I need a guestbook.

According to this blog, all we do around here is host guests! It's really not true though. Most evenings are spent with just us, cooking dinner, watching tv, grading papers, and checking facebook. And playing Kinect. :) I just do a terrible job of updating when I don't have something major going on. I'll work on that.

Anyways, we had guests again this weekend! My grandma and grandpa came to visit. They drove here from Illinois and stayed for the weekend. We weren't able to do a whole lot due to the annoying cold winter weather even though it's SPRING. No sightseeing, or grilling outside, or enjoying the scenery, because it was just so stinkin' cold. Oh well. We had fun anyway! Our visit consisted of some eating out, some eating in, and a visit to a dinner theater here which was so fun! The evening began with a buffet, and then they moved all the food out and the show began! We saw the musical "Happy Days" and it was so good! We all enjoyed it and will definitely be taking future guests! Another highlight of the weekend is shown below . . . are you ready for this?

They played Kinect!

Is that not one of the funniest pictures ever? They were ducking under something.

I'm pretty sure I have the coolest grandparents on the planet.

So, all of that was very exciting, but the highlight of the weekend was Sunday night,for sure. After a conversation with my grandpa, he made the decision to accept Christ into his life!!!!!!! What a long-awaited answer to prayer! I know many of you have had a hand in praying for him, and this is such an amazing example of how God keeps his promises. We had the conversation Sunday night, they drove home Monday, and he was baptized around 6 pm tonight! I know I'm celebrating along with all of heaven tonight and I hope you'll join me in saying a prayer of thanks as well. :)

It's hard to wrap up after a story like that, but I'll just say that God continues to grow my faith and surround me with people who support and challenge me in my walk with Christ. I am so thankful for my husband, my dear friends, and our amazing Lifegroup and church that we've found here. We have been so incredibly blessed and I love to look back on how God has guided us every step of the way so that His plan is the one that is carried out, not ours. Amidst the challenges and unknowns of life, it's nice to know that I've got a God who always has the best in mind for me.

For I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you hope and a future. -Jeremiah 29:11

Indeed, God keeps his promises. Keep an eye out for how he's guiding you this week.

[Celebrating in MD] :)




Spring has arrived [insert a dozen nose sniffles here].

Dear Warm Weather [sniff],

I adore you and [sniff] your sunny smile and [sneeze] your welcoming  of my children outside for recess instead of being cooped [sniffle]up for crazy indoor recess which I [double sneeze]hate, and I also love capris [sniff] and skirts which you [sniffle] allow as well. However, next year, PLEASE [sneeze] leave the [sniff] allergies [triple sneeze] behind [sniffle, sniff]! Thank you!

Sincerely [sniff]
Mrs. [sneeze] M

So, it has been an absolutely gorgeous day here today, but my allergies are causing sinus and migraine issues that have left me on the couch with a box of kleenex on this Friday night! Ugh. Time to break out the Zyrtec. It's almost springtime! Good thing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is on ABC Family tonight. :)

A special visitor came to us this week! Brent's sister spent the first part of her Spring Break with us, including her birthday!

We met her at the airport on Saturday . . .

On Sunday, we celebrated her 17th birthday with yummy homemade chocolate cake and sparkling cider!

Yum!

And what a lovely visit it was! Shannon even made us a delicious dinner on Monday night! It was so fun to have her here and just hang out. Anyone else want to come for a visit? I'll make you cake, too, even if it's not your birthday! :)

So, as I had mentioned before, our lifegroup is reading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I must say, I have never been so challenged in my relationship with God before and I love love love it. It was time for me to make a change and this book was just what I needed. It is such a blessing to share discussion with our incredible lifegroup as well. I think the most challenging part has been looking at what God considers "lukewarm" and realizing all the lukewarm traits about my life and faith. What a kick in the pants! However, it has been nice to honestly discuss with others their opinions and thoughts about the topic. Such an encouragement. I strongly, strongly encourage anyone, no matter where they are at in their faith, to read this book. Be ready to change your life and fall in love with the amazing God who created us and the universe. Let me know what you think!

I'll stop there for today, because I could go on and on about what I've learned from the book. It's been a hectic few weeks and I haven't posted about it as much as I would like, but I hope to do so in the future, as well as update you on some changes I've made. If nothing else, this week, I challenge you to move away from being lukewarm and strive to love God the way he deserves. Don't forget to look for all the ways that I know He'll bless you as well.

Hope all is well with ya'll! Much love.

[hugsfromMD]

Love and stuff.

As you know, this past Monday was Valentine's Day! I'm not gonna lie . . . I was pretty stoked about celebrating our first Valentine's Day together as husband and wife! :)

On our first Valentine's Day together in 2006, I awoke to find this on my drive to school at RSU:

This year, I came home from work to a beautifully prepared dinner with candles, seafoood pasta, garlic bread, and sparkling cider! It was delicious and oh so perfect. :)

He's the best. :)

It is such an incredible blessing to be able to celebrate holidays together, and, really just to be married, after the struggles of long-distance. I was talking to a few other girls from our lifegroup and we had a conversation about the benefits of a long-distance relationship. While I am not denouncing the difficulty or challenges faced in a long-distance relationship, I do think there are some lessons and blessings that God teaches through them. So here's a little encouragement to any of you currently enduring an LDR (Shortened, sorry! Too much to type!).

First, when you are in an LDR, there is a bond of trust that must be developed. Our mutual trust of each other allowed us to be at peace even though we couldn't physically be a part of each other's day in any way. Over that time, our trust in each other grew, and I feel like that has significantly blessed us in our marriage as well as we learn to make decisions together because we trust each other's judgement. We proved faithful to each other in long-distance and continue to do so daily in our marriage.

Next, we developed an incredible strength to communicate with each other. Again, because we couldn't spend time together and hang out, we spent time communicating via phone and webcam. And thank goodness for webcam! I owe a debt of gratitude to the genius who helped develop that. But I'm getting off topic. :) I know some are in situations where even phone and webcam are privileges. But no matter the situation, we learned to be clear and honest with our words, because words are all you have (and the occasional goody box, of course) when you can't actually hang out. Again, as we live together and make decisions together, communicating (while it can still be a struggle) is a skill that we have been able to develop significantly over the last 4 1/2 years prior to marriage.

Another benefit I feel that Brent and I gained was God's gift of time.With both of us in school, and being apart, we were able to focus the majority of our time on school and our educations. We were able to grow independently of each other, towards the people God wanted us to be, without feeling pressure of time or purpose. We were able to develop lasting God-given friendships and work hard to achieve meaningful educations. Without the time-constraints of a regular relationship, we were able to dedicate our lives to God's purpose for us at that time. I look back now and think about how difficult it would have been to split time between Brent, my studies, my amazing friends, church, and family. I don't know how people do it! I count it as a blessing to have had the time to dedicate to all these things that were very important at the time and made me able to do what I'm doing today. God has a purpose for every season of our lives, and I definitely saw it during this time as well.

Finally, being in an LDR made marriage just that much more fun and exciting! We don't get bored or irritated with each other easily because, hey, we're living in the same place! That's just so cool. I don't feel like we take time with each other for granted because it was so far in between visits until that blessed day in July. :) I look forward to getting off work each day just knowing that I get to spend the evening with Brent.

So, I guess I rambled about that for so long because I want others to realize that God has a specific plan and reason for every trial in every season of your life. For those of you in an LDR, I know all too well the difficulty you face each day. However, being on the other end of it, I want you to know, without a doubt, that every bit of it is worth it. God will bless your relationship beyond what you can imagine because you have trusted him with this area of your life, even though it's not the easy road. Hang in there, friends.

I'd like to wrap up by saying thanks to Cheri for the award! :) That made me smile!

I hope each of you is having a lovely weekend and watching for how God is blessing you in your life!

[hugsfromMD]

Special guests.

Last weekend brought the arrival of my parents! They managed to escape the blizzard conditions (barely) and enjoy the blissful weather of Maryland (a heat wave compared to OK!)

A few people have asked how their visit was, and I always respond with "It was wonderful! But I'm exhausted because it seemed like we were going the whole time!" Indeed, there is much to see here! It has been such a big change to just be close enough to so many cool historical things. I like it! I'll share some photos from our adventures.

We began our day on Friday with the Air and Space Museum (part of the Smithsonian). There were some pretty cool things there, including a rock from the moon! I got to touch it! (Insert little kid excitement here) There were lots of big planes and rockets and stuff too. You'll have to ask Dad and Brent about those . . . I can't say I know much more except that there were . . . planes and rockets and stuff. :)

From the Air and Space Museum, we headed across the National Mall to the National Museum of American History. En route, we passed the U.S. Capitol Building! We noticed it was a lot warmer near the capitol than it was anywhere else with all that hot air! (Thanks to Brent for that one! teehee)

The American History museum was my favorite stop of the day. I just loved seeing all of the things that belonged to our former presidents. The coolest thing we saw was the hat Lincoln was wearing the night he was assassinated at Ford's Theater:

Another cool part of the museum for me . . . Julia Child's kitchen! Don't worry, she owned a KitchenAid Mixer as well. :)

Saturday dawned foggy and gray but we didn't let the drizzle stop us! We headed south to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. This was such a cool thing to see. Visitors are able to walk through the house and see so much of what was originally in the house. The back of the house overlooks the Potomac. I think this was my favorite stop of the weekend.



That's Mount Vernon behind us!




Back side of Mount Vernon overlooking the Potomac





The back porch of Mount Vernon


On Sunday, we went to church and then had lunch at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. Luckily, it was a much nicer day, and we enjoyed walking along the water after a yummy seafood lunch. Sunday night was their last night in MD, and what better way to spend it than watching the Super Bowl?! Watching the Packers win was a nice way to end their visit. :)

Even with all the cool stuff to do around here, having my parents come and visit makes me wish we were closer to home so we could do this more often. Come back soon, Mom and Dad!

[hugs]

SNOW.

So, the exciting event of our week was definitely the snowstorm! I feel like a little kid when it comes to snow. I was watching the weather and peeking out the window constantly. The resounding conversation:
"Brent, come look at the snow! Come look out the window!"
"Yep. That's a lot of snow. Too bad you'll still have school tomorrow."
"Maybe not! Look how much there is! Look how pretty it is!"

And again, we would have the same conversation every 10 minutes. What can I say? He's lived in Boston for the last 4 years. He just doesn't understand my excitement . . .

So we got snow both Tuesday night and the main part of it on Wednesday night. It snowed until about midnight, but we went out around 9:30 while it was still snowing to check out the damage (I mean, play in the snow. :)

Excited to go out in the snow!

After the snow plow came through . . . thanks a lot . . .

Brent working hard to clean off the car. I helped some, but . . . it was more fun to take pictures. :)

 There were some others too, but I couldn't get them to look right on here.



 So, as I said earlier, I was REALLY hoping for a snow day. And, although nearly EVERY COUNTY in MARYLAND was closed on Thursday, I had the privilege of going to work as usual.

There were 2 kids when I arrived at school on Thursday.
Yeah, 2.
We got up to about 25 by noon, out of the whole school.

Needless to say, none of the teachers who showed up were excited, but oh well, maybe next time.

To placate my lack of snow day, I had a small "snow day moment" when I came home on Thursday night.

I came home, put on my pj pants, houseshoes, and sweatshirt. Then, I made myself a cup of hot chocolate while I browsed pictures of the 2011 HGTV Dream Home, which I have entered daily to win. It's where I plan to spend some snow days in the future. ;)

You are all welcome to come and hang out with us when this home is ours. I do expect the same courtesy, of course, if you happen to win it. It's only fair!

Upcoming excitement for this week: Mom and Dad are coming on Thursday! We've got big plans and I'm sure there will be lots of pictures!

Hope you all have a wonderful, safe, warm, and cozy week! God bless!

[hugsfromMD]

Sunday nights.

I find myself at this dreaded place again.

The last dwindling hours of the weekend on Sunday night.

I sure do love my weekends at home. I love hanging out with Brent, having time to cook, workout, hang out with friends, and watch football [there is always some paper-grading in there too, unfortunately]. But I absolutely loathe the last few hours of Sunday. It seems that my motivation dissipates as I muster up the energy to get off the coach during halftime to make our lunches for Monday and figure out what I'm going to wear in the morning. I have to make sure I've got stuff ready for school tomorrow. I have to remember to set my alarm [which then reminds me that I have to get up early again. bleh].

So basically, around 7 pm on Sundays, my mood tends to sink.

In efforts to battle my Sunday night blues, I'm going to set some positive goals/attitudes for my week. So, here are my goals for the next 7 days:
1. Be more patient with 1 student in particular this week. My goal is to change his/her day, instead of letting him/her change mine.
2. Begin reading Crazy Love which is the book I mentioned in my last post that our Lifegroup will be starting to study soon.
3. Call some dear friends to catch up.
4. Workout at least 4 times. (Goal: 5)
5. Savor the time I have each evening with my husband, hanging out and eating dinner together.
6. Focus on the specific blessings God pours on me each day. There is always something to be thankful for, even on those long, terrible days!

Hope you are looking for the positive every day this week, too. I know we've all got things that weight us down. This week, here's my challenge. Worry less and trust God more. I read this verse this morning and was reminded of the peace we receive from the Lord who always, always provides.

Matthew 6:25-34

       “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? . . . So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

I hope you have a wonderful week and that God fills your week with lots of reasons to be thankful!

[hugsfromMD]

P.S. Congrats goes out to the Packers and Steelers, who did what the Colts couldn't this year . . . make it to the Superbowl. I'll be cheering for the Pack!

Welcome back.

I guess it's about time I posted in this new year full of promise and excitement! Hello 2011. :)

First of all, I am so excited to say that I finally finished our wedding album! It is being printed and sent this week. It took so many hours of work and editing, and it took me 6 months, but it's finished. :) You can view it online here!

Well, we've all been back to work and regular schedules again, and I hope your year has started off well. Brent and I had a fabulous first Christmas as a married couple, and enjoyed so much wonderful time with our families. I also got to meet up with 2 of my 3 favorite OSU grads! :) We were home for about 9 days, and enjoyed every minute of it!

Christmas Eve with the McLaughlins

Christmas Day with the Davis'

I love the joy in this picture. :)

Oh, how I miss these girls (and Bethany!)

Since Christmas, I have just been trying to be productive around the apartment and get back into the swing of things at school. We have report cards due next week, and even though I've been much more organized over the last quarter, there is still a lot of work to be done. I just finished entering a huge stack of grades, and have the exciting task tomorrow of writing comments and entering grades on report cards. We've got a professional day, with half of the day free to work in our rooms! I'll take whatever I can get.

I'd also like to report that we've got our apartment in tip-top shape right now. It's still not perfect (after all, it is very small!) but we have done a lot of work organizing and cleaning over the last few weeks. I remember talking to my grandma when we were home about how much I love Christmas, but at the same time, how nice it is to have all of the "stuff" put away and the apartment clean again. Besides, I've got some visitors coming in just a few weeks!! :)

In other news, I am sad to report that the Colts lost their first playoff game, so they will not be the Super Bowl champs this year. However, I am looking forward to wearing my new Manning jersey (thanks, Brent!) next year when they have home-field advantage in the Super Bowl. :) Until then, I'll just cheer for anyone playing the Patriots! (Sorry, Chitwood!)

This afternoon, Brent and I joined a gym here in Columbia, called Life Time Fitness, which was recommeneded to us by his friend and office-mate from work. We went for 2 free weeks in December, and it was so nice! It reminds me of the Colvin at OSU, except even better! Anyways, we are ready to get into better shape and now we have a great place to accomplish that! I'll keep you updated on our progress.

And finally, our lifegroup is getting ready to start a study over the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I have heard so much about this book and know it can be life-changing, so I am excited to see how God will work in our lives through this! I'm sure I will have lots to share once we get started. On the website, you can read the first chapter, so I'd recommend it if you get a chance!

I suppose I'll end my ramblings for the day there. I hope you all have had a wonderful start to this new year, and I hope that you are constantly looking for and praising God for the blessings He has given you!

Happy New Year from the McLaughlins!

[hugs]