Two years of Bliss

I am so happy I married you my love! You are more precious to me every day, and I still pinch myself that you are mine.

Second Anniversary Steal!

Or Second Anniversary is about to be here! Yipee!
At the same time, we live with V's parents currently, so I spent the last few hours looking for hotels. We have to stay close since I have to work at 8 the next morning, and we are trying to keep it reasonable. I feel like I wasted the last 4 hours of my life! There is no hotel, (well at least not really gross) that is under $100! There is something wrong when the Holiday Inn costs $129 for 1 night. We could stay at an awesome boutique hotel in Dallas for that price, I just would have to leave at 5 in the morning to make it to work on time! Grr...
However....
We had a friend tell us about a site www.biddingfortravel.com that is basically a message board for people who have used priceline, and they let you know the lowest bid that was accepted by a hotel. Sweet right? There was a super trendy hotel I had my eye on that is not too far from home, but originally priced at $139 a night. Well I found someone had gotten a room there for $40 a night! Praise the Lord! Was it too good to be true? Well after staring at the screen and going back and forth for about 3 hours, V and I placed our $40 bid on www.priceline.com, and we were accepted! That is about $100 savings!
No lie, this was an answer to prayer, and we couldn't be more excited! Look at this awesome mod hotel we get to stay in for $40! (the total with tax ect is $53.27)

This is the description: "Breeze into one of our rooms, featuring our ultra-comfortable signature bed, an oversized showerhead, custom amenities by Bliss® Spa, and more. Our plug & play connectivity station charges all your electronics and links to the 42” LCD TV to maximize work and play."

I will NEVER book a hotel the traditional way again!

I am super excited!

Inspiration Folder

Today I stumbled across a new fun site, House of Turquoise! I found myself saving picture after picture that I found inspiring, and before I knew it, I had a whole inspiration folder! Check it out! (All pictures found on House of Turquoise.)

I love the wall color, and the dark couch here. And the mixing of the blue and grey and brown. I already have plans, and stuff, for a room that is going to (hopefully) look similar.

Amazing cabinet! Wouldn’t you love to get ready in this bathroom? I think I might even be able to stay tidy if I lived here.

The thing I love about this is the room is incredibly light and bright, but there is dark furniture. A must for us since we already have some furniture.

I am loving this whole room!

 

Since we are moving to a town where most of the houses are from 1970, wood paneling is something that we are just going to have to deal with I am afraid. That remains to be seen until we find our house, but I am loving what they did with the paneling here. It looks intentional!

I love that this room doesn’t take itself too seriously. At least I don’t think it does.

I like the grey here. The white really pops against it.

And these chair covers are awesome. At least awesome until someone eats on them. I think they would need to be bleached every meal. But cool idea.

And least but not least, I am loving this for many reasons, I we have couches that color. And I want walls that color. And I think it is beautiful.  But a little busy for me.

Oh what a View, Days 2-9

So much for going a day at a time! We are literally on the way home, and while I’m sitting in the car for the next 15 hours, might as well catch everyone up on our awesome trip!

After we drove from Texas to beautiful Colorado Springs, we crashed for the night. The next morning we had a few hours before we had to check in for our conference, so we headed to the Garden of the Gods. I had been here once before, but it was a first for V. We had a blast! It was so cool to see God’s amazing creations!

Emily and I were so excited to get to hang out!

    

And my sweet husband jumped from rock to rock- and was dang good at it too!

     

Sam and Emily really are this fun all the time. I know, it’s awesome. Come live in the pineywoods with us!

Than after Garden of the Gods we checked out the Navigators headquarters, Glenn Eyrie, in Colorado Springs. It’s a real castle! Amazing! I want to go stay in the honeymoon suite at the top of the turret one day. Talk about feeling like a princess.

After that, we had a quick lunch at the most delicious French Bistro, La Baguette. The guys didn’t quite get what the big deal was until they had a bite of the yummy French cuisine. It was probably my favorite meal of the trip.

 

Then we drive up to Fort Collins, and got all checked-in for the Staff Conference! And this was our home away from home (that is for a few days anyway…)

These pictures somehow make it look nice enough, but it was one big YUCK! It was definitely a guys dorm, complete with mold, no ac, stench of feet and armpits, and urinals in the girls bathroom (which was down the hall, up a flight of stairs, and down another hall…) Note: we found out a few days later it was not too late to switch dorms, and get a place with a bathroom and ac- and we happily packed up to hit up dorm 2.

 

There was a welcome Country Fair that night, and it was so fun to run into so many friends from around the country that we don’t get to see often, but love to death!

The next day, we got fully geared into conference mode. Let me just share that I have been to many many conferences, and I have gotten the privilege of hearing lots of amazing speakers, and being challenged in so many ways, but God did amazing things in my heart over the week+ that we were there. So many times I found myself in tears (and for so many reasons…) and it was so amazing to get to share that with my amazing husband, and sweet friends.

Even though this is about 8 days worth of pictures, I am just going to share them all here.

This is from the first morning of CSU, and it was incredible to be in the same auditorium with 5,000 other believers who do the same thing that we do! This was one of the first times that I teared up a little.

 

For the past 50 years, the co-founder of Campus Crusade, Vonette Bright, opened the Staff Conference with prayer, and this year was no different. This woman is so inspirational, and her heart is amazing.

Vince and I could not get over that people get to look at mountains every day! We were a bit jealous and contemplating moving, until we realized that with mountains comes snow, and we are two birds that are just too used to heat! I am just glad we were there in the summer and enjoyed 70-80 degree weather, a HUGE change from the 107 at home… 

 

One night we got the fun of getting to hear Tim Hawkins, a Christian Comedian. Let me be the first to say that I think that Christian and Comedian are not usually 2 words that belong together, and my expectations were pretty low. Goodness gracious I was wrong! For an hour and a half this guy made me laugh so hard that I cried, and Emily couldn’t breathe. Her hands even went numb she was laughing so hard. Vince even had tears. He was that funny. I highly recommend him. Very very much so.

On Sat. morning I got to see Robin, along with the rest Rach’s fam. I love love love them. I enjoyed every minute- and they introduced us to a super-yummy little Cajun Breakfast place called Lucille’s. If you don’t think that Cajun and Breakfast mix, it’s ok, I didn’t either until I had the best french toast of my life.

Another day we got to spend time with staff from our Region in the CRU world, (TEXAS, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana) We had a fun picnic, and got to hear what God is doing locally. Besides getting to see old friends.

One night, we got a chance to be part of the program for the evening since we joined staff recently. All of the new staff from lined up and out from the stage, and it was amazing to see the 350+ people that committed to serve the Lord with their lives. The line (of all of us) went on for about 20 mins- and that was just so cool!

Samily (Sam + Emily)  walked with us too!

 

This is the view from our dorm to the the big arena where we had the conference.

One more of the more silly, but favorite parts of the conference was Jazzercise. Now I know the mere mention of the word brings mental pictures of lavender leg-warmers, and pink bodysuits, but I promise it is nothing like that, and it is probably the most fun I have ever had working out.  Em and I were the class managers since we loved it so much the summer before at New Staff Training, and so we went to class everyday! 1.) It kicked my butt. Quite literally. 2.) It kept me from gaining cafeteria food weight (YAY!) and 3.) it was a total highlight and delight.  Here is our amazing instructor, Angie, with Emily and I.

I was sick for the last day, and of course that is the only day anyone brought their camera, but I was there, every day minus sick day! And it was awesome! And the group was much bigger daily.

 

And finally (and congratulations if you have actually read all of this!) we had our last meeting. I was so sad the conference was over- it went by so fast! The Lord taught us so much, and we were so glad we got to go! The last night was a big celebration and send off, and let me tell you, I feel excited and ready to come home and share with all our student all the Lord taught us! It was awesome!

On Top of Mountain! (really!) Day 1

The husband and I are in the middle of our 2 week Campus Crusade Staff conference- and let me tell you, it has been

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!

Since I don’t have time (and or energy) to put this all up in one post, I am going to go a day at a time- and you will just be a few days behind in our actual life. Who knows, I might even get all caught up here in a few days!
We packed up the car (left our darling puppy with V’s parents,which really broke my heart) and headed to Wichita Falls to meet up with our amazing staff friends, Sam and Emily for the long haul up to Colorado!

Emily and I were so excited! We had not seen each other in forever!

Emily’s parents made us this yummy dinner!

And she had the coolest container to serve water! Isn’t it beautiful? She said she saw it at this cute boutique restaurant and recreated it herself with a empty bottle! Love it!

We left super early in the morning, and were super sleepy, not that you can tell. Ha!

And for hours, this is all we saw…

Until!!!

We made it to Colorado! And the welcome center for maps and freebies!

We drove on a Monday, and apparently McDonalds was giving away free Mocha’s all day. I had not been to a McDonalds in about 4 years, and lets just say we made up for lost time! Sam decided every rest stop/ potty break we should get free mini-mochas. This was our fourth of the day (actually I thought they were gross and gave V all mine)

We made it Colorado Springs where we stayed the night, and I got to see some of my roomie Rach’s family! It was so fun to get to see them! Other than our McMocha's, we wanted to go all local eating out, so they took us to this cool little place called Phantom Canyon in downtown Colorado Springs.

Can you believe they get to see this every day??

But all in all we made it safe and sound, and ready to play and get up to the conference the next day!