Project 365

My goal for the next year is to have fun, not make any commitments as far as "resolutions." I want to work more on my photography! To develop different skills. I want to be that photographer who has crisp pictures and had the confidence in herself to capture that perfect candid shot! To work on this I want to do the Project 365. This is where I capture my life during the year by taking a picture each day! ( Yikes! I know tall order, but I will try) This doesn't have to be a perfect picture, I just want to capture the "real" life moments that make our family us! I want to eventually make a photobook of this! and maybe capture years to come this way!

I also want to work on my faithfulness and obedience to God! To trust Him and know He has the perfect plan for us. I feel this year is going to be BIG and I want to be brave enough to to be "that Christian," that follower of Jesus Christ, where other people see His light through me. So as I go throughout this year, I want others see His light and say "something is different about them?" And for them not to be afraid to ask us why we are soo happy or what makes our marriage work. I want to share God with everyone I meet, I want them to know Him personally like we do!

To spend more quality time with my husband and my daughter!

Halloween Costume 2011

 

Linking up with Kelly's Korner on her series "Show us your Lives.." This Friday is Halloween Costumes.

 

These were the kids Halloween 2011! Sami and her cousin Sha' Von! I loved these costumes! It was definitely LAST minute! We were going to the Pumpkin Trail and realized they had a costume contest so we dressed them up and headed over there! They won 1st place!

 

This year I don't even have a costume yet? I may need to work on that this weekend! LOL

 

Enjoy!

Patty

 



Beautiful Gratitude

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

This is the words God spoke to me today. What does this mean to me? EVERYTHING. I am VERY humbled when I say this, a lot of time I think what do I have to do to get something out of this. I have this amazing job that I have had for going on 3 years. I know God puts us where He needs us to be. I have thought many days God why am I here at my job? Racking my brain searching for my purpose at that job. Always coming up short.

About a month ago my boss put her notice in. I was shocked! This makes the 4th person to put their notice in, in a short amount of time..maybe 3 weeks. What does everyone know that I don't? But anyway today was my boss' last day. I was sad most of the day. She is an amazing boss, a very strong women of faith.

She sent out "the e-mail" of saying she's had a good time etc and where she is going to, etc. When I read her e-mail it hits me!

I wasn't put here to teach anyone. My purpose at this job isn't to do, it's to learn! If you know what I do in this position, I teach school age kids about science, water cycle, water conservation, etc. So I am in the mind set that God put me in this position to change a life. NO! I have been thinking wrong this whole time! I am a student total opposite of what I thought! Talk about running into a brick wall.

Then He reveals it..I have always had patience. ALWAYS! Up until I had Sami, then ALL my patience went out the door. It took my very patient and caring boss to leave for me to realize this. She has taught me soo much about these two things! God placed me in this position to learn from her and I guess I wasn't getting it so he rocked my world and took her out! I am glad I had the short time to learn and work under her. I am very grateful for what she has taught me. I have always said God works in mysterious ways to me.

Ok God I am back in the game, what position are you going to put me in now?

Are you in the game? What position is God calling you to be in? Student or Teacher?

Thankfully Back in the Game,

Patty

Are you Ready for some Football!!!!!!!!

 

Football season is well under way! What better to enjoy the games then to prepare for the party with some serious tailgating food! I have a lot of good finger foods for tailgating. Where to start? I am just going to list some of my favorites and give the recipes. I am linking up with Kelly's Korner at www.kellyskornerblog.com. Every Friday Kelly writes a post about "Show Us Your...." and today is "Show us your Tailgating Recipes".

Sausage Balls are always a good start.

Tailgating Sausage Balls

 

1 large mild sausage roll

1 large hot sausage roll

2 c. Bisquick

1 package of shredded cheese

Pam

 

Directions-

-Take all your rings/jewelry off

-Smash and combine both sausage rolls in a large bowl

-Add all the package of shredded cheese-mix together

-Add bisquick a little bit at a time ( you may have to add more - I just eyeball it, I don't really know how much I actually use- could be 2 cups or less)

-Take a small portion in your hand and roll into a ball, continue until all mixture is gone.

-Line a cookie sheet with tin foil and spray with Pam. Place balls on cookie sheet 1/2 inch apart.

-Bake on 400 Degrees till they look like the above picture.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

These are soo easy, ok maybe I am cheating a little but look how good the picture looks!

 

These I buy from any school age kid. Scoop the dough out of the bucket and cook according to package instructions. ( :

 

Jalapeno Poppers

Jalapeno Poppers AKA Poppers, are soo delicious and are not only for tailgating but we make them at any family gathering. If you make them once, you will definitely keep making them.

Ingredients

-Jalapenos

-2 pkg cream cheese

-1 pkg bacon

-Toothpicks

 

Directions:

-Cut your jalapenos in half and core them-Make sure you get ALL the seeds and inside out-If you don't they will be HOT.

-Take and fill the inside of the jalapenos with cream cheese

-Take a piece of bacon and cut it into thirds, wrap one third around a jalapeno and secure with the  toothpicks.

-Bake 350 Degrees till the bacon looks done.

These three recipes are soo easy to make and all the boys I have ever made them for keep requesting them.

I can't not mention football without mentioning my Texas Tech Red Raiders!

WRECK 'EM TECH!!!!

Hope you enjoy!

Patty

 

365 days.

Yesterday was October 2nd. This marks the start of a new year for me, my 33rd year. My favorite number is 3! So I am thinking this might be a good year for me. Ha! Has anyone heard about people taking a picture a day for an entire year? I am going to try this out! So far so good, ( :  Let's see how many days I accomplish this. I am posting today but may only post the pictures say every Saturday from the week. I haven't decided. I am sure you will get bored see pictures of me everyday so I may just limit the posts not necessaryily the pictures. Here is the 1st picture. OH and for my birthday, I received a tripod for my camera!! I am soo excited and this task will be much easier now!

October 2, 2012

 

and just because...Sami had to get in on the picture taking action. I love that she will actually pose for pictures now..lol ( this is always her pose- I call it the flamingo )

 

Flipping, Hanging, and Awesomeness

Samantha was in gymnastics when she was 1 year old. She mostly ran around but did love jumping on the trampoline, and flying through the air on the swing. It was a mom and me class. It was fun but when they went to the floor exercises she wouldn't listen. We did this for a semester and with being a new mom I just didn't realize that this is normal! Looking back I should have keep her in class and stuck with it. I don't have any pictures of that time because our computer crashed and we had to reformat. We tried to put her in something again when she was 2 1/2 years old with a combo class ballet, tumbling, and tap. This was a nightmare! LOL..She really wasn't listening and everyone was getting frusterated. Though, she looked really cute in the ballet outfit. Ha! So Tap and Ballet were like torture, but she did like the tumbling class. She is now a little over 3 1/2 years and we are trying to get her involved in something again. I feel like if you don't have some sort of thing to do..a hobby, you get bored and get into trouble. When my sister and I were little, we were in a combo class along with this we played soccer. It gave us something to do. I look around at all the kids who aren't in something and feel bad for the kids. It's like the parents spend their money on themselves instead of providing opportunities for their kids, the kids are there just basically living in the parent's life. THIS makes me sad! Because of this I have felt guilty with not having her in something but on the other hand she had disrupted class by running in and out, and just being young and not knowing.

With this being said:
A couple of months ago, we received a mailer that a new gym was opening in August. I jumped on the phone and made the phone call and got information about this new gym. I was thinking hmmm this may be interesting, it's a little more expensive than the other classes I have had her in. That worried me. But my biggest fear was repeating her behavior from her last combo class. I didn't know if I could handle that again. But with not wanting to be "those parents who don't put their kids in anything because of selfishness," I enrolled her! I took the leap of Faith then started praying. Please God, don't let us have a repeat of last time." and kept praying and praying this.

God is amazing and will answer even the smallest of prayers, if you pray in Faith that He will answer. This is a great lesson to anyone. God gives you situations so that you will need Him. So that you will be constantly on your knees talking to Him and letting Him reveal His plan to you. I have found this to be true this past year with being involved in church and forming a relationship with Him.

So we found this new gym, The Little Gym of Lubbock, it is AMAZING! The best answer to a small prayer, I prayed over and over!

 

Best part this gymt is just not in Lubbock, look for The Little Gym in your town.

Here's what happened. We walk in and I am honestly  am about to throw up because of past exeriences with Sami being HORRIBLE. She is looking around and the owner/staff are coming up to her and talking to her. They take her to take her shoes off and get them in a her cubby. Then they lead her over to go inside the gym. We (the parents) have a seating area or viewing area. She starts to struggle away..I am thinking "Oh No! Here we go again!" *SIGH*...BUT NOPE she stopped and walked in with her teacher! WHAT! There were 4 sweet children in her class Thursday. 2 boys and 2 girls. Sami stayed with the teacher and listened, fully participating in class!! I about passed out! LOL I was soo excited. But the cool thing about this gym is they have curriculum each week. Last week was safety..they worked on becoming safe gymnasts. They started on the floor mats with the instructor learning how to be safe. Another staff member came up and talked to the parents telling us what is going on!  They use all positive encouragement as "punishment" if you want to look at it..sorta reverse psychology..LOVE IT! For example, say the boys didn't want to do the mat exercise they were all into the bars and trampoline. So the teacher would say " X whenever you are ready to come back to class, we would love for you to come back..Thanks Sami and Y for staying with your teacher! (as she is giving them Hi-Fives) Then after class the teacher went around and talked to each parent about the awesomeness of their child. At one point in class, Shane and another father got up and opened the classroom door and told the kids to go back to the teacher..LOL The owner came over and repremanded the dads for doing that..He said that the gym has no expecations for the little one and that they will follow but that they don't encourage the kids like that but only with positive enforcement. LOVE LOVE IT...

 

Here are some pictures from class..please excuse the quality of pictures because we were in a glass area so I am taking the picture through glass that has a relection of more glass and the parking lot. /:

 

Here Sami is practicing her falls...if they fall off the bars, they are suppose to roll backwards, so they don't get hurt.

This picture is funny because the sweet teacher (in orange) and the girls were the only ones participating so the guy (JD aka the owner) stepped in to help make the parachute activity work. Amazing team work from the staff. I love that he is not afraid to step in.

 

How cute are the kids here. Behind them is the A-frame bar, I wish I had gotten pictures of them on that but this will have to work.



Last picture. This little guy kept running up to the window and growling at us! So cute!

 

God is soo amazing to not only answer a small prayer but to answer many worries I had and hand us this amazing place where Sami can grow and be herself. As well as giving Shane and I the place to know that it's ok for them to run and not participate. Where it's encourage so they will try things at their own pace. God is wonderful. I thank Him for this opportunity for Samantha to have fun and get involved with Gymnastics. And for kepting things just normal enough to where we will always have a relationship with Him. I say this because if things are always perfect then we wouldn't need God. Think about what would happen if we didn't drop to our knees to ask Him to figure things out for us. God wants us to have that special relationship with Him. He wants us to run to Him whether it's in good times or the craziness of just daily life!

 

I challenge you this week to test this theory out. Say a small prayer in Faith and see how God answers your prayer. Remember it may be longer than a week for God to return your answer but He always does. Then step back and ask yourself why He asnwered the way He did. (He's revealing His Plan for you)

 

Have an amazing week and open your minds and hearts to listen to what God has in plan for your lives.

 

Obeying & Spreading His Awesomness!

Patty

 

Pictures, Pictures, and more Pictures...

These first pictures are from my photography class that I took, didn't make the "cut" for the class but I love them none the less. ( :

 

 

All these are from our road trip we took the first week of school - Fredricksburg, San Antonio. The Animal pictures are from a drive through Zoo. It is called the Natural Bridge Zoo?? Natural Bridge Caverns??? WOW! I totally went blank on the name! The Zebras were MEAN!!! They didn't like us feeding them at the rate we were so they started chewing on my door handles!! MEAN MEAN!!

 

 

 

This next picture was in New Braunfels- We literally drove around 2 hours to find a decent hotel! It was a nightmare! BUT we ended up finding this gem! Look how awesome this is...To the left of this area was a beautiful lawn area. The hotel was just as gorgeous! I think it was a Marriott? If you look in the back the river is right there! GORGEOUS!!! We all decided we should have found this hotel sooner so we could relax a little longer at this place. This picture was taken after we checked out. ) :

 

I thought this was the funniest tree! At first I thought wow a pregnant tree! I don't know what tree this is but it is pretty cool. After I downloaded the picture..It looks like a pig is peeking out from behind the tree.

 

ABC's

Tonight I am helping Samantha learn her ABC's. I want her to be very ready for Kindergarten. We are going to take a letter and work on it till she has it down. Tonight of course we are starting with A. She can sing the ABC song but she doesn't recognize the letters. This is what we are going to work on and when we are done, I think we are going to move on to our numbers

A

is for apple!

Happy Happy Birthday

Yesterday we made a mad dash to Midland for our nephew's 1st Birthday Party. My sister out did herself!! The birthday party was AMAZING! This little boy is sure lucky to have great parents who love him dearly!! This party being an jubilous celebration of the first year of Mr. G's life and also a celebration of life for his mommy! We almost lost her on July 3rd. Here is looking to many more years with both of them! We love you guys dearly!

The theme of the party was Cars and the colors were very bright bold colors, reds, blues, oranges, greens, yellows. It was a fun birthday, for an handsome boy!

AND not only did she hold an amazing 1st birthday party, she held an after party (who does that right?) So she hosted 2 BIG parties in 1 day! I love my sister, she is soo Martha Stewart!! I will have to post pictures later because none are uploading yet!

God is sooo goood! I am thankful for Him answering everyones prayers so that my sister could be there yesterday to see her handsome boy turn 1. Giving it all to Him!

Amazing Grace

This week has been full of going and going practically non-stop. Our church had Vacation Bible School, VBS, both Shane and I helped with that! I guess the one thing I have learned this week is God is just amazing in everything! If you stop and look at your life, really stop and take a step back from everything, you can really see His work in your life. He truly has amazing grace for everything and everyone! VBS was a learning experience for me. Samantha is 3 so she was able to participate this year. She absolutely LOVED it.

We asked her cousin Sha'Von if he wanted to go to VBS this year with us. I think he felt the same way Samantha did! It was just really fun for him! Here is a picture of the two of them! Aren't they adorable! Another blessing, I think his Mom and Sha'Von are going to start going to church with us!! That makes me happy!

God is working in soo many ways right now! I am blessed to be able to recognize those ways. I am loving every minute of it and being able to realize this is all Him. Much of these things wouldn't be possible with out His doing. I have been praying over my husband for awhile now and this week, most of those prayers have matured and come into full light. It has given me a love for my husband that I didn't know I had. He has changed dramatically within these last couple of weeks. His personality has grown and attitude changed. He no longer is the "hard" guy he has been these last years. I say "hard" because in the past few weeks, I have seen him break down, I have seen him love on Samantha and I more, I have seen his energy to help others, He is on fire lately. I have this amazing gift from God and I feel very humble in saying that most times I take it for granted. I am by no means the perfect wife/mother I had visioned. This week has opened my eyes to this. I do have a great life and am VERY blessed. God has shown his amazing Grace to me this week.

I am thankful for prayer! Without it I don't know where anyone would be? It is the only way to have an intimate relationship with God! Yesterday I had my teacher workshop. I was scared! For one last year's ( my 1st teacher workshop to put on) was a little small. OKAY let's be honest. It was bad! I only had 7 teachers show up and I had my boss and her boss there!! Yikes..A lot of teachers RSVP'ed and didn't show up. So we purchased a lot of to-go lunch boxes, so to speak. To me, we just "wasted" money. I am not the one to really do that. So I am feeling guilty and to start with I just didn't have that much direction on the last workshop. This year I just saw how God answered my prayer on have at least 8 people show up! LOL...He came through as always. I had a total of 29 people!! It went well and I made a ton of new friends! and hopefully will get to travel to area schools to teach them about water conservation!

My next activity for the week is driving to Midland for a certain special 1 year old's birthday party today! I can't wait to see my family! I love you Mr. G! That doesn't require much stress..at least I hope not because I have had plenty this week. By far the most stressful week of the year!

God is soo good and if you have that faithful relationship with Him. You will truly see the blessings He has promised you! These have been the blessings in my life this week? What has your blessings been?

Sweet Samantha

I haven't posted in awhile. Well on this blog! I have another one called My Photographer Too. Please go there and add it to your blogs. http://www.myphotographertoo.blogspot.com/. I have been trying to get my photography business up and going! It has been a slow process so hopefully it will stay around. ( :  I have also created a FB page with My Photography Too. Please "like" this also! It is fun taking pictures! Ok so enough about my new venture!

This post is about Samantha, Sami. She has been so sweet lately! She constantly wants in my lap. Lately she will just randomly look up and tell me "Mom! I love you!" This melts my heart. I overheard her tell her daddy that " MOM said I was AWESOME!" I had just told her she was awesome because she was really helping me clean for Mother's Day! It just made my day to hear her say that to her daddy!

I took the above photograph last night. If anyone knows Sami, she LOVES "Brown Puppy" (as she has recently named him) This just make my heart smile. You can really she her love for Brown Puppy in this photograph! I think she was actually saying to Brown Puppy.."Brown Puppy, you okay? You need a drink? You hungry? Okay I will get you something"

I love this little girl with all my heart!

Spring is here

I am soo bad at posting on this blog! I am a sit back and read other peoples blogs kinda person, I am going to try to post more. So Spring is finally here! I love love love this season and all the refreshing "newness" that comes with it. I love thunderstorms and we have had one this spring!! Hopefully we will get more. Everything just seems peaceful this year for me. Ready to tackle some home improvements and try my thumb at planting some flowers.

I photographed a wedding the other weekend ...so I have my card full of wedding photos..hopefully I can download the rest of them and clean my card up so I can shoot some spring photos today! If you know of anyone in the Lubbock area who needs some pictures send them my way. I am trying to get a side business open...if you could call it a business more like a hobby because my prices aren't ridiculous like most photographers. I look at it this way..I love to photograph people, places, and things. Why would I want to charge people a lot for something I love to do?  To me that just doesn't seem right. I want to be your "My Photographer Too." Oh she isn't just your photographer..she is "My Photographer Too!" Hence the name I picked out..My "business" is called My Photographer Too!

ok I really need to get off here and get Samantha up..we need to leave in 20 minutes! ( :

Have a blessed day and be still and let God bring some wonderful new thing in your life, if you will just let him!

Signing Off
Patty