So Thankful...

I wish that I listed everything that I am thankful for everyday, it would probably make any problems I might be going through seem non-existent. However, the thing that I love most about Thanksgiving- even beyond all of the fantastic food which I wait for all year long is the way that families all come together, despite their differences and celebrate all they have been given.

I have a wonderful family. We are not perfect by any means but I feel so blessed to be a part of both the Qualls and Jasper clans. This year we split the holiday, we spent Wednesday and the morning until about 11 with the Jaspers in Austin and then headed back to Houston for the last afternoon/night with the Qualls and Ryan's mom. It was a great day and the good food was flowing! Here are just a few things I am thankful for this year...

1. The way my mom decorates the house for the holidays- it's something I look forward to every year, she always does a great job and is the best host in the world.
2. corn casserole- one of my t-giving favs! My mom makes it every year
3. broccoli- cheese casserole- my other fav! my Nana has this recipe perfected!
4. Scout. He is such a crazy dog and brings so much happiness to my life!
5. Pedicures- i know why they end in the word "cure" they cure every stress in life. While I was in FW visiting my girls Raven and I spend the weekend doing all the things we love doing together- jean shopping, pedis and manis, watching movies and eating great food! in our book it was a completely satisfying weekend- love my girls!
6. Ryan. He loves me, crazy, stubborn and all! I am so blessed by him and lucky to have found him.
7. FRIENDS!! I have been blessed beyond what I deserve with new and old friends alike. This is something that if you have read my blog know that I have struggled with- after loosing a close friendship I was in a very difficult time and the Lord has been so faithful to me. Although it has not shown to be His will that the relationship is mended at this time He has constantly reminded me that what he takes away he gives back- a million times more! I have the best friends in the world- if you think you have better friends than me, you are wrong. :-)
8. Our house! I absolutely love living in our house, I really enjoy entertaining and love that we have been able to do it quite a few times since moving in. We have been so blessed by owning such a new home that is perfect for our chapter in life. We didn't think owning a home would happen so soon and I am so thankful that it did and that it hasn't been a financial struggle for us. So many people are loosing their homes in this economy ad we don't take ours for granted at all- we don't deserve it but thank God he has chosen to give it to us!
9. Moving back to Houston. The last few months have been up and down about our new chapter- obviously I am happy to be close to our family and some amazing friends but there are definitely days I miss Fort Worth. The thing I am most thankful for is the peace of knowing we are in God's will. There is no doubt in my mind that we were supposed to move back and join FBC. Watching Ryan serve on staff has made me fall deeper in love with him than I was before. Serving alongside of him when I am able to is more rewarding and freeing than anything I have ever done.
10. A good pair of jeans. There is nothing more important in a wardrobe than a good pair of jeans. I have been lucky to find 2 new pairs for the holidays- this makes me smile.
11. My new Jimmy Choo purse from my generous Mom-in-Law. She is always blessing us with things that she somehow knew we needed or wanted. I have been needing a new purse but didn't want to spend the money on it with the holidays around the corner and without my ever telling her this she surprised me with the cutest bag yesterday!!
12. Christmas trees! I love Christmas time, especially decorated trees- last year we had a mini tree because our place didn't really have space for a full size tree. This year we are getting a real tree and I couldn't be more excited!
13. My job- I am so lucky to be in a job that I love and have such great co-workers.
14. Cold weather!! I am so happy that its freezing outside right now- makes me excited for Christmas and new years!
15. Weight Watchers- I am back on the plan and have lost about 9 pounds, granted with the holidays I will have quite a few cheat days and that is what I love most about it. I am officially making an effort to loose a lot of weight- I have been carrying extra pounds for way too long. I will try to keep the blog updated with my progress!

Here are a few pics from Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for this year??

Um, Hello Blog!

So i have started 5 different blogs since my hiatus. I have finished not a single one... I have alot to post but honestly don't know where to start now that it has been so long and so many blogworthy things have happened but here I sit... blabbing about what I should blab about... here is one of the 5 that i am going to attempt to finish right now!

I am going to just start with Halloween because it is one of my favorite days- simply because I love wearing costumes, I LOVE chocolate and my absolute favorite thing- passing out candy to kids in costume! Well, this year gave me all of those things at the same time! To be honest I was kind of thinking this year would pale in comparison to the previous 2 Halloweens- last year I went with my besties and our group to a haunted corn maze- it was such a blast!! The year before Ryan and I had our only wedding shower on Halloween- it was so much fun celebrating our relationship in costume with our closest friends. Anyway, back to this year... I took the day off on Friday and Ryan and I headed to Huntsville to visit the camp we went this past weekend for JR High retreat- we made a promo video filmed by my mad skills and then went to lunch at our favorite place from college- Five Loaves. I had my chicken quesadillas with a cup of Enchilada soup which was so thankful is still the Friday soup special. My stomach has not been that happy since graduation, over 3 years ago. We also made a trip to Austin Hall where our wedding reception, engagement and the 1st time we met happened and to the bookstore to load up on new t-shirts, stickers for our cars and even a collar for Scout! It was so fun walking down memory lane- I am so blessed to have met my Ryan over 6 years ago- he changed my life the moment I saw him.

Saturday one of my besties Lindsee and I headed back up to Huntsville to see our great friends Hannah, Meredith, Heather and Laura. We had lunch at Farmhouse- our old favorite and spent the afternoon with a little boutique shopping and seeing Hannah and Heather's adorable house- I have not laughed and been so blessed by great girl time with these amazing friends in a while so it was so fun! Normally when I am with these girls I take 589 pictures but somehow I only ended up with one, here is my Lindsee and I- love you girl!

Linds and I headed back to the woodlands and I headed over to our friends Elyse and Aron's house to prepare for our small group's halloween party! Our small group has been such an awesome addition to our life! It's so great having friends in our same chapter of life, at our church who are all God-driven and a blast to be with. The party was so fun with TONS of great food, fun and decor! Ryan and I were Mr. and Mrs.Potato Head, the other couples that came were Lois and Peter Griffin of Family Guy, Rodeo Clowns, The Princess and the P and Nerds! Here are a few pictures of our night:


Sunday was a day that we knew was going to be crazy... however it ended up being one of the busiest days of our lives! After church we headed for a quick lunch that was so weird. Ryan and I have been doing the Daniel Fast with a few people from the Youth staff so we have a strict diet- Luckily, Tortugas has these amazing veggie fajitas that I have loved for years so we headed there... the hostest being the professional that she was yelled to a waiter about where to put us and the waiter answered back "don't put them in my section" - we were feeling very welcomed. The hostess then proceeded to put us at a table that prohibited Ryan and I from sitting across from one another because it was practically on top of a family of 37 people- yes we were sitting side by side facing a long table of strangers. my response as she tried to seat us "UM is it possible to seat us elsewhere because it'd be kind of weird sitting here" her answer "What?" me again- "Can we sit at another table because we can't pull out any of the chairs across from one another..." her- "What chair ma'am?" me "All of them... do you have any other tables??" her- "this is all we have" me- "Ok..." we sit. I stare at the other 67 empty tables in the place. Ryan and I laugh hysterically about the fact that we were at a family reunion and didn't know the other people at our table... Our waiter enters... I immediately tell him we are moving. Hostess glares at us. WEIRD! Fajitas come and they were wonderful.

Right after lunch we headed on a search for 250 hot dog buns. We went to Sam's the Friday before and picked up 250 hot dogs to be told a church had cleaned all of the Sam's in the Houston area out of their hot dog buns. Cool... We are a church with the same plan. After an HEB run we were armed with 2 buggy fulls of hot dog buns and fixings for our volunteers for Trunk or Treat. We headed to the church, I dropped Ryan off and then went to our house to let our dog and my sister's dog we were babysitting out, grabbed our costumes and decorations for our car and headed back to the church- aided Ryan in cooking 250 hot dogs and got everything ready on the tables, then we finally started on our car which we didn't have much of a game plan for other than that it would be Toy Story since we were the Potato Heads. I had collected all of my cousin's Toy Story paraphernalia and it actually turned out pretty cute for the 16 minutes we had to decorate and throw our costumes on before everyone started to arrive. Trunk or Treat was a blast! I loved it!

I am going to skip this past week and just tell you about 2 weekends ago because this post is already super long. Ryan and I have been looking forward to November 5-7 for months, it was his jr-high retreat called "Fearless." Ryan wrote all of his material, created quiet times and booklets for the kids and has been preparing for it for quite some time now. It was based on both present day martyrs and those in our history- all people who lost their lives for Christ. I have to say that I have never been more proud of Ryan than I was this weekend. I've always LOVED listening to his sermons but this weekend was one of those times that I just sat back while he taught in amazement that I am the girl he chose to spend his life with, the girl who gets to share in his ministry. Our 7th and 8th graders could not be more awesome. We had a group of 30 head to a camp called Carolina Creek near H-ville. Ryan and I both know people who are on staff there and were so impressed with how nice the cabins were along with the rest of the facilities, the counselors who are so fantastic and the activities. Our students had so much fun and so did we! We did a high ropes course which included an activity called "Tree Tops" which was an obstacle course high in the air and a 1,000 foot long zip line- needless to say it was so much fun! I had never done a zip line and I can't believe I have been missing out on something so awesome! I could post a few of the 7,483 pictures but i am just tired of uploading and spacing everything out so I am just not going to.

This past weekend was welcomed with pure exhaustion and me being taken over by my allergies but we still managed to go on a date Friday night to a new pizza place in Market Street and then to the movies to see the Social Network. It Was really interesting to hear how Facebook was created, not my favorite movie by any means but interesting. Saturday we slept in and relaxed and then headed to the Nutcracker Market in downtown Houston at the Reliant Center. I WILL NEVER GO TO THE NUTCRACKER MARKET AGAIN! Although there were some cute things, I even got a new super cute purse it was too over-whelming and over-priced. I was hoping to get a few Christmas decorations and maybe a Christmas present or two but we ended up walking away with 2 jars of jelly and a purse. SERIOUSLY? I did have tons of fun with my family though, my parents,sister and bro-in-law went along with us so it was fun trying all the samples and wandering around. I also got to run into a million people I knew so that was good too! After the shopping spree we headed to Spanish Village, this great Mexican food place that my parents have been going to since they started dating in high school- I had my usual cheese enchilada and tamale and enjoyed some great chips and salsa too!

I am getting pretty excited about this coming weekend, Ryan is leaving Wednesday for a wedding he is in that is in Georgia. Normally I would obviously be going with him but he has to be at a youth conference in Nashville the day after the wedding (SO JEALOUS!!) and so we decided to save the money since we wouldn't really be able to spend much time together since he will be super busy with groomsman duties and then flying out to Nashville so instead I am heading north to Fort Worth to see my besties Katie and Raven! This will fill my heart with happiness as I miss Ryan like the desert misses the rain for the 6 days we will be apart. I can't wait to see my girls- it has been over a month which is crazy because for the last 2 years I was 1. living down the hall with Raven before I got married 2. then I moved across the street post wedding 3. Then we lived a block away the rest of the time we were in Fort Worth. Obviously I saw them a few times a week so I have been suffering from separation anxiety! OK, well thanks for reading this post for the last 62 hours. I hope you all have a great thanksgiving, I plan to have my next blog be all about the great food I will be partaking in.