Wednesday Lovin!

Hello everyone! Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone is having a good week so far. I'm joining with Jamie for WILW!

I'm Loving.....that Friday I am taking my 8th & 9th small group girls to go see the movie Soul Surfer!!!! Yay! I'm so excited, and I think they are too. haha! Afterwards we are going to go get some cupcakes. Cupcakes are pretty much a requirement for any girly outting nowadays. :)

I'm Loving.....my sweet little Maddie! This is a picture from her recent bath time experience. If you love looking a dog pictures (like me) than scroll down to my last post....there are lots of her bath time pics! I'm a proud mama!

I'm Loving......our new DIY project is almost complete! hooray! Husband and I have been working on transforming our old dresser into a kitchen buffet. It is looking awesome and we just have a few final touches to put on it. I can't wait to show you!

I'm Loving.....that this Saturday we are having an Easter Egg Hunt for the low income apartments that Tim and I help at every Tuesday! We are hoping that we have a great turn out. We will have a hunt, food and share the Resurrection story with them!

I'm Loving.....that Jesus is not in the tomb, but he is Risen!!!!!!

I'm Loving.....that next weekend hubby and I are taking our cutie patootie nephew on a date!!!!! We are going to go get happy meals and see the movie Rio! I can't wait. I have the cutest nephews in the world. :)

I'm Loving.....my precious husband! Prayer Request: Please pray for Tim's mom. She is really sick right now.

I'm Loving.....that we have been having revival meetings at our church this week and it has been awesome! And our Evangelist is a movie star! Yep....he was the elderly neighbor in the movie Fireproof! His name is Bill Stafford! I just love him. God has really been working in my heart this week. I don't want to share too much right now....but there has been something in my life that I have been waiting on the Lord for, for a really long time! But God hasn't answered our prayers yet. Monday I spent a lot of time praying and fasting and I truly gave our situation over to the Lord. Every time I would pray....I had a little tiny smidge of doubt in my mind that God wasn't going to answer our prayer and couldn't do it. But you know what? That is not faith! I'm trusting Him completely with our situation! He is able to more than I could ever even imagine. I'm not going to limit him. I'm going to keep praying and trusting!

Have a fabulous day!!!!!

Love,

Amanda

Maddie in the tub

I have some adorable pictures of Miss Maddie that I just had to post! Giving her a bath is hilarious! :) She doesn't like the bath part.....but she loves being blow dried at the end of it!

It's pretty cute. ahhhhh this is the life....

i heart the above picture.

hahahaha! funniest picture of maddie EVER! :)

her cuteness melts my heart.....

and now she is sticking her tongue out for whatever reason!

Maddie says hello to everyone and hopes you have a fantastic day.

She will probably take a nap and watch the birds and bunnies out the window.

with love,

amanda & maddie

TGIF!

It's Friday!!!!! Whoooohooo! :)

First....I just want to thank you guys for all of your majorly helpful comments on my last post! You guys ROCK! I haven't had a chance to mess around with it.....but this weekend I am going to take sometime to figure things out (thanks to your help!!) You can see my last post here.

Well, I thought I would officially post a picture of my new hair! haha!

Here it is....... I got it cut into a new style...added bangs....and got a new color! It's like a dark brown that fades into a goldenish brown. I guess it's called an ombre??

I dunno.

The day after my haircut....husband took me out on a date! He was snapping some pictures of my new look....and he was trying to see if I would take a picture without smiling!!!!! (ummm that never happens) 99.9% of the pictures of me....I have a big cheesy smile on my face! lol! So, this is what we came up with! Not sure what I think? I think I look silly! :)

And this picture would be an action shot of me trying to be serious! I just can't do it!!!!!! ahhhh

And it ultimately ended up with me doing stupid things.......like this.

Later in the evening....husband took me downtown to try a new fro-yo place! It was YUM!

I don't know why fro-yo cups are always so HUGE?! I always tell myself that I'm not going to fill the cup up to the top....but I always end up with wayyyy too much!

The end of our fro-yo date! Such a lovely time with the love of my life!

He's a keeper! :)

Hope ya'll have a very happy Friday and weekend!!!!!!

Thanks again for all your sweet and helpful comments on my last post!

xoxo,

Amanda

i need blog help.

sunshine....running club....strawberry limeades....new hair....blackberries....prayer walking....funny husband....

so far this week has been delightful!

check engine light on car....finally doing our taxes (boo!)....

a few things are trying to bring me down this week!

this morning the check engine light came on in my car. stinks! phyllis nefler (our car's name) has a few other problems and needs to go see the car doctor soon.

(p.s. our car is named after the movie troop beverly hills) :)

i have a question for all of my savvy blog friends....

***several of you reply back to me in an email after i have commented on your posts......well, i think that is just so sweet and i love it!!! the thing is....i didn't know you could do that and i would love to know how! i hope no one thinks i am rude because i haven't ever sent you a reply email. i just didn't know you could do that until recently. :) so...how do i send you an email reply after you leave me a comment? if you can help me with my question....would you mind commenting or sending me an email? thank you so much! i am always learning something new on blogger!

oh and i got my hair cut and colored! yay! it was about time! i will post a before and after pic soon. i just love my hair stylist! she is so talented and a great friend to me. (she also waxed my eyebrows for me too! o u c h i e!!!!!!!!)

running club is going well. i really enjoy it. surprisingly i have enjoyed challenging myself with running. it is so different than spending 30 minutes on the elliptical machine or 45 minutes doing zumba (however....all those things are still great workouts!) running is just a different challenge. i can't imagine how i will be able to run for 45 minutes without stopping someday. it seems impossible right now....but i know i will be able to as i keep truckin' along!

my new verse i am memorizing:

"you will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you,because he trusts in you."

isaiah 26:3

have a beautiful and glorious afternoon and evening! :)

xo,

amanda

It's fun to stay at the YMCA!

As I told you yesterday.....Tim and I joined a Running Club! Yep! haha!

Tim and I have always been "workout people" but never "running people". I could go on the elliptical machine or do an aerobics or taebo class for an hour....but run outside for an hour??? Nah! No way!

So we were both exited when our downtown YMCA offered a running club. Several people have asked what exactly we do in the running club? I had no idea what we would be doing....

I just signed up and hoped I wouldn't die!

We have an instructor that takes us out on our runs. She is the bomb.com when it comes to running. She does marathons and such.....you know....the easy stuff! We meet twice a week for 45 minutes. We go outside and do our runs. She told us we will do our runs rain or shine! Oh joy! :) On our Monday meeting it was a stinkin wind storm outside and we still ran!!!

(i will confess, i wanted to quit in the middle of it! tim told me i couldn't quit. shucks.)

We only meet twice a week.....but she gives us homework between our meetings.

I really enjoy running downtown. Lots of things to look at during the run to keep me going. Cool buildings, interesting people, cupcake shops luring me in.....doh! Just kidding. I didn't jog into any cupcake shops.

I do have to be aware so that I don't fall into any potholes or anything. That would be embarrassing. Speaking of embarrassing.....I'm really glad I'm not the slowest one in our group. I was really worried about being left behind. I stay in the middle of the pack. Husband leaves me and runs at the front. I thought about being mad....but then I remember he is almost 6' 3 tall and it would be silly for him to run as slow as me. Plus, I want him to be able to get the most out of his workouts as possible.

So, I'm okay with it.

We recently joined our downtown YMCA and we LOVE it so far. They offer so much! There is always something going on for me to be involved in. I have to have that.....cause I get bored easily with the same ole workouts. I love having those options. :) Besides....Tim and I enjoy saying "let's go to the YMCA" in a sing song voice. And by saying us, I mean me.

Oh and I almost forgot to tell you this: at the end of our running club, we are running in a 5K together in June! So we will have graduated. The YMCA gives us a shirt and everything! I love getting free t-shirts.

Lastly, Mr. Tim got me a surprise! I had a package waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday. He got me my very own pink Camelbak water bottle!!!!! I was pumped! Tim has a green one and I have always wanted one too. They are the best water bottles ever....but they are a little pricey, that's why I never bought one for myself. It was so thoughtful of him!

Today is a Running Club day! :) Wish me luck! It's not windy out today....so I think I will do A LOT better. I hope.

HUGS!

Amanda

A Texas Weekend, Tea & Running....randomness at its finest!

Happy Monday Friends!!!!

Hope everyone had a marvelous weekend. We took a little trip to the Dallas/Fort Worth area Friday-Sunday. We went to a conference with our church. I would have loved to meet up with some of you Texas bloggers....but we were busy with the conference and didn't have much free time. I did think of ya'll though. Texas is really awesome I must say! :) I thought everything seemed really nice and really expensive and pretty! And everyone is super duper friendly! People there kept telling us it was Texan hospitality! haha! It was so cute. However....I did not like how the water tasted at restaurants. I'm not sure what it was, but I couldn't drink it. We had a great trip!!!!! I had been wanting to share some fun pictures from a youth event with our church a few months ago. We took some of our high school girls to a tea house and to get cupcakes! It was such a fun outing. They really loved it!

The girl's LOVED the cupcakes! But who doesn't love cupcakes now-a-days?!

My yummy salad at the tea house....

And hot tea of course!!!!

A few of our cute high school girls!

It was such a fun time! I just wanted to share about it. :)

Oh and I really wanted to thank you all for your very kind comments on my last post about my husband! I love you all and truly appreciate all your sweet words and prayers for us!

Another random tidbit.....Mr. Tim and I just joined a Running Club!!! haha! I will have to devote an entire post to it this week. :)

Good Night!!!!

Amanda

some exciting things going on in the shepard's life...

Well, I have some very BIG and EXCITING news to share with you today!!!!! My husband has surrendered his life to full time ministry! He has been struggling with this call on his life for about 2 years. Thoughts just kept filling his mind that he wouldn't be able to do this....or that he wasn't smart enough......or the fear of having to move away from our hometown. Thoughts and fears would not leave him and he was miserable. But, God kept working on him and he knew that God was calling him to become a pastor. He feels peace about this and God has confirmed this decision to him over and over the past few months! As Tim's wife, I too had to be "on board" with this decision. I feel peace about this and I'm willing to following the Lord's leading on our life....whatever and wherever that might be. I did struggle for awhile with the fear of having to move away someday. I don't know if that will ever happen or when that might happen. All I know is...that I have to be willing. I want to be in God's will for our life. I can say that I have faith in God....but if I'm not willing to move if he calls...than that is not faith and I'm not trusting Him. God calls us to trust Him and follow Him at all times. To trust Him in the BIG and little things in life. God desires His best for me and Tim....and for you! God loves me and is for me! That is so exciting!!!! So....I believe I will be okay if we have to move away someday. :) So, now we are just praying and looking at what our next step will be. Tim has to go to Bible School and get his degree. We are looking into that and all our options.

We are super pumped and excited to start this journey!!!!!! I am so proud of my husband! I love hearing him when he speaks to the youth at our church now....so now I will get a whole lifetime of hearing him preach! lol! I am going to have A LOT to learn about being a "preacher's wife"! :)

That's my man!!!!

Hope you guys are having a great Thursday! I am going to workout after work and then I'm going to fix a yummy dinner. I'm trying a new recipe!

Hugs!

Amanda