Branson with C2!!!!!!!

This weekend the United C2 (College and Career) group went to Branson and We had a BLAST!!! This trip was full of memories and wish more people could have gone. But we had a great time and this will be a trip we will never forget!!!

We left Thursday evening and headed to Branson…when we got there we went to eat at Applebee’s because that was pretty much all that was open! Thank God for ½ price appetizers! Haha On Friday morning we got up and had good ole Cracker Barrel for breakfast!!  We then went shopping for a few hours at the Tanger Outlet Mall! After our shopping experience some of the group went to the Arcade and the rest of us went mini golfing. Lets just say that we had quite the experience on ‘the greens’!! For those of you that golfed, can I get an Amen?? Haha Complete with getting rained on! We then headed to TJ Max and Target before heading to Lamberts! Home of the Throwed Rolls! We all squished into the table and had the best meal ever!! After we ate, we went back to the cabins and played games! On Saturday morning we got up and spent all day at Silver Dollar City, then came home late Saturday evening. We had a BLAST and we can’t wait to go again!!!

Just a few memories to sum up this trip….

*Need a car seat??
*Fighting for ½ price appetizers
*Where’s Byron?
*Ragen’s dodging experience at the outlet mall
*Prayer on the ‘Greens’
*11 people sitting in a 6 person table at Lamberts
*Entertain for Entertainment…come on guys!!
*Catch Phrase…the guys lost!! 
*Round 2?!
*Popsicles anyone?
*Krista’s shoes
*Won the fat people’s Olympics
*Walking through the woods…everyone got wet and muddy…
*Where’s Tara?....WHERES TARA?
*Well folks, we’re going to stop the ride for a moment to pick up someone’s shoes
*The cave
*You better not take a picture of that bat! Leave that alone!
*No licking!!
*Stopping at QT
*Chris and Thunderation
*Krista trying to get Branson on 411
*Children of Uganda

Semi-Finalist!!!!! x2!!!

I know that I've posted this picture before but I am just too excited to not share the news!!!

When I took this picture I had forwarded it to several friends and they all encouraged me to enter it into a contest. I hadn't even thought of it and they inspired me so I decided to look online and see if there were any online contests available! Well there were so I decided to go for it!!! :) With the help of my sister and her husband, Robyn and Jeff, we named the picture "Enlightening". I entered the picture about a month ago and I got an email today stating that it had been selected for the "Semi-Finalist"!!!!!!!! There is a great chance to win a prize. The big prizes are amazing and I am claiming it!!! :) Also, since it has been selected to go to semi finalist they are publishing this picture in their book, "Endless Journeys"!!!!!

**UPDATE** I had entered this same picture into a 2nd contest and I found out this weekend that I have been selected as one of the finalist on this competition as well and they are also publishing the picture in their book!!!!! And have a very good chance at winning a great prize!!!

GAH!!!! I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!! I will let you all know the results when I hear something!!!! If you think about it, say a prayer!!!

Lori and Jessy came to visit!!

Lori and Jessy came to KC last week and we were able to get together for dinner on Monday night!!! It was SOOO good to see them and we had alot of fun!!!! This is a picture of Lori, Megan, and I after dinner at Jack Stacks (YUMMO)!! Megan is Lori's best friend from high school and she is a great girl!! I didn't get a picture of Lori and Jessy tho. :( Our time wasn't long enough but it was great to see them for a little bit! :) Love you guys!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Everyone!!!
We didn't do anything for Easter this year. My nieces and nephews didn't get to come down this year...but here are a few pictures that my sister sent me of the kiddos! :)

Kansas City!

I love Kansas City!!! :) I'm loving it more and more every day!!! Sometimes I'll just go driving around to see if there is anything else I can find! :) It's so awesome!!

Youth Convention '08

So, I must be slackin'. lol I haven't been taking very many pictures lately! haha Here are a few pictures from YC '08!!!

Hanging Out...

After the drama, we all hung out like almost every night. lol I didn't get a lot of pictures but here are a few! :)

Journey to Redemption

Last week, our church had a Easter Drama! We used to do them all the time but because we didn't have our own building for 8 years...we couldn't do them. So this is the first time we've done it since we've been in our new building! It turned out really good!! We had about 1000 people come to it and had a lot of visitors too!! It turned out great and everybody did an awesome job!!

Crazy Awesome!!

So, this past Sunday we had some crazy awesome church!! God really did some awesome things! Pastor was preaching on miracles, and how the generation now needs to see more miracles. In that service, we had 14+ people that were healed!!! There were headaches and backaches that after they were prayed for, God instantly healed them! Their pain was GONE! There were so many other things that people got prayed for, I'm not sure of all the results, but God is doing some crazy awesome things!!! It is SO exciting!!! God is amazing!!

Michael Buble Concert!!!!!!!!!!

So, last night Jon, Me, Marissa, and Chris went to the Michael Buble' Concert!!!!! It was amazing, not even gonna lie about that!!! :) The music was amazing and the live band was wonderful!!! He had a group open up for him called 'Naturally 7'. They had no instruments but it sounded like a full band! They did all the music with their mouth! It was great! The only thing we didn't like about it was that he had a dirty mouth...but I guess that is to be expected when it comes to a secular concert. But all in all, we had an amazing time!!! I'll try to post a video soon, if I can figure it out!

Jonathon's Welcome Home Party!!

This past Saturday we had a big Welcome Home party for Jonathon! It was so much fun!! We all got together at Kacey's house and we had a Sandwich Bar, played games, and just hung out. There was almost 20 people there so we had a great turn out and everybody is so happy that Jonathon is back home!!! We missed you Jon!!!
(I'll be adding more pictures as I gather some from other people)

Good Report!!

My heart is just overwhelmed and am so thankful for what God has done!!! It seems like since Christmas everything has gone wrong, lost people I loved dearly, everything that could go down, went down...you name it, it happened. As some of you know, since my Dad got his pacemaker put in around Christmas time, his heart has still be fluttering and it wasn't beating correctly or on beat. So, the Dr's said that he was going to have to get a shock treatment done on his heart. Well, they scheduled it for today. Last Friday night my Dad had gone to a Men's service at church and there were a few men that prayed for my Dad. They stepped out on faith and told my Dad that they were going to believe that he wouldn't have to get this done because God was going to heal him! Well, my Dad went to the Dr this morning before the treatment was scheduled to get some tests run. And he did NOT have to get the shock treatment done!!!! The Dr said that Dad is NORMAL!!!! THANK YOU JESUS!!!!!! We are VERY excited and THANKFUL to what God has done!!! He is simply amazing!!!

Jonathon's Home!!!

As I have blogged in the past, Jonathon has been in Africa for the past 5 months. He finally made his journey home this week!!! I am soo excited that he is finally here! It was SOOO good to see him again. Now, if we can just get Ken, Gin, and Jen here we'll be doing good!! haha I miss them so much but glad to have a part of them home. :) He will be moving to Omaha, Nebraska for a little while but he is ohhh soooo much closer now! :) Love ya Jon...glad my bro is back!!

Mom's Birthday!!

My sweet, wonderful, beautiful Mom turned 68 today! My Mom, Dad, and I went out to eat after church today...Here are a couple of pics that we took!! Happy Birthday, Momma!!

God is SOOO Good!!!

As some of you know this past weekend I went to Minnesota with a couple of friends for a Retreat. We had an amazing time...however on the way home the roads got REALLY bad. There were patches of ice everywhere and there were literally HUNDREDS of cars in the ditches, everywhere!! We kept praying for God to keep us safe... Well, unfortunately we ended up doing FOUR 360's on the highway and ended up in the ditch ourselves. We were screaming, "JESUS!!!" And when we stopped, we were 200 feet from a bridge and 2 semi trucks!!! Another car went off the same time we did. It was so scary, but God definitely had his hand upon us! We were so thankful that my car didn't flip, we didn't run into anything, there was NO damage, and we walked out of the car without being hurt. God saved us and had his protecting hand upon us. A nice Iowan gentleman stopped to help us...he tried to help us get the car out of the ditch, but there was over a foot of snow on the ground and the car wouldn't go anywhere. About that time a Highway Patrol Officer stopped to make sure we were okay, and he too tried to help us get the car out, but there was no luck. The gentleman and the Patrol Officer took us to the next town (about 15 miles) to the nearest hotel. They had a Best Western, a Boondock Motel, and a gas station and that was it. Thank God the Best Western had a room open. The Highway Patrol had a towing band and that caused us not to be able to get the car out of the ditch...So we had to stay in the hotel for 2 days. So, all in all, God is good and we are now home. Thank You Jesus!!!! I can't wait to sleep in my own bed! lol
**This picture is of our tracks that we made when we went into the ditch. With all the chaos I forgot to get a picture of the car.

Sub-Zero Singles Retreat '08

This past weekend...Sarah, Venita, and I drove to Minnesota for the singles retreat. It was so amazing. It was at a campground and they had over a foot of snow!!! The retreat was relaxing and very laid back and we met a ton of new people and made lots of new friends! :) On the way there, we had a beautiful drive!!! The sunset was just gorgeous!! We stopped at a gas station that was a "Pump and Munch"..so needless to say we had a good time with that one. haha Also, we got to stop at the "Ice Cream Capital of the World". It was awesome!!! And the ice cream was yummy! The services at the retreat were great and God really moved. We had a bonfire and while we were outside, it was snowing! It was so cool! We also had snowball fights which was really funny. And they had a volleyball tournament too. We didn't want to leave the retreat because we had so much fun! On the way home, we stopped in Minneapolis to shop for a couple of hours at the outlet mall. After we left....the weather got really bad...and well....you can read that on the next blog...Enjoy the pics....:)

Mammaw's Funeral

My Mammaw passed away on Sunday, February 3rd, and the funeral was Thursday, February 7th. She was such a wonderful lady and I miss her so much. She was famous for her good ole Southern Homemade Chocolate Gravy and Biscuits. YUM! I don't like chocolate but I loved Mammaws Chocolate Gravy and Biscuits. She loved her redbirds that came to sit on her kitchen windowsill everyday. She LOVED bright colors!!! Her favorite color was red and she loved my Dads bright orange shirt.....so in memory of our precious Mammaw we all wore bright colors to the funeral. I felt so honored to be able to sing a duet with my sister at the funeral. It was hard but Mammaw wanted her granddaughters to sing. It tore me up to no end to see my Dad and my Granddaddy cry. It was a very tough week. But on the bright side, we got to see some cousins of ours that we haven't seen for about 13 years. Even under the circumstances, we enjoyed being with our family. At the funeral, she had so many flowers and plants than any funeral I've ever been to. They were doubled on both sides of the casket and on both sides of the wall. Thank You Mammaw for being such a wonderful and Godly lady. I will never forget your love for God, as you read your Bible faithfully every day. There are so many memories that I will never forget. She was selfless and always put others first before herself. She left the legacy of love....I love you Mammaw and miss you soooo much.

Update on Mammaw

Well, as you know from the previous blog, that we drove all night last Saturday night to Louisiana. We arrived last Sunday morning at 7:00am. When we arrived, Mammaw was already in a coma.....she passed away at 2:30 that afternoon. 5 minutes before she passed away, Granddaddy went over there and hugged and kissed her and it was only minutes and she passed away from this life. We were all in the room when she passed, 18 of us. It has been a long hard week. I never would have imagined loosing and having to bury both of my grandmas in 2 weeks.

I'm ready for Spring...

Most of you know that I LOVE snow, and everything else that comes along with it...sweaters, bundling up, boots, and everything...especially during the holidays, but I am SOO ready for Spring. And it needs to get here quick! haha It has been so stinkin' cold here. We've been having windchills of -8 and -9. It's insane. I am soo ready for Spring.....where we can wear flip flops and short sleeves. lol Oh well, it'll come soon enough I suppose. :) Before long we'll be complaining on how hot it is! lol But, all in all...I wouldn't trade our winters for anything. :)

My Mammaw-UPDATED 02-09-08

Well, It seems like here lately there has been one thing after another happening. We found out this past weekend that my Mammaw (Dad's Mom) is in the hospital. She hasn't been doing very well. She has pneumonia really bad in one long and is having other complications as well. The Dr said that if she makes it 24-48 hours then we might have hope. But I think we're almost past the 48 hour mark and she is doing some better from what I heard today. If you think about it...please keep her in your prayers.

Update 01/24/08 PM- The Dr's are talking about letting Mammaw leave the hospital on Tuesday, but she will most likely have to go to physical therapy because she has lost all of her strength and can't walk or anything. The good news is that her pneumonia is getting better!!

Update 01/30/08 PM- Well, Mammaw won't be able to go home now. The pneumonia has gotten worse and is now in both lungs. We aren't sure as to what extent. And her lower lungs have somewhat collapsed. Yesterday, her throat was either shutting down or swelling up and she couldn't eat without choking very badly. They gave her some meds today to try to help that, and she was able to eat better today but if that continues then she might have to have a feeding tube. So, we'll just see what happens and continue to pray that God heals her.

Update 02/02/08 PM- We got a call this afternoon that my grandma has taken another turn for the worse... She is now in a coma, her white blood cells have gone back up, and the Dr has now said she may not make it through the night...maybe tomorrow. We are leaving this evening to go to Louisiana.