My life, my love, my reality...

Weekend update take 3

This is the last time I am going to try and create this specific post.  I will try to keep it to a minimum. Dang Typepad. It has crashed on me twice. Aarrrggh!

This weekend = nice.  LOL.   I got some scrapping done.  I made this album for my little Madi:

I would attempt to show you the entire album, but Typepad apparently has a problem with the amount of pictures I showcase on this darn blog...hence the crashing.  I used a kit from Keep In Touch shoppe and I am so excited I finally got to rip into it.  The colors are definitely up my alley. Very girly.

Sunday night was the beach bonfire for Illuminate.  A couple of pictures from the evening.

Madi and sand = completely in her element! LOL!

Dan and some of the gang.

Some girlies from the college group. 

It was a blast.  Madi and I only stayed for a little bit due to the fact that her bedtime is at 9pm and she would definitely need a bath after playing in that sand.  I mean she was practically rolling in it and eating it. Gross!  I for one do not really like sand.  It drives me nuts and I can't stand the way it feels on my skin.

Oh....and thank you for all of those who prayed for my friend Bre! They had their precious little girl Peyton.  She weighed 8 lbs and 12 ounces.  They call her their little sumo.  Hopefully I will get to meet Peyton soon and with the parents permission will post pics when I can.

That is all for now.  I don't want Typepad to crash on me again. lol! Blessings!

Tiff~

Some fab stuff!

So this weekend was good and bad.  Of course on Saturday it was national scrapbooking day, and although I was feeling particularly under the weather....I headed out to my lss and picked up some goodies!  Madi came with me and we had a lot of fun together.  She ran around the whole store.  It is a little hard to shop with a two year old who is not caged to her stroller!

She did manage to let me take a picture of her though:

She loves scrapping....gotta start them young. 

By the afternoon, this was her:

She was out cold!  Of course I should have been taking a nap, but no....there was too much cleaning for me to do to be able to enjoy one.  Such is life!

And I also got to purge some supplies that I have not used and I probably won't use.  I am giving them away on this blog!  Check this out!

TONS of stuff that I am giving to one lucky person!!!!!!!! 

And do you see that?  That is a Sassafrass poster.  Yep, that is going in there too.  Yippee! So just leave a comment on this post and I will pull the winner on Friday May 9th.  Blessings!

Tiff~

A prayer for a student

My heart is breaking for one of our college and young adult students.  I won't give his name here on this post, but his mother is on life support right now.  She has been sick for quite awhile and it looks like they are going to take her off of life support tomorrow (5/1/08) at 6pm.  Please, if you think of this young man, say a prayer for him and for his family.  I just cannot imagine what he is going through.  My hubby will be with him and the family tomorrow.

God is so good, even in our pain.  May God give the family comfort during this time.

Blessings,

Tiff~ 

Cheerleading, yummy salad and Tyrone Wells

On Saturday we went to my niece Jenna's final cheerleading competition.  This was the first time Dan was actually able to go.  And lucky for Madi, she got to go along to.  The girls did so amazing and they won 2nd place.  Go Jenna!!!!

Madi loved the girls and their uniforms and all the glitter!  Oh the glitter!  Madi was dancing and screaming Jenna's name and getting so excited watching her cousin perform.  It was awesome.  I was talking to one of Jenna's coaches and she said that they can start cheer as young as 3 years old.  I definitely want to get Madi involved in some sort of extra curricular activity.  I was thinking either dance or gymnastics.  I think Dan and I may consider cheerleading since gymnastics is so closely related to it.  We had such an amazing time. 

After the competition, the whole family went to eat lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen.  I had the most delicious salad.  It was called Grilled Vegetable salad and oh my gosh, I was in heaven!  So delicous.  It had grilled Asparagus, roasted corn, sun dried tomatoes, Japanese eggplant...all over a bed of romaine lettuce and tossed in Dijon, balsamic vinegar.  Delish!  Totally the perfect touch to an amazing Saturday.

On Sunday, we had our benefit concert with Tyrone Wells at Illuminate.  Unfortunately, I got really dizzy and a nasty headache came over me.  I had to stay home.  I was so disappointed.  I have never seen Tyrone perform and I really wanted to be there.  And I missed Dan.  I felt so bad.  But he told me to rest and relax and he took care of Madi until he had to go back to church for the concert. What a good man I have.  I heard it was awesome and definitely had a coffee house feel to it.  That is so exciting! 

Tuesday is turning out to be a better day so far.  Hopefully it will end fantastic!  Have a great one!

Tiff~

Nick Vujicic, a wedding and so on

I am back from my little break from bloggerland. To be quite honest, my computer at home has been broken and I have been trying to refrain from updating at work.  You know, trying to be a responsible employee.  Well, computer is still broken and going to be looked at this week.  So I am blogging on my lunch break. 

I just now realized I have not blogged about Madi's first easter.  Mostly because all of the Easter pics are on my other computer.  And I am still waiting on my dad for those Miss DB pics.  When I finally get those, it will be one heck of a blog! 

Saturday I went to a friends wedding.  She looked gorgeous!  I am so happy for her.  She finally met and married the man of her dreams.  Congrats Christen! 

Sunday was a big night for Illuminate.  We had a guest speaker.  His name was Nick Vujicic and you may have seen him on 20/20 last week.  He is truly amazing.  Born without limbs, he is using his disability to share the goodness of our God.  God truly spoke through him last night and there were at least 30 decisions last night.  Praise God!

Here is a picture of Nick:

He has a website Called Life without Limbs.  I urge you to check it out.  He is an amazing young man and I know God is going to continue to do amazing things through him. 

This week I am getting ready for Madi's birthday party on Saturday.  Her actual birthday is on April 13th, but Dan is speaking at the main services at church her birthday weekend and I didn't want him to miss out on the fun of course.  Hence why we are celebrating a week early.  I have pretty much made all of the major purchases I needed to Saturday evening, including her presents.  Now I just need to wrap them and get the party favors ready.  Sooo excited.  I will post pictures on Monday...for sure! 

Oh and thanks to Tina!  I won a RAK on her blog and I am soooo excited for my goodies!  Can't wait to play!!!! Woo Hoo!!!!!

Love to you all!

Tiff~

I am pleased to share with you.....

Fat Daddy's Bake shop.....I found them on Etsy last week.  Absolutely delicious.  Seriously.  And they are supposed to be cupcakes in a jar, but they are huge.  My husband was home when they arrived to our place and he opened the box to see inside...and almost died!  He was like "I thought we were trying to lose weight!" I just couldn't resist.  Heard really good things about Nicole, the owner, and her cupcakes...so I had to give them a try.  You know you want to.   Delicious.  I ordered six and the first one I tried was the PMS/Chocolate overload cupcake.  Oh my gosh heaven.  Can't wait to get home and try another flavor. 

Been searching the internet for new scrap goodies and I came upon this cool stamp company mentioned on the message boards at Studio Calico, Papertrey Ink.    I love finding new products to buy.  Loving their stamps.  Think I might put a couple in my cart and use them to make cards.  yummy, yummy.  They are celebrating their first birthday, so they are still relatively new.

I told you that this past Sunday we had Shelley Lubben speak at our college group.  She was really great and I hope you had a chance to check out her website to see all of the things that God is doing through her ministry.  She is out on the front lines, trying to help people break free from the porn industry.   Here are a couple of pics.  Sorry if they are hard to see.  Our students really tried to get good pictures, but alas they had  my crappy point and shoot!

That is Shelley on stage.  She was very good at putting our audience at ease while talking about a very uncomfortable subject.  She even made our students laugh, which is a huge plus!

It is kind of bright in this picture, but we had an amazing turnout for Shelley.  About 150 people came to hear her. 

Another angle of Shelley.

That is all for now.  Also, I wanted to share with you a little bit about what I read for Day 12 in my 30 day challenge of encouraging my husband.  So far, it has been amazing.  God has been showing me that a lot of my discontent is coming from my own heart...not necessarily from Dan.  My expectations are really high of him, so I need to realize that I may be asking too much of him when he works so hard to provide for our family.  Here is what I had for me today:

"

"With all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love."

Eph. 4:2

Part of the difficulty you may face as you continue in this 30-day challenge to encourage

your husband is that you really are struggling to find positive things to praise. Perhaps

the problem is not with your husband. Have you checked your own heart?

Sometimes we get disillusioned because of our own unreasonable or unrealistic

expectations (Prov. 13:12). It may not be that our mates are doing something wrong; it's

simply that we expect too much in some areas.

Our expectations must be met in God alone, and then we will have the right perspective

to ask God for the healing and grace we need to respond to others.

How sad that we give more grace to others than to those in our own homes. Today, try

to look at your husband through eyes of grace. Verbally thank your husband for what he

is already doing."

Enjoy!!!!

Tiff~

Day Twelve:

Phil Wickham concert

Last week I told ya'll that we were having a Phil Wickham concert with our college and young adult group on Sunday evening. We had an amazing turnout....about 350 people showed up to worship corporately with him.  And he is truly gifted by the Lord in his music.  It was really amazing.

As promised, here are some pictures of the concert:

And here are some pictures after the concert.  Madi found her way on the stage and decided this was the place for her!

And I caught a random pic of Phil Wickham:

And he was gracious enough to take a pictures with our little family:

If you are interested in having him perform at your local church, have your Pastor check out his website: www.philwickham.com

Enjoy!

Tiff~

What do you mean by....

The topic tonight at our college group was the cost of following Jesus.  Tonight, Dan proposed a good question that I think all of us who choose to follow Jesus and trust Him as our Lord and Savior....Do we understand the true cost of following Jesus?  When we say "I will follow You Lord"....do we know what we are saying?  I think so many people speak those words and yet when walking with the Lord gets hard they leave, or they decide they need more time to talk and think  about that decision.  When Jesus says "Come and follow Me"  Go.  It really was a great night and I am sure many of our students really searched their hearts and their commitment to God.

I know the kids are really excited about Phil Wickham coming to our group on February 10th.  I know I am.  It should be a great evening with great worship and lots of new faces!  If you are in Southern California...come on over Illuminate at Knott Avenue Christian  Church at 6:00pm 2/10/08.  It  will be amazing.

Checked out Studio Calico this evening to see the beautiful kit that will be coming my way.  Sad thing is, I haven't even really worked on the January kit, so I think I should start on that tomorrow.  Picked up some other goodies from the Scrappin Table last night, so I need to play with those too.  Gosh...I am feeling really creative right now.  Too bad I can't do anything about it tonight.  Most of my stuff is in Madi's closet and she is sleeping.  To wake her up would be bad news.  She is a momma's girl and she likes to cuddle with me...which  means less sleep  for me! LOL! I mean what else is new.  I haven't really slept in almost 2 years.  And my mom said something  about not sleeping until you are really old..........

Arbonne is going okay.  I haven't really pushed it lately because I have been doing other things.  I think I am really going to take it to the next level next month and try to move up to District Manager.  I would like to make some more money and be able to get back home with my family.  It really means that much to me.  Been doing a lot of shopping too at Old Navy, Forever 21...mostly to keep up my appearance and not go back to the dowdy housewife I was slowly watching myself become.  I really stopped taking care of my appearance for awhile and it was starting to show everywhere.  I am happy to report that I am slowly coming back to my old self.  It feels wonderful.  Now onto being a better wife and mother.

I should probably go and get some sleep.  It is about 11am here and I am going to have to get up early tomorrow and get ready for my day.  A lot to do.  Love you all!

Tiff~

Keep these dates open!

If you are in the Southern California area and you are between the ages of 18-29.....I am inviting you to a couple of events at our college group, Illuminate, that I think will rock your socks off!

1st:  February 10th we will have Phil Wickham performing for us at 6pm! We are super excited as he is apart of our big Spring kick off for 2008.  You won't want to miss this event!!!!! It is going to be awesome!  Check out his Myspace or website to hear some of his music if you are unfamiliar with him.  He is seriously amazing. 

2nd: February 17th Shelley Lubben, former porn star and prostitute will be sharing her testimony and her passion for reaching those ensnared in the lie of the Adult industry.  Her story is amazing! I am really excited to her what she has to say to the college students and how we can help other's like her.  Check out her Myspace or website to see videos of her speaking to churches around the country.

Location: Knott Avenue Christian Church, 315 S Knott Avenue, Anaheim CA 92804

Contact Dan Harper at 714-527-5195 for more information about these exciting events! 

Hope to meet you!

Tiff~

Phil Wickham

February 10th, 2008 Phil Wickham will be at Knott Avenue Christian Church giving a concert for our college group Illuminate! 

If you love his music and you are in Southern California...head on down to Knott Avenue at 6:00pm....because this concert is going to rock.  You can also check out Phil Wickham's myspace for information....or you can contact me!  lol! 

I am seriously so excited for this.  His concert is going to kick off our Spring Semester at Illuminate and we are looking forward to positive changes and growth.  God has been good to our group, and we are getting stronger and we are ready to influence the world for Christ.  Dan recently gave a message stating the direction he wanted the group to go in.....and our group was way on board.  That makes me so happy.  Illuminate has been through so much the past few years, and I know they are looking forward to having a place they can call their own and to watch God move among them. To see awesome things happen to watch those that they pray for come to know Jesus as their Savior.  Isn't that what we are to do? To share the gospel with those we love?  Allowing God to tug at the hearts of family and friends who do not know him?  To know true peace in a world that seems so chaotic and uncertain?  Today really hit me hard.  Seeing that what happened in Colorado and Omaha could really happen anywhere....even at our church in Anaheim. 

So please remember to think and pray for those in Colorado and in Omaha.  With it being so close to Christmas, losing a loved one is especially hard. 

Blessings to all of you,

Tiff~