More Snapshots of Vacation

 

I have a few more pictures from our time away...want to see?

Three cheers for a hotel breakfast!! Ryan loves it that the Farmstead serves biscuits and gravy. I love it that they have one of those fun waffle makers. And then I broke my waffle. Zero points for presentation, but all the points for yummy!

We did a little shopping that day. Dad found himself an apron, which is hilarious since he doesn't cook. :) 

One of my FAVORITE things to do in Shipshewana is to go through the tiny cabins. I still love them with my whole heart, though my most favorite one changed this time. (I have had two that have vied for top billing in my heart, and this time, number two moved up.)

And now they also have full size model homes. Not surprisingly, my favorite looks a lot like our actual house's layout!

That tub, though...

Then we explored the outdoor furniture. Lori found a playhouse with a swing, and Ryan fell completely in love with this lounger. And the tricycle. 

We wrapped up the day (and the trip) with an evening at the Collingsworth Family concert. Fantastic music!

Thanks for coming along with us on virtual vacation! 

Snapshots of Vacation

Yesterday I told you about some of the worshipful moments I encountered on our family trip, and today I thought I would show you some snippets of the trip! :) 

First, you should know that I saw SIX DEER on my way to the lake!! Lori was kind enough to stop the car completely in the middle of a country road so I could have my freak-out over the deer. I only got pictures of three, but there were six total. They were just having lunch out in a field. SO PRETTY!!!

The view from the boat. This particular lake has a lot of huge homes on it, so we enjoyed gawking as we cruised. So many pretties!

Perfect day for boating. (Aside from stormy days, I've not met many I haven't liked for boating!)

This is where we had lunch! Boated right up to it and then ate out on the patio. It was delicious! 

After we finished our lunch, we had to scurry back to our car so we could get to the hotel to check in. We stayed at the Farmstead in Shipshewana, which is, I think, the only place I've ever stayed there!

We had dinner at the Essenhaus, which is a staple stop on any Shipshewana trip. Home-cooking at its finest!

We were celebrating a bunch of milestones, so we got a cake to cover them all. We just passed the cake around the table so everyone celebrating could get a picture with it. (The bakery asked me what to write on it, and I told them we were celebrating too many things to write it on such a little cake, so we went with standard flowers instead!)

Just kidding. I didn't eat it all by myself. :) It was a good cake, though. White cake with raspberry filling. Yum! 

We ended the day with a walk around town and some great views of the sunset!

I'll have a few more for you tomorrow! :) 

Sunday Sentiments

 

Ryan and I just arrived home yesterday after a couple of days away with my family. We hit the ground running when we came home, trying to get all the house chores caught up and things prepared for the week to come, so I haven't sorted through any of my pictures yet. I'll get to them...I promise.

The weekend was about celebrations. My dad and one of my sisters both have milestone birthdays this year, and my parents will celebrate their 68th anniversary next weekend. So the weekend was full of all the things you might expect: parties and cake and pictures and time together.

But for me, the weekend was also about worship, and I was grateful for it. 

My sisters and I had a little bit of a pre-celebration, and part of that included a boat ride. (My sister owns a pontoon, so her husband treated us to a lake cruise.) You know how I love the lake, and it's been years since we've gone. After Ryan's mom died, our annual family trips to the lake ceased. We miss the water. We miss the boat rides. I miss how close I feel to the Lord when that water is lapping the side of the boat.

I tried to be aware of conversations and paying attention to the family time I was supposed to be part of, but my mind was a hundred miles away as I stared across the water and soaked in the joy of being back out there in my most favorite place. 

I took a few pictures to remind myself later of how much I loved it. It was pure joy, and I could have spent hours more out there.

Then on Saturday night, most of the family went to a concert together (a first for us!) and that whole night was one piece of worship after another.

We went to see the Collingsworth family, and I enjoyed every single moment. 

They sang some of my favorite old hymns and they sang new songs (some I knew, and some I didn't). They shared pieces of their stories, and even though I knew some of those stories from following them on social media, I still got caught up in the wonder of how God has worked in their lives.

It was a really beautiful and special night that I'm still pondering in my heart.

Friday night, Ryan and I went for a walk around town (we were in Shipshewana) with Lori and Jeff, and God painted THE most beautiful sunset for us to enjoy. I tried not to lose sight of it as we made our way around town. 

There was so much more to the weekend, but I am especially grateful today for these things. They will always be dear to me. 

The Saturday Six

 

You all know how much a love a good color-coded ANYTHING, right? well, my love for all things color-coded, organized, and pretty inspired this week's Saturday Six! Enjoy!

One.

I had to laugh at the beginning of this post, because I have had the EXACT conversation she talks about regarding the breaker box! Why are breaker boxes such a graveyard of confusion and bad handwriting? I feel like it's almost required for them to be a mess. But this lady created a color-coded system to make it easy to see which one controls which things in the house. It's so pretty. And even though most people don't hang out looking at their breaker boxes on the regular, it's still nice to know it can be pretty, right?

Two.

Earlier this week, I made the Dashing Dish recipe for roasted vegetables, and I had to take a picture of it, because it was SO PRETTY with all the veggies lined up in nice, neat, color-coded rows. Sure, it all got mingled on the plate, but organized food in presentation makes me exceedingly happy. Also...it tasted SO good and kept us in business for veggies for about three meals! 

Three.

I absolutely organize my clothes in color order in my closet. (You can read some ideas on that here.) It makes it so much easier for me to find the things I'm looking for when I'm hunting for a certain color. I'm also working on simplifying the NUMBER of colors in my closet, so hopefully this is about to get even easier! Also, I really miss the days when Goodwill put clothes in color order. I could shop SO MUCH FASTER when they were in color order, because I was almost always looking for something very specific when I went!

Four.

Who doesn't love a color-coded filing system? Sure, it's in the drawer, and you don't see it every moment of every day. But it's SO PRETTY when you do need to get in and find something! Here's an idea for that! 

Five.

Years ago, I made an orange gift basket for a friend of ours on her birthday. She LOVES orange more than anyone I've ever met, so it was a fun gift to make. Color-coded gift baskets for the win! Some of them you can make super inexpensively, but it shows your recipient you know him or her well enough to know a favorite color! Here are some ideas.

Six.

This is the color-coding list I use for my Bible highlighting. I don't highlight every single verse, but I do mark things that fall into these categories. I printed this out, laminated it, and I keep it inside my Bible for reference. It has worked well for me! (I use colored pencils for marking.) 

Guests!!

 

We always enjoy having guests come to visit, and this week brought us our first non-toddler overnight guests!

My sister and brother-in-law were passing through the area and spent an evening with us and then stayed the night. Lexi was not quite sure why her bedroom suddenly got a makeover, but she wanted to pose with the completed bed!

(Our guest bed stores as a twin and converts into a king, so I had pulled it out for their stay. Lexi moved over to the office for the night.)

Had to have a welcome sign, of course.

When they first arrived, we went on a walk around the neighborhood. (They had been in the car for a while and were ready to stretch and move!) Lexi was excited to show them everything. Lexi had just licked Jeff's ear before this picture was taken. :) 

We also took them out to Pizza King for dinner. They love Pizza King, but they don't have them where they live, so we told them we'd have that for dinner. The photo below is a very deceiving angle. The pizza was NOT as big as it looks.

After dinner, we spent the rest of the evening hanging out and talking! And Lexi was SO EXCITED they were there. In fact, yesterday morning, when she got done with her breakfast, she discovered they hadn't completely latched the door to their room, so she busted in to tell them good morning. #facepalm. 

Thanks for coming to see us!!! We had the best time hosting you. Sorry about the wake up call. 

Never Too Old

Ryan teaches me all kinds of things just by being Ryan, and in the last week, he taught me another valuable life lesson.

He called from work one day and said he had determined his handwriting was unacceptable, and he would be working to improve it immediately. I love him with my whole heart, but he does have challenging-to-read handwriting. I will give him that! Part of it is that he forms such tiny letters, so you really have to focus to read. Beyond that, it's just genuinely hard to read. 

That very night, he came home and printed out some worksheets on handwriting and began his own self-induced class on improving his writing. He doesn't work on it every single day, but he does work on it regularly. (We also have an adorable third-grade-looking worksheet hanging on the refrigerator sporting some of his cursive work.)

It makes me giggle, because when he shows me his work, I don't recognize it. His handwriting now does not look like "his" handwriting at all. But I can read it. The letters are larger and more legible, and I am proud of him for working so hard to make an improvement.

I could stand to join him, of course, I used to have fabulous handwriting, but it has gotten progressively worse as I've gotten older. I blame it on actually being a writer. My mind moves much faster than my hand, so if I want to get all those thoughts on paper before they evaporate, I have to MOVE. That means I have no time for pretties. Just write and go on. And now it's just bad.

But what Ryan taught me through this whole handwriting class adventure actually has nothing to do with writing itself and everything to do with his heart. 

He has taught me that you're never too old to realize when something needs to be improved, and you're never beyond taking a few steps backwards to make those improvements. Being in your forties doesn't mean you're too good or too old for those elementary school worksheets if that's what it takes to improve your handwriting skills. 

We tend to very quickly make excuses about how or why we shouldn't bother with something because we're too old to learn or too set in our ways to mess with it. But we aren't. Maybe because we're "old," the learning might come at a slower pace, but we're not exempt.

What do you think you're "too old" to learn or do? And are you really?

For example...I know I'd love to learn pretty hand-lettering. I don't necessarily want to learn calligraphy, but some sort of fun, scripty handwritten fonts that could make little notes extra cute. 

I'd also love to learn how to crochet. I started learning from Sarah right before we left WillowBridge, but then all of the wrapping up work and packing took over and I never had time to continue my lessons. 

And even if I never work in an actual coffee shop, I'd still love to learn some legitimate barista skills - just to use at home! 

Thanks, Ryan, for inspiring me to keep learning!!!! 

Belonging

Can you handle one more story from the weekend?

This past Saturday night, after our day at the Back to School Bash, we met up with our small group. 

Ryan and I love small groups. We led one fairly early on in our marriage - when we attended church in Marion, just down the road from where we lived. Our house was small, but we welcomed as many as we could squeeze into our little living room and thoroughly enjoyed fellowship and Bible study together.

Then we moved away to Kokomo and first led a small group made up of Ryan's coworkers. We met at his boss's house and learned together. It was a sweet group that we miss! Once we got involved in a church there, we led small groups through them, and by the time we left Kokomo, we were actually the leaders of the small group ministry as a whole. We thought we would be there for a long time to grow and expand that ministry, but God had other plans for us.

We sorely missed small group fellowship while we were at WillowBridge. We didn't feel like we could commit to a group since if we were on duty, we couldn't guarantee that we could actually be there. But toward the end of our time there, a sweet friend from our church asked us to be part of her small group. She said she totally understood if we had to cancel last minute, but if we could make it, she wanted us there. That group loved us so well, and even though we were only part of it for a few weeks before we moved, it was just what we needed.

So we moved here, and our friends invited us to be part of their small group. They said they understood if we weren't ready yet, or if we needed some space from groups in general, but we would be welcomed if we wanted to go. I think the first time we went was something like a week after we moved. It was familiar and comfortable because our friends were there, but I was also nervous to start over with new people in a new place.

But this group has welcomed us so completely. Everyone in the group is in ministry, so they all understand the push and pull of the ministry lifestyle. They've made a place for us, and we are so very thankful.

We went Saturday night, and we learned that one of the guys in our group had just graduated with his Master's degree, so we celebrated him! I made an apple crisp, one of our friends' kids made homemade confetti from crepe paper and tossed it in the air when the graduated arrived. We sat around the table and shared stories and food, and the then the guys gathered to play Ticket to Ride and the girls hung out telling stories in the living room. 

I was suprised, when I got home that night, that I wasn't just flat-out exhausted. We'd had a full day of work on Friday, including two hours in a sweltering bus, we'd had the back to school bash (which Ryan also helped tear down), and I thought I'd be exhausted by bedtime. But, in fact, I felt energized! Spending an evening with friends was just what I needed. 

The next morning, our church had an outdoor service (around a BEAUTIFUL pond) and received new members and baptized a dozen people! 

I know church membership is something that is very critical to some and not as important to others. I thought I would explain what it means to us; it's okay if it means something different to you!

What holds eternal value is whether or not we are part of God's Church...having received Jesus as our Savior. We made that decision a long time ago, and we know we belong to Him! Our decision to be part of any local congregation is more of our statement to that particular church that we are committed to attending regularly, serving alongside others, and offering our financial support. We know that unless God moves us, we plan to be in this area for a long, long time (or forever!) so we were ready to take that outward-sign step and join this congregation.

The service was a beautiful time of worship and particularly meaningful to us as we promised to support this church. 

The weekend felt like belonging, and we were so grateful. 

Back to School Bash

 

When it rains, it pours, it seems, on weekend events for us! As I told you about yesterday, we volunteered with Stuff the Bus on Friday afternoon last week, and then on Saturday morning, we did another work-related event!

Our church (for the past eleven years) has had a free clothing boutique. The story of how the boutique came to be is actually really faith-boosting and inspiring. I'll have to ask my friend Julie if we can share that on here, because I think you would enjoy it. The boutique is open one Saturday morning a month, and local families in need are encouraged to shop and take what they need - no more and no less. Once a year, they have a big back to school bash, where they not only have the clothing as usual, but they also give away prizes, have crafts and games, offer brand new free backpacks and school supplies, give free haircuts to kids, and more! 

This year, my friend Julie (who runs the entire operation) invited Ryan and I to have a booth for Love INC at the event, because the families who attend are the very families we serve, and she thought this might help us get to know some of them better. We were so excited to be part of it, and we decided to put together a photo booth. Seemed more fun to have something to offer, rather than just standing there handing out brochures and business cards. 

Last week, Ryan and I went over to the church to assemble the backdrop for the photo booth. I got this idea from Pinterest, and I think it turned out SO CUTE!!! It took us a couple of hours to put it together, but we had a lot of fun talking while we worked. (Fun fact: the plywood we used for the back was actually left by the builders when we moved into our house, so it was free! All we had to buy were the paper plates and the tape. And we got all the paper plates at the Dollar Tree, so it was fairly cost effective.)

Here are some pictures from assembly day:

Saturday morning, we carried the backdrop outside and propped it up on the side of the church. We also had a table with some props...we got these from Amazon. They were all back-to-school related! 

Isn't it so colorful and fun? We received a lot of compliments on it! One mom stopped and said, "I just want a picture of the backdrop so I can make one sometime." OKAY!! :) 

Ryan and I had some fun with it:

And here I am with Julie!

Julie said we served over 300 people that day, and it was a record-breaking year. It was a really big blessing for us to get to be part of it, and we loved it. 

At the end of the event, right before the prize drawings, Ryan was able to speak a little bit about the work of Love INC. There were a couple of other ministries there too, and they also shared. 

And before we went home, we shared a snow cone!!

Photo bomb by Jonathan!

We were super thankful the weather held for the morning, since there were some questionable forecasts leading up to the day. And we were thankful for a chance to serve the community!