It's that time again...finals!

Oh, thank heavens...I only have to take finals ONE MORE SEMESTER...ever! I am so thankful for that. I have been so incredibly busy lately - I had a final on Monday night, a final today, and two this coming Monday. I will be glad when they are finished. My 50 book evaluations, original book, and thematic unit were also all due in the past two weeks, so I've been crazy trying to get all that stuff finished...thank God I didn't procrastinate and put those things off to the last minute...I don't think I ever could've finished them all on time! In other school related news...I made a 100 on my Unit!! This is fantastic news because making a 100 on the Unit for Curriculum is pretty unheard of. I worked my tail off getting that thing perfect and I'm so glad I did. Now if I just was able to do well on the final today, I could scrape by with an A! But I'll settle for a B if the final didn't go too well (which I'm not thinking it did...which is okay with me).

God has been stretching me to trust Him so much lately. I think I have trust issues and I'm not really sure where those came from. I really don't think I have a reason to be leery of trusting people and God, but for some reason I really am...He keeps showing me that the only way to do things is with Him in the lead and SO many times I try to rush in front of him and do things myself...and then I end up in tears crying out to Him to get me out of the mess I've made, and he always does. So why do I find it so hard to trust Him? Money is tight right now, which is difficult no matter what time of the year it is, but especially when it's Christmas time. God and I had a little heart-to-heart the other night and even though I know logically that I shouldn't, my heart won't stop feeling failure for continually running to Him about the same things. I feel like He must be tired of me not learning from mistakes and repeating them...gosh, I know I'm tired of it!

Our COM group went down to feed the homeless again on Tuesday night and I kept thinking that I feel like Greg and I don't have money, but in the grand scheme of things we are kings compared to them. We are so lucky...we have a home (even if it isn't where I want to be, it sure is better than the shelter on Trinity), we have enough money to buy groceries, we have money for electricity, running water, we have two awesome cars, and we even some left over every month to do some fun stuff like rent movies or go out to eat. I just need to keep some perspective the next time I'm feeling crummy because I haven't been able to go shopping for myself in awhile.

Photography is going so well! I had my last wedding last Saturday and it was really fun. I feel like I'm understanding things a little bit better and am starting to get a little more creative with my shots. Allen even posted one of my pictures on his blog - http://doberenz.blogspot.com - it's like the second post down. It made me smile! Working in his office is going really well too, although I miss my kids like crazy! I never thought I would feel that way because I hated my managers at the daycare so much...but I really do miss seeing babies every day. I think that's how I know that I'm meant to teach. Yes, photography is fun and I really love it and would love to pursue it as a hobby in the future that I could even make some money on the side with...but my heart is really into teaching. I love being in the classroom and I love seeing kids learn and discover new things. That is what God created me to do and I know I could never be happy not spending my weekdays teaching children in some form or fashion.

I hope your holiday season is so blessed...I miss you guys so much. Dustin, I hope you are feeling loved and prayed for wherever you are because you are! We really miss seeing you and hearing your hilarious stories all the time - I think Greg misses you a ton! It will be so nice to have you back in Austin to hang out with from time to time. And Hannah, I miss you like crazy, beautiful cousin! Gosh, holidays just aren't ever the same without all you Brown girls running around Grandma's house. I'm so glad you're finished with everything though - what a blessing! We will have a phone date soon :) I love you so much!

I'll post pictures of all our Christmas decorations soon. It's really neat having a real tree for once...it smells so good! And our Willowtree Nativity Scene (a wedding present from grandma and grandad) is AWESOME...so gorgeous :) I'll try to take pictures to put up next time I'm on here.

I love you guys and I miss you more than words can say!

Manual is a scary world!

I feel bad not blogging since Sunday...not for all you faithful readers (and friends/family!) but because I miss it! To catch you up since Sunday...

Monday: I took two hard tests and I'm pleased to announce that I think I did wonderfully on both of them! I also worked the book fair at UMHB and got two free books out of (and somehow came home with 7 books and 1 awesome cookbook)...That definitely fulfilled my "kid" side. I justified the picture books I bought by saying that I'd use them whenever we have kids. Which is like 5 years from now...but I will!!
Tuesday: Wonderful, wonderful COM group. I love my group. LOVE LOVE LOVE them. We talked about how we can be praying that God will be BIG in our lives and the lives of those around us...Be BIG God!
Wednesday: -drumroll please- I met with Allen and I'm going to start practicing to be a second shooter at his weddings! I'm so incredibly excited. So I rushed over to Barnes and Noble and bought a really neat book - Understanding Exposure. It's definitely made me understand manual on my camera...although it's still scary, it's less "What did I get myself into?" scary and more like, "Wow, this is a lot to learn but it's really cool" scary. I took a few pictures before reading where my exposure was pretty off.

This one is pretty good focus...a little dark though.

A little soft on Riley (she wiggles too much!) and it seems a tad overexposed to me.

VERY underexposed.

Thursday: Grey's came back on! I was very excited about that. And even more exciting - Greg came back home!! YAY!
Today: I sat down for about 4 hours this afternoon and really started to understand my [dad's] camera. I took lots of pictures (most of them are pretty boring because they're exercises in my book), but I got some really cute (and technically pretty good) pictures. Understanding manual is more of a "Hey, I think I can actually do this," thing for me now...and I'm really excited that my pictures look SO much better technically than they did in Auto.

Riley is one of my favorite subjects...I figure that if I can get her in focus, then I can get anything in focus because she's so wiggly!

And one more cute one of Riley.

Tomorrow is running. And my alarm is going off this time, gosh darn it! (I should be asleep right now though).

One last thing before I go. Dustin proposed a question - what do I think will abide in my pursuit for contentment. I thought about that for a long time tonight...and I still haven't really come up with a concrete answer. I think that taking my thoughts captive, like he mentioned, is a good idea, but in actuality it's so much easier said than done. I've been struggling for a long, long time with body image and I try so hard to take my thoughts captive. But sometimes I get discouraged and I forget about taking my thoughts captive and it spirals downward to me feeling absolutely awful about myself for a few days. Greg encourages me so much to be aware of what I'm thinking and I really, really fight and struggle with that.

I think one thing that might help me is listing (either mentally, on here, or in my actual journal) all the things that I'm thankful for or that happened in the previous 24 hours that were exciting and fun. Sometimes I get so caught up in the future that I forget how much fun I'm having in the present! What am I thankful for today?

- Health insurance.
- A wedding gift card to Target that we forgot about (and the hand-mixer, food processor, and board game that we got with it!)
- A wonderful dad who lets me borrow his camera whenever I want.
- Friday's off from work.
- A husband who lets me pick where we eat (Chick-fil-A!)
- A clean apartment.
- A king-size bed.
- My new non-gas guzzling car that is very pretty.
- Blessings from God.

I think that really will help me live in the present more :)

I need to go get in bed now so I can be bright-eyed (sort-of) and bushy-tailed in the morning...whoever thought up that saying? It's kind of silly and it makes me laugh.

I pray that God blesses you abundantly today!

In Awe :)

I'm so sorry I've been slacking lately on posting. There has been SO much going on and God is simply amazing :)

And of course, I really don't have time to write tonight either because Greg is going out of town on Sunday for four whole nights, so once I get my homework done we're going to actually sit down and talk without the TV on...what a novel concept!

I would appreciate prayer...lots of it! I have a possible opportunity to work with/for the guy who photographed our wedding. I really, really need direction because I know that this is what I want...but I don't know for sure that this is what God wants yet. It would be so great to learn photography from him...and it would mean I could possibly do photography as a business/job later in life (meaning I wouldn't have to be a complete stay at home mom...I could have some form of income coming in!)...but it also means Saturday's away from home. And we're newlyweds. And well...those our our days together. They are our days to be lazy, to sleep in, to clean, to watch movies, and of course to watch Grey's Anatomy on DVD (because I force my poor husband to do this with me ;)) But at the same time it is something that I wasn't looking for in the least, and Allen is like this amazing photographer. He could teach me so much. So yes...please, please pray for me :)

And just a humongous praise to God. We have found a church, and in the two and a half weeks that we have been going there I feel more connected than I did in eleven years at The Fellowship. That is huge for me...I feel like I'm finally on my way to having a community of believers surround me in friendship and love. We went to a COM group on Tuesday night and we just fit so well. God is good.

That's all for tonight.

In Christ,