I can't believe I survived this weekend! It was Disciple-Now at our church and we had the 10th grade girls in our house. They are absolutely crazy and I love them with every inch of my being. Our weekend was not only filled with some amazing sermons, fabulous music and great food. But we can't fail to mention the most important part.....the PRANKS! The very first night my girls were chompin' at the bit. So we made our midnight wal-mart run where we stocked up on TP, plastic forks (to stick in people's yards), post-its (to cover thier cars with fun notes), shaving cream(it makes fun letters in the grass), and shoe polish (we just wanted this to wear on our faces, but even though it did up our coolness and danger factor a couple notches it soon made our dork factor grow also as it began to burn through our skin and the only thing available to get it off was the shaving cream we were using on people's houses, whew!) 
This is Rory (Caroline's new yorkie) she brought her to spend the weekend with Prissy. You can't really tell in the picture but we gave her a mo-hawk with some serious hair gel.
D-Now is supposed to be a weekend for the kids but I find myself learning a lot in these situations. I learned I can't do everything myself. I try so hard to train up my precious girls in the way that they should go. I want so badly to give them hindsight and save them from mistakes that they will later regret. But God slapped me in the face this weekend. I had to give up all control. Nothing I could say would help them with the certain issues they were going through, I tried and tried but I seemed to be driving a wedge even further between. When I finally took my hands off the wheel and let the college leader in my house have full control, I mean, I got the heck out of dodge, it was then that God worked. Sometimes I guess you just need to talk to someone who doesn't know you. Our leader had a great testimony on how she used to party and drink and do everything against God's wishes purposely. She also talked about after she got saved, how she still struggled with those things, even up until last year! Yet, this girl was as close to God as anyone I knew. I began to feel down hearted. That my "goody-two-shoes" testimony would never be GOOD enough to convert or inspire anyone. Really, who wants to hear about a girl saved at 9 years old, a rule follower who would rather die than break them. It was all so boring in that moment and for the first time ever I hated my testimony. I wanted to be able to claim that God saved me from a drug addiction, or something so extreme. For the entire day on Saturday I struggled with this feeling of worthlessness to the very ones that have my heart. I was broken. It wasn't until late Saturday night, well maybe not even until Sunday morning that God reassured me. How much heartache and guilt did he save me from? Shouldn't I be thankful? In fact, It wasn't MY testimony at all! Lord knows I wasn't the one who was resisting ANYTHING. It was God doing it for me and through me. And he reassured me that it was for a reason. Someone out there needs hope, and somehow my story will give it to them. I'm sure of this, and I'm proud of my testimony. More so, proud of my God who rescued me from all this world swallows us with. So in a nutshell, that was my battle. It was quite an emotional weekend.
So, follow that with Jus and I's two year anniversay. We left town right after D-Now and headed to Point Clear Grand Hotel Resort and Spa. I must say I did a bang up job of picking this place (with the suggestion from Angie). It was A-m-a-z-i-n-g! Here is the view from our balcony
(which we did NOT sit on because it was friggin' cold). But what I was most impressed with was the bed.......oh Lord. I'm not usually one for laying around in bed on exciting vacations, but that is all I wanted to do at this hotel. I found myself checking the mattress, pillows and comforters for name brands so that I could scavenge around and buy my very own! 
Okay so we did eventually leave the bed to dine. We got reservations at the Grand dining room which is one of those places with 18 different wine glasses on the table when you walk in. Pretty fancy. But the funny thing was that we were the only ones there! We had the whole resturant to ourselves. I would like to say that my husband arranged to have the whole resturant for our anniversary...but that wouldn't be true, there just really wasn't anyone there (and after we got the menu/bill I think I found out why :) Regardless, we had our very own piano player who kept referring to us as "ladies and gentlemen".The next morning we ordered the best breakfast for room service and then hit the spa for our couple's massage. Justin assures me that massages are not sexual in nature whatsoever so I suggested that he have a male masseus. He was thoroughly grossed out by this and insisted that he have a woman. Now this makes me think, "hmm, in that case,it should be okay for me to have a male if he gets a female, right?" WRONG! He objected to that idea too. (double standard much?) So I gave in and we both got woman. But I was overjoyed when they walked in and he got the Helga type old lady and I got the sweet middle aged woman. hahahah! karma! Anyway, our vacation was soon over and we headed back to our destroyed house. We spent the rest of the day cleaning the massive amount of TP and valentine decorations that the 11th grade boys loving left there for us. Joy Joy! So, now a new week has started and it is the last couple days of hunting season, PTL! I finally get my husband back. Tootles!
Well, now Christmas is gone and I find myself taking down all those decorations I worked so hard to put up. I'm kind of sad because I didn't even remember to take a picture of any of our Christmas spirit while it was there. I really did get to decorate so much more this year too! dangit! Oh well, there is always next year huh? It was a great Christmas this year. We got to celebrate it a million different times. First was the trip a couple weeks prior to alabama to enjoy the Noel with my mom's side of the family. I'm glad we all still get together and see each other, even if it is just once or twice a year. I love my family and I think living away really makes me appreciate them =)
Prissy got some rawhide candy canes in her stocking, she proceeded to run all over the house carrying her prize! She so cute.
As we are digging in our presents and stockings Aunt Polly comes out of her room and just laughs. We soon realize it is probably due to our very own Christmas tradition, the "underwear hats". Whenever we get new underwear in our stockings, we have to wear them on our heads while we open presents. The only hitch was that I forgot to put undies in Justin's stocking this year, so he had to wear some of my new ones on his head. I gave him the ones with the frilly legs and all. I cannot believe I didn't take any pictures of us as fasionistas, but I forgot =( Well, soon after we packed up and headed to spend some time with my family. Every year my mom cooks the biggest breakfast and all 20 of my brothers and sisters come over and we all eat together. We spent the rest of the day playing with new toys and later that night went to the movies. We Are Marshall is a great movie, I love football inspiration movies. Not to mention that it is a true story and Bobby Bowden's character was in the movie being the amazing man that he is. Justin had to come home the next day, cause some sad people have to work these days. But I got to stay until Thursday! yay. My mom took off work on Wednesday and we spent the whole day with Sharry galavanting around and shopping! it was so much fun and I realized that the magnet my mom gave me was seriously true....."Mirror, Mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all!" I'm not sad about it.