For David

Some pictures I took of a friend yesterday...these are in order from my favorite to my least favorite. I am LOVING Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It is the best photo-editing program out there - in my humble opinion.

Found it?!?

Alright, ladies and gentlemen...this indecision is killing me. I really need to decide on a new name, and I think I found it. I thought of it from the C.S. Lewis quote "Aim for heaven and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you will get neither."

Shooting For Heaven.

Get it? Destination: Heaven, and "shooting" my pictures for heaven.

What do you think? Yes? No? Maybe?

What if...

What if you were writing a novel and had to pick a name for the "good guy." What would you name him? He's the hero of the story....the really, honestly, Godly good guy.

Any ideas? I need a first and last name for a guy. And one for a girl if you have any ideas, but she's not as important yet :)

I've heard two different opinions on this.

1. No one really has "hero" names. Name your characters simple, honest, down-to-earth names like Jim, Dick, Ted, etc.

2. Everything is in a name. It can convey worlds about a person's character. Choose your names carefully and make them sound like how you want to portray the character.

What do you all think? I have my opinions, but am totally open to changing them. Comment and let me know!

Happy New Year!

I am so grateful for the work God has done in 2011. It was a wonderful year in many ways, and a very rough year in many ways. We had quite a few hard losses and many trials, but it was such a growing process, and has really helped to put a new perspective on some things for me.

One of the things God really put on my heart at the beginning of last year was how much I need, NEED to be in the Word every day. I made that a goal last year, and it was amazing how much it grew me. Quickly.

My main goal for this year is to become more of a prayer warrior. Through Jesus Christ, we can come boldly to the throne of grace, and the only reason we don't take advantage of this is because of a lack of faith. We just  finished a wonderful study of Hebrews with our church, and one of the main things that I was challenged on was how important faith is. Faith is EVERYTHING. Literally. 


We, as a family, don't tend to do New Year's resolutions, but it is nice to be able to kind of take a moment to take an "inventory" of the last year and gear up for the next year.


So....I hope you all had a wonderful 2011 and have a blessed 2012!!!

Oregon visitors

We had a wonderful visit with the C family from Oregon last week! It is so neat how you can not see somebody for a long time and then when you get together again, you can pick up right where you left off! That's exactly what happened!! We had an incredibly blessed afternoon, and I just love this family. Here are some pictures of the fun that we had. 

Me with a silly little boy :)

Of course, we all had to go see Lassie! 

The little ones had fun dressing her in her PJs.

I love you guys!!!!!  

Timothy had a strange interest in our cow....I think he was

thinking "steak."

After a little while, we pulled out the horses and carts. All the kids

had a blast driving..... 

...except Timothy. He wanted to be driven! 

He grabbed a cart and started running. And the race was on!

Jessie - "OH NO....." 

Yep. Flipped right over backwards! Timothy claims it was Jessie throwing her

weight back, and Jessie claims it was Timothy letting go of the cart.....

hmmmmmmm 

Jessie - "He dumped me right flat on my back" 

"And just why am I back in this cart?" 

We ended up trying to make a tandem. :) 

Then, Timothy decided it was too hard to run and hang onto a cart

at the same time, so he made a "harness" out of hay string! 

Gotta love a farm kid. Hay string and duct tape, right?

Me with Kelby 

Anna and Kelby 

Jessie - "I don't know about this makeshift harness...." 

Jessie and Kelby 

Jessie, Alicia, and Kelby... 

More goofiness from Matthew! 

Titus! 

Timothy...he claimed this was the biggest smile he could muster after

running around our arena for hours on end. This kid is an "energizer bunny." 

The race! Through the pasture, dodging horses the whole time! 

Can you spell determination?

Matthew looks like he's going to get taken out! 

We had such a wonderful time with them!

Yesterday we took 7 minis and 3 carts and headed downtown for the Fiesta Bowl parade! It is a huge parade with thousands of spectators and the horses all did so good. I have tons of pictures but haven't gotten a chance to upload them yet. I ended up not driving because my stallion would not have handled it all very well, so I walked the new baby, Lassie. She did so good, but about halfway through, she got pretty tired (the route is about 2.5 miles, I think). A wonderful friend from church had come along to help in case this happened, so he picked her up and carried her the rest of the way! She was grateful! (Brennan, if you are reading this, THANK YOU!!!!!!) I will try to post pictures at some point.