Surprise!!!

This weekend was my sister's birthday, and my nephew's 1st birthday. I really wanted to be there, but I knew how hard it was for Nick last time I went home. But, Nick also wanted to go visit a good friend of his from college who is deploying next month and lives up in Colorado now. We realized it had been about 2 years since they've seen each other because of deployments and such.

So, we booked tickets for our respective trips a few weeks ago and since it was last minute, I decided to make it a surprise. The only person I told my sister Whitney (the one not having a birthday) to see if she could pick me up from the airport. So, I managed to surprise my entire family! It was such a great surprise!

We went right from the airport to my sister Hillary's house and she was totally shocked. She said something like "You're not supposed to be here!" and "How did I not know about this? I know about everything!". Love it! Then, she got involved in getting my parents over to her house, which I think she enjoyed almost as much as me surprising her! My parents were totally speechless when they saw me. It was great.

So, it was a fantastic weekend of quality time with the fam! I got to spend tons of time with my niece and nephews, which is always totally priceless. One of the hardest parts about living so far away is missing out on time with them. The birthday party was a blast too, of course! My sister has some fun pictures on her blog if you'd like to see them. My nephew is doing sooo well, and it was great seeing him rolling over and sitting up and just being an adorably happy little guy. I couldn't stop smooching his chubby little cheeks!

Nick had a wonderful weekend too and is ready to move up to Colorado, which is good, since it's our first choice for our next move! He hiked Pike's Peak, went to an Irish pub, and just explored the beauty of Colorado.

We're both definitely enjoying being back home in Texas (although I think Nick could do without being back at work), but we had great trips! It was nice being in a little cooler weather as well, especially considering it was 80 degrees here when we woke up early on Saturday morning to catch our flights!

Trust

It is amazing how quickly things change in the Army. When Nick's unit got back from Iraq last December, they were told that they would have 18 months of dwell time (time without deploying). And, plans were made for a deployment in July of next year (2011). Well, this week, things completely changed, and the deployment is now pushed up a few months to early 2011.

Thankfully, we barely squeaked out of this deployment and are still set to move to Georgia this fall. And, I mean, we barely squeaked out! Officially, anyone who does not have a report date to a school or another unit before November 5th is deploying with the unit. When is Nick's report date, you ask? Oh, November 1st!

It's moments like these where I have no choice but to completely surrender to God and trust that He is in control, no matter what. If Nick's report date was 4 days later, he would be deploying again early next year. Four little days could have meant a completely different year for us next year. That is just amazing to me. I mean, I've always known that nothing is a "sure thing" with the Army, but wow.

"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Matthew 6:34

PWOC

It has been a long time since I was consistently in a bible study. The last time I was in one that lasted more than a few weeks was probably in college. And my job was doing childcare for the last ladies' bible study my church had, so I couldn't exactly participate in that.

Nick, on the other hand, was in a fabulous bible study in Iraq, and has been in one through our church when he's home. I have to admit, I've been a little jealous of him, and have recently been trying to find one of my own.

I had heard of a few, but unfortunately, most conflicted with my schedule. Well, since school is out for the summer, my Tuesdays freed up and yesterday, I tried out PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) on post. It's something they have at every Army post, which is cool, and I already planned on going with my friend Jenny when we get to Georgia.

So far, I really like it! And I came at a really good time because they're starting a new study in 2 weeks! Woohoo! Next week they're actually doing Vacation Bible School, but they need people to help, so I said I would. I was actually kind of bummed I wouldn't be able to help out with VBS this year, but now I can! I totally loved teaching my nephew's class last year, and I know he's bummed I can't help out this year.

Anyway, it was just a really great group of friendly ladies and it's nice already having something major in common. Pretty funny though, I managed to find and talk to someone who is originally from about 10 minutes from where my parents live. Weird! I'm excited to get started with the fellowship and community though in the coming weeks.

Baptism

On Sunday, our church and our sister church (which actually founded ours) had a group baptism on some gorgeous nearby property. It was at the end of this long gravel road and had a creek running through it. The perfect place to spend a hot summer evening! About 50 or so people got baptized:

The group getting baptized, and/or baptizing

One really cool thing they did was that they let a lot of fathers baptize their own children, even those who had just been baptized themselves. I know that is something Nick would love to do for our future children. Our church isn't very big, so most of those getting baptized were from our huge sister church. But, we had like 10 or so people, one of whom was Nick! He hadn't ever been baptized, so he decided that this would be a good opportunity to do so. It's been the first chance he's had since he got back from Iraq, and that's where he had a lot of growth in his Christian walk. Every person got to share a little bit of their testimony:

And then they did the baptisms:

Our pastor did the honors

It was really amazing to hear so many testimonies and all of the amazing things God had done in so many people's lives. And I'm really proud of Nick for standing up in front of all of these people and publicly declaring his faith in Christ. It's just one of the many indications of how much he's grown and changed in his walk with God, and I'm so glad he was able to do it.


We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Romans 6:4


I took a video for all those who missed it (see below), which unfortunately, was a lot of people. I know Nick was bummed that his awesome chaplain that led his bible study in Iraq moved this past week and wasn't able to see it. Excuse the choppiness of the video. I took pictures and video on the same camera, so the video kind of stopped temporarily when I took a picture.

3 Years

So Wednesday was our 3 year wedding anniversary! I absolutely can't believe it has been that long!

One of my absolute favorite pictures from our wedding

We didn't do a whole lot on our actual anniversary because that was day 2 of getting all of the battalion's tanks back from Iraq, which Nick was in charge of. Thankfully, it didn't end up being too long of day- nowhere near as long as either of us expected it to be. It was also an interesting day because a lot of Nick's unit left on Wednesday for Louisiana. However, apparently they never put out an official final list of who was going, so when 30 people didn't show up, they started just picking random people to go. Thank goodness Nick was not on that list! I think I would've lost it! There really is no "sure thing" in the Army.

Anyway, we got some awesome phone calls and cards from family as well as some personalized (they say Nick & Courtney) M&Ms from my parents for our anniversary on Wednesday! And we are going out to dinner tonight to officially celebrate! We're going to the same restaurant we went to for Valentine's Day, where Nick ate elk and I had pheasant, yum! We also exchanged gifts on Wednesday. Nick got me a beautiful bracelet with amethysts (my birthstone), and a hammock! The hammock is portable, so we can set it up in the backyard, and take it camping with us too whenever we go next! Woohoo!

I got Nick a book about Vietnam he's wanted forever, Inglorious Basterds on DVD (he LOVED that movie), his name engraved on his bible (because apparently the 3rd anniversary is the leather anniversary) and cooking lessons at the restaurant we're going to tonight! When I showed him the menu for the cooking lessons, he pretty much drooled. I'm not sure when we'll be going (they do the lessons once a month), but it will definitely be delicious!

Yeehaw

So I definitely forgot to mention a few fun things about camping. I definitely saw fireflies for the first time in my life, which was AWESOME! I didn't realize they flicker on & off instead of just being lit up the whole time. It was like seeing little shooting stars.

Also, we are definitely planning better next time we go camping. We somehow managed to forget lots of random little things that would have been useful, like napkins, and ketchup and mustard. Good times.

The rodeo came to town last week, and we got tickets for Saturday night. The rodeo grounds are right near our house, and they only use them for a rodeo 3 days a year. So, I was thinking it would be a pretty small event, but it was definitely a bigger deal than I expected it to be. Apparently a lot of the cowboys were "X best in the world". Who knew our little town rodeo would be such a big deal! Here we were all cowboy'd up for it:

We even donned our cowboy boots

I feel like we're just now starting to find all of the cool stuff in our area of Texas after over 2 years of living here. It's too bad we're not expecting any visitors before we move, since now we have all sorts of cool Texas-y places and experiences to take them to!

Camping Adventures

How is it that I am somehow busier on 4-day weekends than in a normal week? I swear, time seems to speed up somehow. Anyway, here are the pictures from our camping trip that I've been meaning to put up.

Our campsite

Nick had a 4-day weekend because of Memorial Day, so we went to a nearby state park on Thursday night and stayed until Saturday afternoon. I'm really glad we went on Thursday because the campground was practically empty on Thursday night, then got really crowded on Friday night. The Colorado River went right through the park and it was totally gorgeous. This is the view we had from our campsite up on a hill:

It was a totally fantastic little trip! We did a lot of relaxing and reading and played some Uno, Pass the Pigs and Trivial Pursuit. Somehow Nick had never played Uno before somehow (I grew up with that game) but now he is an expert! Nick also practiced his fly fishing skills and we went hiking and wading in the river with the boys- which Scout enjoyed especially:

Wading in the river

As with anything, there was the potential for the dogs to act up and be obnoxious the whole trip, but, I am happy to say they were absolutely wonderful! They would bark at random things here and there, but would stop when we told them to and didn't get too frustrated with being tied up on their leashes. We ended up having them sleep in the car at night, which was a really good idea as there were lots of animal visitors around camp. They were blissfully ignorant to them (and silent!) in the car.

Happy dog

Speaking of animal visitors, on the first night, Nick and I made sure to put all of our food items away before we went to bed. But, we left some paper plates and cups and things on the table. We were just getting ready to go to sleep when we heard some rustling at our picnic table. We shined the flashlight in that direction & saw a raccoon looking through our stuff! Nick ran out and saw him throw down our paper plates and run away with something. After much searching for them the next day, we realized the little bandit had stolen our wet wipes! I'm sure he was pretty bummed when he realized they weren't edible and tasted like soap.

We also saw lots of armadillos (sorry we didn't get a picture Spence!), deer and lizards. I also saw a snake at one point, but it was just a little garter snake and stayed away, thank goodness!

On our last day, we decided to take a little hike to a waterfall in the park. We never expected to see this:

So gorgeous! I don't even know how something like that is possible in Texas! I felt like we were back in Kauai on our honeymoon. I mean, the rest of the trail was filled with cacti. Totally a pleasant surprise though, and the dogs were troopers, especially with rock faces like this heading down to the waterfall:

We conquered the mountain

They loved hiking though. We kept calling Scout our "Adventure Dog". He was so excited to go and explore and if he was tired, he would just relax for a bit.

The Rufus, who unfortunately, kept getting covered in burrs

The Rufus loves the Nick

Us!

I'm so glad we went and got to relax and use all of our awesome camping stuff!!! I don't know that we'll be going camping again anytime soon, just because it's already getting reallllly hot. But that's Texas for ya!