Wordless Wednesday - Goodbye Old Farm!

Twitter Tuesday - Max On Life

Twitter is a constant encouragement to us. We follow writers, pastors, friends, and organizations. There are many tweets weekly that really inspire us. Here is what is on our mind today.

@MaxLucado: Marriage is God's idea. He created it because most of us are better God-followers with a partner than we are alone #maxonlife

I have been dwelling on this tweet for a few weeks now... Taylor assigned it to me after I said the same thing to her when she had come back from a week in SA for Spring Break. Mine wasn't phrased as nicely as Max's, it was more like-

"I don't like it when you are gone..."

but the idea behind it is the same. :)

But really. I become a slacker when left alone to do my own thing. Not on purpose but I don't have the reinforcement that Taylor gives me. All my life I have had ideas and have started projects but I've always second guessed myself and didn't really finish anything. When I married Taylor she was someone I could talk to, someone that would listen, she encouraged me, focused me, loved me. She made me make sense.

I have always known that the Food Pak ® project that we did was never the result of either of us as individuals. I had the idea but Taylor had the ear to hear me and the love to talk, grow, and plan the idea into a doable challenge. This is how our marriage works. We each bring what we know and who we are to the table and then we can prepare ourselves as a whole for Him. That is what the goal is, to live life to please him. And without my wife I don't even come close.

"We are one but not the same, we get to carry each other". U2

Just to put some facts to what I am saying I copied at few lines from the book "Do Hard Things" by Alex and Brett Harris-

"A study of horses revealed that a single horse could pull an average of 2,500 pounds. The test was repeated with two horses. You'd expect the weight pulled to double--to about 5,000 pounds. Not so. Two horses working together pulled 12,500 pounds! That's five times the amount one could pull alone. There's something inside a living being that rises to accomplish exponentially greater things when part of a team."

So you see, what I said was just what Max tweeted... I just needed my wife's help to explain it. ;)

Sunny Saturday - Houston

We spent the day enjoying Houston and a few of the attractions near by...

After the farmer's market we went home changed and then went out for lunch.

(Today is 1 year and 11 months)

Back home for a nap, a wardrobe change, and some ice cream then out of a walk around town...

It was a nice day to spend together, hope yours was too.  Don't forget to enter the giveaway!  The winner will be announced today.

Transitions and Giveaway

We are down to just one week left in Houston. Mixed feelings.

We moved out of our very first place together on Tuesday and became roamers... living out of bags and the back of our truck. But we have some great friends that offered us a place to stay while we finish up work and school. So we have a place to sleep and eat and spend time with people we like. :) God has really blessed us with friends in Houston.

Did we mention that they live walking distance from Frankie's office?! So helpful since we drove his car to San Antonio last weekend and left it there... We can also walk to a ton of restaurants, shops, and even our farmers market! :) And we're only 10 minutes from Ecclesia! Easy peasy compared to the 35 minute drive we had before..we might want to just move in here! ;)

Change is coming fast, in fact it has already started. It feels nice to be going through this at the same time as Easter. It's like BIG things are happening everywhere. :) We are happy that we can follow Christ wherever he leads us, thought it can be scary.

Next week starts a new transition, we will no longer be homeless but we will be jobless... and that is extremely scary. But we try to remind ourselves of Matthew 6:25-34

If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds. (MSG)


This passage always brings us comfort, especially in the vulnerable times. Knowing that he will provide our every need, makes it all seem so small but His purpose and His plans that much bigger.

So because this is our last weekend to be here we decided to have some fun and do some things we are going to miss... we'll update all about it in this weeks Sunny Saturday post! :) But to hold you over, we've got a giveaway! Yup, right from our very own farmer's market and our soap friend Cammie......

Easter Soap!

With a fresh grapefruit scent! How refreshing! Happy Easter, friends! He is risen! :)



To enter this giveaway, leave a comment on our Sunny Saturday post (to come)! Let us know your favorite thing about your part of town, your hometown, your favorite Saturday fun, or what you're doing to celebrate the Risen King! Winner will be announced at the end of Easter, so stay close.

Memorial Box Monday ~ Blessed by Boxes

Linny at A Place Called Simplicity started Memorial Box Mondays.

"In Joshua 4 Almighty God tells the Isrealites to collect stones and set them as a Memorial to remind them of God's power and provision. He then tells the Isrealites to use those stones as a memorial; that every time they see them to tell their children and their children's children the stories over and over again, continually reminding them of God's faithfulness."

To read the full idea and an introduction to Memorial Box Mondays go here and read Linny's "How about Memorial Box Mondays? aka We will remember..." post.

If you'll remember back to our MBM post about Sweet Tea and Chocolate, you'll remember that making a decision to move back to San Antonio was kinda a big deal for us. Lots and lots of prayer was involved as well as petitioning for wisdom from elders, ending in a prayer that we could find peace and confidence in our decision. Well God certainly heard that prayer and sealed it with Sweet Tea and Chocolate, but he continues to comfort us and bring certainty to our decision.

Now that the moving process has begun, we have looked at things with a new lens, realizing how much work it really is to relocate from a third story apartment to a single bedroom 300 some miles away. Yet through these times even, God has been with us...

A friend of Frankie's boss had been moving and as he unpacked, Frankie's boss brought car load after car load, day after day, of [expensive] moving boxes (and tons of bubble wrap) to the office for us to use! We didn't realize what God had provided until we stepped back and looked...

and stacked...

(there are many more flattened boxes behind these) We had about 30 quality moving boxes sitting in our living room the week we were ready to start packing! Not three weeks before, not two weeks later, and of no charge to us! We were blessed!

To add to it, when we finally got around to calling UHaul to figure out how to rent a trailer, there were only two of three options left- the two options we hadn't decided on after much thought and wrestling with a decision. We had decided to go for the medium size and figure out what to do with anything that didn't fit the next week. So when we called, and all that was left was the small and the large, we opted for the larger knowing that the small would have been way to small. We weren't planning on paying that much but God knew just what we needed- we loaded that baby full and it towed just fine! Needless stress removed from the coming weekend!

And to end it, we had not found a storage place yet...yes, we are slackers. (But, maybe out of ignorance, we are not worriers!) Frankie had taken a quick peek around the area to find out average prices and Mom looked, too. All were pretty steep. So Saturday morning, while unloading the UHaul at the Winder's house, we began to take out the items that were staying in our one room. Then we were going to take the rest...ummm...who knows were...and try to find a storage place not too far away. But in that big old house (with tiny bedrooms) God allowed Mom and Dad to bless us with abundant space for ALL of our belongings! All of their stuff they had moved two weeks prior fit nicely into the garage, leaving empty a room off the back of the garage twice the size of a typical storage facility! These lovely parents delegated us space in this room for the cheap price of being part-time summer school teachers! ;)

It's been a lot of work, but seeing God through every detail of our move is simply joyful. Into our Memorial Box will go this [adorable] miniature moving box to remind us that God is truly taking care of us and is definitely a God who "cares right down to the last detail." James 5:11 MSG

Sunny Saturday "Littles Edition" - Moving Boxes

Of course the best part of moving is playing in the boxes! ;)

Wordless Wednesday - Brandon Heath and Dave Barnes

One Day Without Shoes

Memorial Box Monday - TOMS

Linny at A Place Called Simplicity started Memorial Box Mondays.

"In Joshua 4 Almighty God tells the Isrealites to collect stones and set them as a Memorial to remind them of God's power and provision. He then tells the Isrealites to use those stones as a memorial; that everytime they see them to tell their children and their children's children the stories over and over again, continually reminding them of God's faithfulness."

To read the full idea and an introduction to Memorial Box Mondays go here and read Linny's "How about Memorial Box Mondays? aka We will remember..." post.

We didn't hear about TOMS until a few years ago... I think Taylor's brother Brady, was the first to have them of the people we knew. But when we heard about them and the movement that they created, we had to have a pair of our own! So for Christmas we got giftcards for TOMS from Taylor's grandparents and were so excited to pick out our first pair! We each bought our shoes and (with a coupon code of course) even had some change left over on the cards.

After we we had them awhile Frankie's sister, Kathy, wanted a pair so we gave here a left over giftcard to help with part of the shipping costs.  Well she ended up buying them in a store and didn't use it, which left us with a couple of floating around giftcards with a couple of dollars each. We kinda forgot about them until the time came for our blogger birthday and 100th post! That day we wanted to thank everyone who had been reading and encouraging us throughout the year so we did giveaways all day- books from Max Lucado and Chris Seay, a CHF T-shirt and bracelet, tickets to the ALS benefit, and of course a pair of TOMS! It was a busy day and we mailed prizes everywhere from San Antonio to Canada!

The lucky winner of the TOMS was a sweet blogger family-friend from San Antonio, Lexie (She and her Mom blog here!). She was so excited to win those shoes, and we were so excited that she did, too! We exchanged emails and ordered her shoes of choice.  As we were checking out online we called Kathy to get that card number to cover part of the cost. We entered it in and checked the total... $8.61...

 
 

Wait a minute!... WHAT? How is that possible? We spent those giftcards on our own TOMS, but somehow it was reading $50.00! All we had to pay was the shipping... and after a day of giveaways the blessing was very much appreciated! :) So in our Memorial Box we will place our TOMS giftcard to remind us that sometimes when you bless others you find that you are the ones being blessed! (And also to double check our giftcards!)

To go along with our Memorial Box Monday post we also have a date to share with you... April 5, 2011. Yep, it's tomorrow!

April, 5th is TOMS's "A Day Without Shoes". And if you don't know what that is we will explain....it is a day when you don't wear shoes... ;) to bring awareness to children that don't have shoes. We will be going to work/school without shoes and invite you to join us for the day or just part of the day. We also invite you to read why shoes matter to people who have none!

So don't forget tomorrow to trim and paint your nails because tomorrow we will bare our soles!

Sunny Saturday - Birthday

Today is Frankie's 25th Birthday so this Saturday we celebrated with family, games, homemade pizza, and some music!

For presents Frankie asked for people to match his $25 donation to CHF for Food Paks, he set his goal to $250 and we met it that night! 

Thanks everyone for coming out and for helping other families have a chance to gather around a table together to eat well.  Thank you Lord for 25 great years of life filled with blessings and love.