Thankful.

Every year for Thanksgiving, I like to go around the table and ask everyone to share what they're thankful for. I'm so bummed we didn't do it this year. I don't know why we didn't, but we didn't. I guess I'll have to do it at Christmas to make up for it.

Thanksgiving dinner at Cody's is so different from what I'm used to. I have never had much of a typical Thanksgiving. For years, we went away every Thanksgiving. I've had turkey dinner in a lodge not far from the base of Mount Arenal - that's the one with the famous pictures of the volcanic activity.




























Thanksgiving this year was a little different, as we ate at Cody's dad's, who lives up by the Poconos. It was quiet, a nice time, good food.

Since I didn't get to reflect on my happy, sweet life and all the things I am grateful for, I suppose I'll do it here in my little corner on the internet...

1. My family - especially Cody and my parents. I just love my family so much, and I'm so, so thankful to have all of them in my life. I could not ask for anything more.

2. Epic Church. This place has provided me with so much happiness over the last few years. I have learned so much about my faith, myself, new friends, and new skills I never knew I had.

3. My job and my bosses. I am finally at a good place in my professional life and high five for that. It's been awhile, and I have worked hard for that.

4. My animal family. I can't tell you how fantastic it is to come home after a long day, and just cuddle up on the couch with one - or three - lovable kitties.

5. A warm house, with food in the pantry, a car to drive, clean clothes to wear... all the little things we Americans tend to forget truly are blessings. We are a wee little percentage of the world's population, many of who do not have clean water, a change of clothes, comfortable homes, and so on. It's 2011 and there are horrific shanty towns in this world. We can not forget that we are at an incredible advantage over so many others, so let's be generous and share some of that, please?

6. Fuzzy slippers and comfy pajamas. Because really, what makes a night better than that?

7. Leftovers. mmmmm.

Comcast will be the death of me.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok... now that I got that out, I believe I can breathe again.

I don't think I've ever had so many problems with a service provider as I have had with Comcast over the last 3 years. I am finally fed up with them. After them sending us defective cable box after box, installing them incorrectly, making a mess out of the cable lines on our street, disrupting our service every time a tech comes on our street, incorrect billing, et cetera, et cetera, we have finally decided to kick them to the curb.

You're probably wondering why we waited so long. Well, I love their interface and channel selection, simple as that. I really do not care for Direct TV or Fios. But, there comes a time when I just have to put my foot down. The bills are just so darn high and the service is beyond poor. I won't give them any more of my money.

Do any of you use FiOS or Direct TV? Please let me know your thoughts. Direct TV is giving us a fantastic deal for 2 years, so it's hard to turn it down! :)

7 Things - 11/14/2011

1. I've decided that my little space here on the internet needs some love. I have been neglecting it so much, it's shameful! Therefore, I will make a goal of posting at LEAST once a week, with the idea that I'll post about 7 things going on in my life for the last 7 days. A little motivation...

2. I have a new job, and I've been there for four months already! Incredible how time flies when you love what you do. I am now a personal assistant for a husband and wife in a town not far from me. I don't think I'm comfortable about divulging more, since I'd like to respect their privacy, but I will say that I just love it. LOVE it. I am so blessed.

3. Cody and I celebrated our first anniversary in September. Life is going really well for the two of us. If the first year of marriage is the hardest, then thank God. It wasn't too hard. :) We are now in the "groove" of it, I suppose. It's a happy time.

4. I have SO been into Pinterest. Are you on it? Follow me here!

5. Epic is growing by the week! So exciting! Cody and I are leading another life group, and we've been getting involved with recent service projects. We've also been helping out at some events down at The Simple Way. It's just so exciting to see people coming together, doing good things, and being God's hands and feet in Philadelphia.

6. My health issues have their good days and bad days. My whole eye / migraine problem thing that I'm trying to get to the bottom of drags me down a lot, but I'm trying to keep plugging along. The doctors bills suck, but I am rediculously thankful for health insurance.

7. I've been super into the World War II and Vietnam War shows in HD on History. I can't stop watching them, and feeling this range of emotions. What it really came down to is that I'm grateful for the time and place I grew up, and how indebted I am (we all are) to our veterans and current members of the military. What incredible people they - my grandfathers, uncles, cousins, friends - are.

New phone!

My iPhone 4 has been activated for about 10 hours, 2 of which I've been awake, and I am in love. It is ridiculously faster than my old phone, the camera quality is better, and I can multi-task.

This is the first "toy" I bought myself in 2 years - since my iPhone 3 in March 2009. I am beyond excited. :D Aaaaandddd someone is buying my old phone for $100 - same price as I paid for this one since it is a refurb. Score.

My first photo taken with the new camera... If you didn't know, there are cameras on both sides. Therefore, no more awkward backward camera photos!




Oh and a serious shout-out to Apple for breaking their rules and restoring a bunch of music my old phone ate. They refunded me like 3 albums, which is typically against their terms and conditions. Awesomeeeee!

Cody is mad jealous... Guess I better find him one for his birthday before he goes out and does something crazy like buy an iPad.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Gates St,Philadelphia,United States

Sundays @ Epic!

i'll edit this post when i get some better photos...
if you've read this post already, i changed the baptism video link. the old one was posted and we finally got a copy of the new one.
i hope you like xoxo

I write a lot about Epic Church Philadelphia here, so I thought I'd give a little play-by-play about what a Sunday morning at Epic is like...

Epic services are held at 9am and 10:15am on Sunday mornings at the United Artists Theater in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia.

When you enter the theater, one of the greeters at the door will make you feel welcome right away. Everyone is always so friendly! Stop by the information table and check out some reading material...or steal some mints...

Make your way back to the actual theaters and you'll see where you can sign your kids in, if you're interested in them being in the nursery or in Epic Kids. The volunteers who watch the children love serving and love the kids! I would know - I served in the nursery for awhile, but now taking a break to help out with the greeters.

Before you go into the theater, make sure you grab a cup of coffee, tea, or juice, and then hit the donut and bagel table. We wouldn't want you to sit hungry, right? And it's just not right to be in a movie theater without snacks...

Service starts with our Worship Team playing two or three worship songs. This used to be a part of the service I wasn't crazy about, since I was so used to much more subdued Catholic hymns, but it has now become one of my favorite parts. The songs are beautiful. Here are some links to example of what it's like... :)

Hillsong - With Everything
Hillsong - Forever Reign
Chris Tomlin - Holy is the Lord
Hillsong - Inside Out (one of my FAVORITES!)
Hillsong - Mighty to Save

It's really amazing to be in an auditorium full of people just singing their hearts out without caring at all what they sound like. It's beautiful! Oh and our worship team rocks! So no matter what the rest of us sound like, they make it fantastic. I love them.









After Worship, we take a minute to greet some of the people sitting around us, and then we usually watch a quick clip like "Epic People," where we meet some of the other people who go to Epic. Cody and I got to do one about a year ago and it was fun! People recognized us after the video and it was much easier to meet new friends.









After the video the beautiful and all-around awesome Sarah makes announcements about what's going on in the coming weeks. For example, our next baptism is next Sunday the 27th.

I LOVE going to the baptisms. My baptism was one of the best days of my life. If you want to check out a link to what the day was like, go here! I'm so excited I got over my fear of public speaking and could give my testimony. What's really, really cool is how many people usually come up to me or Cody after the services they play this video and tell us how we moved them to tears. It gets me all warm and fuzzy inside haha. If you can't tell, I'm the one with the glasses and striped shirt. My dear friends Amanda and Paul "dunked" me, while Kent and Jake did Cody at the same time.

Sarah also talked about our upcoming service projects. We're doing three in the coming months. The first is serving dinner at Hope Lodge, a home for cancer patients and their caretakers. In May we're doing the Mother's Day Home Makeover for a single mother in the area who could use some help around the house (so excited to work on this one!!). The final one planned is in July at Chosen 300, feeding the population of that homeless shelter. It's amazing how quickly the service projects fill up. I love how the Epic group loves to volunteer their time, money, and hearts!!

Then we hop into the message series... delivered by our Lead Paster Kent (officient at our wedding if you may remember) or the Teaching Pastor Jake (a great friend of ours and a reader at our wedding). Today, Kent started a new message series called "Man in the Mirror." It's all about becoming more responsible for our own actions in our life. It was a terrific message today, and if you're interested, you can check out the podcast when it's posted later in the week.

The service is then finished with the offering and a final song of worship with our worship team. I ALWAYS walk out feeling like a new person... sometimes I'm newly inspired to take action somewhere in my life. Sometimes I feel confident that my life choices are positive, sometimes I feel they're negative and I need to take action. Sometimes I'm in tears, sometimes I'm walking on air, and I'm almost always moved to DO something.

After the service, we usually hang out for a bit and catch up with friends. So many of our friends we hang out with on a regular basis are from Epic, so we'll make plans for the week, or we'll reconnect with some people we only are able to catch up with on Sundays. Either way, it's awesome. It's like a family reunion every week, filled with family members you pretty much love.

Cody and I started coming to Epic in August 2009, and it has seriously 100% changed our life. I hope that you'll come visit sometime. :)

happy saturday!

#1 sign that spring is around the corner...










i chop my hair off. yey. terrible photo, but was eager to share.

not much is going on here on my end, which is mostly why i haven't posted i suppose.


* cody and i just celebrated our 6 month wedding anniversary last night. i've been sick (more on that) so we didn't plan anything. we just ended up going out to one of our favorite spots in manayunk - meze turkish cafe. the food is a-ma-zing. the service could use some work (pretty slow), but it's worth it.

* some things going on with the job front, but i don't want to say anything on the internets just yet. pretty exciting though and i can't wait to share when all is said and done.

* we've been reading crazy love by francis chan in our life group this semester. it's a great book - definitely hard though! i've done a lot of thinking about my faith, and i believe it's growing stronger after reading a few chapters. cody is leading our group with our friend rick, and they're both doing an awesome job. i really like our group this semester. a lot of our good friends are in it, and we're getting close with some new people. i really look forward to wednesday nights now.

* cody's been doing some work on getting a non-profit started. he's just in the baby steps stage right now, but it's exciting. he's going to be working with chosen 300 and helping some of the men get some computer knowledge. he wants to spread his work across the city, which i'm super pumped about. i love seeing him so passionate about something so worthy. i am so proud of him and can't wait to see what this journey brings.

* we had to put our poor kitty vanna down a few weeks ago. she was sick with kidney failure, and she was nothing but skin and bones. it was awful. we were giving her fluid treatments and special food, but she wasn't getting any better. it was more my call to put her down than cody's, so i feel a twinge of guilt, but i couldn't bear to see her suffer any longer. it was really hard on cody. here's a sweet picture of her as a kitten...gorgeous little maine coon. *sniffle*











* i was TERRIBLY sick for like 9 days where i couldn't keep anything down. i tried to push through and go to work, but ended up with a few sick days. i finally decided to go to the doctor. what did i have? MONO. who gets mono when they're 27?! i still feel a bit on the weak side, but i feel so much better than how i was feeling. it was the worst ever. it was like i would sleep for 16 hours straight but felt like it was one hour. i looked like i belonged on an episode of intervention or something. nice thing is i lost a bit of weight...

hmmm guess that's about it. life has been flying by and we've been keeping busy. i'm really looking forward to the start of spring, some rita's water ice, a few beach days, using our bed and breakfast gift cards (any ideas on where to go? we're thinking ocean city, md), and planning a potential trip to europe in the fall. just gotta come up with the money for plane tickets asap before they go up!