not all who wander are lost...

Father’s Day weekend

abi — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:25:55 +0000

Last weekend was a busy one! Friday night I went to watch my little brother play one of his championship little league games with my family. It was a good game - really close and Andrew got on base several times, stole a base, and scored a run for his team. Then I took my other brother, Patrick shopping for new clothes - he hadn’t been shopping in several years and ended up with pretty much a whole new wardrobe. His fiance’ is excited to see him in new clothes when we go up to Boston the week before his wedding.

On Saturday, my sister Katie and I went down to Hampden for the annual “Honfest”.

The Hon is Not a Dying Breed

HonFest is a local tradition. The Bawlmer term of endearment, Hon, short for Honey, embodies the warmth and affection bestowed upon our neighbors and visitors alike by historic working-women of Baltimore. HonFest is an annual celebration in honor of these women.

Since 1994, HonFest has grown from a tiny Baltimore’s Best Hon pageant behind Café Hon, to a nationally recognized festival that covers four city blocks on Hampden’s very own 36th Street. In recent years, the festival has been acknowledged by The New York Times, Rachel Ray’s Tasty Travels, Nightly News with Brian Williams, The New York Post, Southern Living, The LA Times, HGTV, CNN, and just this April by The New Yorker.

We had fun walking around the street and the shops in Hampden. Katie especially liked the India specialty store and the local fair trade shop. But it was pretty hot and humid, so we didn’t stay too long. Then we went together to a fabulous bridal shower that my good friends Becki, Emily Joy, Erin, and Donna threw for me! Those girls are amazing! They made tons of great food, decorated the room beautifully, and had fun games and favors. You can find pictures of the shower at:

http://abiandandy.wordpress.com

That evening I had a good time with my family and especially enjoyed visiting with my Aunt Trish who came all the way up from southern Virginia (about 7 hours drive) to spend the weekend with us and go to my shower.

On Sunday, my sister Emily and I took my dad to the ball game! It was Emily’s idea - and we had a great time! She wanted to get nice seats for him, so we ended up trying out the “All you can eat” box seats. I had never done box seats before - they were really nice! Part of the deal was that we got our hands stamped and then could go out and hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, peanuts, ice cream, soda and lemonade whenever we wanted. It was a close game between the Orioles and the Pirates….but the Pirates won it in the 10th inning. We really enjoyed spending the time with our dad and I really appreciate the great example of a caring, Godly man that he has always been to me.

Emily, Dad, and I at the game - Father’s Day 2008

My little brother Andrew kept himself busy while we were gone….he made a tent in the front yerd! He ended up sleeping out in it all night and I took these pictures of him before I left for work on Monday morning.

tired….

abi — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:24:55 +0000

Last week I was exhausted all week. I think the weekend away in Georgia wore me out! I went down there for Memorial day weekend to meet and visit with Andy’s mom and the rest of his family down there. I left work a little early on Friday and flew down to the Atlanta airport and met Andy at his gate - he left right after work on Friday and flew in from Fayetteville, NC. His mom, sister, grandmother, and their dog all came out to the airport to pick us up. It was great to meet them and we all had a good weekend. See pictures from the weekend:
abiandandy.wordpress.com

So I went home early a few nights last week and slept, and I got to sleep in on Saturday (a rare treat these days), but I still don’t feel caught up. Oh well. I’ve got way too much going on, as usual for the next few months - nearly every weekend is accounted for already. And I’m trying to wedding plan and visit with a lot of people up here since I’ll be moving away at the end of the summer! Crazy times.

wedding cupcake fun….

abi — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:08:17 +0000

I know - I’m really crazy. But I have decided that I want to have cupcakes at my wedding instead of a traditional wedding cake. And my amazing bridesmaids have offered to help me make them. So I decided we needed to do some testing of recipes and decide what kind of cupcakes we want to have.

I’m still recovering from sugar overdose. My good friend Becki agreed to help me out with testing some cupcake recipes yesterday. We had a lot of fun shopping for ingredients, making 6 different kinds of cupcakes and 3 different kinds of icing, drinking girly drinks, and watching Gilmore Girls. Here is the picture overview of our afternoon:

this was the first 4 batches (pre-icing)

After baking all 6 batches, we decided to take a break with a fun “Orange Paradise” drink, then we had to clean up the kitchen a little - we had already made a huge mess!

Icing the many cupcakes

We had Josh, Becki’s husband, taste test them for us

He approved. He especially liked the Oreo one, the Cookie Dough one, and the Red Velvet.

Then Becki and I tried them all

We made 43 total cupcakes (1/2 and 1/4 batches depending on the ingredients needed). The 6 kinds of cupcakes we tried were:

Mini Oreo Surprise

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Pink Champagne

Perfect White Cupcakes

Kool-aid Cupcakes

Red Velvet

All of them were recipes I found online that start from a box mix (I figure we need to keep it somewhat easy when we’re making dozens and dozens of them) and they really were all good. I think I decided though that the top 3 that I want to make for the wedding are the Red Velvet, Pink Champagne, and Mini Oreo Surprise.

all about love

abi — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:05:16 +0000

Love - “a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise, and the lips to pucker.”
- Anonymous

wedding website

abi — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:26:56 +0000

I created a wedding website to help keep all of our family and friends up to date on any wedding related info and let them get to know us a little better. I just added a blog there too and will try to update that blog every week or so.

www.abiandandy.com

Feel free to check it out!

Fruity Love

abi — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:19:47 +0000

lately I have been forgetting a lot of things….and feeling a bit like I’m drowning, but oh well.

One of the things I’ve been so busy with is planning and leading our church’s annual youth group retreat (last weekend - went really well!). We had a good time and I had a great group of 5 high school students who were my student leaders who helped out a ton. They picked out the theme, “O I Love U So” (from an energizer/song we do that they like) and theme verse - 1Cor. 13:4-8a. I somehow came up with a crazy, creative way to illustrate the 4 Greek words for love by comparing each of the types to a different kind of fruit:

Eros (romantic love) - Strawberry
Phileo (friendship love) - Orange
Stergo (parental love) - Apple
Agape (unconditional love) - Pineapple

It was a lot of fun and all weekend long the youth were asking things like “is that a pineapple kind of love, or a strawberry kind of love?”

I had a great time with the youth and had a bunch of high school girls in my room late every each night talking to me. I am going to miss all these students (and their parents and everyone else at this church) a lot! They’re all pretty upset with Andy for proposing and making me move down to North Carolina with him. But they are happy for me…..they just don’t want me to go.

I’m praying that they find a great new youth leader and that I can transition and leave well.

belated BIG news!

abi — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:32:33 +0000

wow - it has been forever since I’ve put anything up on this site. I have been pretty busy with a little bit of everything. Youth group stuff is going well - we had an incredible time with our 30-hour Famine. I was very impressed with the 20 middle and high school students who gave it a try and for the first time in most of their lives, voluntarily went without food for 30 hours to raise awareness, money, and canned goods for the many, many people around the world and here close to home who go hungry everyday. It was a really neat thing to see them so motivated to let other people at our church know about all they had learned about hunger.

But my biggest news is…….

Andy and I got engaged!

On March 1, 2008

We had been thinking seriously and praying about the idea of marriage for the month or so before, especially since we found out he was moving away. We took my parents out to dinner the day after Valentine’s day and talked to them about it and Andy asked for their permission to marry me. So I knew it was coming….but he was really cute - we had a free Saturday afternoon and he wanted to go to the inner harbor again before he left town. We walked around (it was a little windy and cold) and then we went up to the the “top of the world” (Baltimore’s World Trade Center - which the guide told us was the tallest 5 sided building in the country or the world? I can’t remember, but something like that). We were looking around when all of a sudden I turned around and Andy was on one knee! He asked, I accepted, and we’re both really excited about the future together!

We were already planning to go visit with some friends that night, so we had a great time showing off the ring and sharing our excitement with everyone.

(thanks Emily Joy for the last couple of pictures!)

about the boy

abi — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:27:37 +0000

it was the boyfriend’s birthday a few week’s ago and we had a lot of fun celebrating at a Japanese steakhouse. We invited my sister and her husband to go with us because, interestingly enough, boyfriend and brother-in-law get along really well and he wanted them there. Neither Emily or I had ever been to a Japanese steakhouse before and enjoyed the showmanship of the chefs and the fresh food cooked in front of us.

My sister had us over to their apartment for cake and ice cream afterwards (a surprise to boyfriend) which was really sweet of her, and we watched the movie Office Space.

After issues with the church and the conference he was with, boyfriend decided he needed a break from the ministry for a little while and he has been pursuing other career opportunities. He was has been pretty excited about a possible job with the Red Cross where he would be stationed on military bases, first here in the US for a couple of years, then anywhere after that helping the soldiers as an assistant station manager. He found out he got the job last week and was waiting for the final offer in the mail to find out where they were sending him. I was hoping it would be somewhere nice and local to this area…like Quantico or Ft. Meade…but apparently he’s heading down to a base in North Carolina. Which is kind of good for him since he’s from there…..I just don’t like long distance relationships. Oh well. We’ll see where this whole thing goes. I’m really happy for him about the job though - it seems like a really good fit and something he’s excited to be doing.

“christianese” w/definitions

abi — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:55:42 +0000

Just read this on a fellow youth worker’s blog and thought it was pretty funny:

For
those unfamiliar with this strange dialect, I have compiled a helpful
Christianese-English Dictionary so that you can find out what your
Christian friend is really saying to you. If you have any other
troubling Christianese phrases, please post them and I will happily
translate them and add them to this list. (Please read this with a
grain of salt.)

1. I’ll pray about it = NO!

2. We need to pray for so and so = Guess what I just heard?!

3. I’m waiting for God to open some doors = I’m living in my parent’s basement.

4. God gave me a word for you = I have advice to help you with your disaster of a life.

5. I’m going to have my quiet time = Leave me the heck alone!

6. God is good = My life sucks.

7. Bless his/her heart = What an idiot.

8. I have the gift of discernment = I can judge people without even talking to them.

9. I was having fellowship with them = We had beer and pizza and watched the game instead of going to church.

10. I’m saved by grace, not works = I can do whatever the heck I want.

11. She caused me to stumble = What a skank.

12. I kissed dating goodbye = I couldn’t get a blind date, literally.

13. Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth = I can’t believe you said the real curse word!

14. I don’t mean to judge but… = I’m going to judge.

15. I’m dating Jesus right now = Are you kidding? I’m way out of your league.

16. God wants me to take some time off from this relationship = I met someone else and I’m too coward to break up with you.

17. I’ll pray about marrying you = NO!

18. God told me that we are supposed to get married = Maybe you’ll say yes if God is behind this.

19. I’m fasting = Your spiritual life is miniscule compared to mine. Try to keep up.

20. God has called me to minister to her = She’s really hot.

21. I think you should pray about it = You’ll see that I’m right.

22. We’ve decided to court, not date = My parents have a death grip on my life.

23. Courting = Homeschool dating.

24. Lord willing = My plans are His plans.

25. Take this with a grain of salt = I’m about to really offend you.

26. I’m feeling convicted about this = One day my actions might change too!

27. Have I offended you? = Why are you treating my like garbage?

28. Who wants to pray? = I don’t want to pray right now.

29. Jesus turned water into wine = Jesus turned water into grape juice. (Southern Baptist Dialect)

30. Jesus turned water into wine = I can drink whatever I want. (Presbyterian Dialect)

epiphany stars

abi — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:46:16 +0000

was celebrated last Sunday, Jan. 6th. At my church they have a neat tradition of actually giving out “epiphany stars”. These stars are simply a laminated stars with different words written on them. These words are supposed to be something to think about - journey with - throughout the year and see how God uses them in your life. Then on epiphany Sunday, whoever wants to can share about their journey with their stars from the previous year before we get new ones. There are always really interesting stories about how God spoke to people in different ways through the word that was on their star. My star last year was “power”. I didn’t have any amazing story of anything God did through that word….but I kept it all year up on my mirror in my bedroom and was reminded that it’s not by my power that I can do anything, but by God’s power. This year I got the word “Attitude” in parentheses underneath of it they had put “(positive)”. I am sure I will need to remind myself to have a positive attitude many times throughout this coming year!