Graduation Weekend

This was a busy graduation weekend! Wednesday night, Tim's parents made it here after their long drive from the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. On Thursday, we started our day by taking Micah to get his 6 month pictures taken. We then celebrated my birthday, by eating BIG cheeseburgers at Red Robin.



Tim and his dad went to the fund raising golf tournament early Friday morning, and then ending our day with the baccalaureate. Saturday morning, Tim had graduation practice. That night, Tim's parents babysat Micah, while Tim and I had date night. YAY!! For my birthday, he took me out for dessert at Cold Stone (one of my favorites) and then to Regent University's production of "Singin' In the Rain."



Sunday was the big day when Tim graduated from seminary!! After 5 long years of hard work, he completed his Masters of Divinity! I just want to say that I am so proud of him! I am so thankful that I was able to share in the seminary experience with him as his wife. Here are a few pictures from graduation. Matt DeJesus, who does an amazing job, was the photographer for graduation, and who took the first picture below.

The End

I am so proud of Tim! He has completed all of his papers and all of his reading assignments. It has been such a full semester for him, as he has been learning how to balance schoolwork, family and working full time. But he has now completed his semester and MDIV!! Next will be graduation, which will be on Sunday, May 3^rd. So while it may be the end of one chapter in our lives, we look forward to where the Lord will lead us. Congratulations, Tim!! Stay tuned for graduation pictures!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Hope you had a great time of worship this morning, reflecting and rejoicing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ!


(Here's Micah in his Easter outfit. We ended up taking his vest off since it was too big. But he sure looked handsome, so we thought we would include the pictures anyways.)

Stressful Experience

So Friday I had quite the experience, when all I wanted to do was to get some gas for the car! After meeting Tim for his dinner break yesterday, I headed over to the gas station, since I was almost on empty. When I swiped my credit card, it said transaction canceled. So I tried it again….and again....and again. Finally, I decided to go to another pump. Same thing!!! It kept telling me to see sales associate, which I was not about to do since I had a screaming baby in the car (Hungry+teething+overtired=screaming baby). I’m getting a little frustrated that I can’t get it to work and I have this screaming baby in the car, so I go to the next gas station. After trying my credit card twice and having the same thing happen, I decided to run inside the store. I guess another customer thought I looked pretty frazzled because he let me go in front of him. But the card still wouldn’t work. At this point I have no idea what to do. Micah is still screaming. I don’t have any other credit card with me, no debit card, the bank is closed and I don’t have the ATM card or pin number anyways, no cash and Tim is back to the phones at work! So now what? I started driving, still not knowing what to do. I called the credit card company and pulled over into a parking lot. I tried to hear the lady on the other end, because, yes, Micah is still crying! I quickly climb into the back seat to offer him my finger, which thankfully calms him down. Now the lady is asking for the password for our credit card account!!! Password?!! I have NO clue! She gave me the hint…I still had no idea! I’m wracking my brain, explaining to the lady that I don’t know his password and never even thought to ask for it (Tim opened the account before we were even married, and I just joined on after marriage). They transferred me to the fraud department, where I talked to a very nice lady! I explained to her that I was just trying to get gas in my car so I could get home, I have no money on me, my husband is at work, and I can’t call him because he’s on the phones calling other people, I’ve got a crying baby who needs to get home, and I don’t know Tim’s password! I think I was so frazzled and frustrated by this point that she felt sorry for me! (This is about 20 minutes after the ordeal started!) She had me verify some merchants that we used our credit card for purchases, and she opened my account so I could get gas. She left me with “Ma’am, maybe you should find out your husband’s password.” So needless to say, I was able to get gas for my car about 30 minutes later. I was going to stop by Target, too. But after that ordeal? Yeah right! So what was wrong with the account? Well, we ended up buying a video camera online earlier that day. The fraud department called Tim while he was at work and didn’t have a chance to call them back yet. Apparently, they froze the account until Tim called them to verify that he made the purchase and that the card wasn’t stolen. And the best part of the story is that after telling Tim about my experience, he bought me flowers on the way home from work to brighten my day. What a sweet husband!

Spring Cleaning

Kristen came out yesterday and told me something that I never thought I’d hear in a million years. She said that the beautiful weather we’ve been having lately inspired her to do some spring cleaning and get rid of some old stuff. No that’s not the part that shocked me. What shocked me was that of all things she had in mind to get rid of…she said she was going to get rid of shoes! Yeah, my jaw dropped. I thought maybe the pollen had gone to her head. My shoe-loving Kristen actually getting rid of shoes? While my head still tried to grasp what I heard, she went on to say that her goal was to get rid of two pairs. Well, would you believe that she found 5 pairs of old shoes to toss? Kristen had so much fun throwing out old shoes that she hit the bookshelf next to look for books we can get rid of. And she found some. So now we have a small pile of books on our floor that have to go. (If anyone wants a cookbook called The Man without a Mate, we’ve got one we’re giving away. Yeah, guess I don’t need that one anymore.) But with our love for books and Kristen’s love for shoes, my guess is that the newly created space won’t be vacant for long—especially the spot vacated by her old friends.

Horsin' Around

A couple days ago, Micah wore this outfit that had horse heads on the feet. Whenever I changed his diaper I would play with his feet, making the “neigh” sound of a horse. The next day I heard him in his crib making a new noise over and over and over that was very similar to the “neigh” sound I was making for him. It cracked me up!! This morning, Tim and I woke up to Micah’s new horse sound. We thought it was so funny, and I was able to capture a short video of him as he’s delighting himself with his new noise.

Triple Coupon Event

Since I’m staying home with Micah, and we currently have 1 income coming in, I have been looking for ways that we can save money. Instead of it being a chore or something that we have to do, it’s really been a fun challenge for me to find ways to cut back financially. A lady at Tim’s work was telling him about this website that had a bunch of tips, coupons, freebies and deals at different stores in the area. I’ve been a faithful follower of this blog, Frugal in Virginia, and it has been my inspiration to start cutting coupons. Every Sunday (well, at least for the past month) we’ve been stopping at the gas station to get the paper after church so I can collect all of the coupons. We found out that Harris Teeter had 4 days that they would triple coupons!!! So on Thursday, we braved the cold weather for our first triple coupon event to get our amazing deals! Many items we were able to get for $1 or less or even free!! We even went back on Sunday night to use the coupons that we got in the newspaper earlier that afternoon. Our first trip, we spent about $21 and saved $29 in coupons! Our second trip, we spent about $7 and saved almost $19 in coupons! It was so much fun…I think even Tim enjoyed it!

(The picture above includes almost all of the items we purchased on our first shopping trip.)