Wow, Where is the Time Going??

First, off I want to apologize for not posting on here in so long.  We have been pretty busy over here in Kentucky, so I'm going to try to sum up for you all what we have been up to.  Before I do that, I would like to give praise to the Lord for all the blessings he has given us while we have been over here at Southern Seminary.  We feel truly blessed that God has given us this time to prepare and train in order to serve Him with our lives.

After coming back from our amazing vacation in Gatlinburg, TN, we began to get back into our old routine of things.  At the end of December, my grandfather, Harvey Behrends passed away.  Although, he lived a very full life, it is never easy to see a loved one go.  Yet, we praise the Lord that he is now in Heaven, in no more pain, seeing our Savior face to face and that someday we will see him again.   Thankfully, my family was able to fly me home for his funeral on Friday, January 18th.  The service was a celebration of the life he lived and his dedication to the Lord upon his Salvation in his later life.  While in California for the funeral I was also able to see many of my family and friends.  I loved being able to go to the beach with my in-laws, and just hang out with my parents and my brother's family for one of the days that I was there.  Being with family is definitely one of the biggest things that I miss, so it was such a blessing that I got to be with them for even just a short time.

Visiting the beach in Southern California, was such a refreshing experience.  I just love a sunset on the beach!

Hanging out at the bowling alley with two of the cutest nieces, Jesse, and .....

Kris.  Aren't they just the cutest girls ever!!?

I just love this picture of Jesse standing by the fan at the bowling alley, look at that cute hair!

And here's Kris waiting for her turn to bowl.  She's pretty good and she even beat me. :)

My mom with the girls

I loved being able to spend some time just taking in the views of Anza, CA my hometown.  

And of course I loved being able to see my dog Lacey again.

Then when I got back to Kentucky Matt had these flowers waiting for me...I think he missed me. :) 

One day Matt and I decided that we needed to go on a very cheap date day adventure.  You'll never believe where we ended up...The cemetery (Cave Hill Cemetery).  Yep, I know that's really weird, but this wasn't just any cemetery, there were famous people buried there.  We got to see Colonel Sander's (Kentucky Fried Chicken) grave, and many more famous people's graves that we didn't know.  It really was a beautiful cemetery, and we decided that we would have to go back in the spring to see all the flowers in bloom because not only is it a cemetery it's also a botanical garden.  So that was probably the strangest date day that we have ever been on, but it was really fun and interesting! 

The grave in the upper right hand corner is Colonel Sander's Grave.

Both of our jobs have been going really well.  I don't know if I've already mentioned this, but Matt is now hired on full time, and he even got a pretty significant raise.  Where he is working at he has the opportunity to get quite a bit of overtime on the weekends, so this is good for our finances.  Pray for him as he works long nights and has long days of studying.  Pray that God will give him the strength that he needs each day to make it through.  I still love working with preschool students and working at Christian Academy of Louisville.  Lately I've been really into doing bulletin boards, and here's the winter bulletin board that we had up in the classroom, it was a lot of fun to make, and the kids had a great time posing for the pictures. 

Did I mention that there's some pretty crazy weather over here.  Let me just give you an example of how the weather went this week.  On Monday and Tuesday we were in the high 60s, so it was pretty nice, even a little warm, Tuesday night, we were awaken to the tornado sirens going off.  No Tornado actually touched down, but it was pretty interesting to pretty much sleep through our first tornado warning.  I know, I know, we should have got up and went to the basement, and that's what we'll do next time, we just didn't know where we were supposed to go, we live in a pretty big apartment complex here on campus, but we know where to go now.  Wednesday through Friday the weather was freezing!  We had some snow last night, and this morning I woke up to a text from my school saying that they had canceled school due to the snow.  So, I've had the whole day off today, this is probably why I'm actually having the time to write this post. :)  All that to say...the weather is crazy here!!! I sure do miss our predictable California weather, but I do like the snow here.  Oh yes, one more thing, all this salt on the roads here is going to destroy our cars.  I'm not used to all of this salt, but oh well, my car has been on it's last leg for a pretty long time, so I don't think it will be coming back with us to CA when we are finished with Seminary anyways. :) 

Look at the interesting salt crystals beginning to grow on my car. :) 

Today's snow (1/2/13)

Cold weather must have:  Huge pots of Chili.  That's my "baby" kitchen while cooking chili, and after cleaning it up. :) 

So, as you can see, we've been pretty busy over here in Kentucky.  Matt is enjoying his Spring Semester classes.  He's taking Greek Exposition, New Testament I, and a Preaching class.  He has a lot of reading to do, but he has a schedule in place that should allow him to get it all read by the deadlines.  Thank you so much for all your prayers, they are very much appreciated.  Until next time, everyone stay warm, unless, you're in California, just enjoy the nice warm weather over there. :)