Getting to know me - Christmas style

I got tagged by Katarina...
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping Paper - It's more fun to pretty up!
2. Real tree or Artificial? Artificial but I love the smell of real
3. When do you put up the tree? Usually the day after Thanksgiving but this year I made a bargain and it was up last night!
4. When do you take the tree down? Haha! Whenever Jerrad gets grumpy about it!
5. Do you like eggnog? Yes!!!
6. Favorite gift received as a child? I have no idea
7. Hardest person to buy for? Jimmy
8. Easiest person to buy for? Katarina
9. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes - my grandma made it years ago and it is still the classiest one I've seen!
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Christmas letters, by mail.
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? There was one year my grandma had just gotten married and her family list tripled and her budget stayed the same. She did a lot of homemade gifts and I don't think anyone has figured out yet what exactly she gave us.
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? The old Toy Story
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? I always shop for Christmas.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Yes=)
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Meemee's tacos
16. Lights on the tree? Lots... and colored - even though mine are white for now.
17. Favorite Christmas song? Wexford Carol
18. Travel at Christmas or stay at home? Stay "home" meaning still sleeping in my own bed. But I love being at Kitty's or Marm's for the gathering. Then again, I love hosting as well!
19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeers? Yah, but I'm not going to. I'm trying to block all things of Santa out of Christmas.
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? I love my big silver star!
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas Eve
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? People forgetting what it is about or trying to make it about something other than Christ.
23. What theme or color are you using? Red, black and silver
24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? FOOD!!!
25. What do you want for Christmas this year? Sewing essentials, my bed (Jerrad was going to make it for me last year and he ran out of time), and an external hard drive for my computer!

The Sower

Unfortunately my best theological revelations come during a sermon and I don't get them from the same text that is being preached. I say unfortunately because, I really do want to listen to the preaching, but I also like to think that God has what we need ready for us, even if it isn't from the preacher. He knows what I'm going to get, that's why he has it ready there to jump out at me.

Wednesday night was one of those times. My pastor was preaching in Mark 3. He got to the last few verses of the chapter. I went on reading in chapter 4... Here it comes!!!

Mark 4:3-9 talks about the sower going out to sow. You all know the passage/parable I am speaking of. Every sermon I have heard on this passage talk about how one Christian may hand someone a gospel tract, and another may help that person through a hard time, encouraging him/her, and another Christian may be the one to actually lead the lost person to Christ. It is an encouragement for Christians to keep witnessing even though you may not see the fruits.

As great of an application as this is, that is not what jumped out at me this time. This application really hit me a good one when during the sermon a lady in our church answered a question for the preacher. Q: "What is one thing that would discourage us from keeping the faith?" A:"Seeing your children turn from the God you taught them to serve." Wow! Of all of the persecutions and trials we could endure, the first thing that came to her mind was her children. Whenever someone talks about little children and babies, I most generally give thought to my precious nephew in heaven. And the passage I wandered into started coming together in my mind.

The sower has sown many seeds knowing fully that some may not come up, that some may be carried away with the wind, some may fall on rocky ground and some may be scorched by the sun. But still does it because he knows that some will still come forth and bear fruit. Does he stop sowing year after year for the ones that don't bear fruit? No. Does he nurture his crop any less knowing this outcome? No. He still goes on knowing that the crop may never reach it's full potential.

When we have children, well, I shouldn't say "we" because I have no children but in the theoretical sense I'll use "we". When we have children, they are our seed. We sow them into the finest field we can, we nurture, care for and raise those seedlings the best we know how. Does that mean that they will always turn out the way we want? No.

With so many variables in farming, to which I've come to know a lot more about over the last 5 years, there is no guarantee of a crop. That is why we get insurance early in the growing season. That way if something happens to the crop, we won't hurt so bad. I think you know where I'm going with this! Our "crop insurance" is the Lord. We cannot forsee what will happen in the growing season, but either way it turns, we will be glad we have it. We may say, "It was a glorious year for farming and all of our crops produced far more than we could have imagined." but are we ever sorry for getting insurance? No. because we know that it could've been much worse. When it is bad, and our crops bear little or no fruit, the Lord helps us along. It's not as sweet as a productive crop, but we make it.

My husband is out on the combine today harvesting milo. It was a great crop, it's taking him so long to cut it because it's such a thick stand! It's awful fun to cut when it's like that! But there was still peace in knowing that when our wheat didn't make anything, we had insurance to cover and milo we could put down in that same field to help fill the void. So when our children don't turn out the way we planned whether by rebellion, hard times or even death we know that our "insurance" will get us through until it is time to sow the next crop.

Friday Foto - on time!

1) Taken at Bear Lake in Colorado about an hour from our cabin.

2) In September 2007

3) I love that it takes a while for all of the elements of the picture to come together.

4) This picture means something to me because of the trip itself. One of our dear friends ahd just been dealt a hard blow in a relationship. So we all took off on the spur of the moment and went to the cabin. We all went fishing and just enjoyed ourselves. It was so nice for the guys to fish and get their "therapy" while I got mine swapping back and forth from fishing and taking pictures.

5) Named, "Earth, Wind & Water"

Friday Foto - Late again!

1) Taken at Table Rock Ranch - Steve Onley's house for Adam and Sarah (Onley) Booth's wedding

2) July 19, 2008 - about the time the wedding was supposed to start, but we were waiting on the bride's hair.

3) The lighting and the angle for this picture work perfectly for the style of the cake topper.

4) This picture means a lot of different things to me.

It was my first wedding with my new camera so I had a lot of fun playing.

I was so happy to get one of those cool, modern pictures. Sometimes I feel honored to get really awesome pictures because I'm not an awesome photographer... yet!

This was a very special wedding to me... I have known the bride since she was born. We played together as very young children and our parents have plenty of black male pictures of us. I was so grateful to get to do this wedding! God brings us back around to those we love!

The bride's aunt made the cake. She's not just the bride's aunt to me. She is so much more than that! In the era that we met this special family, my dad was going to Bible college and we were tight on money (Can I hear an "Amen" on that?!). My mom worked, my dad worked and went to school. My brothers and I needed a babysitter. The pastor's daughter was the perfect gal for the job. Becki Onley babysat us the entire time we were living in Greeley. She was like a second mom to me for 5 years. She potty trained me, she held and coddled me as her own. My mom says she is surprised that I learned how to walk before we moved away from there because Becki would never put me down! And my favorite story of Becki is that she (After another LONG story that I won't go into right now) named her firstborn child after me. So the cake itself is special to me because of who made it!

5) Named: A Sweet Angle on Love

Raiders get your Guns Up!!

I would like to go on record saying that I was a Texas Tech football fan before they were good! We are in the standings for a title this year and just like any other teams that have done this before, there will be the fair weather fans. As long as they are winning, they will have fans. But I have sat in front of the computer watching the ESPN live feed (we don't have tv services) for hours on certain fall Saturdays to watch them get beat over and over again. I would humbly cheer for my team knowing that they would walk off of the field worse than when they walked onto it. I still scour every store's college section hoping that I will someday find some Double T merchandise in the land of KU, K-State, OU and Nebraska.

Now... now my friends... Here comes the team that I love and they are coming to take back all that has been ripped from their bandage taped hands. Look out! I was sitting at the Pheasants Forever banquet Friday night listening to all the men there in their OU sweatshirts. They were talking about the anxiety of playing Tech in a few Saturdays. That felt good! They were talking about how good my team is this year and how they didn't know how their boys would hold up! May justice be served on a red streamer-wrapped platter. Whether it be in Lubbock on the Llano Estacado, Lawrence, or Norman I can guarantee you it will be hot and steamy out of Graham Harrell's hands... And the Vict'ry Bells Will Ring Out!

Friday Foto - on Saturday =)

Yesterday was a little hectic once I got home from work. And we had our Pheasants Forever banquet last night. Jerrad is on the board so we stayed until it was ALL done and cleaned up (1:00 A.M.). Hence, my Friday Foto is a little late.

1) This was taken in my in-laws' "backyard"

2) I only know when it was taken because of the folder name - August '07

3) I love how the colors of the background almost perfectly divide the picture in half diagonally! Then the way the colors of the bird pop off of it!

4) I don't know that this picture holds any sentimental value to me other than being a great image... that I was privelaged to capture!

5) Name - "Cluck-cluck" <---- Trina will get it!

Dumas Demon Drumline

I was thinking the other day about my high school days and all the weird stuff I did. We were crazy, but still good kids. Our parents never had to worry about drinking, or drugs, or eating disorders, or anything illegal. But we had a ton of fun!

Like the time Kyler and I snuck into the upstairs office where our percussion teacher's office was. Just to continue the sticky note tirade we had started a few weeks back. We plastered the wall with sticky notes... hundreds of them! Since we weren't supposed to be up there we had to execute our way out also. That's when the head band director came out of his office downstairs and said, "Let's go home guys." To all that were hanging out in the band hall after school. We couldn't come out then or we'd get in trouble for being in there, but if we stayed we'd be locked in the band hall all night! Since that was better than getting caught (?), we stayed put! =) So there we were locked in the band hall. A few minutes pass and we are trying to figure out what in the world we are going to say when we convince someone to unlock us. Then, dumb us, realize that we can go out the back door and it will lock behind us!

So that wasn't exactly risky... but it was funny!

Then we were at state solo and ensemble my senior year. Our percussion ensemble was AWESOME! We had so much fun and we rocked! We headed down to Austin to the UT campus. We were waiting forever to get done. We went in a kicked butt with our ensemble. We had to exit a different door than we came in with our equipment. So one of the directors was going to get the instrument van and trailer for us to load. In the mean time here are the five of us percussionists with Mr. & Mrs. Tice. We had a very unique relationship with him. He wasn't a whole lot older than us, he went to Dumas High and he was the craziest of us all! As we were waiting on Dr. Trayler to come back for us, we were about to die in the hot, blazing, June, Austin heat and humidity! Some of the people helping work the contest came over and got some ice out of the big ice bunker close by. When they turned around to walk away, Mr. Tice climbed in the ice bunker to cool off. We giggled. Then the workers came right back to get more ice and what do they see but a DIRECTOR hanging out in the ice bunker!

That trip we also managed to sneak into his hotel room and sabotage his entire room. Since I was the only girl in the percussion section at the time I got out of the retaliation! But I heard it was gut wrenching awful!

Our percussion section was the most unique that I believe had come through DHS in a few years... at least since Tice had been in it! We went to our own contests, had our own activities and rehearsals on top of whole band stuff. We had our qualms after all... there was a little estrogen in the bunch! =) We had an incredible line! The bass drum digguhs were in the house! (I never realized how dumb that sounded!) We learned to play our parts with folding chairs. It's a long story, but I swear to you it worked! My best memories of high school involved Carla (my best friend), Kassie (other best friend) and my drumline guys + Amy!

We were able to bring back traditions that had been cut out in the past because the previous section couldn't do it right. Not because they weren't good percussionists, but because they didn't have a teacher like we did! We incorporated things into our music that had never been attempted in our high school band before. We won WTAMU's "Day of Percussion" Outstanding High School Ensemble with "Ogoun Badagris" by Christopher Rouse. We also took that ensemble of Josh, Ricky, Leslie, Justin and me to state ensemble contest. We got a first division... No one at DHS had gotten that honor before us except... you guessed it... Corey Tice.

It wouldn't be a blog about the Triple D without a tribute to our wonderful teacher - The Ticenator, Sir Tice-a-lot, and for the few of us who knew him as Mickey Blue Eyes! He taught me so much! From restaurant etiquette, to grammar. But mostly he taught me how to be open minded but still stick to your standards. And that one lowly high school teacher can make a difference in a life!