Thankful

PICTURES
I've posted one of these before, but I put them on our Christmas cards, so I didn't want to show them off until I sent our cards out. Didn't they turn out good? My dad took them with my cheap little camera and I edited them on picnik.com.



This has been such a blessed year for us. I am so amazed that God has given us so much.

In some ways, we look at where we are, and we wanted to be so much further along by now. Josh and I wanted to be out of debt by 2010. We're definitely not going to hit that goal. But you know what? We've been successful in a lot of other ways.

MONEY
This year we managed to pay all of our bills without having to borrow one single penny. We've always had the exact amount of money that we needed for each month.

HEALTH
Neither one of us have had to make a trip to any doctor this year. We haven't been seriously ill or hurt. Oh, and I'm NOT pregnant, which is a blessing at this point in our lives!

PETS
Our pets have been very good this year. The dogs have had to travel 3 hours to North Carolina and back again MANY times this year. They've also been incredible sports about being in a kennel during the day. And our cat, Ellie has had to stay in our bedroom by herself for those weeks when we were both out of town.

FAMILY
My parents have taken care of our dogs for many weeks this year. It has saved us a lot of money from not having to kennel them, and helped us to make more money that we normally would have because we've been able to go out of town. My parents have also allowed us to hide away from the world at their house. When we go to drop off the dogs or pick them up, my parents ALWAYS have a bed ready for us, and even made a guest bedroom. We know that we are always welcome at their house, even if it's a last minute thing. They also allowed us to borrow a car for an indefinite amount of time. Blessed doesn't even begin to describe how I am with my family.

WORK
We have awesome co-workers that really care about us. It has provided great friendships and a lot of laughs. We've also gotten to travel quite a bit. Mostly around the southeast, but our boss also flew us to Dallas for a week. Our jobs are also taking us to South Carolina, which is a lower cost of living, as well as 2 hours closer to our families!

CHURCH
We live 5 miles from North Point Community Church. What a blessing it has been to be a member there! The best part has been volunteering in Waumba Land, the birth-4year old group. We started helping out with the music for the 3 year olds (going to each of their individual rooms and singing with them), but the past 2 months we've been doing large group for the 4 year olds, and I've even been doing some acting and storytelling for them, too. I love watching the little kids learn and sing and dance with us! My favorite moment was a few weeks ago when we were teaching them about the 6th day of creation. When asked what God made on the 6th day they all screamed "AMINALS!!!" How is it possible for that many kids (about 100?) to pronounce a word wrong? It was so cute!

MUSIC
Josh has been able to play consistent gigs throughout the year, and his name is more and more well known. He has his own little fan base everywhere he goes. People respect him as an Atlanta musician and love to hear him play. It has also provided supplemental income when we really needed it most.

MARRIAGE
Josh has always been an amazing husband, but he has done SO MUCH for me this year. I can't even put into words how awesome he is. I really can't. He does everything for me. I'm crying as I write this because I can't even fathom why God would bless me with such an amazing husband. Tonight he is driving our boss' dad around for extra $$ (backstory: our boss' dad is crazy rich and needed a DD tonight). We left NC early from Thanksgiving and he drove 3 hours on little sleep in order to make this extra cash (that we need in order to pay for the move next week).

GOD
Everything I've written above is thanks to God. He is so amazing and even though I've not been as faithful with our quiet times together this year, He has still provided MANY miracles. Again, I can't even describe it with words.

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We signed a lease for our apartment on Wednesday. This is the floorplan that we're getting. Let's do a little comparison between our current apartment and our new one:

Current: 1 bedroom/1 bath; 791 sf $865/month
New: 2 bedroom/2 full bath; 1218 sf $509/month

Yes, you read that right. I'm so excited!! Friday is move-in date! Here's the new floorplan:
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And one final thing: My new position at work is AMAZING. I was totally made for this job. And it's not just me-- my boss and everyone keep saying that I'm perfect for it. It's so awesome!