about our beach day

A couple weeks ago Aaron and I spontaneously decided that a trip to the beach was in order. We had a day off and nothing planned. The weather looked decent. And besides paying for gas and parking, going to the beach is free.

We packed a picnic, some towels and books, put on sunscreen, and hit the road.

On our way, apparently Aaron was a little impatient.

But, once we got there, it was worth it.

There's something about the sight and sound of the ocean that makes everything seem better.

It was a little chilly, but we still had a nice day at the beach.

Any day where I get out of town with this guy is a good day.

Hopefully this was the first of many beach days this summer.

about Timothy and our cool job

The other day I was reading Paul's second letter to Timothy in God's Word.

Paul says to Timothy,

"I remember your honest and true faith. It was alive first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice. And I am certain that it is now alive in you also." (1:5)

And a little later in the same letter Paul says,

"But I want you to continue to follow what you have learned. Don't give up what you are sure of. You know the people you learned it from.  You have known the Holy Scriptures ever since you were a little child. They are able to teach you how to be saved by believing in Christ Jesus." (3:14-15)

Reading these words was an instant reminder of why our job is so cool and why we do what we do. Aaron and I both have a desire for parents to be the spiritual leaders of their kids. God says that faith should be passed down from generation to generation: just like Timothy learned about God from his mom, who learned it from her mom, who learned it from her family, and so on.

When a little child begins to learn about following Jesus at a young age, it will stick with them forever. They might ignore it sometimes, but there's no doubt that those truths are instilled in them. And one day, Lord willing, they will follow Jesus and in turn teach their own children.

At Journey, we exist to be a resource for parents. There's no way we can be the spiritual leaders of everyone's kids. That's not our job. But, we will do anything we can to equip parents to lead their kids to Jesus.

We begin giving parents "parent cues" as soon as they drop off their newborn baby with us, and we continue to partner with parents through high school.

In May, we are offering a brand new class for parents of kids in elementary school called "True Story." It's a class to start parents and their kids on the most important conversation they will ever have: the conversation about God's big rescue story.

I am so excited about this, and I hope we have a good turn out.

Have I mentioned that I love what we get to do?

in pictures

Some recent favorites...

a Friday flashback

Last month I got an e-mail from Groupon. Usually I just read the title and ignore it if it doesn't appeal to me. Something about this certain Groupon e-mail made me open it. And something about "Carolina Mudcats Baseball tickets for $4!" made me buy two tickets to a baseball game.

It was a strange day indeed.

Nonetheless, we found ourselves in possession of tickets to a minor league baseball game, and last Thursday, off we went on an athletic adventure.

Let's flashback to...

Thursday, April 18, 2013..

We dressed in our baseball best (i.e. button down shirt for Aaron and dress for me), drove the 45 minutes to Zebulon, and pulled into the Mudcats baseball stadium. 

We quickly realized that the Mudcats franchise was not going to take our Visa to pay for their gravel parking lot fee. Oh the woes of never carrying cash and the frustrations of small town sports things.

We exited and asked Siri for the nearest gas station. She did even better and found us a Walmart plaza with a Cash Points just minutes away.

We rectified our mistake and tried to continue our evening without letting it spoil our evening of baseball fun.

Back at the stadium, we forked over our five dollars and parked our car. We took our Groupon up to the ticket counter.

"Where would you like to sit?" asked the baseball game ticket seller.

"In the best seats!" said Aaron.

"Ok...well, how about section 218 by the Mudcats dugout?"

"Sure!" I said. That sounded like good seats to me.

He gave us our tickets and in we went.

The stadium I suppose is like other baseball stadiums, although I couldn't be sure, of course. There were little food venders around the inside. We selected our first baseball game treat, ice cream, and then found our seats. They were good seats.

Our view

We proceeded to watch baseball, and were even more excited to find out we were in the section that Muddy the Mudcat used to enter the field.

Muddy!!

Our night got even better when two couples came to sit in front of us, and the first words out of the one guy's mouth were "Hashtag: best seats ever!" Yes, he spoke the word hashtag. And come on, that's funny. So they of course were amusing to us for the remainder of the evening as we spoke in hashtags.

After awhile, we got another round of baseball treats: a corn dog for Aaron and some Cracker Jacks. 

I was not impressed with my prize, which was my reasoning for the purchase. Oh well.

The Mudcats won the game, so that was exciting too.

We had fun and might even go back for another game some time.

Go sports!

how I've spent my time this week

Hi. It's been a few days. I've been meaning to write, but my free time has lately been preoccupied with these:

A little creepy, I know.

I've been watching movies while cutting out animal masks for 150 preschoolers. The masks are no big deal. It's those stupid eye holes that really take a lot of work. And the movies make it fun at least. 

It's crunch time again at work as we get ready to prep June and July so I've been spending lots of time with the copier, paper cutter, scissors, and paper clips. 

Anyway, I have lots to catch up on in these next few days on the blog. Stay tuned!

a Penny post

I went looking for Penny the other morning and found her ready to conduct her next meeting...

about an apocalypse

I recently remembered one other negative of the spring season (one being the awful pollen everywhere):

It's the caterpillar apocalypse that tries to invade our house.

I know the picture doesn't look like much of anything, but there are literally twenty fuzzy caterpillars on our sidewalk leading up to our front door any given time of day or night. Yuck.

Sadder still is they don't get much further than our welcome mat because we have pest control.

That's a lot of dead caterpillars.

We try to warn them to turn back, but they just don't listen...hard headed little fuzz balls...

about power passes

So, my husband loves movies. A lot. We have movies. A lot.

He claims to have been even more addicted to seeing and buying movies before I came along. I believe it.

He still is up on all movie knowledge and trivia on most days, and we of course still go see movies often. However, we aren't really movie theater goers, per se. We are IMAX movie goers.

Now, you may say, how do you afford such nonsense?

You probably don't say that. I know.

We go to the IMAX instead of the regular movie theater because we have these handy dandy things called Power Passes. We get them as a Christmas present every year (for the past four years that is) from the Bauers. Therefore, they are free to us ($45 in actuality). And they then give us the power (see what I did there?) to buy IMAX movie tickets for $5 each all year long. And that's just the feature films. Any IMAX documentaries are free. Plus, our Power Passes get us in the advance seating line.

So, for example, when we went to see Oz the Great and Powerful, we sauntered in about twenty minutes before the movie started. We paid $10 for our two tickets (which is the price of just one regular movie theater ticket). The general admission line was packed, but we walked up to the Power Pass line and only waited behind a handful of people. Then we watched Oz on a ginormous screen in 3D with great seats.

We. Love. Our. Power. Passes.

Of course, not all movies come to IMAX. But, let's just be honest: pretty much all the really good movies do. We subject ourselves to the ridiculous prices of the regular movie theater for Disney movies and not much else.

I don't know if any other IMAX theaters in the country have Power Passes. Raleigh might actually score some cool points for that.

So, if you live in or around Raleigh and like going to movies, the Power Pass from the IMAX at Marbles is totally worth it.

We saw Jurassic Park in 3D Monday night. So fun.

about busy Saturday numero uno

Remember when I said we didn't have a free Saturday until the end of May? Well, it's still true. This past Saturday commenced the insanity.

We did get to enjoy a leisurely morning with a late breakfast.

I made pancakes from scratch for the first time (ran out of Bisquick), and I liked them way better. It's not even that much more difficult to make them from scratch anyway. No more Bisquick here, please.

After breakfast, we got ready to attend a wedding of a friend that Aaron has known since he was in college and that I have since gotten to know.

We drove to Pleasant Garden, NC and the wedding was at an adorable bed and breakfast.

So pretty (but hot!)

Any wedding that offers Cheerwine at the reception is a friend of ours indeed. 

We clean up pretty good.

We had to leave the reception early to head back to Raleigh for a dinner appointment. We also had to be back in time to visit our beloved Caribou Coffee on its last day at the location nearest to us.

Oh how to express my husband's sadness at the closing of his favorite coffee shop/sometimes office/meeting place/make his day better escape? He even admitted to some tears in his eyes.

Heartbroken.

We will miss you, Caribou. We will come visit your other non-convenient locations whenever possible.

Anyway.

We ended our night hanging out in beautiful downtown Raleigh with new friends. Thanks to my brother and his girlfriend for watching Penny during our ten hour absence!

It may be small, but we still love it so.

about April FX

Well, hello.

I'm Whitney, and this is my blog. It's not about anything in particular, but I like to write it. And if you read it, thanks. I appreciate it.

I know this goes without saying, but we had a busy weekend. What else is new? Friday was our Family Experience for elementary kids at Journey. It was a lot of fun and a great time talking about friendship: spending time with someone you trust and enjoy.

Who doesn't love to have friends? Well, maybe some people don't, but they are probably crazy. I think everyone at least has one or two people that they would call friends. After all, God created us to thrive in community.

I am blessed with many friends, but of course there are always a few that are your truly good friends that you trust and enjoy the most.

Anyway, this month in UPTOWN (our elementary area) will be devoted to looking at different aspects of friendship from God's Word.

Friday night was a great kick off!

about anniversary trips

It's hard to believe that Aaron and I are approaching our third anniversary. Three years. Three.

I know three years isn't a very long time. But, it's still exciting. In some ways, I can't even remember not being married. I just feel like we've always been married. Not in a bad way at all. I don't know. It's hard to explain.

I still adore being married. It has yet to disappoint me. I truly love Aaron more as the days go by. It's still exciting. Still fun. Still surprising. Still wonderful.

He is my very best friend and I love living life with him.

Hey, some days are harder or busier or not as fun, but at the end of the day, he's the only one I want to be with.

We made a decision when we got married that we would make our anniversary a priority every year and get out of town alone for a few days or so.

For our honeymoon, we took a cruise.

Ah, young love.

The next year on our first anniversary, we spent five days in Walt Disney World.

Happily ever after, indeed.

Last year, we spent a few days in Daytona Beach and made the drive to Disney World for one day.

Our favorite place

This year, we hemmed and hawed about what we wanted to do. We obviously love Disney, but it's not cheap. And, we were just there for a week in January. We didn't want to spend a lot, but we did want to do something more extraordinary than driving two hours to the beach here in NC. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I had checked into Groupons and nothing was jumping out at me. We did a price quote on Disney too just because it's always an option. It was doable, but not as cheap as we would have liked.

Finally we decided to look at cruises again. We loved our honeymoon cruise. We wanted a cruise for our honeymoon because while Disney is fun and our favorite, it is anything but restful. If you're going to do Disney right, you are up early and out late and not relaxing. We had better things to do on our honeymoon, you know?

Anyway, I checked into Carnival cruises, and we found one that sails from Jacksonville, FL on June 10th (our anniversary is the 11th) for the Bahamas. We honestly didn't care where it went as much as where it left from. Jacksonville is only a seven hour drive from here, which is not bad. We can't miss a Sunday this year, so we needed something that was during the week. This cruise seemed perfect. Monday night-Saturday morning. All-inclusive. In our price range. 

After thinking on it for a day as to not do anything too rash, we booked it last Tuesday and renewed our Passports on Wednesday. As long as our Passports get here in time, we are ready to sail the high seas.

Now that we finally have something planned and paid for, I'm so excited. I have a feeling it will be a much-needed getaway after the next couple months.

about our new grocery store

We have switched grocery stores. I'm not entirely sure why. We eat well in general, but there's always room for improvement, right? And all-natural and organic foods are better for you so they say. The other week I said, "Let's see if it costs a lot more to shop at Whole Foods Market."

I made the grocery list like normal and we took it to Whole Foods. It was a little overwhelming that first day, but successful. We've been twice since then. Today was the first time we went over our budget, and it was only two dollars over. That's because someone wanted to buy very expensive sea scallops. Ah well. Sometimes you just have to splurge a little bit. Anyway, I'd say we're hooked. We've even invested in grocery bags made out of recycled plastic bottles.

We laughed at ourselves today because our three stops this morning were to the Planet Fitness, the Panera Bread, and the Whole Foods. Maybe a little too healthy for one morning... ;)

ramblings

I know this next statement is probably only frustrating to me, but...

I forgot to write a Happy April! post.

It struck me today out of the blue. I have no excuse other than I totally and completely forgot.

Meh.




This is the first week where I've actually felt a little bit overwhelmed with our schedule. We've been pretty non-stop since Sunday morning with no end in sight until Monday or so. I have to keep reminding myself to not only take it one day at a time, but one task at a time.

This was my list for today, in no particular order. And I could have remembered it in my head, but I like to check things off.

Looking at it now, it seems pretty easy. But, this morning it was overwhelming. Hence, my list. 

I am now down to just three things left. And I'm going to cut this little blog short so I can cook dinner.

Also, "Make list" is not a reminder to make that list. It's to make a different list. If that was confusing.

Anyway, I ramble. Come back tomorrow and I'll try to have something more interesting.

To conclude though, here's something that made my heart happy today:

a Penny post

We sure are glad for warmer weather, especially Penny. That means she can go to one of her favorite places...

The dog park.

a last goodbye

It's a little weird going to Journey today knowing that Smooth and Kelly and the girls won't be there.

Last Sunday, they spent their last weekend at Journey. They spoiled Aaron with three new Vinylmations. He was so excited, especially because he didn't have any of the ones they picked out.

Us with Cana, Kayil, and Karis

We in return had fun picking out little gifts for the girls to take on the plane with them, including one for Chloe.

Wednesday came, and it was the day to say goodbye until we meet again. Aaron and I joined several other friends and family members of Smooth and Kelly to see them off at RDU.

We are so proud of them and look forward to watching their story unfold in Uganda. Keep them in your prayers and follow their story at www.thevias.com.

They couldn't bring Chloe home yet, but they are changing the world by bringing home to Chloe.

about my date with Bensen

I can't believe that I ended my job as Bensen and Keyen's nanny over three months ago. Every once in awhile I still get choked up about it. A couple weeks ago, Aaron, Lisa, and I made our first visit to Moe's for a Tuesday lunch without the boys. I didn't think much of it until we walked in and it hit me. I got a little teary eyed.

But, as you know, I'm enjoying my job at Journey, and we have actually seen Bensen and Keyen fairly often. It's definitely not the same as seeing them almost every day, but I'll take it.

I try to make it a point to see them every other week, even if it's just stopping by for an hour or so.

This past week, it actually worked out for me to have a date with Bensen. We had gone over the previous week so that Rodney could put Bensen's carseat in my car (talk about major flashbacks). On Monday morning, I went and picked Bensen up to go on a playdate with our friends that we used to play with all the time. Bensen was pretty excited, and so was I! We felt bad leaving Keyen, but I'm sure he will get a turn one day.

I got to meet the boys' new nanny too. I was a little nervous, but as soon as she answered the door, I immediately liked her. She was super sweet and really easy to talk to. We didn't spend a lot of time together, but I'm sure I'll see her again. I know she is taking great care of Bensen and Keyen.

Bensen and I had fun at the park with our friends and then we got to eat lunch at Chick-fil-a.

Aaron and I are looking forward to hanging out with Bensen and Keyen next week when we are babysitting them for a few hours one night.

I am so glad I can still be in their lives!

a Friday flashback

Happy Friday!

I don't know about you guys, but I'm 25 and Aaron is 29, and our parents still buy us Easter goodies. It's definitely awesome.

However, getting those goodies home can sometimes prove a little difficult...

Let's flashback to...

Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013...

After a busy morning at Journey, Aaron and I went home for an hour to hang out with Penny before we left to go meet my family at Outback Steakhouse for our Easter lunch/dinner.

For as long as I can remember, my family has gone to Outback for Easter. I'm sure when I was little my mom or my grandma would make a big Easter dinner, but every year since we've been in NC for Easter, to Outback we have gone.

When we pulled in, my family was waiting outside. My mom was holding two Easter baskets overflowing with candy goodness, most excitingly:  homemade peanut butter chocolate eggs.

We put the baskets in the backseat of my car and went in to eat dinner. All was well so far.

It was when we got in the car to go home that the unfortunate events began to unfold.

I pulled out onto Capital Boulevard and quickly crossed the four lanes to get to the left turn lane of the next light to make a U-turn. Capital and all Raleigh citizens have a love/hate relationship, I think.

By some chance, I was just in time for a green turn arrow, and I sped up to catch it. As we made the U-turn, the thought of the Easter baskets in the backseat crossed my mind. But it was too late.

We heard a big crash against the back door.

"Oh no," I muttered. I didn't have to take my eyes off the road to know that the back of my car was now covered in Starbursts and Tootsie Rolls and little chocolate eggs and Nerds and the coveted homemade peanut butter eggs.

"Oh no! The candy!" Aaron yelled dramatically.

"Well, that stinks. Just leave it until we get home."

Aaron reached back. "It's fine," I said again, "We'll get it later."

"I know," he said, "I just wanted a Starburst." He held a little pack of Starburst in his hand.

"Oh...well, give me one that's not orange." (I detest the flavor of orange.) He opened the little fun size pack which consisted of one orange Starburst and one pink Starburst. "Yay! I love pink!"

Aaron begrudgingly handed over the pink Starburst and ate the orange one.

I worked on unwrapping my Starburst while driving. It was proving a little difficult. (Don't try it, kids...I'm a bad example.) I had just pulled off the last of the wrapper when the pink candy slipped out of my fingers.

Clank. Clunk. Thud.

"Oh no."

"What? Where did it go?" Aaron asked.

"It's in my car," I said still holding the wrapper.

"Well, yeah..." he said.

"No, I mean it's in my car. It fell down inside the steering wheel."

"What?!" Whitney!"

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!"

"What's going to happen when it gets hot and you have melting, sticky candy up in your car?!"

"I don't know?! I'm sure it will be fine..." I tried to convince him and myself.

"I'll have to try to get it out when we get home..."

I glanced at him suspiciously picturing him with tools and my steering wheel and raised my eyebrows.

When we got to our destination, I went around to the backseat and started scavenging for all of the fallen candy. Aaron made his way around to my drivers side and started banging and shaking the steering column.

"I can hear it in there rattling around," he said. I came around to stand beside him.

He banged it a few more times until miraculously, a little pink square fell out from somewhere onto the floor of the car.

"Oh boy! My Starburst!" I cheered. I bent down to pick it up and inspect it.

"You're not going to eat that, right?" he said.

"Oh...right...nope..." I grinned sheepishly.

a Journey post

Today I woke up determined to sit down and write for awhile. It's been a little crazy around here. 

Last week was packing week. We packed the Journey Kids' supplies for April and May on Wednesday and Thursday after shopping on Monday. It went really well because Robyn, Lisa, and I had done most of the prep work beforehand. We packed both months in around six hours over the course of those two days. That may sound like a long time, but it's not really.

After packing was over, we spent time getting ready for our Good Friday event, "The King's Walk," and made sure our environments were ready for Easter Sunday.

"The King's Walk" was a hands on experience for families that told the story of Jesus' death and burial. It went amazingly well, despite running out of almost every supply. We were not prepared for the response that we received...over 500 people went through!

Nailing their names to the cross. We died with Jesus so that in return we could live!

Easter Sunday was a great day at Journey. The Warehouse was packed for all three services, and back in Journey Kids we got to teach 400 kids that Jesus is alive!

I am continually blown away at the work God is doing at Journey and so very grateful not to have missed it. Every weekend brings a new adventure!

I love my church.

scripture

A good word that I needed today.