Woops... I'm still here!!

Yikes I've really let this drop lately.  I let a month go by!  Seems like I haven't done a very good job keeping up with many things these past few weeks.  It's so hard to remember a month ago, but here's five.

1.  Received my notary stamp in the mail - I'm official!

2.  Entering football season with several Hokie co-workers.  Matt and I already have tickets to one home game and one away game.  One co-worker is planning a tail-gate at his house before the VT/Carolina game and my boss writes stats on his dry-erase board!!  I'm lovin it.  :D

3.  Had a few nights in a row of good dreams!  I never have good dreams!

4.  Being called Mrs Meitl at work... and having it sound familiar and not strange like maybe I've just tried on someone else's name for a while.

5.  Melissa and Clayton had their baby girl - Haven Claire Welch.  6lbs5oz.  Itty bitty!  So sweet and so perfect.  I got to spend the day last Monday with Melissa and it's just amazing how terrifying something so small can be.  Every little move she made caused Melissa and me to sit up and see what she was doing.  Just precious.

1.  Reaching 60,000 miles in the first car I bought new off the lot.

2.  Pulling up to a stop light to sense that someone is waving at me from the lane to my right.  Looking over and discovering it's a resident from Lenox, the lovely miss Partlow.  Blowing her kisses in return while both of us grin ear to ear.

3.  Deciding to use some of our savings to take our parents on a cruise - Bahamas in November!

4.  An hour long conversation with Kara - we should schedule those monthly... it's such wonderful therapy :)

5.  Taking maternity pictures of Melissa and Clayton around Durham.  Looking forward to meeting their sweet girl in about 3 weeks!

1.  Our church pairs up engaged couples with married couples to act as mentors.  This past weekend our bible study threw an appreciation dinner party for all of our marriage mentors.  They are so much more than mentors to us, they really are friends.  Towards the end of the night the guys and the girls split up to chat.  The girls sat on the screened porch with a few candles so we could see each other.  Five women who have been married anywhere from 8 to 40 years and five women who are all right around the one year mark.  What a beautiful picture.  We talked about personal things, we talked about challenges, we laughed... a lot, and we received words of wisdom that we all needed to hear.

2.  Back to school shopping!!  One of my co-workers is organizing a school supply drive for an area elementary school with a high rate of under-privileged children.  Matt and I took the list of needed supplies and filled one backpack for a boy and one backpack for a girl.  Who doesn't love a new box of crayons and colored pencils and picking out notebooks with the best looking covers?  The backpacks are loaded and sitting by the front door ready to be delivered.  Hopefully this means one girl and one boy that will not have to worry about standing out for not having the basic school supplies that the other kids have.  Hopefully they can walk in with their backpacks and just focus on learning and making friends, with one less thing standing in their way.

3.  Amazing prayer time at bible study Wednesday night.  It seems like each of the girls has something really major going on right now and it felt really good to delve into to prayer together.  There's something really powerful about calling upon the name of the Lord with a group of women you know and love.  

4.  Bacon wrapped shrimp with basil, bbq sauce, and goat cheese.  Sooooo goooood.

5.  Sampson loves my stuffed animals.  It doesn't work to buy him his own stuffed animal; he wants mine.  He has a tendency to drag them out of the bedroom when no one is looking.  He gets them in the middle of the living room floor, starts kneading them, and meows.  He never does it while we're around though.  We never actually see him grab the stuffed animal and drag it.  One night this week Matt woke up at 4am to Sampson meowing.  He had kibo (my hippo, kiboko, "hippo" in swahili) out in the living room.  He had stolen it from the bed while we slept!  I woke to find that I had Matt's gray t-shirt under my arm instead of my gray hippo, haha!  

1.  Dierks Bentley and Tim McGraw with Carrie.  So so much fun.

2.  Coming home from Dierks and Timmy to find my sweet husband with his guitar learning how to play "Come a Little Closer" by Dierks Bentley

3.  Date night:  Italian take-out, a $4 bottle of red, and super mario brothers on the wii.  Wonderful.

4.  A really really productive week at work... feeling like a couple of big projects are going to soon be complete!

5.  Picking our first pepper from seeds we plenty months ago and slicing it open to discover it's a tomato!  And that all of those pepper plants that have shot up in the yard are actually tomato plants!

What a lovely week this has been

1. Being much more diligent about morning prayer time with my husband.

2. Spending some time with 10-day old Oliver Sebastian and his sweet sweet new parents.  What an amazing gift he is... with mama's cheeks and daddy's ears.  Aww :)

3.  Getting a quote for the foundation work that needs to be done on the house and (even though it's a lot and we're not excited about it) not freaking out, because we did the work to create an emergency fund for times just like this.

4.  Realizing several times this week what an amazing work environment I am a part of (of which I am a part?  Whichever. Does anyone actually talk like that?  I digress...)  I'm empowered, appreciated, challenged, and respected.

5.  Seeing my parents continue to just "do what it takes" in every facet of life - loving the example they have always set for me.