Settlers

Remember that one time when I was a sophomore and my friend Scott Schuester asked...wait, begged, Rachel, Ellen and I to come play some game called "Settlers of Catan".

All of our initial reactions reflected the fact that we thought it was going to be one of those "weirdo" games where people dress up and play all night.

Well fast forward a couple years and I finally played the game. Somewhat hesitantly, we joined Meredith and Josh to play a game because it was their favorite. Little did I know that it was not a crazy weirdo game, but it was a really intense fun game!

All this to say, last night Reed won his first game of Settlers. Now I want to win! I've won once before but it was with help. That doesn't count to me. I want to actually win because I did better! I'm pretty awful at playing though. I typically don't have a strategy and I usually make moves that everyone else responds with, "Oh you don't really want to do that, here it'd be better to move here."

Haha. So tonight is the night! I just have this good feeling. Plus Josh will be there, so if I do win, it'll be that much better (Josh is like a PRO!).

I also wanted to admit it here...I really want to get this game and teach people in Dallas how to play.

Wheeeeew! There I said it!

A chapter ends.

We all have those points in our lives where things change. A chapter in life moves into the next.

I have so much excitement for the next chapter of our lives but also I have so much apprehension.

There have been closing chapters before, like leaving high school to come to college, but I have to say no other chapter in my life has impacted me as much as my time at college.

I'm not saying growing up didn't hugely influence me and shape the person I am.

But in college I....
1. Found the Lord and accepted Him as my Savior
2. Learned how to not be such a crappy and selfish friend (through the help of some AMAZING people)
3. I actually learned how to truly trust God
4. I struggled with boys (a lot!) and God taught me (a lot!) through it
5. I met my husband
6. I gained a group of friends that are closer to me than I ever though possible...the people I can always count on and who encouraged me and challenged me for years.

This is why it is so hard for me to say goodbye. The things here are not uprooting and coming with us to Dallas. In fact, except for a couple friends already there, we are having to start over with building relationships.

As scary as it is, I know how necessary it is for us to start anew and take on the challenges of meeting people. It would be so great to stay here, but it also wouldn't challenge us.

There is a reason why Dallas is our home and I am so excited to see what the Lord has for us...but I will forever cherish this chapter of my life. Forever.

Only one more week in College Station

Having time off this summer has certainly had lots of advantages. For one, I get to spend loads and loads of time with Jess. Thats always wonderful. I've been able to help out the Perryman's, spend some good quiet time with God, and hang out with a book and the computer at Sweet Eugene's. With our moving date coming up I've also had a little time recently to realize how much I will miss College Station. It isn't necessarily the place. Don't get me wrong, in a lot of ways I prefer it to Dallas. The slower pace and lack of traffic are wonderful, but for me all things A&M have grown a little tedious. Maroon is a nice color, but it's not that nice.

More than anything I will miss the people. Jess and I have made some wonderful friends while we've been here, and sadly we cant take them with us to Dallas. Last night we got to hang out with our good friends Danielle and Janelle. We went to Casa Rodriguez for dinner and then went back to our house for Mario Party 8 and a few games of cards. Nothing outrageous. Nothing crazy. Just a good time with good friends. Tonight the four of us are going to go to the Perryman's for another game night. Hopefully Meredith doesn't destroy me again (she has a penchant for beating me at no matter the game). I'm sure the kids will have gone to bed by the time we get there, but it has been a joy to have the blessing to watch them grow. Abey and Ellie are precious girls, and Jonathan and Jacob (the cutest twins I've ever seen) have gone from crawling to talking, well almost at least :), in the time that we have known them. Josh and Meredith have been a huge blessing to us as well. They have been exceedingly gracious with their time and wisdom, and Jess and I have benefited immensely from knowing them.

There are many more friends that we will miss, these guys are just the ones that happen to come to mind right now. Jess will have to say goodbye to more people than me. She does happen to be much more of a social butterfly than I am :) Please pray for us in our transition. We will face new challenges in Dallas, and it feels daunting to tackle them while trying to make new friends and resume old friendships, but now as a married couple. God has been so good to us, and I believe that He will continue to do so. Pray that we would hold fast to that faith, and trust in His power and not our own.

Speaking of blessings, Jess and I bought the rights to our wedding photos from our photographer, and we got the cd's a few days ago. There are dozens of pictures that are absolutely wonderful, but this one is definitely one of my favorites.


I cannot begin to speak to how much I love my wife. We are so blessed that God first loved us.

Harry Potter 6 worth the hype? I thought so

It's Reed again. I promise I will be more than a movie critic when I post on this blog. I promise ;)

Well, when Jessica and I lazily woke up this morning she started to look through her phone and found out that there was a 9:50 showing this morning of The Half-Blood Prince here in College Station. Even though she knew that she would have to rush to work after the movie was over, and that we would have to hurry just to make the movie on time, there was no doubt in either of our minds that we were going. I love my wife :)

I must say that both of us have been eagerly anticipating the release of this movie for honestly the past 6 months or so. We are not the biggest Potter nerds ever, not by any means, but nevertheless we have been excited, with just the slightest hints of reservation. We both naturally like the books better than the movies. It makes us both a little sad that over the last few movies they have had to cut more and more things to maintain a reasonable time limit for the films. In fact, Jessica dislikes the fourth film for this reason, and both of us were hoping that the new movie would be more like the Order of the Phoenix than the Goblet of Fire. (We liked "Phoenix" a lot more).

I thought the movie was very well done. In some ways it might be my favorite of the series. I thought that all of the actors turned in excellent performances, Dumbledore in particular. Both Jessica and I prefer the first Dumbledore to the second (the first actor died after the second film, in case you needed the reminder), but I thought he gave a perfect performance. Harry and Ron were both excellent, and Hermione was not guilty of the over-acting that Jessica and I have thought she has fallen into at times over the last two films. Malfoy was even very good, a much deeper character than he has previously been. The special effects were superb and taken up a notch from the last movie. As a movie goer I thought the movie was absolutely excellent.

As a reader and fan of the books, I was disappointed with a few things. So as not to spoil the movie for anyone who has not seen it yet I will not divulge any important information. But having said that, the movie makers decided to insert a scene in the middle of the movie that was NOT in the book, and the time given to that scene came at the expense of another scene from the end of the movie. The scene that was inserted was not bad by any means, and I'm sure the decision makers for the film decided that they needed to insert a little bit of action to keep the audience interested during a period of plot building in the movie, but there were so many other things that they could have done with the time that they devoted to this scene. My only other problem with the film was that they handled a key event at the end a little differently (it was really only a few semantics and minor details), but I did not like it as much as how it was done in the book and I wish that they had just stuck to what was in the novel. All of this makes me wish that the producers would decide to mimick the Lord of the Rings and release an extended cut on dvd.

Well, all in all I still thought it was an excellent movie. I need to see it another time or two to really know if it might be my favorite in the series, but if you like the books and/or movies, I highly recommend it.

Venting Time

Okay I just have to vent this....

There are people that I love and care about that can get me so BLAZING inside in an instant. It's one of the topics that just makes me heart ache.

It's when someone tries to dissuade Reed and I to adopt because of this reason: the children could have emotional/mental/physical issues that would be hard on you and may not be worth it.

Just writing that made me want to cry.

Who are we? Choosing what to do based on how easy it is for us?

I know that I am naive and I know very little about the hardships that may come with adoption. The choices we may have to make are going to be hard and even our children may have rough things that together we'll have to take on.

But I yearn to love them, to adopt them, to give them love that isn't conditioned upon how easy they are to deal with. This is what my Father, the one true God, did for me. Who am I to deny that kind of love to someone who may not have loving parents.

I truly feel God calling us to adoption. With all my heart I feel lead there.

And I also feel in my gut that God would be saddened by our excuses of how hard an adopted child may be to deal with.

Heck, I was a wretched, downright awful person before the Lord adopted me. But He still did. And it wasn't easy...Calvary proves that.

I know that many of the people who say this are such amazing and good people and I love and respect them. I'm praying for a more graceful heart when this comes up. I'm truly trying to separate the concept that upsets me from the person who might have said it. So more than people upsetting me...it's this idea that this is some legitimate excuse. It's just isn't to me.

James 1:27

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Heart Healthy

1 Corinthians 6:19

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from god, and that you are not your own.


Over the last say 6 months or so, both Reed and I have not been very diligent about our health. Whereas we used to never get fried pickles, or chicken tenders or any other thing that was greasy, we slowly started to give in. It started as a "well, we never do, so why not" and then it became more common and we rationalized it the more we ate it.

Then the other night, after I ate WAY too much at Texas Roadhouse, I woke up after a morbid dream. It wasn't a freak you out, scary, I'm dying dream. I was running, but I had to have wires attached to me at all times because the reason I was running was because I had just discovered that I had heart problems.

I really believe God purposes the things in our heads and although sometimes we may think it is random, I know that his dream was God weighing on me how big of a deal it is to take care of my body. I could tell this wasn't any normal "random" dream, just because I woke up with a new found fear and resolve to take care of myself and my husband better.

Now, I'm not out here to hurt anyone's feelings, but let's get the facts. You are at greater risk for high blood cholesterol and heart disease if you eat a diet that often includes deep fried (fried pickles) or breaded foods (chicken tenders), which are high in fat. It's a fact that when you fry foods you are filling the food with an insoluble GREASE called saturated fat and trans fat. Those fats can't be broken down through digestion. SO what do they do? They are stored in cells throughout your body.

This is my confession: We have not been treating our bodies as a temple. Just in the past 5 days I have had a breaded chicken sandwich with fries from Wendy's as well as fried pickle slices from Texas Roadhouse. There has most definitely been other instances, I just can't remember them off the top of my head. And not to mention the fact that neither of us has made time to work out over the past couple of months, me especially. I'm a prime candidate for bad heart health...I eat crappy and I live a very sedentary lifestyle.

I know some people may read this and think, wow your making a really big deal of something that's not THAAAAT big of a deal. But I just want to refer you to the verse above.

1 Corinthians 6:19

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from god, and that you are not your own.

Our body IS a temple, we're not our own, we're stewards of our bodies. We're made in the image of God. I just don't think it's a far reach that God desires us to take care of our bodies. He's asked us to be good rulers and caretakers of the earth and I'm pretty sure if God cares so much about the earth, he also cares that we are good rulers and caretakers of ourselves.

If our body is meant to be a temple of the Holy Spirit...a living, breathing, walking, glory to God giving temple...then shouldn't I make sure that it is taken care of and healthy? I truly believe that the Lord is showing me that it can be an act of worship to take care of our bodies.

I know that some people could go overboard and I don't know that I'm so concerned about making the perfect decisions with food all of the time or going health nuts to the max. But I do truly believe that I can make better decisions that honor God.

I mean how can I be a ruler over the earth, over the fish and the sea and the birds, if I can't even take care of my own body and health? (Genesis 1:28)

Just some thoughts on Reed and my new "healthy heart" living campaign :)

One Month

Yesterday Reed and I hit our one month-a-versary!

It seems small, but really, every day is new and exciting.

I can't say everything is perfect, or that we love each other always as we should...but we're learning, we're moving that direction, we're growing, we're learning to forgive and we're learning how to be a good wife and husband. I more want to put this little disclaimer out there because I don't want to assume that we're just awesome at everything, because we're not. I need to be honest and say, we're definitely not a 50 year old married couple. But as are all things with the Lord, it takes time to grow a seasoned relationship...I can't wait :)

Is it fun? Heck yeah! I get to hang out with my best friend ALL THE TIME! Already I've gotten sick and have been able to see my wonderful husband gently take care of me and not make me feel bad about being sick at all. We've also broken into the social scene and visited parents and friends! It's been a blast!

We are in for a journey together. There are seasons of life that we will explore together, the good and the hard, but I know every day we are going to love each other more than the next. I know that after a year we will look back and think, "Wow, I thought I loved you as much as I possibly could, but I realize how much more I love you now!"

I really and truly think that God is going to refine us so much and show us what true selfless love looks like. I can honestly say that I need a lesson on that one. Lately I've been seeing how selfish I really am. Even in just a month, being married has revealed a lot of selfish tendencies that I didn't even realize I had.

It's neat though. I'm glad I have a bond and commitment with Reed that declares that we will never give up on one another, no matter how selfish or hurtful we can be.

That's the kind of love that inspires me to love back selflessly.

I'm praying that for our marriage...that we learn what it means to be a glimpse of Jesus Christ and His church. I'm praying that even in our home, when no one is watching, that we treat each other with love and respect. I want every moment of our lives to be enveloped with the concept that we are meant to completely glorify God.

We are so blessed. The last month has been amazing...just AMAZING. I can't wait for next month, because I know it's going to be crazy with moving, but it will be an adventure and a challenge for us to do together :)

I love you Reed!