :) It was very fun. 

Frozen water balloons to keep the drinks cool. 

A fun day with family and friends! 

Wichitawesome

Having a great visit with the Writebols!

A Relaxing Saturday Night

I couldn't get it to rotate...grr

 What a perfect Saturday night (over the weekend - obviously)! It consisted of popcorn and a movie. Gotta love Netflix! I ended up watching an Audrey Hepburn movie. It was funny and cute. It wasn't the most exciting movie, but it was so nice to watch a good clean movie. 

I'm gradually learning how to make popcorn on the stove as good as my dad does. He makes the best popcorn! I feel so lucky when I'm over at their how and he makes a batch. Yum! I haven't perfected the art, but I'm working on it. I think I used a little too much oil this time around. 

Popcorn - Jim Humphreys' Style 

My popcorn bowl and I had a lovely evening. :) 

Remembering

Memorial Day 2012

Growing up I always remember Memorial Day weekend. One of the things we did as a family was help put flags up in the Santa Rosa Memorial Cemetery. We actually did it as a fundraiser for the Marching Band up until a few years ago. As a kid I remember it being a fun thing to do almost like a scavenger hunt. We'd have to find all of the grave stones that said the person had been a part of the military and then put a flag in the ground by it. It sounds a little terrible to say it was like a scavenger hunt, but as a little kid that is what it was. On Saturday morning we would put all the flags up and then Monday afternoon we'd walk through and take them down. 

It wasn't until this year that I actually attended the ceremony held on Memorial Day. It was such a neat experience. There were a couple hundred people there and there were flags everywhere. It was such a great time of honoring those who have served our country and fought for our freedom. 

While I was there I was reminded that my own grandfather served in the army. I don't know what rank he was or where he went, but I know that he worked to make a difference for our country. I'm so thankful for the people who are willing to risk their lives for my freedom and safety. 

This is the last week of school!! 

I'm so looking forward to summer. I'll still be working, but the summer day camp is a lot different than my teaching job. It is a little more relaxed. 

I've got to find a fun way to celebrate at the end of the week.
Any good ideas? I'm leaning toward going to see a movie, but I'm open for other ideas.

Here is a list of the things I'm looking forward to this summer. 

I'm really into making lists lately. 

• Visiting the Writebol Family in Wichita. 
• Reading at least one book for fun. 
• Getting a flip-flop tan. 
• Having afternoons off. 
• Planning ahead for the next school year - I probably won't think about that for a few weeks though. :) 
• Working on my cookbook and finishing I hope. 
• Lots of walking. 
• Zumba class at the JC. 
• Spending more time with my family. 
• Fresh tomatoes from my own tomato plant. - I wish there were some now.

I do love summer! 

Women's Retreat

Reasons why I love going to my church Women's Retreat!

• I don't have to think about work. 
• I get to go to Mt. Gilead. 
• Lots of time with friends. 
• There is a lot of laughing. 
• There is always great Bible teaching. 
• It is slow paced and so relaxing. 
• Fun games in the evening. Bunco and Tick this year. 
• Laughing. 
• Yummy food. 
• Wonderful time with friends! 
• Time in God's beautiful creation. 
• The whole weekend is spend with Christ as the focus. 
• Dessert at every meal...well, not at breakfast. 
• I leave feeling refreshed and challenge in my walk with the Lord. 

I'm so thankful that God provides these kinds of things for me to go to. And it is amazing how well He times it. I was really needing some time away this weekend as well as some great teaching. I feel so blessed to have gotten to go this year. I pray that the things I've learned will stick with me for a long time.