Please pray for Samuel

Go here to learn about Samuel

and his fight for his precious little life.

Samuel's father,

who has endured many of his own

long and painful trials,

grew up at the same church that I did.

Please be praying for this family.

'tis the Season

We're still working on up-packing

and arranging stuff from the move,

but that didn't stop Mark and Kate

from pulling out all the Christmas decorations

Thanksgiving weekend.

They had such a fun time putting everything

right where they thought it should go.

It sure looks interesting (aka: messy!)

but they had a blast and I hardly

lifted a finger.

This past weekend they got Ron to get a tree

which they then decorated pretty much

all by themselves.

It's so fun to see how excited they get

and how well they get along when they're

doing something together that

they enjoy so much.

totally random

Here are a few quick pics from the last month...

Kate and her friends all ready to Trick or Treat around the new neighborhood.

Scary Mark.

Adam and his friends heading off to Homecoming.

Gregory behind a camera. One of his favorite places.

when in doubt, bake something

After powering through a bunch of boxes this morning,

I was ready for a break.

My sister told me about a recipe for some really yummy cookies

that she made and I wanted to give them a try.

I couldn't find the exact ingredients,

so I varied it a little and here's what I came up with .

Mix a box of cake mix,

a can of pumpkin,

and half a bag of white chocolate chips together.

Bake for 13 minutes at 350

and voila!

Super duper yuminess!!!

They're really little, so they end up being the perfect size

to just pop one (or maybe 5)

in your mouth.

The original recipe calls for

a box of yellow cake mix

a can of pumpkin

and a bag of cinnamon chips.

I still want to try those,

but I haven't been able to find any cinnamon chips yets.

Oh, and I almost forgot,

I added some chopped pecans to mine too.

And I've got this in the crockpot for dinner.

Here's to new recipes

to get me out of my cooking rut!

views

We went from a view of this...

to a view of this.

And a view of this...

to a view of this.

We're still buried under boxes,

but it feels so good to be

home.

busy, busy, busy

We have had back

to back

to back

houseguests

the last five weeks.

It's been super fun, but now it's back to reality.

Which for us right now involves finishing up packing the house

because we are moving one week from tomorrow.

I took a bunch of pictures of the chaos

we are living in these days,

and some pretty pictures of the leaves changing colors,

but then we packed the thingy I need to get the pictures from my camera

on to the computer and over here to this neglected little blog.

Since I don't like posting without a picture,

I thought I'd share an old picture of the monkey.

Enjoy.

not so wordless Wednesday

Ron and I got to have a wonderful little getaway this past weekend.

It was super relaxing, we got to catch up with

some of our best friends,

we made some new friends,

and my man got to golf on a course that had views like this...

I'm pretty sure that's what heaven will look like for Ron.

Now I'm off to the airport to pick up my mom.

Hope she's ready for the insane amount of work I've got waiting for her.

You just gotta love moms!

And maybe while she's packing up my house

I'll have a chance to post some more pictures from

our super fun fantastic weekend.