Celebrating 15 Years!

August 22, 1992





Fifteen years ago today I became Mrs. PandaPop. What a ride it's been! Being married to a minister has been quite an experience: living on a budget, moving 13 times in 15 years (not that many churches though!), biting my tongue more times than I care to count, seeing the yuckie side of Christians (including myself!), being blessed beyond measure by the body of Christ, meeting so many people through serving in various churches and leading in ministry events, the list could go on and on. There were a few times we just wanted to throw in the towel and have some other kind of vocation seeing that a life in church work is no cake walk, but God brought us back around to see that His will is for PandaPop to be a vocational minister. Right now that happens to be a Children's Pastor. Who knows what God has in store for us in the future?

Through the years we have grown to understand how the other "ticks" and what ticks off the other! ; ) Our first five years were filled with getting to know each other as husband and wife while going in head first into church work. The next five years found us smack in the middle of struggling through infertility and the longing to start a family. God brought us closer together through that valley. It just happened to roll on over to the last five years as well. However, during the past five years our God blessed us so much by allowing us to become parents together to the most amazing and beautiful little girl from China, our daughter. Mmm...those are so sweet to us. We pray that in the next five years He will bless us with another daughter and maybe even a son. It's all in His hands.

We also (me mostly) have completely let our physical bodies go to pot over the past years! Soooo, now we are in a new phase, chapter, story, whatever you call it...and we gave ourself the most awesome gift to celebrate 15 years of marriage: a membership to Lifetime Fitness. If you have never heard of this place then look it up online and see that it is far different than a typical "gym". It truly is the top-notch, best of everything kind of health club. We are beside ourselves with joy over going here. It makes it FUN to work out!!! I wanted something that would "last" as a reminder of our 15th since on our 10th anniversary we got the James Avery GOLD wedding bands that have Song of Solomon 2:16 on them engraved in Hebrew. ("I am my beloved's and he (she) is mine".) The gift of health and vitality is a lasting present to ourselves.

The pics that follow are just a few through the years. I have an album of lots of couple pictures of us through the years. It cracks me up because we have several where we are wearing virtually the same type of glasses frames and we never meant to do it! Tonight we are going out to dinner and to see a movie. We just love being together.

PandaPop, you are my best friend and I love you infinity X 2! Thanks for so many awesome memories and I pray for many more with you, my love. Happy Anniversary! ; )

Go here for last year's story if you didn't visit this blog back then...

1992-Sante Fe, New Mexico...Youth Minister for a youth ski trip

1995-a month after I cut my hair from long to this!

2000-The infamous Y2K!...we are drinking MILK in champagne glasses! LOL!

2002-Serving at a church outside of Houston a bit after 9/11 and in the waiting time for PandaGirl (our FIRST day at this church WAS 9/11/01!!!)

2004Serving at our last church in the Dallas area and are parents to PandaGirl!

Feb. 2004 in China getting PandaGirl!

2007-Our beautiful, adorable, fun, smart and darling daughter.

2007-Last night and serving as Children's Pastor at the BEST church we have ever been blessed to serve!!! We LOVE it!

Praise the LORD!

One of our playgroup friends are in China now for daughter #2 and she is FINALLY in their arms!! Lots of joy going around for them....wooohoooooo! Go check it out here!

Mudpies!

Did you ever make mudpies as a kid? I did and LOVED it! What little kid can resist the squishy goo going through their toes and fingers, of course, getting the mud EVERYwhere? PandaGirl and our next door neighbors had fun on Friday getting their time in and memories made with this wonderfully, creative...and CHEAP entertainment!

We're All in This Together!

What did YOU do Friday night? We, of course, were on the major bandwagon called: HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 2!!!! How fun and exciting to anticipate all week (all summer rather!) the wonderfully cheesy and hokey WILDCATS from East High!

PandaGirl is almost 5 and I am almost 37---not EVEN in the market Disney is targeting---and we LOVED it! Last year we got hooked (PandaPop, too!) on the original movie and the awesome soundtrack so we just had to be up with the times and partake in the ritual this summer. These movies are so clean and are very "feel good" and every now & then that's just what the doctor ordered! Who else watched? Come on, fess up! ; )

One Word Meme

I was tagged by MommySpice a couple of weeks ago to do this one-word-meme so here it is:


Yourself: honest

Your partner: best-friend

Your hair: growing

Your mother: teacher

Your father: jovial

Your favorite item: scrapbooks

Your dream last night: silly

Your favorite drink: sweet-tea

Your dream car: Nissan-350 Z

Dream home: heaven

The room you are in: kitchen

Your fear: widow

What you are great at: laughing

Where you want to be in 10 years: God's will

Who you hung out with last night: family

You're not: athletic

One of your wish list items: iPod

The last thing you did: lunch

You are wearing: clothes ; )

Your favorite weather: cool

Your favorite book: Bible

Last thing you ate: salmon

Your life: journey

Your mood: stable

Your best friend: hubby

What are you thinking about right now: pudding

Your car: moon-roof

What are you doing at the moment: duh.

Relationship status: married

What is on your t.v: Biography

When is the last time you laughed: today

And there you have it.

The Most Powerful Skit I Have Ever Seen

Geezers Benny, it's HOT out here!

Anyone who knows that little movie quote knows it came from "The Sandlot" which is one of the BEST movies of all time!!! It is the perfect reflection of the hot summer time-try-to-find-something-cool-to-do attitude we have going on in Texas right now. We were so spoiled in June with straight rain and a very mild July that now we are BAKING! Yea, that fall is around the corner! Until then though, we have to stay cool any way possible and of course, that means a few popsicles here and there.

This is what the girls did after their welcome home visit with the soldiers on Monday. They are so cute!

BLESSED to be an AMERICAN!!!

How blessed we are!!!!!!!!!!!

We live very close to Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport and had the opportunity this morning to welcome HOME 117 soldiers from Iraq! Tears, chill-bumps, and great patriotism were all around. PandaGirl and I got up at 5:30am in order to meet about 60 other people from our church to go be a part of the welcoming team.

Seeing the real live people gave new meaning and "meat" to my prayers "for the troops". Now I have real faces to recall and I shook their hands. Some were older and had clearly been in the Army as a career, but the ones that just got my heart were the twenty-somethings fighting for me to live in freedom! I am thankful now more than ever for what goes on daily in Iraq. I will make a more conscious effort to "pray for the troops". They are REAL! Not that I ever doubted our soldiers were real or not, but having a hands on experience opened my eyes to stop being so self-absorbed and consumed with the insignificant worries of daily life. Thank you, God for these precious people!

The part that really got me was that there are groups that arrive EVERY morning from service and are sent off EVERY afternoon. I was told the send-off is solemn, no kids and you get to sit and talk with the soldiers. I want to do that, too. I would love to sit and pray with them before they go off and protect my butt from terrorists. The groups we welcomed this morning are only on a two-week break and then they go out again. My life seems so incredibly easy and blessed when looking at the life these soldiers live all for our blessed USA. Hope you somehow can understand my joy and appreciation for our experience this morning.

Unsolved Mystery...; )

OK~over 100 hits yesterday on this blog and 16 bloggers commented...half of whom I already know. Seems kinda funny! We are all so secret on the web.

I won't be blogging daily anymore. Life is too short to spend soooooo much time on this thing. It IS fun, but too addictive. In a couple of weeks my schedule is changing drastically anyway and won't have the time which I did this past year. So keep checking back. Ya never know what I might like to post or when. I love memes and have one on hand just waiting to be answered. Have a great weekend!

WHO'S OUT THERE?!

I have quite a few visitors to my blog on a daily basis. It is fun to see when someone has left a comment, but I wonder who all you "other" people are?...hmmm. I know I visit blogs without commenting due to how much time it really takes to click over to a blog, read and then think if I care to say anything, but if any of you LURKERS are willing then drop me a comment and let me know who you are. It's kinda freaky knowing people know about me and I know nothing about them! ; ) LOL! Have a great day!

BTW: (I saw one of those dumb t-shirts with words on them yesterday and it said, "Thursday is the new Friday." Well, maybe that IS funny!) Be a blessing today!!! ; )

What's in Your Middle Name?

I was tagged by a new blogger and this one sounds fun plus I haven't seen this one before. (Do people just sit around and think up NEW memes?...I think I'm going to come up with one and see if it makes its way BACK to me! LOL!)

1. You have to post these rules before you give the facts.
2. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
3. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog-post containing your own middle name game facts.
4. At the end of your blog-post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog

Dawn:

D~Disney World. I am hoping that we actually get to go on this well planned vacation. Since it has now been postponed twice I'm not even writing it on the calendar for February when we "plan" to go!

A~Autumn...ohhhhh-I adore autumn. Fall is my MOST favorite time of year. I love the changes to cooler temps, the smell of pumpkin spice candles, decorating with pumpkins and fall leaves, football season, making caramel apples, and the smell of a campfire burning not to forget of the fun of looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. I also have certain recipes that I only cook in the fall or winter seasons and I love bringing out the crock pot for the delicious yum-yums. The icing on the cake is that PandaGirl's birthday is smack in the middle of fall meaning that I get to go to a tea room for our traditional birthday lunch! Love it!!!

W~Wayne...this letter was way too easy. OK-I'm revealing PandaPop's true name. Gasp! (I don't think the earth is going to fall off its axis over this mystery being revealed..LOL!) My love, my best friend, the person I adore more than anyone on the planet, my confidant, my movie line quoting equal, my laughing partner, my protector, my daughter's amazing Daddy, my HERO.

N~Naps! Yessirree! I have ALWAYS loved taking naps. Doesn't matter where I am. I can power nap and be good to go or I can snuggle down in the couch with a favorite blanket and my squishy pillow and nap-away. I don't like missing them unless I am doing something super fun like shopping or scrapbooking. Otherwise, let me nap! ; )

Now, I am supposed to tag FOUR people because that's how many letters are in my middle name:

1.MommySpice

2.Glorious Grace

3.My Glamorous Life

4.Snow White

This & That

I have stated before how much we love our new home and the area, but to have people go the extra mile to make us feel welcome just blesses my heart. We are also four minutes from our church now. Several of our church members live close and we just feel more connected living here. We were blessed by one of the other staff wives bringing us this darling little basket filled with fruit along with a huge pan of freshly baked brownies. Can you guess which thing we chose to eat first? LOL! Well, the fruit was still left for the pic. There's your answer. We also had a family bring us grilled hot dogs with all the trimmings and makings for ice cream sundaes. Our next door neighbor brought us warm banana muffins one morning, as well. The rest of these pics are just random things that have caught my attention and the camera was close by.

Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

No one can see me. This is a safe place. Hee hee...I'm so clever.

Do you think these two are tired of the whole moving drama?

PandaGirl keeping herself occupied while we were moving things into the house. Cute as a button, but bored to tears. LOL!

I think Miao has adjusted just fine to his new home. Taking a little peek out the window while lounging on the new couch!

Last Tuesday we joined our beloved Hunan Spice family & Deshing Darling family (they both have better pics) along with some other blogging moms who have daughters from China whom we met only through blogging!

Seedless watermelon! YUM!

We woke up to this one day last week. Fun. Can't complain toooo much. It is only the second flat on this Xterra since '02.

This is how PandaGirl took care of her "babies" while she was away last Friday night at a friend's house when PandaPop and I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum (BTW: it was GREAT!)

A Little Paint Goes A Long Way...

Good morning! Here are a few before and after pics of our new home we just moved into. The owners let us choose our own paint colors and we jumped at the chance to paint! PandaPop gets all the kudos for this job. He is so great at painting! Of course, pictures don't really capture the true colors or the warmth of the room, but you get the idea. This is only the living and dining room areas. More pics to come of the rest of the house later. I am not typically a "blue" person so I had the two huge blue walls changed immediately.

When you get down to the pic of the couch know that you are viewing a gift from the Lord. When we first moved up here three months ago we got a gorgeous red couch from LaZboy. One month in...it broke. All summer I have been fighting to get our money back on the silly thing. We finally got the money back all the while sitting in purple canvas lawn chairs for our "couch". We were going to use the money from the couch to help pay for our Disney trip which had been postponed until October. Well, with this unexpected move we had to use the $$$ for moving expenses (which now moves the Disney trip to February...maybe). Anyway, our new landlord came by and saw the new paint and asked what color our couch was. We explained the whole red couch gone bye-bye story and she said, "You're not going to believe this but my neighbor is trying to sell their couch and ottoman and no one bought it at their garage sale. It matches your paint colors." Long story short we got this gorgeous, fluffy, oversized, (probably twice as much $$$ as our red couch) couch and ottoman for...$175.00!!! It totally matches and we couldn't be happier with it!!!

God is so good.

We love our home and our neighborhood and all the brand new shopping areas that are absolutely GORGEOUS! I am forever thankful for that dumb squeaking in our apartment which got us on the move in the first place. Funny how yuckie things can turn out to be some of life's biggest blessings. I will have many more pics tomorrow about other happenings from the past week. Have a blessed Monday!









This last pic is just so you get a better look at the beautiful color of the flooring!

Ahhh...Home Sweet Home!

What a W-H-I-R-L-W-I-N-D of the last week and a half! WHEW! I am TIRED! We just got everything completely moved to our new home on Thursday. Needless to say we are pooped. Hopefully we will be able to live here for quite some time. We ADORE this home and love the neighborhood. We were able to paint and it all looks so great! We have never lived anywhere we could paint the walls, but over the years we have collected quite a collection of nice things in colors we love. Now to see them all together in a home with coordinating walls...well, it's just plain charming and we LOVE it! I will post pics next week and give some of the gory details of happenings over the past week.

I just found out about the whole bridge tragedy in MN. Our prayers are with those families.

PandaPop and I are so excited about tonight! We are going on a real live date!!! Actually, a double-date! How fun!!! We haven't been on a date since last December when we went to dinner and Christmas shopped for PandaGirl. We are going out with some great friends to see The Bourne Ultimatum. Can't wait!!


I'll be back on Monday with lots of new blogging! Have a great weekend!! ; )