My life in music...

I thought it was kind of fun to post song lyrics in my last post. And because music is such a part of my life, I thought I would continue with it...

As I stated, my life has been an exaggerated level of chaos the last two weeks. Seven laptops were stolen from our computer cart, which was sitting in my classroom, on Monday night. Despite locking the cart and locking the door. Unfortunately, the teacher whose room connects to ours left his door unlocked. So students broke in after school, stole the computers, and then sold them. Fortunately, they were dumb enough to sell them to a student who told his aunt, who let us know about them. So we recovered two. However, I still spent the majority of the day filing a police report, watching security cameras, and building up my courage to tell my principal about the situation. On top of all that, I find out that one of the students who is being accused is the student I TRUSTED to be our COMPUTER MANAGER. I am so disappointed. It makes me feel hurt that he would misuse my trust and it makes me feel stupid that I trusted him in the first place after being told not to.

Among other things, I have had students who we discovered were in the middle of domestic disputes in the last two weeks, students in the hospital for doing harm to themselves, and students who have lost a parent or a best friend. All in the last two weeks.

I'm burnt out. I am emotionally spent. I need a vacation. I am quick to lose my patience with my students, when the entire purpose of a Special Education teacher is to be more patient than others. I am quick to snap, quicker to yell, and quickest to cry. I am at my complete breaking point.

Yesterday afternoon I was sent a Godly message. A friend of mine, really a mere "Facebook friend," posted a Bible verse as her status that reminded me of an amazing song. I am often the type of person who focuses less on God during the good times and more on God during the hard times, as many other people do. So He has completely brought me to my knees in the last few weeks. This has happened in my life before, when I have drifted too far away. So I can only believe that He has brought me here to bring me back to Him. Bless you, Father, I am coming back.

About five years ago, if not more, I was familiarized with the idea of "breath prayers." The idea is that you have a short phrase (just one deep breath), which generally stands for so much more, that you can repeat throughout the day to connect you back to God and remind yourself of whatever it is you need to be reminded of. Yesterday, I adopted a new breath prayer. So for the next few days/weeks/months/however long it takes, my daily breath prayer will be "No weapon," based on the song of the same title...

No Weapon, by Fred Hammond
No weapon formed against me shall prosper, it won’t work (4x)

God will do what He say He would do
He will stand by His word and He will come through
God will do what He say He would do
He will stand by His word and He will come through

No weapon formed against me shall prosper, it won’t work (2x)

God will do what He said He would do
He’s not a man that He should lie, He will come through
God will do what He said He would do
He will stand by His word, He will come through

Oh I won’t be afraid of the arrows by day from the hand of my enemy
I can stand my ground with the Lord on my side for the snares they have set will not succeed

No weapon formed against me shall prosper, it won’t work (2x)

For I Know God will do what He said He's gonna do
He will stand by his word, He will come through
God will do what He said He's gonna do, stand by his word

NO NO NO WAY!

No weapon formed against me shall prosper, it won’t work (2x)

It won't work

Dont be afraid of the arrows or the snares set by your enemies if you believe it say oo

There just aint one, there just aint one weapon
Although they've set a snare and a trap I want you to know it won't work oh no no no

I am truly, incredibly blessed. In the midst of more chaos then I have experienced so far at my job, I am so happy. In the midst of a week filled with physical threats from students, laptops being stolen from my room, all on top of the usual nonsense of my current daily life, somehow I can actually still smile and laugh. Why? I am blessed with a man who is my partner in every sense of the word. I am blessed with a man who surprises me by bringing home a "six-pack" of gourmet cupcakes because I had a rough day. A man who kisses me on the forehead as I cry and says, "We'll get through this together." We. WE will get through this. Not, "You'll make it." Or, "You can do it." But we. I am now, and forever, a we. What an amazing feeling.

Thank you, Father, for sending this precious, amazing man to me and for blessing me with this marriage. I promise not to take it for granted. I promise to spend every day working to make him feel as loved and taken-care-of by me as I do by him.

Lyrics from my favorite musical, The Last Five Years. It is actually a semi-depressing show, but this is an incredibly beautiful moment where the man, Jamie, and the woman, Cathy, actually get married. It is the second song on the CD I made myself the week before the wedding...

Husband: There are so many lives I want to share with you
I will never be complete until I do

Wife: I am not always on time
Please don't expect that from me
I will be late, but if you can just wait
I will make it eventually

Not like it's in my control, not like I'm proud of the fact
But anything other than being exactly on time I can do

I don't know why people run
I don't know why things fall through
I don't know how anybody survives in this life
Without someone like you
I could protect and preserve
I could say no and goodbye
But why, Jamie, why?

I want to be your wife, I want to bear your child
I want to die knowing I had a long, full life in your arms
That I can do, forever, with you

Will you share your life with me
For the next ten lifetimes?
For a million summers
Till the world explodes
Till there's no one left
Who has ever known us apart
There are so many dreams
I need to see with you...

There are so many years I need to be with you...

I will never be complete

I will never be alive

I will never change the world until "I do"

Day 16!!

So I won't even try to apologize for the 3.5 months because everyone has heard it before and it doesn't seem to mean anything when I do =) However, I am going to try and be better because I really want to keep track of such an exciting time in my life!!

So, the past month has been a complete whirlwind. The wedding was amazing and Zach and I realized how incredibly blessed we are to have the family and friends we do. We have spent the last two weeks trying to rest and recover from everything. Here are some of my newest "wife" adventures...

Honeymoon in Chicago!!!


Homemade chili to celebrate fall!!


My attempt at decorating for the season (idea stolen from Emily, THE decorator!)

Homemade "Berry Banana Bread"
(found here: http://fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com/2009/11/berry-banana-bread.html)

((Side note: This recipe is definitely a work in progress, as this was the first time I have ever baked bread. There are certainly some changes I will make next time, and some things I learned to do differently!!))

As far as everything else...

• I started training for my next half marathon, the Birmingham Mercedes Half Marathon on February 13th
• After that, I will be running in the Nashville Country Music Half Marathon
• Teaching is still ridiculous and I don't know that I'll ever get used to it
• I am in the midst of trying to decide what I want to do after teaching... Grad school? Law school? Nursing school? Who knows. I'm willing to take suggestions...
• All in all though, I am LOVING life with Zach right now and this incredible time in our lives!

Keep you posted!!!

Pure Cheesy-ness...

I spent this weekend celebrating our nation's birthday with three amazing families: the Smiths, the Olsens and the MeGahees. The weekend, while full of nonsense and too many people in one house, was another eye-opener for me. Anyone who is anti-cheesy-ness should move on and wait for another post... =)


I am beyond blessed. Let me re-phrase. I have always been blessed, but I am more and more aware of this on a daily basis. I am doing my best lately not to take this fact for granted but to remind myself regularly. This weekend did just that for me. I am beyond blessed with the amazing people I have in my life and the relationships I have been given. More than just being blessed to have those people in my life, I am blessed that said amazing people have relationships with each other. Good ones, too! I literally almost teared up at one point this weekend, in the midst of too little sunscreen and too much Bud Light when I saw my mom and Zach's mom giggling with each other in the back of our rented Pontoon boat. Not only do I have a good relationship with my *future, in-less-than-three-months* in-laws, but my parents also have a good relationship with them. Not only do I love Zach's sister, but my sisters love his sister. Zach's friends are my friends and my friends are his friends. As I have seen in the past, through friends' experiences, how difficult these relationships can be to form, I am beyond thankful that our friends and families get along so well -- and I vow to be grateful for it every day.


I am also blessed with the amazing man who I marry in less than three months. While working on noticing and appreciating the relationships we have with ohers, I am also working on appreciating the time we have with each other and not taking it for granted. We have our fights and our issues, but I have so much fun with him. Despite being exhausted from our trip, we arrived back in Atlanta and had a night full of laughter and silliness.



I am a blessed girl. And I am doing everything I can to take it all in, appreciate it, and save these moments up for when the stress of school starts back into my life!

Our weekend, in a few pictures...

Oh, Birmingham..

So I have been enjoying my summer so far. It is nice to have time to myself to be lazy and to read and do so many things I have been putting off while school was going on!

This week I have been in Birmingham working on wedding stuff. Friday, we went and ordered invitations in Montgomery. I have to say, after finding the dress, that was the thing that most made it real that we are getting married. Seeing our names written out and everything was a little crazy!

Monday, Mom and I found the jewelry I will be wearing at the reception and Tuesday we found her dress! It has been very fun and exciting getting these little things accomplished. I am trying to do as much as I can in June/July, because I know that once its August and school starts up, everything will begin to move so quickly!

In other news, I have become addicted to the novels by Philippa Gregory. Most people know her as the author of The Other Boleyn Girl, but I love everything I've read so far. I finished The White Queen and am now in the middle of The Virgin Lover. Next is The Other Queen. I have so much fun escaping into these books -- imagining being royalty back in the day (we all know I wish I was a real princess).

This weekend we are planning a trip to "Shoot the Hooch" and then go to the Braves game on Saturday. Should be lots of fun! Maybe I'll be good and post pictures!!

Engagement Pictures!!

The weekend before last Zach and I ventured to Auburn for our engagment photo shoot! Sweet Brooke took our pictures and we had a fun time with the whole experience. She posted some of the pictures on Facebook and I just now got the cds with the rest. Here are some of my absolute favorites!!

Flowers!!

A few weeks ago, Mom and I decided we would do a test run of the flowers for the wedding. Because I have a VERY budget-conscious fiance, we are going to be doing our own flowers to save money. Mom worked for a florist all through high school and college, so we felt like it was a project we could take on. I want nice flowers, but they are also something that I am not really stressing out about. SO no real pressure.

We went to the wholesale florist in Birmingham to get some ideas about the cost of flowers. They were so helpful there and explained the whole ordering/selecting process that we can go through in September. We brought home roses, hydrangeas and lilies so that we could play around and see what would be involved in making bouquets for the wedding.

My original idea was to model a bouquet I found in a magazine for me and then take the flowers from mine and make each bridesmaid a bouquet from just one of the types of flowers. So one girl may have a bouquet of lilies, one of peach roses, one of purple roses, one of hydrangea, and so forth. That way, each girl has some individuality and are able to choose their favorite flower for themselves. I am hoping we are still going to be able to do this. The only problem is with the lilies. Because of their size/expense, they are hard to make a bouquet by themselves. The bouquet as we made it would be dwarfed by the other bouquets. (See pictures below).

The first two pictures are to show the difference between just roses and roses with hydrangea. The last two pictures are to show how sad the bouquet looks when its just lilies.

My next idea was to use hydrangea in each bouquet as a "filler" so that the bouquets are more comparable. We are still trying to figure things out. We also played around with some ideas for mine. It will obviously have more flowers and more variance in colors -- but we werent going to spend all that money right now. (When you buy flowers, you cant buy individual roses. Instead, you buy bunches of 25 roses at a time). We played around with solid-rose bouquets, bouquets with hydrangea as fillers, and bouquets as hydrangea as though they were individual blooms. Here are some of the different ways we arranged them -- let me know what you think!!

The left side shows hydrangea more as "fillers" and the right side shows the hydrangea more as blooms themselves.

What do you think??

Homemaker in training... Pt. 2

As stated in the previous post:

Along with the many other goings-on in my life, there have been a few cooking advenutres along the way! A few weeks ago, I had two big adventures. One adventure was my first attempt at homemade spaghetti sauce (like, not Prego. And not taking Prego and adding stuff to it. Like, forreal homemade from scratch). The second adventure rwas a from-scratch red velvet cake. Both nights I had a BLAST and I will DEFINITELY be making those recipes again.

My dad's birthday was three weeks ago and his favorite cake is red velvet. So in an attempt to increase my domesticity (not sure if thats really a word?) I tricked Katie into being my assistant chef and we rolled up our sleeves and got to work! The recipe I used was is found here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sara-moulton/southern-red-velvet-cake-recipe/index.html and was recommended by Emily.

I think Katie has more fun than she thought she would -- and she was definitely a great help!

(1) Katie couldn't get over the "chemistry" of baking -- she was amazed as the way the ingredients kept separate. (2) I was not amused by her amusement. (3) I am sure we were making some very important observations/decisions.

(4) We even made cream cheese icing from scratch! (5) The actual frosting of the cake was a little more difficult than we thought it would be... (6) Ta-da!!! So proud!

And this one is just for fun... Unfortunately, the cake and I were not always entertaining enough for Katie, so she broke out into "dancing."

I'll probably get into trouble for this.. but.. Love you!!! =)

Homemaker in training...pt. 1

Along with the many other goings-on in my life, there have been a few cooking adventures along the way! A few weeks ago, I had two big adventures. One adventure was my first attempt at homemade spaghetti sauce (like, not Prego. And not taking Prego and adding stuff to it. Like, forreal homemade from scratch). The second adventure was a from-scratch red velvet cake. Both nights I had a BLAST and I will DEFINITELY be making those recipes again.

The recipe for the spaghetti came from Lauren's mom -- after I sent a frantic email for help from everyone I know that can cook (and whose email address I had!). I don't know if it is some sort of secret family recipe that only a few people are allowed to have, so for now it will remain a secret. Unless, of course, I get permission. Then I will be GLAD to share it, because it was DELICIOUS! That night, I also found out that Kroger (and apparently most other grocery stores) sell dough so that you can feel like you are baking your own bread from scratch. Here are a few pictures from the evening!

Wedding Fever

So, after my cousin's wedding this week -- I have full blown wedding fever. Don't get me wrong -- its not that I didn't have the fever before. As Kristi said, I have pretty much always had wedding fever. However!! After going to my first wedding as an engaged guest, it made me even more excited about my own wedding than I already was. The most fun part of it is looking at what people have done and getting ideas for what to do and for what not to do! The whole time I was thinking "Is this something I want?" or "How can I do this my own way?" and very rarely "I hope this doesn't happen at mine!!" It brought out a lot of conversations between Zach and me about what we want to happen on our day. For instance, precious flower girl chose the exact perfect moment to begin crying and coughing -- while they were saying their vows!!! Ah!!! Lesson to us? Paying for workers at the church nursery -- $25/hr. The entire church being able to hear us speak our vows -- PRICELESS. =)

All in all, it was a very lovely ceremony and Candice was gorgeous! I can't wait for her to re-gain her sanity so that I can pick her brain about things I should know. For example, she had her dress fitted only THREE weeks before the wedding -- and then STILL lost another five pounds! Goodness! I am looking forward to the rest of the weddings we will attend before our own to continue getting great inspiration from our friends!!

Here are a few pictures from the family-filled weekend!

Everyone in our family wanted pictures of the current bride and groom with the future bride and groom!

LOVED the AU Groom's cake -- the blue icing turned everyone's mouth blue!!

What an attractive bunch of people =)

Spring Cleaning

So, unlike the many people who are tired of the pollen problem in Atlanta, I was one of the few not thrilled about a rainy, dark day. Especially after just getting back from glorious, sun-shine-filled, 80-degree Miami. However, inspired partly by the weather and partly by the book I am currently reading (The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin), I decided to do a little spring cleaning. In her book, Rubin first tackles her own closet in order to bring chaos and order to her life. I chose the same approach. I spent some time at Target picking out some new storage supplies (inspired by the cubes I saw in Emily's closet) and then I came home to tackle the monster task.

My before pictures:





Now, I should be very embarrassed to post those pictures. However -- I am just so proud of the way it looks after and the effort it took that I am willing to let you see just how bad it was. First, I had to get rid of all those clothes that I don't wear -- which is just about half of what was in my closet. Whether they are no longer in style, they no longer fit (thank you, post-college weight gain) or I just don't like them anymore, they had to go! This in itself did wonders. Then I had to put together my new stoarage unit:






Finally, after throwing away lots of JUNK, THIS is my beautiful new closet!!




It is amazing what a high you get just from something so simple as opening your closet and it being completely in order. I liked it so much, I moved on to the hallway and linen closets.. but I won't bore anyone with all of that. Tonight I am attempting my first try at homemade spaghetti sauce -- I'll keep you posted!!