Be still...

"God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the
earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart
of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

There is a river whose streams make
glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High
dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of jacob is our fortress.

Come and see the works of the Lord,
the desolations he has brought on the earth,
He makes wars cease to the ends of the
earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the
spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
'Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.'

The Lord Almighty is with us;
The God of Jacob is our fortress."

Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.

It was Justin's birthday Monday, and we got to celebrate yesterday with a meal of Stuffed Masa! Isaac and I got home, then immediately drove to his house and the store to get the stuff and then got back to my house and began cooking up a storm. We had an hour to get enough food cooked for ten people and have it done and ready to bring over to J and A's. It was fun, but slightly crazy...dishes piled everywhere, veggies piled everywhere as I try to cut them all, Isaac at the stove making the mix, then the stuffed masa, then cooking them all with only two hands. The house was so smokey and the kitchen was so trashed by the time we piled everything into my car and raced over to J and A's. I really wish we had a picture of it to show you. But it was a great meal (stuffed masa is a favorite of mine) and a great night just relaxing with friends. We got to hear about the mission trip to San Francisco that J and A had just got back from, and we just got to hang out with everyone. And Mo made me this incredible dessert ('cause I couldn't eat the chocolate cake) made with pears poached with orange juice and topped with boiled raspberries. It was sooo good! And to see the kitchen this morning, you wouldn't even know the disaster it had been last night, so it was all worth it.

I'm doing something crazy today...I'm going to take a one day break from our furious search for housing for September. I've been checking Craigslist and all the realtor websites constantly throughout the day, then calling on places, we've been going to see places, and it's just stressful. So I'm going to take a day off from it today, which I'm actually really excited about. It's kind of hard because I want to be looking and looking so I don't miss anything, but I feel like I've been hearing this voice inside of me saying "Be still and know that I am God." I feel like I'm being challenged to be free to release myself from the stress of looking today and just enjoy the knowledge that God will help us get into a place. After all, the houses will be there tomorrow, right? As weird as it sounds, I can usually tell pretty distinctly when the holy spirit is speaking to me and I feel like today is one of the days that he is. So I will finish this blog and not immediately peruse through Craigslist. Sigh. Living out the faith I profess to have in the Lord is always a blessing in the end, but giving up the control over my life definitely proves to be challenging at the time.

But God's never failed me yet, right?

Mmm, mmm raspberries...

Yes! It's raspberry season and we went raspberry picking for the first time ever (for me, that is)! I've been looking forward to going all year because this was the berry I missed during the U-Pick season last year. But alas, we now have plenty of frozen raspberries to grace our meals. We've decided we're going to continue the tradition of Isaac's family of growing tons and tons of berries as soon as we get a little land to plant everything on. Lots of fruit trees, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, whatever we can grow. Yeah, that's exciting! And we even matched that day. Ha! That most definitely wasn't planned, but it does make me smile. The two times I've seen James and Janelle since they've been married, they've been matching as well. It must come with growing deeper in love, huh? (I'll try not to make a habit of the matching part, babe). We went to another wedding on Saturday and it was such a good time. Our friends Stephen and Anna got married and it was a beautiful wedding with a fun reception with food and dancing. There we are, all dressed up...and matching. Justin and Alex get home today, which is exciting! They've been with the youth group on a mission trip to San Francisco for the past week and a half and we've missed them. By the way, it's Justin's birthday today...happy birthday, friend! I'm sure there'll be celebrations for that soon. So, I wanted to show you a picture of one of my favorite places...it's this old used book store up here and it is just piled high with books. Books are everywhere, literally. You can see some of the piles, but this picture only shows about a sixth of the upstairs and there's an entire downstairs as well. The best part about this place is the guy who owns it knows where every single book is, how many copies he has, everything. It's crazy! On Friday, Isaac met me at work and took me on a date for gelatto and then we spent some time perusing the book store before we rode home for dinner. I was in a pretty crabby mood that afternoon, but he took me out anyway. Wow, I got myself a sweetheart and a romantic. Lucky for me! Mmm, speaking of my man, you know what's nice? Isaac wanted to save saying "I love you" until we were engaged, and, although I was pretty much pining to say it/hear it before we were engaged, it is such a wonderful thing to be able to say and hear now. I feel like it will never get old.

Two months and counting...

Yay! Only eight weeks until my handsome man and I get to be married!! My roomie Janelle and her husband James just got back from their honeymoon a couple days ago and we got to sit and talk with them about how wonderful it was last night. It made me even more excited to be married...they were seriously glowing and couldn't stop smiling. My other roommate is engaged as well and is getting married at the end of August so there is a definite appreciation and love for wedding/marriage/honeymoon talk in my house. And love is in the air! We've been to two weddings so far and have four more to attend (one of them being ours!). And there are a couple more that are happening that we're not able to attend. And guess what? We're getting married on the same day as my roomie from last year, Sarah! So we're going to have the same anniversary, which is so fun! Okay, I'll stop talking about wedding stuff for now...

Last night Isaac fixed even more of his bike and we got to go riding again. He's been riding to and from work from his new house, which is about a 45 minute ride each way. It's been great! We're going to be a little biking family!

We've been eating our peas like crazy, by the way! They're so good! And the cucumbers are flowering, which means we'll get cucumbers soon. It's a little late in the year, I think, but we had several weeks of no sunshine, so that slowed their growth process a little bit. And we used our chives in dinner last night. So good! It's really encouraging that our garden turned out so well this year, it being my first time and all. Isaac keeps reminding me that not every year will be like this, but it's so cool to get a good turn out the first year so I'm even more encouraged to keep it up in subsequent years. It'd be so awesome if our new apartment (wherever it is out there) had a place to garden and we could do it again next year. If not though, I can be patient.

Here's one of my favorite, and very encouraging, verses as of late. Hope it can speak to you as well..

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him
and he will make your paths straight."

Love it. I am so thankful for the presence of the Lord in my life. I honestly don't know how people are able to deal with life without his peace and comfort sometimes. I think I would go crazy if I had to walk through this life on my own strength.

Nope, not this one either. We'll keep looking...

This could be the one...

We're looking at another place to possibly live in September this afternoon at one. Keep praying that God leads us to the right place and that I can be satisfied waiting on Him if this one doesn't work out.

PS. The peas are getting HUGE in our garden! We ate some with our dinner last night. So good! And the cucumbers are flowering and the carrots are growing like weeds. So fun!

My incredibly artsy fiance...

Well, the house we were excited about didn't work out. We went to see it on Friday and it just wasn't on the inside what it looked like on the outside. A little bit of a bummer, but we still have a month to find something. You can keep praying that God will open up the perfect place for us. I had my girls' weekend this weekend! It was great! Just three days of relaxing times with the girls (minus Sara) and we even had sunny weather for it. Kris has herself a couple of adorable little kids who we got to play with, too. I'll tell you one thing, though, that drive is not nearly as much fun by myself. I've been so spoiled since dating Isaac because we've always been able to make that drive together and now it just seems like an unbelievably long drive. But it was worth it. Then I got to go wedding dress shopping with my mom for a couple hours, which was as fun as shopping gets for me. No luck with the perfect one yet, though. Ooo, guess what we have to show you? Isaac's coffee table is done!! And it's so awesome! He bought an old coffee table and took it apart, redesigned it, sanded it down for days, painted it and now we have an artsy centerpiece for our new living room (whenever we get a new living room, that is). See the angle on the top? Yeah, so cool. I love my artsy fiance! Speaking of my artsy fiance, he had an incredibly fun idea for our wedding invitations...we screen printed them! And we did it all last night for hours and hours. You don't get to see them, but you can see the process we went through. It's this awesome thing where Isaac made the design on his computer and then used photo emulsion to create a screen. Then we'd put each paper under the screen and he'd scrape the paint over it. So cool! And they turned out really well. Thanks for taking interest in our lives, friends. Enjoy your day!

A new home...

We found a potentially perfect house to live in after we're married! It's the upstairs apartment of an old house and it looks awesome from the outside, and we have an appointment to look at the inside of it tomorrow morning! So please pray that it will work out, and if that's not the place the Lord has for us, then you can pray that we'll find the perfect place soon. We would love this place if the inside works for us as well as the outside does!

We'll keep you posted...

LOVE summer...

It's been a series of beautiful, sun-shiney days up here in the 'ham! LOVE summer! Life's been a little crazy these last several days...lots of things going on with a wedding to plan and Isaac to move. But Isaac is officially moved! At least, he's out of his old house and into his new home for the next two months. He's still got a lot of organizing at the new place, but at least his old house is clean and empty. We've (mostly Isaac, but I've helped a little, too) spent some time these last several days packing, cleaning, organizing, throwing things away (one of Isaac's favorite things to do) and trucking things to his new place across town. He's moving into an awesome house with some fun guys, but it's a little unfortunate that he's going to have to move all of his stuff again in two months. But I suppose that's life, huh? We get to live together in two more months!!! Two months and three days to be exact! Ooo, and can I tell you something else that is incredibly exciting? I ate a pea from our garden yesterday! And it was good! We're going to wait a couple weeks more to eat the bulk of them so they can grow a little bit more, but it's so crazy how many peas we have already! And the carrot plants are growing wildly too. Click on the picture to see it close up in all it's glory. Other than that, life is going pretty steadily. Isaac's bike has been working pretty well and he started riding to work a few days ago, so now we're a two bike family. It's so fun to bike everywhere, especially because it keeps us healthy and saves us a lot of money in gas. Take that high gas prices! James and Janelle got married last weekend, by the way, and that was really exciting. It was roasting and toasting up here that day, but they still were able to greet their hundreds of guests with a constant smile and lots of love. I wish I had a picture of that to put on here because Janelle was beautiful, but I'll have to share that with you later on. This weekend is girls' weekend for me! Once a year I get together with my favorite girls who have been with me since elementary school and we spend a weekend catching up and hanging out...it's something we look forward to every year! This picture's from two years ago when they came up for girls' weekend, but it's the only one I have on this computer, so it's the one you guys are getting. Have a wonderful rest of your week! I won't be able to blog until I get back on Monday, sorry about the delay as of late but I'll try to be better...

Whoo-hooo, part 2...

Well, we're still engaged and loving it! I'll try and post again soon, but the short of our lives right now is that we get to plan a wedding and anticipate the rest of our lives together!

Yes, Yes, Yes!

Whooo-hoo!

We're engaged!! We're getting married!! I get to live with Isaac and be with him forever!! I'm sure most of you know by now, but Isaac told me he loved me for the first time and asked me to marry him on Friday, July 4th! And I said yes! And, of course, that I loved him too. I am the most blessed woman on the face of this earth! And the ring is perfect! We didn't talk about it at all, Isaac just picked out what he thought I'd like based on how well he knew me. And he literally picked exactly what I wanted! An antique ring with an amethyst and lots of deco. Good job, baby! So, here's the story. Remember how I was telling you all that we were riding down on the motorcycle through beautiful back-country roads all the way down to Gig Harbor to spend the fourth of July with J and A and their families? And that we had done that same trip a year ago before we were dating? Well, off we went on Friday having the time of our lives on the moto (don't worry, we were wearing helmets on the actual drive). We stopped at Deception Pass for a picnic lunch, which we ate on a little bluff overlooking the water. And then, all of a sudden, Isaac was telling me that he loved me and wanted to marry me and then he showed me the ring. And then I said yes! And shrieked and mumbled a lot of, "Oh my gosh"es and "Are you serious?"es. And then I strained all of my facial muscles smiling constantly the rest of the ride down to the Gig. We're getting married!! He loves me! We haven't talked much about the specifics yet, but I'm sure those will come in future days. The rest of the weekend was wonderful and relaxing, relishing in the glow of being engaged. We just hung out at the beach with our friends and played. The evening of the fourth was pretty fun as the boys made their burning box, a tradition at the beach fourth of July apparently, and shot the melody of fireworks off from a boat in the middle of the water. So cool! There was ultimate frisbee, reading in the sunshine, bocce ball, movies, just lots of relaxing. And we went clamming, too! It was my first time, which isn't surprising as I'm not much of a seafood fan, but Isaac was loving the feast afterwards. He's a happy boy if you give him seafood, especially free seafood! We headed home on Sunday, retracing our previous trip on the moto again, and then went to youth group that night to tell all of our students and friends there. It was great! And we're engaged! I don't think it's even fully hit for me yet, but I do know that I am beyond blessed to get to spend the rest of my life with such an incredible, loving, kind, adventurous man! Yes, yes, yes!!

Happy Independence!

To celebrate our independence this year, Isaac and I are headed down to J's family's beach property again with J and A, their families and a few other friends. Boo on the rain that's forecasted, (and boo on the rain today, for that matter), but we're expecting a fun, relaxing weekend. That's usually what the beach weekends are like. Isaac and I are leaving tomorrow and are taking a back way down...the beautiful way, through Deception Pass. We went this way a year ago on our way to the beach for J and A's wedding...here's a picture from that trip last year at Deception Pass where we stopped for lunch. It's fun to see the pictures from a year ago, when I was pining away for Isaac and I wanted nothing more than to get to date him, and now, a year later, we're very happily dating and closer than ever to each other. Such a blessing! Happy fourth, everyone! We'll post some pictures of our weekend adventures early next week. Love you guys!

Ratatouille...

Give a holler if you've ever seen the new(ish) Pixar movie, Ratatouille! Well, if you haven't, you should. It's so fun. I bring it up because last night was couples' dinner and Morgs made ratatouille and it was phenomenal! She gets lots of points for presentation as well. It looked as good as it did in the movie. We met J and A downtown and the four of us biked over together. It was a very hippie night, especially since the first thing we did when we got to their house was see the compost/worm bin that Morgan had made the week before. I really do love becoming hippified more and more each day. Speaking of Pixar movies, the new Walle is a must as well. It's in the theaters right now, so you can wait until it comes out on dvd if you wish, but you've definitely got to see it when it comes out. So good! We went and saw it with a bunch of our friends this weekend and everyone loved it! We also got a chance to get together with a bunch of our friends from the youth staff, and some of their friends as well, to have dinner. We made a huge batch of tortillas and mexicali and fed the whole gang. And we rode our bikes there, too, which was so fun. I tell you what, we were made for bike riding...it's a whole new adventure for Isaac and me. And last but not least...there are flowers on our pea plants! And our carrots are getting huge. Well, back to the daily grind of life.
PS...we totally forgot to take pictures of the picking of the strawberries, but we'll try to remember next time. Oops.

The goodness of the Lord...

This Psalm just really resonated with me last night. You know when you read something and it just feels like it was written for you for this very point in your life? That's what it was like last night. It's sometimes hard for me to feel like I get much out of the Bible that I haven't already heard (cocky, I know) so I don't read it all the time, but I determined last night that whether or not I felt like I was getting a ton out of reading, I believe that there is a supernatural effect in my life just by even merely reading the words and speaking them into my life and mind. And the battle for my mind is a great one these days, a struggle to remember and apply God's truth to my life. And so I read last night, Psalm 27, and it just resonated with my soul (very ironic, Lord. I don't think reading the words I've read so often before will have any more effect on me, yet I choose to read them last night just in case there is a supernatural effect attached to the reading of your word and they provide me with a powerful comfort and strength. ha.)

My favorite line was verse 13..."I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living." We don't have to wait until heaven to see the goodness of the Lord. We get to see it in this world full of sin and pain and hurt. And that encourages my soul like nothing else.

Here's the Psalm for you all...

1 The LORD is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?

2 When evil men advance against me
to devour my flesh,
when my enemies and my foes attack me,
they will stumble and fall.

3 Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then will I be confident.

4 One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.

5 For in the day of trouble
he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle
and set me high upon a rock.

6 Then my head will be exalted
above the enemies who surround me;
at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make music to the LORD.

7 Hear my voice when I call, O LORD;
be merciful to me and answer me.

8 My heart says of you, "Seek his face!"
Your face, LORD, I will seek.

9 Do not hide your face from me,
do not turn your servant away in anger;
you have been my helper.
Do not reject me or forsake me,
O God my Savior.

10 Though my father and mother forsake me,
the LORD will receive me.

11 Teach me your way, O LORD;
lead me in a straight path
because of my oppressors.

12 Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes,
for false witnesses rise up against me,
breathing out violence.

13 I am still confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.

14 Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD.