Wedding season

As promised, more wedding pictures today.  These girls are so sweet and were such a blessing to me a couple years ago when we had a Bible study together.  It is always so fun to catch up with them and see where the Lord is directing them. 

I attended a shower for Mariel a couple weeks ago, and it was so fun to be able to attend her wedding.  She is one of the most creative girls I know and since she was involved with Cru at her college, we have many similarities :)

All of us minus Mar- she was dancing with her dad at this point :)

Quick picture with the bride!

Saying their vows!

You may now kiss the bride!!

How adorable are her centerpieces?! Loved them.

Sweet girls.

Time for couple shots- Zach and Caroline!

Stacy and Andrew!

Daniel and I :)

Priority for Today

Today I am meditating on this: 

"Look at the fruit in your own life and let it be a gauge for your own connectedness.  Do you listen to the Spirit as you stand in line at the grocery store?  Do I allow the Spirit to lead when creating a budget?  Where do I tend to do my own thing?"

I sadly have a feeling I could have a reeeallly long list for that last question.

(Forgotten God, Francis Chan)

Weekend Updates

"Travel is important because it gets us away from our everyday lives to see it with new clarity."

Shauna Niequist

No, we didn't travel anywhere far away this weekend, but we had an opportunity to see our lives with new clarity- and I would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone.  

This weekend we had our modular class lasting all night Friday and all day Saturday and also had a beautiful wedding to attend (pictures below and more to come!).  While the wedding was fun and class was interesting, what was really great is the 7 hours that we had to spend in prayer as a final for our summer class. 

I know, most people can't imagine spending 7 hours praying, sitting, and reading your Bible, and at first, let me tell you, it was a little hard.  I was tempted to think there were more important things I could be doing as I saw people running and cars passing by- knowing they were probably checking things off their to do list for the day and I was .. well... sitting.  But, that was far from the truth. 

The more I sat there the more I realized that I don't take enough time to stop and think about my life.  To really pray and ask God for direction.  To check in with God- to evaluate my heart and the direction Dan and I were headed.  Questions like "In what ways does our marriage need to grow?  Where has God taken us these past couple months? etc."  were all running through my mind, and God showed me a lot.  And it left me begging the question why I don't do this more often.  Moments like these are so few in my life yet MUCH needed.  It definitely gave Dan and I a lot to talk about.  

So, that was my weekend.  A great start to the week.  Here are some pictures from my phone of all our events! 

Mariel and Paul getting married

Mariel designed these :)  She's super creative.

Passing time before the reception

We were lucky and our GPS directed us to the Starbucks inside a grocery store.  I hate it when that happens lol

I took some pictures during our 7 hour prayer :)

And we used our two free Starbucks coupons.  It is such a treat to get a VENTI for free!

Pinstripes

 Our good friend Cam is heading to Spain to do his student teaching for a semester!  We're super excited for him and celebrated by taking a trip to Pinstripes last night.  While Becca, Rachael, and I watched, the guys had a pretty intense Bocce ball game going.  We're going to miss Cam, but can't wait to hear about everything when he gets back in December!

The lighting was not the best for taking pictures... so just pretend that these are all a lot lighter.

They had a bonfire going!  It smelled like the fall :)

Bocce ball is beginning..

We got quite the deal!

Tony was a wonderful hand model for me while I tried to get this shot in better lighting haha

The girls :)

We're off to another weekend of classes and weddings!! Hope you have a good one :)

Forgotten God

This fall in my women's Bible study we are going to go through Acts.  I'm seriously SO excited.  I love Acts- there is so much good stuff in that book.  It's going to be awesome.

In preparation for leading a Bible study, Lina, recommended we read Forgotten God by Francis Chan, and I just finished it.  There are a couple things I really liked about this book:

1. He encourages you to reexamine your past thoughts toward the "Holy Spirit."  We've all had many different encounters with the Holy Spirit.  I probably came from a church that was like "Oh yeah... the  Holy Spirit.  We should probably talk about that more."  Whereas others have come from a pretty charasmatic background.  Either way, he encourages you to start out reading the book with an open mind, even being open to the possibility that your view of the Holy Spirit could be wrong.
2. It's biblical.  He doesn't bring up anything new from the Bible that I hadn't heard, but he does use the Bible to talk about the Spirit.  The Spirit is a "He," not an "it."  Chan doesn't just talk about feelings, he talks about truth.
3.  It was super easy to read.  In the world that Dan and I are in right now, it is SO refreshing to read a simple, straight to the point book.
4. He's inspiring.  Chan stirred up passion in me to imagine how my life could be so different if I listened to the Holy Spirit more and let Him work in my life.  Here's a couple good passages I liked:

"I want to consistently live with an awareness of His strength.  I want to be different today from what I was yesterday as the fruit of the Spirit becomes more manifest in my life."

"No matter what your personality, it is a spiritual discipline to be still, to listen, and to cut out the distraction of our world.  When we practice this stillness, this waiting and being, it is then that we can experience deep intimacy and relationship with the Holy Spirit."

"The reality is that I am indwelt by the Holy Spirit and because of this reality, stress and tiredness and impatience don't have to define my day."

I put up another one here.

Now tell me if after reading that you don't want to go and pick up this book? 

The last of the wedding photos

Seriously, our internet is SO stinkin' slow right now.  I have no idea how long it is going to take me to actually put all 100 or so pictures I took on facebook. 

Anyways, enough of me ranting about our internet.  Here are the last couple pictures I wanted to share.  We had an awesome weekend needless to say.  I'm super jealous they're in Cabo right now!

Dancing, feeling SUPER sweaty about now lol

Danae took a thousand pictures of Dan and I! lol here are a couple

I thought this one was crazy so I put it up lol

First dance!

Cutting the cake!

Quick paparazzi shot

Holly's dad had a father-daughter dance with all four of his daughters!  SO sweet.

Me and my dad :) Did I say yet that it was so hot?  Because it was.  And this picture proves that lol

More weekend photos

So, if our Internet was moving faster than.. well faster at all, I would upload more pictures, but it has taken me almost an hour to upload these pictures.  So, I decided to call it a night and I'll upload more tomorrow.  There too many to choose from anyway.

The weekend started out with a rehearsal and then dinner at Bruno's.  Dan and I unfortunately were late, not only because we thought it started at 6:00 and not 5:30 (oops!) but because it took us 45 minutes to go 2 miles to get to the highway.  Thank you Mr. Semi for blocking all 4 lanes on Willow Rd.  Not a great start to our drive :/ 

But, we made it safely and spent the night catching up with family and Jon's friends from high school.  Saturday came too early as we (the girls) spent all day getting ready and hanging out.. and then the big moment came.  I almost lost it when I saw my baby brother standing up there waiting for all the bridesmaids (and obviously Holly), but I told myself to pull it together because I was not going to be that girl sobbing walking down the aisle.

It unfortunately started to rain halfway through the ceremony, but Holly just looked out at everyone and laughed as family and friends pulled out umbrellas.  They were seriously the most calm couple I've ever seen on their wedding day- everyone else was panicking and they were just laughing.  

Then, we danced.  It was hot and we were sweating a TON, but it was so fun!  Not too bad for a wedding where they had to cancel their reception plans a week earlier. 

So, here begins the long journey of photos.  Get excited. 

Jamie and Steve got married last month- he's pretty excited, right? lol

One day till they are married!

Getting ready!

The dress is on!

SO pretty!

Such a cute idea- inside were fun facts about Jon and Holly

Where the ceremony was

I'm pretty sure Dan was yelling at this point "Holly- there's still time to back out!"  Nice Dan lol

Doug's big moment- the speech.  He rocked it out. And so did Krista!

more to come tomorrow....

My brother's wedding

We had suuuch a great weekend!  Still in recovery mode- as we always are when we are traveling the whole weekend, but I managed to upload some pictures of the weekend from my phone last night, so I'll share those today.

It's hard to put into words how it was.  It was beautiful, emotional, crazy, hectic, and so incredibly fun.  And Holly was stunning.  Seriously, so gorgeous.

Here's some fun moments I was able to capture with my phone :)

The rehearsal was at Bruno's restaurant in West Lafayette.  Believe it or not, this is a chocolate peanut butter dessert pizza. I know.  Sounds great, right?

Another dessert pizza made with apple butter.

Checking out the bride's dress! 

Getting ready!! 

SO pretty!

Taking pictures with the bridesmaids!

Picture with the ring bearer and flower girl!

Reading her note from Jon :)

First dance

There was a lot of dancing!

Dan looking like James Bond. Stud. Doing really important things right now (aka I can't remember who he was talking to) 

Holly's an Aunt! This is Krista's baby Max, soooo cute!

Jon's getting ready for the next step :)

Could they be any cuter? Loved spending time with Danae and Dan.  And I LOVE her glasses!