Long Overdue Post

Hey!

Sorry it has been months since my last post. I have an account with Facebook and Twitter now so I seem to use them more.

So what is new with me? Well, I got into the nursing program at Wilson CC. I start classes tomorrow. I am so excited!! Just got back from NC State Convention on Sunday. It was really good and I got a blessing on sunday morning. Also got to see my friend Linda which is always great. I got all four of my wisdom teeth removed last thursday. That is definitely a painful experience. I have been having a lot of jaw pain and headaches, but I am glad they are gone because they were impacted and infected.

I will not be making it to the Assembly this year which is a big bummer. I always look forward to it. I just cannot take time off from school. I hope to attend next year thought. Well, I better go. I need to get some rest for my first day of classes. I love and miss you all.

    Sara 

Pictures of My Mission Trip to England! Commentary to follow.

Off to England!

Hey,

I do not have much time to post since my mom and I will be leaving for the airport in a few minutes. It is finally here! I am heading to England on a mission trip. The mission team will consist of my mom and I as well as Bro. and Sis. Griffin, Sis. Theresa Ard, and Sis. Jada Knowling. Just about everyone on the team are preachers. lol! So my mom and I will fly out of Greensboro and then meet the team in Detroit, Michigan. From there, we will fly about 11 hrs. to Amsterdam, Holland, and then we will arrive in Birmingham, England. I am so, so excited! Can ya tell? Youth Convention starts this weekend and Sis. Griffin will be the guest speaker. Then we will spend Sunday visiting the churches in England. We will also be passing out tracks and going door to door next week. Keep us in your prayers and I will post pictures when I get back. Lots of Love!

     Sara

Great News!

Hey everyone,

I'm sorry I have not posted for about a month now. I get so busy sometimes that when I have a free moment I chose to spend it relaxing instead of blogging.

So what has happened since my last post? Well, I went to District Convention in Lucoma a couple of weeks ago. It was such a blessing and I really enjoyed all of the boosts and messages. I also went on Spring Break a couple of weeks ago. I always enjoy a break from school. : )

The great news I have to tell ya is that I just got a letter from the college I am attending and I have been accepted into the nursing program! Wahoo! I will be starting classes in the fall to become a registered nurse and I am so excited. After two long years of school, I am finally in a nursing program. I give God the glory and I thank Him so much because I could not have done it without Him. I also appreciate all the prayers everyone has prayed in my behalf. God has truly given me the desire of my heart which is to be a nurse and help people.

 

So I have two years of the toughest schooling ahead of me, but I know that God will help me. Anyways, I just wanted to let you all know. I am so happy! 

I need to go because I have to pack as my mom and I are driving to Alabama tomorrow to attend a Ladies' Retreat. My mom is going to teach a class. I am looking forward to it. I will try and post more soon. 

        Lots of love,

        

         Sara

Part 3

Okay, so I had to make a Part 3 too.

I need to post more often! Ha!

The last few photos are of when my friend, Linda, came to visit me. She helped me paint my room and we had fun staying up late and making goofy home videos on my computer. Linda has become one of my best friends since I have moved here. I met her at Family Camp and we noticed each other right away as we were both about the same height. I was amazed to find another girl who was as tall as me! At the end of camp, I felt God lay it in my heart to invite her to go to the Assembly. She said she would love to go and from then on we have been fast friends. We are very similar in a lot of things and get some good laughs over that fact. 

Well, actually this picture is of when I visited Linda. Her brother was getting married and she invited me to come down and help her with her hair. That was a fun weekend too!

So here are the pictures of when we painted my room. It was originally a little girl's room and had a baby pink color on the walls. I decided to paint my room brown. Not sure why I chose that color, but I did. It is called "Sumatra Brown." Anyways, you may be wondering why there are letters and drawings on the wall. Linda and I thought it would be fun to play around with the paint and draw some pictures on the wall since we were going to paint over it anyways. I must say it was a blast. The walls were like giant canvases and we just wrote our names and doodled all over them like five year olds. Hey, you're only young once!

Sorry but I do not have any after photos of my room yet. I want to wait until I get my furniture in my room and my decorations up. I will post before and after photos of it as soon as I can though. 

My mom and I have finished painting all of the wood trim in the living room a white color and painted the walls a gold color the other day. We have also painted my parents room a color called "natural" and it turned out really good. Aaron's room has been painted "Cut Ruby" which should match his Texas-themed decor pretty well. We still have to finish stripping the wallpaper in the dining room, but are almost finished with that. We are going to probably touch up the trim in there and then we will paint the walls a light blue color. The trim in the kitchen still needs to be painted white as well as the trim in the downstairs bathroom. I tell ya, that is a lot of work! My mom and I had to paint the trim 3 times in the living room. We were wore out afterwards. So we are going to paint the kitchen the same light blue as the dining room, but we still have to remove the wallpaper in there. After all of that, we will head upstairs and paint the master bathroom the natural color I mentioned earlier and also paint the hallways that color too. Then we will tackle the bathroom Aaron and I share. It has wallpaper that has been painted over with a very ugly lime green color. We are going to paint the bathroom the natural color after we get the wallpaper off. The last project my mom and I will tackle is our 3rd floor which needs the popcorn ceilings taken down and the walls painted. We will eventually tear out the 80's looking blue carpet, but that will probably be a little while.

After the inside of the house is done, we will focus on the outside and planting flowers and such. We also need to take care of the small above-ground pool that came with the house. My mom is thinking about painting the shutters on the house a nice red color since the original color has faded with time. I think once dad gets home he will help with a lot of the outside stuff. So we have a lot of work ahead of us, but I am looking forward to it as this is now our very own home. It is so peaceful here and God has really blessed us. The house has some wear and tear, but that is really the charm of it. Well, I better go. I will make sure to post pictures as we make more improvements on the house. I love you all and want you to know you are in my thoughts and prayers. There is no family like the family in The Church of God and I would not trade you all for anything in this world. Congratulations to the couples who have been richly blessed with the news of a baby on the way! God is so good!

    Sara : )

Part 2

So here is Part 2 of my post:

This is mainly going to be pictures with a little commentary since it is getting late and I need to head to bed. The first picture is of my niece Rylee. I took this while my family and I were visiting Adam and Jen at Christmas. 

Me and Rylee

    

This is the entrance of the Hilton Palacio del Rio. We stayed on the riverwalk in downtown San Antontio and stayed here for a night.

 

The rooms at the Hilton were gorgeous and here is the one we stayed in.

After we checked into our hotel, we all decided to go to the mall on the riverwalk. Here is Josh and Rylee holding hands. So cute!

Mom and Aaron on the Riverwalk

The RiverWalk was decked out in Christmas lights and so beautiful.

Here is my brother Adam and his family.

Joshie was so tired by the end of the night as you can see in this photo. He definitely had a glazed over look!

Aaron and I

Part 1

Hey!

Sorry I have not posted in so long. It seems that life just gets so busy and I forget. I know you all are very busy as well so I guess that is not really a good excuse. : ) Well, since I last posted my family put an offer an a house out in Bailey. I think my mom posted a couple of pictures of it on her blog. We did get the house and I absolutely, completely love it! I have a room of my very own again! My mom, Aaron, and I moved our things from the RV into the house after we got back from our Christmas trip to Texas to visit my brother and his wife. We are sleeping on blow-up mattresses right now and have only a few things in the house as we are waiting for my dad to return before we move all of our furniture and things from the storage units. 

That is the other piece of news that has happened since I last posted. My dad is now back in the United States!! Yeah!! He returned home last week and is currently in Texas as he is still stationed there. He will be flying home to see us in North Carolina on Feb. 4th and my family and I cannot wait to see him. Words cannot express my gratefulness to the Lord for protecting my dad while he was over there in Iraq. God is so good! I am also glad my dad only had to be there for just 6 months rather than a year or more like a lot of the other troops are. He will be staying with us for about a month before he has to head back to Texas. My dad is still stationed there till Nov. 

So my trip to see my brother and his wife in Texas was nice. I am glad I got to see my niece and nephew as I have missed them very much. I miss us going out in the backyard and blowing giant bubbles or heading to the park on a warm summer day and swinging on the swings. We would take long walks and wheel Rylee and Josh around in a big red wagon...

I guess I just have a lot of good memories with my niece and nephew from this last summer when I was off of school. They were just lazy summer days with my family and sometimes you just need that. 

Speaking of lazy days. I had a couple of those this last week. We actually got snow here in North Carolina! Can you believe it? Two wonderful taste of pristine snow. I had Monday off from college already because it was MLK's Birthday, but then it snowed both Tuesday and Wednesday which prompted the college to close. We got around 6 in. or more and it was the whitest, fluffiest snow I have seen in a while. So on Tues. Aaron and I decided to go out in the snow and explore our 3 acres of property. Aaron and I agreed that it was like walking in a Winter Wonderland. We walked to the end of the road, around our pound, and even explored some of the woods too. It was great! I have been praying God would send us just a little snow and He surely did that and more. I felt like God gave me that moment in time to just relax and enjoy the beauty of His creation. I loved being able to hang out with Aaron and I had such a great time making snow angels and throwing snowballs. Here are a few pics I took:

Isn't it beautiful!!! A couple of the pictures are of my house and of the pond out front. We have catfish in the pond which is so cool because we have never owned catfish or a pond before. Ha! My mom is talking about getting some ducks or even chickens since we have about 3 1/2 acres for them to roam on. I am trying to talk mom and dad into letting me get a cat again. ; )

The picture of the boy with the red jacket is Aaron. He has grown so much and turned 16 yrs. old this past Wednesday. My mom, Aaron, and I went to a Japanese steak house to celebrate and then went to the mall. If you don't know Aaron, he used to hate the mall. He never wanted to go with us when he was younger. However, now that he is a teenager, he loves the mall. He likes trendy clothes and dresses pretty snazzy these days. I am so proud of him. He has not gotten his license yet, but I am sure he will have it by this summer. So if you see a blue dodge avenger on the road steer clear!

Speaking of cars that reminds me of something. Another thing that happened since last time I posted is that I hit 2 DEER! No, I did not hit A deer, but a couple of deer. It happened as my family and I were driving back from the Raleigh airport. We had just got back from our trip to see Adam and Jen. It takes about 45 min. to an hour to get home from the airport in Raleigh and we were traveling along just fine without any problems. In fact, we were only about a half a mile from our RV when I spotted three deer on the side of the road. I slammed on my brakes and tried to swerve around them, but 2 of the deer ran out in front of us. I hit them both, but luckily I had slowed down enough that the deer did not come through the windshield. That was all I could think about as I was slamming on my brakes is that I did not want them to hit the windshield. Thankfully, they only knocked out one headlight and dented the fender on our car. We did get some damage under the car, but it could have been far worse. I was so terrified and I still feel I could have done more to prevent it, but I am thankful that God kept us safe.

So Aaron's poor car is in the shop right now and should be fixed here pretty soon. I tell ya, we have had a lot of things happening lately. I know it has been especially hard on my mom because she has to deal with these things without my dad. She is such a strong person though and I hope to be a Godly woman like her as I get older. Well, I think I am going to make this a Part 1 and Part 2 kind of post since this one is pretty long. 

  Sara