September 2009 December 1, 2009

In September I started a Master Gardener class.  The class ran for about 3 and a half months. It covered topics such as flowers, perennials, vegetables, fruits (trees, bushes and small plants), wood ornamentals, pests and plant diseases.  I absolutely love this class. Our lawn started looking amazing once I completed the lawn care class. I realized that our lawn really needed some tlc. I added fertilizer and aerated. Wow, such a difference! Back to the MG class, in order to become a master gardener one must go to all of the classes and then complete 40 hours of garden volunteering at an approved site.

Also I started doing some volunteer work. I started working in a rose garden in Dow Gardens which is located in Midland, MI. While I am there I dead head roses, cultivate, and prune other shrubs. I also volunteer at Dahlia Hill which is a non-profit that only showcases the most beautiful dahlias. I dead head and cultivate there as well. Lastly, I also started volunteering with a ministry called Forgotten Youth Ministry. This ministry goes into the juvenile Detention center and does evangelism and dicipleship with the youth there. I encourage you to check out their blog at chaplainjulie.wordpress.com. This ministry totally ROCKS!!

This is just one of hundreds of types of dahlias

meeting a new niece December 1, 2009

My brother Matthew and wife, Jenny, had another little girl. I got to meet her at the lake house in August. Her name is Selah Grace Towner. Welcome to the world little one!

August 2009 December 1, 2009

In august I put up more food.  I canned 19 jars of tomatos and three jars of tomato juice. The tomatos are absolutly delicious! 

Also I went home and visited my family for 9 days. My step-mother’s side of the family has a great lake house on Lake Carr in NC.  My three brothers, their wives and significant others and I all got togther and played super hard on the lake for 5 days straight. It was incedibly fun!  Our activities included wake boarding, jet skiing, laying in the sun, and tubbing. Now when I say tubbing I don’t mean any kind of lame ole tubbing. I am talking about extreme tubing behind jet ski. The tube we used was called Poparazzi. It is a triangular tube where you have 3 people on it and you all try and stand. It was so crazy yet so much fun.  We ate very well with my grammy and aunt Shirley in the kitchen making sure we had the best southern cooking. We ate everything from pimento cheese sandwiches, to cherry pie, to BBQ Chicken. Ohh yeah! I am getting hungry just thinking about it.

Church Shopping #4 August 3, 2009

I think we may have found a church home. Today Eric and I visted a church called Hopevale Community church. It is a non-denominational church.  It is close to home, I think it is a mile and a half away.  They had local and global outreach prominatly displayed. The music was okay and the message the pastor gave was pretty solid.  They have three services, it is multi-generational, and multi-cultural.

The people were not overly friendly but that didn’t bother me too much.

After singing some songs they prayed for a local missionary who was ministering at the juvinile detention center. This is a scene I have been thinking about getting back into for some time now. I was over joyed to find out that I may have an outlet. Eric also enjoyed the church as much as I did, which is a major plus.

The church is in the process of a building campaign and is actually doing the ground breaking ceremony this week sometime. So, really this church has alot of familiar territory. :0)

We will go again.

Shooting a gun August 3, 2009

Eric and I took a gun safety class yesterday and I learned to shoot our hand gun. You can check out my shoot no aim exercise in the you tube video. In the video you will see me with dorky goggles on. Tease me all you want. I had to wear them because I just had Lasik eye surgery. Also in the video you will see a big guy, that is our instructor and then another girl and guy. That is Nick and Julia Forshee. They are our good friends here in Saginaw. They took the class with us. Click link to see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jquy2-ggrKk for those that care it is a Walther P22

Lasik August 3, 2009

Well I finally did it. I can see clearly now. I got lasik on my left on Thursday. I can see so much better already! It has taken some time to get used to though. I constantly look for my glasses before I leave the house or start to squint my left eye (my has-been bad eye) when I am looking at something far away. But then I remind myself that I can see just as good or better than my right eye. Yipee!

The process was quite easy. I went to an appointment to see if I qualified for lasik. After determining that I did qualify we set up a date to have the surgery. This eye clinic that I went to only does lasik once a month IF they have enough patients to make it worth their while. I guess that 4 patients were worth their while since that is how many of us were their  in the waiting room Thursday morning.

The day of my appointment I went in at 7:30 a.m. First, I got a wave scan (i am unsure of what that was all about, I just had to look at a blinking light for 20 seconds) and then I sat in the waiting room for about an hour to wait my turn. I was the last one to have the procedure.  After I was called back they prepared my eye. The nurse but a bunch on different kinds of drops in and then coated the outside of the eye with iodine. When the doc came in my eye was good and numb. He unpack-aged a white sterile pencil looking tool. Then he had me put my chin on a chin rest so that he could get a good look at my eye. He then marked some dots on my eye. I am guessing that this was the custom part of lasik.

We then walked down to the surgery center. I layed in a reclined chair while the techs positioned a large machine over my face. I was so nervous. Somehow I didn’t get the valume I was hoping for. My body started shaking and my teeth started chattering, like I was cold, but it was definitly warm in the room.  I mentioned to the techs that I was getting nervous but they just stated that I had nothing to worry about. That didn’t really help. So I tried to think of something else. My mind wandered back to Costa Rica and my friends that I knew there. My mind didn’t stay there for long because the doc came in and started the surgery.

First he taped my eye lashes back, top and bottoms. That was a weird sensation but not painful. Second he inserted an eye clamp that forced my eye lids open even more. That was a bit uncomfortable. I mentioned that I could feel the clamp and he stated that he knew that I could. Maybe my subtle body jerk was an indication. :0)  Third, he pulled out a small round disc to cut the flap of my cornea. I had seen the procedure earlier on tv so I knew what he was about to do. I totally panicked but stayed completely still.  He cut a flap into my cornea, no pain. Then he asked for suction. Everything in my left eye went black and the pain began. He was putting pressure on my eye, but I wasn’t sure what he was doing.  About 7 long seconds later the pain was gone and I could see light again. I couldn’t make out shapes anymore since the cornea flap had been pulled back.  Forth, the doc told me to look at a blinking light. I then heard the laser making pinging noises as it shot into my eye and reshaped my lens. That was painless, thankfully. Last, the doc flipped my cornea flap back over my eye and brushed it with a paint brush type tool. He removed the eye clamp and then very quickly ripped the tape off from my eye lashes. That was probably the most painful part. 

In the recovery room the doc said that my eye was perfect.  The nurse handed me some awesome (dorky) goggles to wear for the next 24 hours. boo!

I went home and slept for 6 hours which was prescribed by the doc. Later that day I could already tell a huge improvement.

Church shopping #3 July 13, 2009

Today I went solo to a new church. Eric worked the 10 pm – 8 am shift (Saturday night – Sunday morning) so he was in no shape to check out a new church with me. I went to Midland Evangelical Free Church. Eric and I previously went to an EV Free church in Madison, called Blackhawk Church, and loved it.  The drive is about 25 minutes, which is okay.  This church has about 2,500 attenders which is about half the size of the last church we attended so we are quite familiar with the large church setting.  We know that connection happens through small groups and serving.

This church is pretty similar to the church we previously went to.  They had a similar style of music worship, the preaching was solid, and really just the whole feel of the church was pretty relaxed.  (It was a little more conservative than BH though).  Midland was promoting a leadership conference called Leadership Summit by Willow Creek Church. I am very familiar with this conference because I was expected to go to it for the last 3 years at my previous job.   This conference is super cool, they usually have Bono do some type of video cast during it, and of course you learn how to be an awesome leader!

I really enjoyed this church. Eric and I are going back next week to see if he feels the same way. However, part of me would like to be apart of a church that is closer to our home and a smaller congregation. The friends that we are hanging out with go to a church of 150 and they are so well connected to the people within their church.  I kinda long for that as well.

One of the cons about this church is that I couldn’t find anything they did locally or globally for outreach. Some of you are reading this and thinking, “so what?!” well my previous job was in that department at the church I worked at. However, in my previous job I learned that missions is sometimes the best kept secret of the church. This could be the case for this church. I filled out the connection card that was provided and inquired about local and global outreach. I hope to hear back from them soon.

Something that I didn’t expect to happen was a mountain of tears that followed when I left the parking lot.  I have been so caught up in my new hobbies and my new found friendship with a great gal that had been distracted from thinking about my dear friends in Madison.  In my previous line of work I had some very deep friendships and I long for my friends. This Midland church stirred up a bunch of very fond friends to mind and made me terrible unhappy because I missed them. And what better way to let out unhappiness with a major cry fest. Boy did I let if rip all the way home (the crying of course). I thought of each of my friends through the departments they worked in: Worship Arts, Adult Ministries, College Aged Ministry, Missions, Front Office, My bosses, Connections, Leaders, HR, Tech, Life Groups, Childrens ministry,  people who have left BH and spouses of the people that I worked with. We were a tight staff. (They still are).  Okay I am rambling on and on…

BH staff I miss you all dearly!

Cherries July 12, 2009

Yesterday I went with a friend to go cherry picking. I have never been cherry picking before and it was a great experience.  The cherries we picked were of the sweet variety.  I don’t recall ever seeing a full blossomed cherry tree before this time. This tree that we picked from had GLOBS of cherries everywhere. It was like clusters of grapes, but they were cherries hanging down on all parts of the branches.

My friend and I picked for about 2.5 hours and were able to get about 35 pounds or so of cherries.  We then let them soak in a sink full of water. We learned that the cherries that floated to the top had worms in them, so we plucked those out of the batch and threw them aside. After soaking the cherries we pitted them with an antique cherry pitter.  We just fed cherries into the contraption and cranked it. It would spit out the seeds at the opposite end and then shove the cherry down under the machine into a bowl.

Once we finished that we canned 17 jars of raw cherries.  That was a super long day!!

ps. if you try this don’t forget to have some lemon juice on hand to scrub off the cherry juice stains. :0)

Church Shopping #2 July 12, 2009

So the first we visited had no pastor, now the second church we visited had no congregation. I know what you are thinking…”how can this be?” Well Eric and I visited a church in the downtown area of Saginaw. From the website it looked super cool. The website made me think it was a young church plant of young people. I especially liked that their website outlined their mission: prayer, worship, service, and community. I thought sweet!

So when Eric and I arrived at this small building that was nestled into a strip mall we thought…hmmm…it looks like they aren’t going to be having church today. For one, there where no cars parked around the building and two , no one was entering the building. We decided to still give it a try so we walked into the door of this building and there were about 20 chairs facing one wall. There was also a piano and a music stand where the pastor of the church could speak from.  We were greeted and told that we were in the right location for church. Eric and I sat in the back row of the 2 rows of chairs on a comfy leather couch.  I counted the people in the room and there were 13 people including us and the pastor.

The pastor began by asking people to shout out praises of what God had done this week. Most people offered up praises to God. Then the pastor asked for prayer requests; again most people had requests.  The pastor prayed for all of these requests and offered up praises to God. The people of this church seemed to be very authentic. They tried hard to follow after God.  The sermon topic of the day was on different styles of worship. They decided to not have a worship band that day and instead try other styles of worship. We gathered in a small circle and some people read from the bible while others sang songs. It is so hard to get about from singing, one tends to think of worship in that manner even though you have been taught otherwise.

After worshipping the pastor read the story about David dancing for God in the streets and not carrying what others thought of him. He expounded on that some and then allowed others to comment. He ended with prayer and then there were snacks and a social time. We talked with the pastor and his fiancee for about 10 minutes about their church and it’s affiliation to the church called the Brethren.

Eric and I left and talked about the Pros and Cons:

Pros: authentic Christians and missional

Cons: super super small, unsure of all aspects of the Brethren theologically

We are still on the hunt next Sunday.

updating the carpet July 12, 2009

When we moved in to our new house the master bedroom had a wonderfully ugly shad of pink (the color of Pepto) carpet. After much

deliberation we decided to update the floors with wood click and lock flooring.