Yes, all of my favorites have been combined into one weekend. Music, family, and photography. I’ve been dying to post some pictures of everything we have been up to, but everytime I try, my heavy eyelids get the best of me. We’ve just been so busy lately, and therefore, I have been too tired to do much of anything productive. We have had a blast though. Let me explain.

First of all, our band got the privilege of recording a live CD in a studio this past Saturday. We earned 3 days of recording for playing at a youth camp, so we used the first of the three to do a live recording session with people from our church taking part. It was amazing. Our band spent Thursday and Friday nights cramped into a little bedroom, practicing into the wee hours. I took a few pics so you could see the fun.

Here’s the host. He let us make a bunch of racket in his home… I bet the neighbors LOVED it.

A picture of my mic. Boy do I love singing.

Chico’s drums. I kinda like the black and white. Do you?

My husband rockin’ out. Very nice.

So the next day was recording day! I woke up excited… but before I could go record, I had to go sell some stuff in a garage sale. 6 am was WAY to early to get up! You’d better believe I took my camera to keep me company.

So, notice how far we have gotten into the day. I mean, it’s at least 11 am by now. Then, I look down and notice this….. yeah, one thing is not like the other.

Two different flip flops! Who does that? Duh, ME!

Here we are enjoying our million dollar pizzas for lunch. Seriously expensive. Yikes. It was totally worth it though. I would eat pizza morning noon and night if I could. ha!

This is right before “Showtime.” We really had a blast and an incredible time of worship.

For the show, Eric’s mom and her husband drove down (1.5 hrs) just to be a part of the recording and to spend some time with us. They ended up staying with my parents (our apartment is pretty tiny) and on Sunday after church we made burgers on the grill and had a swim party. But don’t be misled, it was no “leisurely Sunday afternoon swim.” OH NO… it was a full out competitive game of water volleyball. A water splashing, trash talking, ball slammin’ game of volleyball. It was the “old” against the “young,” 4 against 2. The games were tied 1 to 1 and we had to have a championship tie breaker. Who won? Well who do you think? I’m a state champion. hahaha

This is a cute picture of my mother/father-in-law.

He’s so good at this. YUM!

Here is my mom’s puppy, Darlin’. She was scared of only the scariest diet coke can in the entire world. Who could blame her?

Nothing better than full tummies, a game of volleyball, and a little politics talk, right? Um….. yeah….. No comment on the last part.

So thanks everyone for making it such a wonderful weekend. It really was memorable for me.

On a side note, I would also like to add that I read something life changing tonight. It’s funny how things just kind of hit you when you are least expecting it. I’m doing a bible study with a couple of youth from church, and we are doing a study on the book A Call To Die by David Nasser. We met for the first time tonight, so I read the introduction and prologue this afternoon beforehand. David made such a profound statement in his book that my little brain had a hard time wrapping my thoughts around it. He said, “It is much easier to be a nice Christian than a radical one.” Wow. How long have I lived with the idea that I need to be like Jesus, the sweet, kind, tender loving Man? Since I was 13. I just realized that while Jesus was sweet and kind, he was also radical. He changed the world. He was not ALWAYS nice for the sake of being nice. He was loud. He was blunt. He made people mad. He made people think. He told it like it was. He did not always have the “nice Christian answer.” He spoke Truth and thought more about glorifying God than making sure everyone liked him. I mean, I always knew this about Jesus, but I didn’t think that I had to follow that aspect of Jesus’ character all the time. I like being nice. I like for people to like me. And that’s okay. I just don’t need to make that my primary concern because I will always be let down. I want to be radical. I want to think more about glorifying God than myself. Everyone doesn’t have to like me. Everyone doesn’t like me. It’s okay. It IS ok… Thank you God for showing me something new and refreshing today. I pray that it will change my outlook on life while I’m on this earth. I pray that we will be radical Christians.

Love you guys. Thanks for stopping by.

We had a great first year anniversary (It was yesterday, for those of you who didn’t realize the year has already flown by). Actually, we kind of made it into an anniversary weekend. Two reasons we did this.

1. It’s our first anniversary and we wanted to make it special
2. Stonewater had the staff retreat on the actual day, so we improvised

Earlier this year we tried to plan a trip to celebrate, but lack of funds and other events conflicted. I was sort of bummed that we weren’t going to be celebrating our day in a special way, but I happened to forget that my husband is awesome. He totally rocked all week long. On Friday, he surprised me with a gift. It was Adobe Photoshop Elements, since knows that I’ve been getting into photography and loving it and every photographer knows you need post processing capabilities. So… WOO HOO!!! I am so excited.

On Saturday, Eric woke me up with a Starbucks Caremel Macchiato (my fav), ground Starbucks coffee for me to make this week, and a new mug that I REALLY wanted last time we went there. He’s so sweet for tuning in. Needless to say, I was surprised and a very happy girl. So we had band practice that morning until 1 pm, and I came home afterwards to took a nap. Eric said he had other errands to run. Once again he woke me up with a surprise. Guess what? New bedroom furniture. With the help of Marcus and Daniel, he snuck it into our living room. Okay, so if anyone has seen our apartment, you know that most of our furniture has been given to us (new or hand me down). Which means, most of it does not match…. ESPECIALLY in our bedroom. We had a garage sale chest of drawers (bottom drawer broke), donated dresser and mirror (scratched and old), and a wobbly little bitty accent table that barely held up a lamp and alarm clock, and that’s all. So, my husband found a new modern, black Dresser, Chest of Drawers, and Nightstand and the Woods Outlet here in town. It looks fantastic! I love our bedroom now. Everything matches and it looks so cute.

On Saturday night Eric wanted to take me to Ft. Worth to eat. We went to none other than Texas De Brazil. If you haven’t been there, you need to go in a very bad way. It was so so good. We both had to roll out of there. Ugh…. miserable, but so worth it. Afterwards my husband, oh so graciously, let me take pictures of him around Sundance Square. He’s such a trooper. I always feel bad, because even though I need practice, I make him stand places and stick a camera in his face. Then he’ll ask if I got any “good ones” and I have to reply honestly. “No… but I’m learning!” haha… Poor thing. It’s fun though. Oh, I so love it.

So Sunday was church like normal. It seems like the two services are growing and we will DEFINITELY need that early service again come fall. And I want to add that it really seems like the church is catching on to the whole “worship” thing. The last few Sundays have been amazing. I can actually hear people singing. I even took my ear monitor out for the last song because it sounded so beautiful. It has been so amazing seeing the church grow as a family and as Christians together. Everyone is really catching on to what worship is all about. God is so good.

Yesterday was our real anniversary and we spent the evening at the staff retreat. It ended up being a really enjoyable evening for celebrating. Eric welcomed me to the door with a beautiful boquet of flowers. Everyone even sang us “Happy Anniversary” to the birthday song. It was awesome. *I want to give a special thanks to Misti for going to so much trouble for us. She made THREE cakes and TWO Homemade ice creams (one of them we will be enjoying this afternoon). The White’s have been so awesome to us since the day I met them and always go out of their way for us. Thank you guys for everything.* I spent a little time taking pictures at the party, and with some guidance from Misti, learned some new things and had a good time. So, our anniversary weekend was great and I’m so thankful to have such a wonderful husband and great friends.

Today I’ve experimented with post processing and wanted to share some pictures from our weekend. Here’s to one wonderful year with my husband, and hopefully MILLIONS more!

And here is the reason for our miserable-ness…. is that a word? YUM!

Here is a shot of Eric that I like. Cutie.

Here are the beatiful flowers that Eric greeted me with at the door at the Staff Party.

Here are some of the shots I got at the staff party. This was is of Sarah and Jenna playing.

Daniel was the kid-entertainer for the night. Oh, and I see some BO-BO!

This is Misty Carters baby making the CUTEST expression ever.

This is little Sarah Sprayberry. Apparently she makes adorable faces like this all the time.

I can’t get enough of her little hair. It’s so soft and I just want to play with it!

That’s it for now. I’m still working on all my picture taking and editing, but I’m having a blast! Thanks for looking!