to moose with love.

chewy chomp.

all gone.

God's Love Language

I've been mulling over this for over a month now, and I'm convinced of its truth. In honor of Valentine's Day, a little post about LOVE:

My younger brother went to Urbana this Christmas and came out of a group discussion with this quote, "Obedience is God's love language." I never thought about how to best love God before. I know I can love others with words, time, acts of service, etc, but how do I love God? The more I thought about the obedience thing, the more it seemed to ring true. James 2:26 - faith without works is dead. When studying Hebrews 11 in our small group, I read the list of heros of the faith with this quote in mind . . . and they were all commended for their obedience, not their understanding of what God was asking them to do.

While he was at Urbana, my brother Ryan met a man who's father started the dental clinic in Kijabe. Ryan deduced that if this man's father hadn't gone to Kenya to start the dental program, Dr. Rich wouldn't have been there as one of the only missionary dentists in Kenya to attract Matt to come for 6 months out of dental school. He would've been off in Honduras or who knows where. And if a host of others hadn't obeyed God's calling to start a school for missionary kids, I wouldn't have been in Kenya to teach. I am so thankful for those who stepped out in faith and loved God enough to obey Him and heed His calling.

Happy Valentine's Day!

tradition

A couple days ago, my mom mentioned that she was making her Valentine's Day cookies this week. I informed her I had just bought heart-shaped cookie cutters that morning, to replace the ones she sent me while I was in Kenya. She used to make the cookies and send me those when I was in college, but now I'm old and married and I've got to make them on my own. The snow day was a perfect opportunity!

Of course Moosey got a cookie:

Bonus of snow day: someone to decorate cookies with. Matt's were more of a "modern" design.

Drawback of snow day: we didn't get to go to Bible study, which is what I intended to make these for. What in the world will we do with them all?

snow day

Last Friday the weathermen predicted a big storm. I was pumped for a snowed-in weekend, and woke up, oh . . . 20 times that night, checking for snow. Finally I saw the gray light that could only mean moon reflecting off snow . . . unless it was, say, DAWN. The sun rising on a bleak winter day. While the rest of the east coast was dumped on, we stayed dry.

They said it would snow today, too . . . and this time they were right!

I tried to get to work, I really did. Matt drove us. But the higher powers of Old Field had neglected to plow our neighborhood, and we couldn't make it out. In fact, we got stuck on our driveway and had to leave the car until Matt dug it out later.

So we had a real official snow day, snowed in.

Frosted windowpanes.

Somebody gets a little wild when there's inches of snow on the ground.

As you can see, Moose spent a good amount of time tearing around the house in circles. He also LOVES eating snow. I actually enticed him back in the house with a handful of the stuff. He was so eager to eat it, he bolted through the door, leaving behind a WORLD of tasty snow for one little blob on the carpet.

Lots to shovel if we're going to make it out tomorrow!

While Matt was busy shoveling, I got to work making a snowman. I started patting a little ball together until Matt showed me how to roll up a big snowball along the ground, gathering snow as you go. Forgive me, I thought that only happened in cartoons.

a year ago

Happy Anniversary to our friends Dexter and Jenna

who were wed a year ago today at a beautiful tea farm in Kenya

and gave us a chance to take this classically posed picture

because only two days before Matt had shown up unannounced

in my living room

and placed a ring on my finger

and changed my life forever.

love.

winter sun

More pictures of the sunset. What can I say? Every day is beautiful.

the moon and the neighbor's house.

we all have our good angles and our bad angles.

he's not that chubby, i promise.

on call

Today is Matt's last weeknight on call for the next 5 months.

On call? Why in the world would a dentist be on call? Well, here at Stony Brook University Hospital, we have a dentist available for your dental emergencies. And you are free to come in at any time, day or night, as long as its a week day or week night. Then it's not my husband's problem. He's still there one weekend a month through June, but we celebrate the small victories around here.

When Matt's on call, I engage in the glamorous pursuits of watching my girly shows and tackling piles of laundry.

I know we're just two people, I don't know how this happens. It's those scrubs.

We had a storm the day before and I left my tennis shoes on the back porch. They are sopping. There is serious debris all over the yard. But there is also a clean feeling to the air. Moose and I also took advantage of the fresh-scrubbed sky and ventured down to the beach.