Happy Valentine's Day

In honor of Valentine's Day I decided to link up and do this fun survey!


1. How long have you and your significant other been together?
We officially began dating in January 2006. So we have been together for 6 years.

2. How did you meet? {What's your "love" story?}


Micheal and I met at our church youth group. we became really good friends when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. We both served as leaders in our youth group along with our 2 other friends, Kayla and Gary. The four of us were together all the time. The summer before my Jr. Year my best friend Kayla moved to another school. After she left Micheal and I began hanging out just the two of us. We were friends with feelings! LOL! For the next year the only "dating" thing we did was hold hands. We truly hung out, played games, watched movies, and just got to know each other. After Micheal graduated he became one of the adult youth leaders in our youth group. I was still in the youth group because I was in High School and it was against the rules for a youth leader to date a member of the youth group (for obvious reason). By this time in our relationship Micheal and I were both in agreement about our feelings for one another but we wanted to respect our Pastor and handle our relationship in a godly way. We were allowed to spend time together as long as we were with a group. That was fine with us! :-) We just wanted to be together. We officially became boyfriend and girlfriend on January 1, 2006. When I turned 18 on May 2nd of that year our Pastor said that we no longer had to follow the spending time only in a group rule. We have been an "item" ever since! :-) I know our story may sound stange to some people but it's the way God brought us together!  



3. If married, how long have you been married? If not, is this the guy you hope to marry? {do tell}
Micheal and I got married October 22, 2011. The Best Day Ever.

4. If you are married, where did you get married at? Big or small wedding? If not, where would you like to get married? And will it be big or small?
We got married at the Methodist Church in our hometown. There were about 180 guests. Our wedding was wonderful!


5. Do you have any nick-names that you call one another? Do share!
We call each other by our middle names a lot. My middle name is Jo and his is Dean. We call each other Babe mostly. He will throw in a "baby" or a "darlin" every once in a while. He very rarely calls me Amanda. If he calls me by my first name I know I am in trouble! LOL! :-)


6. Name 3 things you love most about your honey.
1) I absolutely love his spunky sense of humor. He can make me laugh like no one else!
2) I love that I can trust him 100%. He has my heart and I know he will never let it go.
3) I love his passion for Christ. He is so wise and I love listening to him speak to his youth and children's church kids. God is using him in a mighty way.


7. Tell us how he proposed? Or your ideal proposal?
Micheal proposed at my apartment on Dec. 21, 2010. He came over to make Puppy Chow (a dessert we pass out to our friends at Christmas). We were washing our hands when he asked me to get his gum for him out of his coat pocket. His coat was hanging on the chair in the kitchen. When I reached in I pulled out a ring box. I was so completely shocked. I knew the proposal was coming but I was not expecting it in that moment. It was PERFECT.

8. Is he a flowers and teddy bear kind of guy for v-day, or strawberries, champagne, and rose petals?
Micheal is definitley a flowers and teddy bear kind of guy!

9. Are you a sunset dinner on the beach kind of girl, or pop a movie in and relax on the couch?
I like both! I love getting out of the house and doing something special. But there are lots of times when the only place I want to be is on the couch next to my love eating and watching a movie!

 10. Tell us one thing you'd like to do with your significant one day. If you could do anything? Go anywhere?
Micheal is a huge Dallas Cowboys fan. He grew up watching them play and just loves them. I would love to surprise him by getting tickets to a Dallas Cowboys Football game in Dallas Stadium. This will happen someday! :-)


11. Tell us what you plan on doing on this Valentine's Day.
He won't tell me exactly what he has up his sleeve but I know we are going out somewhere! :-)

12. Are you asking for anything this Valentine's day?
I always just ask for us to go out on a date! But I did mention that I would like to go purse shopping this year! We will see! :-)

 13. Give us one piece of advice of keeping a relationship strong and full of love.
Make time for each other. Pick one day out of the week where you will do something out of your ordinary routine. In my opinion, this is huge for a marriage!


14. Show us a picture of what love means to you.

Da Weekend!

This weekend we had a mini family trip to Seminole. My Aunt and Uncle live up there and my brother had a weight lifting competition in Seminole early Saturday morning so my mom, Nanny, Pappy, and I drove up there on Friday afternoon. Micheal couldn't come because he had to work :-(

It was mine and Micheal's first night apart since we got married...but don't worry! We survived! :-)

We had a great time hanging out and just enjoying spending time together. We went to my cousin Blake's basketball game on Friday night (his team won! Go Indians!). Then got up early Saturday to go watch Adam's competition. He ended up placing 5th in his weight category so we were proud of him!

I really enjoy weekends like that where you simply make family a priority and just get in the car and go!

We got back home Saturday night around 7. Micheal and I spent the rest of the evening watching Friday Night Lights! I had banned him from watching it while I was gone so we had a lot to catch up on! Ha Ha!

Yesterday, we had church and we also got a surprise snow storm! I had kind of an off day yesterday. I can't really explain it but it was just kind of a bad day. Nothing really happened but I was just in kind of a bad mood. I hate it when I get like that...especially on a Sunday. Micheal and I do Children's Church on Sunday Mornings. I do crafts, Micheal does the Bible Story and we have our youth kids do games. I had a fun Valentine craft for them with paint but it really didn't go like I wanted it to so I was disappointed. Anyway, after church we had a meeting with the people who do nursery and after that it was time to head home and prepare for youth service that night. I hate to say it but preparing and having youth service last night was the LAST thing I wanted to do. Our youth ministry is so important to Micheal and I and I was so afraid my bad mood was going to make me miss out on an opportunity to minister to the kids. I didn't want to be short with them at youth or anything like that...

Micheal went up to the church and was getting things ready for service and when he got home he told me that since it was snowing so much he decided to cancel services for the night. I told him I felt guilty because I was so relieved that he cancelled.

Do yall ever have days like that? Where you just feel spiritually unable to do what you should be doing and you just don't have the energy or desire to get up and put yourself in a better mood?

I sure hope I am not the only one!

Here's to a blessed and wonderful week! Praise God that His mercies are new each morning!! :-)

It's Official

Micheal and I have an addiction...

The Friday Night Lights TV series is now our favorite pasttime of choice!!!

It's kind of ridiculous how much we love it.

Let me tell you how bad it is: On Thursday nights Micheal and I have date nights. We take turns picking a place to eat...we usually try to go to Levelland since its a little closer than Lubbock. However, tonight we have chosen to stay in, eat a nice home cooked meal, and plant our butts on the couch for some uninterrupted Friday Night Lights time! Yes, we have traded our date night for the television! Ha Ha!

I know the root of the problem:

This week we got our internet installed which means that we were re-introduced to the wonderful world of Netflix instant streaming.

This has also led to my new-found addiction and obsession with Desperate Housewives...but thats a whole 'nother story...

:-)

Happy Thursday Everyone!!

Menu for the Week

SO I have been trying to do good about planning meals for the week and sticking to them! This helps keep the McDonald and Sonic runs at bay!! I did pretty good last week. I have found that the hardest part for me is thawing my meat. It makes me so nervous to sit it out a couple days before we need it because our plans tend to change a lot. We will randomly do things with friends and family and before I know it the meat has been sitting in my fridge too long. I am sure most of the time it is still fine to eat but I get so nervous about stuff like that! So in order to keep from wasting food I started taking it out to thaw in the morning when Micheal gets leaves for work. But it typically isn't completely thawed by the time dinner rolls around...ugh! I know this is a totally easy and random problem but it drives me crazy!

I really love cooking and trying out new recipes and I definitely do alot more cooking when I plan ahead and know all of the ingrgedients are in the house!

Anyway, here is what we have planned for dinner for the days ahead:

Tuesday: Hamburgers and Tater Tots
Wednesday: Chicken Quesadillas with beans and rice
Thursday: Date Night
Friday: I will be out of town (AKA Micheal will eat whatever he wants)
Saturday: Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, Rolls, Salad
Sunday: Left overs from the week
Monday: MeMaw Tacos, beans, and rice (My great-grandmother had a wonderful recipe for tacos that you fry in oil...they are to die for! We call them MeMaw tacos) I am having my parents and brother over for dinner on this night.
Tuesday: BBQ Chicken, Salad, vegetable, rolls

So we will see how good I do with this over the week! :-)

Stuff!

Sooo we are still waiting on the internet peeps to finish hooking up our internet...you know the internet that we were supposed to have last week. Oh well, hopefully it will get done within the next couple days.

So I just wanted to do a quick recap of whats been going on with the Simpsons! (I love saying that!)

Last Tuesday we had the Meltons over for dinner. We had a lot of fun just hanging out and talking. We had country porkchops. It is one of my new favorite recipes! I got it from a cookbook we got as a wedding present. YUM! Micheal brought home some cream filled pastries from the his department at United. He told me that people would ask him what they tasted like so he had to buy them in order to be a good employee! (Yeah. Right.) I think someone just wanted an excuse to bring them home! HAHA! (Sidenote: This is a regular occurence at our house...he comes home with all kinds of sweet from United...but its ok because I love him!) Anyway...so far the only people who like the afore mentioned pastries are Micheal and his brother, David. Andy and Meg literally despised them and gave Micheal the hardest time for making them try them! Ha Ha! It was soo funny!

So I have been going to Snap Fitness pretty consistently...I went 3 times last week. My goal is to go at least 4 nights a week. Hopefully I can make that happen this week. The good news is that my body no longer feels like it is falling apart! I feel really good about myself for going and doing something good for my health. I want to try to start eating better but it is soooo hard! I have such a hard time figuring out what is healthy when I cook. For instance, last night I made a chicken stir fry with carrots and broccoli. The chicken was marinated in a little oil and soy sauce but other than that there were really no other seasonings and I served it over brown rice. I think that sounds like a healthy meal but I could be wrong! HaHa! I am trying to find some good recipes that I can add into our weekly meals. Wish me luck! :-)

On Friday I got to go to Seminole and hang out with my cousin Kayla all day!! It was so fun! We talked about how every time we see each other it is because we have something to do, but this time we literally did nothing all day except for talk! I love hanging out with her! I am so glad we have stayed close through all these years! We always talk about how we want our kids to be close. Kayla and I have so many wonderful memories from when we were growing up! We want our kids to have great memories spent with cousins too!

On Saturday Micheal and I went to Lubbock for a date! We basically hung out all day! It was so great! We spent our giftcards from Christmas and then went to the movies and out to dinner. We saw "We Bought a Zoo". We both really liked it! :-) I told Micheal I didn't care where we ate as long as I could order fish. I am trying to eat a little better and I loved grilled fish! We ended up going to Rock Fish! It was very good! We were both impressed with the food and the prices! We found it to be a lot cheaper than Red Lobster! We will definitley be going back there sometime!

Finally, we finished up the weekend going to church and having a wonderful youth service on Sunday evening. I mentioned the new study we are doing in my last post and it is sooo good! We had 2 new young ladies come on Sunday who were very eager to learn more about who Jesus is. I was able to anwer some questions for them and it was just so cool to watch God move in there hearts throughout the service. Plus we found out that one of the young ladies just moved into a house on our street all the way from California! It is just so cool how God works!

Well, that pretty much catches everyone up on our week last week! Hopefull next time I post it will be in my house with my internet! :-)

Stream of Consciousness

It's kind of a dreary, blah day outside..I really wish it would rain!!

I went to the new gym in town last night called Snap Fitness. I go with my mom, De, and Shonda. I hope I can stick with it since I have a group to go with. I was sooo excited to go last night. I don't know why I always think working out will be so much fun. Ha ha! Somehow my mind tricks itself into really believing that it will be a piece of cake!! I did have fun but there is no denying how out of shape I am.

Tonight the Meltons are coming over for dinner. We are celebrating Meg's birthday!I am so excited however from the hour of 5-7 I will be doing some serious cleaning of our casa! Ha Ha! I really should have people come over every day because it seems that is the best way to motivate me to deep clean my house! Ha!

As a part of our Staff Bible Study at work we were challenged to show someone God's love in a tangible way. I am praying and looking for opportunities to do that but for some reason I am really stressing about it! I don't know what to do and it seems the harder I look the more confused I get on what I should do. I am just going to step back and trust God to show me what I should do.

I had a lady come up to me at work the other day and say, "I don't want to rush you but how many kids are you going to have?" The question totally caught me off guard. I thought she was talking about some event at church and wanted to know how many kids were coming! Ha Ha!

We started a new series in our youth group on Sunday Nights called "Dig Deep" The whole idea message of the study is "what is your foundation". This question really makes me stop and think. I think sometimes I allow other things in my life to comfort me and lift me up when I get down rather than turning to Christ. I am really hoping that this study will help everyone involved truly learn how to make Christ their one and only foundation.

I love seeing Micheal's shoes laying around the house. It reminds me that we live together and I still think that is sooo cool! :-)

On Sunday we were married 3 months. I cannot believe it! On one hand it has flown by...but on the other hand our wedding and honeymoon seem like a million years ago!

Yesterday we went to Nana and Poppa's house to celebrate Poppa's birthday. We had a good time. We made chicken alfredo and Spaghetti and meatballs and just enjoyed being together. Last year on Poppa's birthday he was very sick and in a lot of pain. In fact, January of last year was when he began a 4 month hospital stay where he spent a lot of time in ICU. We didn't know if he was going to make it or not. We are so thankful to have Poppa with us and mostly for the fact that he feels good! Just a reminder about how truly good our God is!

Well I gotta run to the grocery store and head home to clean up and get ready for our dinner guests!!

Happy Tuesday!

Good News!!

We should be getting internet at our house sometime this week!!!

I am sooo excited because I can finally upload and post our wedding and honeymoon pictures!

Sadly I lost my camera charger sometime on our honeymoon. It is driving me crazy because I was sooooo careful to make sure we had all of our stuff when we packed to head home. I am still cautiously optimistic that I will find it somewhere random but I am still going to buy a new one.

I haven't been able to take one single picture since we got back from our honeymoon.

Sad day!!

On the bright side...we have a whole lifetime to take pictures!! :-)

I will be back soon!! :-)

October 22, 2011

One of the funnest and most amazing days of my life

The day I married my best friend, my sweetheart, and my first and only love.

The day I was completely overwhelmed with the love and outpouring that Micheal and I were shown.

The day I walked down the aisle with gum in my mouth. (The ONLY thing I would change)

The day I cried my eyes out when I saw my dad for the first time that day.

The day where I had a complete and total peace about everything that was happening.

The day my wonderful Mom helped me put on the prettiest dress ever.

The day my amazing bridesmaids stood next to me as I married Micheal. I am so glad they were there with me.

The day my beautiful cousin Kayla did my hair and made me look so pretty!

The day God answered my prayers...I am so glad we waited on His timing.


I cannot believe that day was almost 3 months ago!

I promise I will do a post with a complete wedding update including pictures very soon!

We don't have internet at our house right now so its hard to find the time to upload pictures and blog.

That's a poor excuse but its the truth!