Dorothy Day

This past Saturday, with our five oaks small group, Bill and I were able to help out at the Dorothy Day center in St. Paul MN. This is the first time that I have ever done this! It was a neat experience. We had to help make the meal, and then serve the meal to homeless people. I got to help with the baking, which was a lot of fun! We made chocolate chip cookies and biscuits. The mixer was huge!!! I don't even think it would have fit in my kitchen! And, the quantity we made was crazy! Just to make the cookies we used 25lbs of flour, 9 lbs of chocolate chips, and 12 cups of butter, plus a 3lbs can of shortening butter! We also made about 770 biscuits! Thanks to Pam and Steph for babysitting! And, if you are interested, Jeremy made a cool slide show video of pictures. Click on the link if you would like to take a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y_e8iDRRc0&feature=channel_page

Matching shirts?!

This just shows how differently the girls have grown according to the size of their clothes! Hannah has always been ahead, like she is five, but mostly wears size 6. Lillian has been behind! She should be 3T, but is still mostly 2T, and even wears a couple pairs of pants that are 24M! My mom wanted to get that something that matched, but they are in different sections of clothing! They both saw this shirt that they really liked though. So, we got Hannah 6x, which fit her perfectly! And also looked really nice with her brown leggings. And, we got Lillian 4x, and lo and behold, she can wear it as a dress with tights! It worked out nicely:) (Bill didn't even realize it wasn't a dress!, but maybe that's because he's a guy?!)

My Hair cut story

My sister in law Kari graciously has me on her voucher list, so I can go to her really nice salon and get my hair cut for only $4! It's been great! For the first time I have actually kept my hair cuts up on a regular, every three month basis! We are excited, because she is expecting a baby this month! She wanted me to schedule a hair cut towards the end of February because it could be awhile before I can get in again, since she will be taking time off after the baby is born. I scheduled my appointment a couple weeks before hand and was all set!
But then came that dreaded snow storm! The one last Thursday that dumped about 6 inches on us in about 6 hours! You would think that this would deter me from going out, but I was very determined to get this hair cut in! The appointment was at 6:15 in the evening. At 2 p.m. I packed the girls up, along with winter clothes, spare clothes and PJ's! And the dinner that I was going to cook at my brothers house. It was just an adventure to get into the van! And yet, I still kept going! Just to get up highway 52 which takes usually about 5 minutes, took 40 minutes! I was stuck in this one spot and saw that the exit ramp was just not moving! So I quickly decided to take a road that I did not know where it went, but luckily I found an exit to the road I needed, and bypassed a lot of traffic!
Finally, 2 hours and 20 minutes later I arrived at my brother's house. It usually only takes about 35 minutes! I made dinner, left and got my haircut, and then we headed home! It was still snowing! And, it took about an hour to get home, but that was not nearly as bad as the way there. For whatever reason, the Lord was gracious! In the future, I may just cancel my appointment! I am very glad to have gotten my haircut though!

A fun investment!

So, we were able to get Wii fit. It's been a lot of fun so far! They weigh you, and give you a BMI. You can set goals, and they track everything for you! They have Yoga, Strength training, Aerobic exercises, and Balance games. You can even go for runs! You just run in place and your mii runs through a scenic path! Hannah is pretty good at the running, and Lillian is really cute when she does it! She kind of doesn't get the whole running in place thing, so we often have to tell her to back up from the TV. There's a lot to unlock, so it will be fun to keep playing!

A Feat for Me

So, maybe this is an easy thing for people to do, but for me, not so much! I ended up going about 4 1/2 weeks without cooking the same meal twice! Usually I am cheering if I do it for two weeks in a row. Now granted I do not cook 7 days a week, but it usually is at least 6 dinners a week. I'm not sure what prompted me to try this. Maybe it was me feeling like we were just eating the same things over and over, or maybe I needed a challenge. Whatever the cause, it was kind of nice. We had our regular meals, but also tried a couple of new recipes, and we had meals we hadn't had for awhile. I finally stopped though, cause there was something I really wanted to have for dinner again. I think I could have went a little bit longer, which is encouraging. I'm not sure if I will do this again, but hopefully it helped to get us out of a bit of rut. And now when I cook some of our regular dishes, I'm not feeling like we just had them!

What did I learn/think of the marriage conference?

This post is to answer a friend who left a comment on my previous post, so I just thought I would make a new post out of it!
I really enjoyed going to this marriage conference! I would recommend to any one who is married to go to a marriage conference at least once in your lifetime! It's such a nice time to get away from it all and spend quality and quantity time together! This weekend made me think we need to do this more often! We do get away for our anniversary, and maybe a couple other nights out of the year, which we are thankful for! But, I think we need to do it a little more often than we do!
The speaker was Timothy Lane from CCEF in Philadelphia I believe. And the theme of the conference was, Marriage: A mess worth making. He talked about having good communication, having good conflict, and practicing forgiveness!
I think the biggest thing I took away, was that when conflict and problems comes, I need to check myself out first, and see what I am contributing to the problem. And how I need to choose words carefully cause they can either build up, or tear down. And then lastly would be that conflict can be good! If you have conflict, and you make it through, it will bring deeper intimacy into your marriage. It was all stuff that applies to marriage, but it was also nice because all these things can apply to all your relationships in life too!
That's all for now!

A really fun and relaxing weekend!

So, Bill and I had the wonderful chance to go to the Bethlehem marriage retreat this past weekend! Our friend Andrea encouraged us to go, and then volunteered to watch Hannah and Lillian for us! What a blessing! The retreat was at a hotel and conference center in Chaska. A very nice place to get away! The speaker was great! It was wonderful to not have to cook the whole weekend! We got to play racket ball, have wonderful conversations, and play games with other couples. It was just a really nice and relaxing time for Bill and I to spend together.


They had a sweet heart banquet where they encouraged people to dress up a bit. This is what we wore.