Our 5th Anniversary

I wanted to take a few photos and remember back on our Wedding Day, FIVE whole years ago. It was a beautiful day. Although beautiful it was a day that we walked into not knowing how hard it would actually be. We had no way of knowing how long it would take us to get pregnant and didn't really care, it was easy for everyone and it certainly would be for us? Right? No!

We did not know how much weight we might actually put on. (let's not even discuss how MUCH WE DID NOT KNOW THAT)

It was a day a 19 year old girl married a 27 year old man.

A day so innocent that we thought that we would never face separation/divorce a simple 8 months later. A day that we walked into blind.

The year after this was filled with dark moments of yelling, pushing, manipulation, screaming, cursing, CHEATING, and…. well, you name it. Our wedding day was just about the brightest day we had that whole year.

BUT GOD……………………………………..

   

But God is GREATER. GOD IS HOLY. 

We decided to get married on October 1, 2005 just hours after Dennis learned that I was emotionally involved and "in love" with his best friend. He was jealous. He asked me to marry him (for the second time). I said yes, but with a stipulation. I wanted to get married in the fall, and I wanted it to be THAT fall. So, 21 days later, I walked down the aisle to Dennis.

As you have already read, it was an impossible hard year.

We struggled the whole time, going to church and living that  life on Sunday morning. I mean, it seriously only lasted the morning. I cannot even say that we made a WHOLE day of pretending to be good. We were lost. We were depraved. Sinful. VILE.

The story of our love seems so grim and depressing, doesn't it?

Well, as I mentioned. God is greater. He loved us from the foundation of the world. He predestined us to be his children. Dennis and I were not participants in this plan. We did not seek God. We went to church, but because it was the "right" thing to do.

Some time right before our first year of marriage, a couple of months earlier, we walked into the doors of our current church, West Salem Baptist Church. We heard the gospel of Jesus Christ CLEARLY preached and taught week after week.

……….. and week after week……….. God worked in our crummy marriage… but MORE THAN THAT………. he transformed, changed, made new, redeemed ………………our crummy hearts. He made dead, alive. He made chains, disappear. He made Dennis and Shannon NEW.

So, together, we are living out a life that longs to be conformed to the image of Jesus. He saved us from much. He saved us from hell. He saved us from Himself. He saved us from His very wrath that we would have had to endure had he not done so. Together we are grateful.

Together we still sin against one another. We still lack in much, but once we meet HIM face to face, we will lack in nothing!

Praise you LORD, for working in us and changing us. Thank you for our years of marriage. Trials and all. Thank You.

Now………………………..

we celebrated this weekend, which was the initial reason for this post. :) How silly of me to get off track.

Dennis surprised me with:

1. Chris Tomlin concert tickets (for last Thursday night)

2. Virginia Tech tickets (for last Saturday)

3. DIAMOND EARRINGS. I told Dennis that I wanted a a pair of nice diamond earrings BEFORE our wedding day for our FIFTH anniversary. (I wanted him to have PLENTY of time to save!)

I was so surprised. I just did not think that this was going to happen since we have a baby on the way, a new addition on our house, etc. But, he saved change, and bought them with that.

THANK YOU honey!

 

We didn't take a picture of the earrings……… sorry! (by the way: this VT photo is NOT a picture that I took! I totally grabbed this off of google images.)

I surprised Dennis with a night at Hotel Roanoke! (again, I did NOT take this photo)

I made a ton of clues on peices of heart paper as you see below… there were like 5 or 6 clues.

We went to Chick Fil A for dinner. (I know, sort of redneck)

Then I blindfolded him and took him to Hotel Roanoke- - walked him all the way up to the Hotel before I took it off. He was fairly surprised even though he could guess that we were downtown.

Our room was decorated in rose petals and CANDLES GALORE….. We had a BEAUTIFUL spotless room.. and UPGRADED at no extra cost to the "Miss Virginia Suite." It was perfect. That night we left the windows open and out of our bedroom we could see the city and the Roanoke Star in perfect visibility.

the last surprise was an AWESOME hot breakfast buffet that next morning. What a perfect anniversary.

Thank YOU for listening all about it.

 

(and yes, Kristen, if you are reading, I REUSED your gift that you gave me at Ashley's shower to wrap his brownies in. (I surprised him at work with them!))

And………….. about the Tech game……………. it was fun… but I don't think that we will make a habit out of it! :)

Anyway- thanks for listening!

Simplicity in Life #1….An unmade bed….

There is something very satisfying in having a perfectly made bed… with pillows and covers and sheets neatly in place…………

………….and yet…….there is also something pretty satisfying about a bed that has been slept in by two people that love each other… with pillows, covers, and sheets all jumbled up…

 

 

Final Addition Photos

This is our old living room, NOW dining room. The dining room furniture came from Nanny & PawPaw. It is a dear piece of furniture to me.

 

Since most of you have already ready seen the OLD part of the house, I am just going to show you the NEW part. .

below is a picture of the new living room taken from the kitchen. .    

This is another angle of the living room, taken from the french doors looking in.

This is looking down the hall toward the bedroom. . you see a basket in the hall, to the right is our laundry room closet.   

This is the new bedroom… (used to be CARPORT.. can you believe it?!?) and you can see the entrance to the bathroom to the right. . . you can see the shower in there. . . we love our new room… it is spacious and cozy… It's just absolutely more space than we have ever had! 

This is the vanity in the bathroom. . . Dennis and I are really enjoying not having to dodge each others toothpaste spit while we brush our teeth together… we have our own sinks! :D (It is the little things in life that we find joy in!) and to the right of the vanity is the closet- - but its just clothes in there.. I did not think anyone would be interested!  

We are so so so glad that this addition is FINALLY over. We are enjoying just having each other back. I am having fun organizing and getting everything ready for the baby to come. We are going to be getting that room ready very soon!!! Thanks to everyone from our church body that came to our party on Friday night. . it was a celebratory night!

Happy Birthday Husband…

 

Today my husband celebrated his 32nd birthday.

So, to celebrate….

I picked him up at work and we had lunch at Chick-Fil-A.

He came home and worked around the house while I grocery shopped.

I came home, and I made him a neat little dinner- - and baked him a cake.

Oh, and I washed the sheets. :)

So, what more could a guy ask for?!?!?!?

For dinner, I made him a Petro.

A petro can be known as a walking taco, but I don't use taco seasoning so I choose to not call it that, and besides, I don't think it tastes like a taco.

What you do:

buy a couple small bags of fritos, or enough bags for each person you are serving.

Make some chili.

buy sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes, and shredded cheese.

stuff the bag:

fritos on bottom naturally.

then chili

then cheese

then lettuce

then tomatoes

then PLENTY of sour cream on top

some people do chopped onion. . . I don't.

wrap the bag with a napkin and stick a fork in it.

dinner is done.

:) Enjoy!!!

More Addition Progress

Hey There!

Paul, Dennis' brother,  and a friend, Roy, put up our deck for us this last weekend. It looks super awesome, and we are so grateful for Paul's workmanship on projects like this. We have a nice size deck already decorated up, ready for some cooler, more enjoyable weather. . .

   

More progress has been made on the INSIDE of the house. Jerry and Ralph has placed our trim and crown molding, we have primed and now ready to paint, and Paul, with a friend of his, placed the tile in our bathroom for us.

I am SUPER terrible at seeing things BIG picture… so this whole project has been a little scary and intimidating. If this would have looked TERRIBLE, it would have been our fault because we made a lot of decisions that I and we are just not experienced to make. I have NO idea about paint colors, tile colors, trim, you name it, it's ALL foreign. So, with a LOT of help and input from more experienced people, we have come to love our new addition. We cannot wait till it is all done, and I can breathe again without anticipating. :) Enjoy the photos!    

…At Home…. Where I have longed to be.

Well, I'm home. I have been technically "at home" since May when I graduated from Radford. The game plan that Dennis and I agreed to was for me to be a stay at home wife, regardless of whether or not we were going to be parents. Well, 5 days after I was "home" as "just a stay at home wife" we found out that we could add "mother" to my "title" (in 9 months) Ecstatic!

Well, it's the end of August, and this would mark the period in which I would normally walk back into the doors of some kind of school, whether it was to continue classes for my own education or it was to further the education of students. Well, I am walking through the doors of my home, daily. I don't punch a time clock, I don't have deadlines, per say, but I am not working toward the approval of man…. or… well, the approval of my man, and his God; which suits me just fine. All of this to say, that I am praising God these days that I can find joy in a clean kitchen, home-made meals, and clean clothes. But I am sort of "missing" the feeling of being apart of something else. So, I have inserted this energy into helping other people set up and prepare for their students. (Pam & Kazia) It gives me my classroom fix, and then I can happily go home and well, clean my kitchen again, and praise the Lord that I don't have to return there because someone is making me. . . but only if I am feeling generous and energized. :)

So the future for us looks promising. I am so so thankful that God has given me the ability to be at home, raising our child(ren), cooking our meals, and being the sole educator of them as well. It's a big, weighty task and I am looking forward to being prepared by God to take on. He will equip me. I know it.

 

Our Vacation 2010

So we are finishing up our last evening of our vacation away from home tonight. I am blogging, packing up, cleaning, etc to get ready for our early morning departure for home. We had a very happening week. . . but I did not take a lot of photos.

 

We enjoyed this pool (above) just about every day. Dennis is such a great tanner. He didn't use sunscreen except on his head and he tanned right up. Me however, I was caked with Coppertone Kids SPF 50 the entire time. I ended getting a little color but nothing too impressive. I hope our little boy inherits Dennis' awesome skin.

 

We enjoyed a couples pedicure on Tuesday. He is secure in his man hood enough to admit it and not be embarrassed. In fact, he enjoys them far more than I do. Truth is, I hate spending money on things like that, but we NEEDED them more than we wanted them. :)

 

Then the next day we had massages. Again, I NEEDED it more than I WANTED it. I am just as happy sitting my the pool pretending like my hips are not aching. :)

 

Then today, we had the best little excursion. We spent then entire day at the pool and then we went on a stroll in the golf cart and found a little place to just pull off by the road and hide under this tree. It was peaceful and beautiful.

 

 

We even stopped for a couples picture. We are happy to be together in this picture. . .  

And before packing up our "picnic" I snapped this cute little picture of Dennis. We had a nice relaxing time away. Dennis gets to enjoy another week off of work. (At UPS that is..) but we have a lot of finishing touches to do on the house. We are very ready for this thing to be OVER. . . and we think that maybe mid-September we will have some sort of normalcy to look forward to.

You know, before our world flips around trying to prepare for the arrival of baby boy Maggi. :)

Addition

These are the latest pictures of our newest addition to the house.

The picture below is the view from the kitchen looking at part of the living room. If you have ever been to our house, our old laundry room was where the french doors are. From this photos standpoint, if you turned the camera to the right, you would go into our old bathroom (we installed a new entrance) and if you turn the camera to the right you will walk past the laundry room, into our new bedroom. (Where the carport used to be)

 

below is a picture of the laundry room closet. . . there will be doors here soon to keep that closed.  

Pic below is the picture of our future bedroom, the room you see next to the ladder is the bathroom, and inside the bathroom is the closet.  

Bathroom below.  

painting supplies  

my favorite part of the whole thing… the air conditioner, which as you can see is up a little high because we don't have the attic insulated yet.  

doors to be installed.

We are leaving for vacation this coming weekend and will be gone for a week, and then Dennis gets ANOTHER week of vacation when we get back. We are going to finish up loose ends, and hope to start on the deck. Getting close, should be just a couple more weeks before we can "move in"

Happy 4th Anniversary to us…

 

Dennis and I went to Coach & Four Saturday to honor our 4th Anniversary! We married four years ago on October 22, 2005.

I love him. He loves me. We love each other. We both love God, and he has loved us. And we are together because of it.

I Love You Dennis…

Look forward to another year…

I despise pictures with me on the other side of the camera….