Words

Growth   [grohth]
–noun

1. the act or process, or a manner of growing; development; gradual increase.

2. development from a simpler to a more complex stage

Sometimes painful, always good!

I've been experiencing a lot of growth lately, too much for words. It has been complicated, and there have been lots of tears, but God has revealed SO much to me and that is super encouraging. I will always be thankful for growth in my life.

I want to encourage everyone to sit in a quiet place with a pen and journal and ask God what your deepest desires are! Hokie Dinah it reveals so much! You may be surprised!

Once I can collect my thoughts maybe I will tell you all what I have been learning! It's so hard to explain, but it'd probably be good for others to hear. Thanks for reading!

My Dad...

This is Me and my beautifully gorgeous sister.

Reasons why I love Lindsay:

1. She has a superb sense of humour
2. She does this thing called the "homie dance" which confirms that she is the whitest girl to ever walk this earth
3. She shortens words to be more efficient? Or just to be funny? I don't always know which one
4. She makes a really disgusted face if anyone tries to touch her
5. She doesn't have any extra limbs growing out of her abdomen like the "octopus man"
6. She has a beautiful soprano voice, which she is humble about
7. She is smart, mature, and immature all at the same time

I forgot to add this to my last post...

It is so windy out today and I love it, minus the fact that some branches were squeaking against my window and I was petrified that there was a mouse in the house that was going to come under my blankets and nibble on my toes. 

Okay, so I just finished watching Oprah and I guess my friend Vanessa did too because she just posted something on her blog that I am going to share because I feel exactly the same way. She can just write way better than I can... so here it is! ...

                                                

                                                      The Death of Books?

"I was just watching the first few minutes of Oprah and she's raving and drooling over her new "faaavorite gadget". It's called the Kindle, and it's an electronic, wireless book reader. It's basically like an ipod for reading. You can wirelessly download books from Amazon and they go straight to your Kindle. Sounds cool right? But honestly... as cheesy as this sounds... my heart just broke a little bit. They were raving about how it's the future of reading and soon everyone is going to own one. It saves paper and space and blah blah blah. But what about BOOKS? What about the excitment of coming home from Chapters or the library with a stack of new books? The crisp, clean smell of the un-touched pages of your new hard cover? Or the musty smell of the pages of an old classic? What about bookshelves? Lined and stacked with books read and re-read and shared. The bittersweetness of turning the last page of a much loved novel, and the excitment of standing in front of a shelf thinking "Hmm... what should I read next?" The joy of holding it your hands, getting so lost in the story you don't even realize you're turning pages. Bent corners to hold your place or draped over the arm of your favorite chair, waiting patiently for you to pick up where you left off.
What about libraries? The quiet hush, the stack ready to check out. Second hand book stores! The thrill of finding an old copy of a childhood favorite.
I know I sound overly dramatic. I realize that books are probably going to be around until I die. But I can't stand the thought of them slowly dying out. The way records and cds have almost died out with the rise of itunes. There just seems to be something so cold and impersonal about clutching a flat, electronic piece of equipment rather than a real, honest-to-goodness book.
If my grandchildren ever ask me what it was like when real books were still around, I swear I will die of a broken heart! :)"


The Suspect in Question...

So what do YOU think?

Wow, my sister Kate sure does trust me. She handed me $350 of her hard earned money and allowed me to walk around Ikea and buy anything that tickled my fancy... but for her room. I was so excited when she told me I could do this, it didn't even require begging!! Unfortunately I didn't take any before pictures, that would have been a good idea. My "after" pictures aren't even that good, but they will give you an idea of how we turned her child like room into a contemporary adult oasis. (Can you tell I've been watching a lot of home and garden television haha.) AND we came in under budget! haha





Sweet lights hey? I love these!









Fake flowers to match the ones on the pictures on the wall!



So when Nathan and I picked her up from work I made her close her eyes and then I walked her into her new room. She said holy crap a lot, ate some candy, and had a huge smile on her face. I think that means she likes it?

First off I have to give a big congratulations to Amy and Shawn for getting engaged! That's so exciting and I'm invited to the wedding so that's even better! haha. And also, Congratulations to my friend Cheri and her husband for tying the knot last week! Oh i just love it!!

So Nathan and I both got iphones a couple weeks ago. Oh my goodness gracious they are so much fun! I have no idea how i functioned before without one. Jk, but seriously they are so fun! Yesterday I bought this application for my phone where it puts a bunch of bubble wrap on the screen and you can pop it. Sounds like a waste of money but it was only .99 cents and it's actually pretty satisfying haha. And that is also why I will have pictures on here today because it's so much easier just to take pictures on my phone (not to mention that I have no idea how to get pictures off of my actual camera haha)

We got bored a couple weeks ago and decided to change around our bedroom. I like it way better this way. These pictures are for Lindsay and Vanessa, the ones who actually would care haha....






For the past three weeks, Nathan has been on the worship team at Gracepoint. He's been singing and leading some songs. He's really been enjoying it and I have to say that he is absolutely amazing! I know it's not a performance or anything, but I'm allowed to be proud of him and his gifts because I'm his wife. Seriously though, he is so gifted! He's had so many people tell him that he has a beautiful voice, including a music producer lady from calgary who just happened to be at church this past sunday. I thought that was pretty cool. Okay, I just re-read what I wrote there and it sounds bad, like we're treating this as a performance and a way to impress people. We're not, I swear, I'm just proud of Nathan and I'm excited that he has this outlet to use his gifts. I can't wait until we get him through school and he can lead people in worship on a regular basis... that's what he loves. He also really enjoys the Worship Pastor there and he's getting together with him on a regular basis just to connect and do a discipleship type of thing. This is way more than we could have hoped for! We've also been meeting more people at church and it's very exciting for us. We had coffee with one of the pastors and his wife and it ends up that he and I actually went to the same highschool at the same time... he graduated with my sister. Weird eh? We're really enjoying Gracepoint and we feel that this is definitely where God wants us to be.

I start my course tomorrow night and it's scary! It's only an eight week thing, but hopefully it will give me the skills I need to get a higher paying secretary job. It makes me nervous starting new things, but I know it will be good. Ooooh, and Danica is going to teach me how to knit! Hopefully it won't be as frustrating as crocheting! I'm watching Restaurant Makeover and they're making nachos... can you guess what I want now. Bye.

Oh, and here's some cute pictures of Toby and Aysha... just because they're cute!

So, much has happend since I last wrote something on here, I must have been having SO much fun that I forgot to write about it haha. I am about to steal some pictures from Vanessa's facebook to show you some of the fun things we did this summer!



Lindsay and Vanessa at the beach after church, the only picture of me from that day is when we went to get fish and chips and I spilled a bunch of ketchup on my hand. It was gross. I went into the restaurant to ask if I could use the bathroom and they quickly said yes because they thought I had blood gushing out of my hand. Their faces were funny!




Vanessa, Lindsay and I wandered around the "Midnight Masquerade" at Chapters and met up with Kathleen for the midnight release of "Breaking Dawn"... the conclusion to our favourite vampire love saga. Don't make fun of us until you read the books. Thank you very much! As you can see, we were extremely excited.







After Vanessa and I got our hair done we went down to the fireworks! This is one of my favourite parts of summer. My dad and Nathan came too, no pictures of dad... and ONE picture of Nathan from the whole entire summer. Someone's a little camera shy I suppose. Anyhoo, we always stop to load up on candy before we walk down to the beach. We found razzles and had to get some as a tribute to the wonderful move "13 going on 30". It's a good one. Oh, and it ended up being absolutely freezing... who would have thought?




This is the only picture i am going to put up from the longsdale quay/ grouse mountain because it was STUPID hot that day and i thought i was a gonner. Seriously, it was hot. But we saw some cute bears!




Then we went to the pne/playland. The only reason i went on rides this time was because my gramma bought the ride tickets. Gareth met up with us there too and it was fun! I thought I was going to puke... but luckily there was no charfing... not by me at least. Nathan and i were sitting on a bench watching some guy throw up everything he ate that day. Vanoo was standing right by him and gave him a dirty look after she realized what he was doing. It was really funny, I don't think she meant to though, shes a good person. haha.


So yes, those are all of the pictures we have of our outings. This was probably one of the very best summers I have ever had. It was so much fun having both Lindsay AND Vanessa living next door. And we got to spend more time with my family which was nice too! Lindsay and Vanoo have now moved to Grand Prairie, I'm hoping they'll move back here after that!!! I'm sad but very happy for them too!

In other news, Nathan and I have found a new church to attend. We have been going to Gracepoint and we are really enjoying it. Nathan had a little "interview" type thing with the worship pastor there and he pretty much said that he'd like to mentor Nathan. So we are really excited because this is a major answer to prayer!!

Okay, that is all for now. Maybe I will update sooner next time! haha

This is not for people with weak stomachs....


To my husband, the love of my life, my best friend,
I cannot believe how quickly this year has flown by, nor can I even begin to describe what an incredible ride it has been. Nathan, I wish I could find the words to describe how much I love you, even though you already know. I am so incredibly blessed to be able to just have you in my life, let alone have you as my husband. You are a beautiful person with vision and drive and passion and I am so intrigued by you. I don't think you could ever bore me! You are a work of art, a masterpiece. One full of talent and potential. You are also so kind and sweet and loving. I wonder why God looked upon me in favour and entrusted you to me, but I am eternally grateful to Him. All praise be to God. I love you so very much Nathan, here's to 80 more!

p.s. I swear, you make it so easy to love you. I don't know how you do it!





Thank you to anyone else who read this and did not vomit all over their computer. And thank you all who came to our wedding and celebrated with us. It was a really amazing day!

So it's time to update my blog again!

Nathan is at a retirement dinner for one of his co-workes which i was NOT invited to, how rude eh? Jeesh. Anyway, so I'm home alone and I should be folding laundry so now I'm obviously going to update.

So this past week or so has been really busy. Last week, to all of our suprise, Kathleen graduated high school. Well, she had her commencement so she still has time to fail, we'll be praying for you Kate. Jk!! And she also had her grad. I cannot even describe to you how beautiful she looked. My parents and Lindsay drove her to my work so we could all take some pictures together and all of the little girls followed her around and wanted to be in pictures with her. It was really cute. And then one of my favourite (am i allowed to have favourites?) little kinders drew a picture with chalk on the pavement of the "princess" that came to visit haha. Congratulations little sister!

The day after her grad was may camp, which was totally awesome! I'm not going to say that I was in love with how some things were run this year but I enjoyed all of the youth so much. It was interesting being the only leader in a cabin with 16 teenage girls, but it was pretty much just really good. Nathan also had a chance to lead the 450 or so people attending maycamp in a few songs of worship. TJ, Gareth, and I were up there with him and it was cool. I was able to worship and Nathan got a lot of encouragement and affirmation afterwards. One man seeked him out to tell him that the two songs that Nathan led were the higlight of his weekend musically and that there are only a handful of people in the world who can balance incredible musicality with genuine worship and Nathan was one of those people. I definitely think that Nathan is something special too! It was just really neat to hear that, and it's also neat to see how humble Nathan is even after receiving a compliment like that. Okay, I think I'm done now. Maybe I'll add some photos later. Goodbye!

I won "Canada's Photo Contest" with 77 votes. I think I beat the other competetors (Did i spell that wrong?) by 8 or so votes. I'm very excited, it's just nice to know that out of the 350 photos that were posted, people thought my picture was the best. And Vanessa, since I won, you have to pee your pants now like you said haha. If you are curious what my picture was, look at my previous blog post. It's there.

And also, I wanted to congratulate my wonderful friend Karina on getting engaged. That's fun!! Have a good day everyone! And watch LOST, it's a good show.

So lots of things have happened since the last time I posted, but I was too busy to sit down and update so I forgot most of them, but here's what I do know.


Vanessa was here for a week just over a month ago. She is such a fun fun girl and now I'm super excited because she is moving down here for the summer and she's going to be living next door to me at my parents house. That will be interesting in many ways! While she was here we decided to go for a little photo shoot and that was a lot of fun...







Speaking of photos, I just entered this photo in the group called "Canada's Photo Contest" on facebook and I'm so nervous because I really want to win haha. The theme is green and out of the hundred or so photos entered so far I have the most votes! That makes me happy haha.




So something pretty cool happened a few sundays ago... Nathan was leading worship and a few weeks prior to that he felt that God was telling him that something big was going to happen this week during worship. He listened, followed God's direction on what songs to pick, and prayed A LOT about it. We have really been feeling lately that God wants Nathan to be a worship pastor, and I keep telling him that he's going to do something GREAT. I just feel it. Anyhoo, that sunday there was a few guys who were doing a presentation from this ministry called "team challenge" who help people with drug problems and after worship one of them got up on stage and spoke directly to Nathan and pretty much affirmed everything we have been feeling. He said that Nathan is a genuine worshipper, he is blessed with a gift and he is going to do great things for God. He talked directly to Nate for like a minute and it was just really cool because it wasn't really him talking, it was God talking through him. There was no way that this human being could speak to us and affirm everything we were feeling without ever having talked to us or even met us before. So as it turns out, God was doing something big in OUR lives that sunday. I wish I could explain what that moment really meant for us, but I just did my best right there.

Toby and Aysha got fixed a few weeks ago and are no longer trying to make babies... not that Toby really understood how to do it anyway. He's kind of dumb, I thought it was instinctual but apparently this cat has to be taught a few things. I just thought I'd share that.



Vanessa took this picture, isn't Aysha cute?

Have a good day!

I'm not going to tell you about the highlights of my week or anything, I wanted to show you the highlights I just got in my hair! I've never had hair this light before and I'm excited about it haha. You can't see them super well but I thought I'd give it a try anyway.






We went to my gramma's for dinner tonight. She's so cute, she made us stew because she knows it's one of my favourites. I think that's all she ever makes when I go over there but I don't mind because i do love stew! mmmm good! I'm getting my dad to make it for me on thursday haha. And speaking of thursday... Vanessa will be here on thursday for a week long visit and I am superly super excited for that! Our week will be full of photo shoots, junk food, chick flicks, and goofing around. I'm looking forward to it!

So, in february Dawn came down for a little visit and we had family photos done. I have come to realize that out of everyone in my family I am most definitely the least photogenic and that makes me sad, but I will share these anyway.

January has come and gone. I turned 21! I think i'll go get wasted in the u.s. of a and then mouth off a border guard. Just kidding, i wouldn't do that!

My birthday was good, I got an icecream maker and made some frozen treats that same day, but we made it wrong. The recipe called for heavy cream and I asked my dad and he said that heavy cream was whipping cream. So our ice cream tasted like frozen whipping cream and it like clung to my tongue. We'll attempt it another time.

Yesterday was Valentine's day and it was so wonderful. The only non fun thing was that we almost got hit by an idiot in a hummer. We were both KINDA hoping that he would have hit us though because our car is making funny noises and if he hit us hard enough we could have blamed it on him and then gotten it fixed for free!
Nathan brought me my favourite starbucks beverage and a dozen white roses (with one red right in the middle, and he says it was his idea, it was so pretty) to my work yesterday and a six year old boy thought it was extremely scandalous when i hid our faces so Nathan could give me a kiss on the forehead. Afterwards he asked me, "Are you like, boy and girl. Like you know, you're his boy and stuff? You kiss don't you?! You kiss on the lips hahahahha" I told him "No Jaden, I'm actually his GIRL. And it's okay that we kiss because we're married." He thought it was fabulous news that we were married (even though he's met Nathan on multiple occasions and I've introduced him as my husband) and proceeded to give Nathan a sly smile as he was getting into his car to go home. Kids are funny.

Anyhoo, we ate Japanese food by candlelight at our coffee table, sitting on pillows on the floor. It was extremely romantic, you
had to be there. I love being married and I love Nathan. He bought me chocolates and a glamour magazine and gave me TWO cards. Now that's love.

Tomorrow we're going to "Life Mates". It's a dessert night at the church for couples and I'm going alone. Nathan's singing during it so I'll be sitting by myself for half of the evening just like I've been sitting home alone for many nights while he's at the church practicing. And I still had to pay to go, but whatever. I'm not bitter haha.

Okay, so I think that's all I have to say except that we started an RRSP and I'm actually really excited about it. We're saving money, I'm so proud! Sorry for no pictures, I don't take any. I think my cat just farted on my arm.

oh, p.s. You should all check out post secret! I've loved it for a while and I want you all to know. It can be really inappropriate at times, it depends on people's secrets that week I suppose, but it is also very interesting. That is all.

www.postsecret.blogspot.com

You can go ahead and puke if you want, but I am going to write a post about my husband. I like talking about Nathan and this is my blog so I'm going to do it.

Sunday was our six month-aversary. These past six months have been stupid. Or they would have been stupid without Nathan. I don't know how well I would have handled the death of two family members, my dad being in and out of the hospital and some very important people in our lives moving away if it weren't for my husband. He's pretty much amazing.

When people ask me "So, how's married life?" I wish I could describe with words how truly wonderful and beautiful it is. It is an amazing feeling to know that i can be completely vulnerable and completely myself with another person. It is incredible to know that Nathan knows tons of things about me, things that really annoy me, and he still loves me and wants to know more. It's kind of like how a relationship with Jesus looks like.

Those are just general things, what I love about my marriage relationship. I hope many of you will find someone to share this intimate bond with.

I like talking about Nathan more than marriage though.

My husband is a quiet, gentle leader. He is never demanding or pushy.
He is mature (sometimes) and often displays wisdom beyond his years.
He is passionate about God, those he loves, and music.
He is a talented musician, and has a gift of leading others in worship.
He is hilarious, but he thinks his farts are funny, I don't.
He is really good at giving presents
He is one of the most understanding people I have ever met.
His unselfishness, patience, and kindness puts me to shame.
He has an incredible smile and he's incredibly handsome. ;)
I can tell he absolutely adores me.

Those are just SOME of the things that are great about Nathan. I've said to him many times that I feel sorry for the rest of the female population because I'm the one who got to marry him. He is the second best thing that has ever happend to me, being saved by Christ being the first. Thanks Nathan for asking me to marry you, and thanks for going through with it. I hope I haven't embarassed you! haha