Purple and Gold!!! :-)

I love being a panther!!! :-) What a great game, and Michigan State here we come!! :-)

The bathroom is officially done!! Here is a finished product!



Today was my first day back to the "real world" as my dad calls it, in 10 days!!! I didn't really know quite what to do with myself, but the day went fast and my students keep me on my toes. :-) I came home to LOML making some of the most amazing ham I have ever had! He started to marinate it last night and cooked it slowly. It was so moist! :-) We had a great time working in the garden today cleaning up the large flower bed on the left side of the house. It makes me so happy and I get so excited for the summer when I get to be outside on a beautiful day with my family! :-)

LOML started a fire with all of the sticks in the yard!


Kirbster struggles to give eye contact to the camera and this was the best picture he let me take in between all of his running.



Flowers from some of the beds!




Hope everyone has a great week and the weather stays nice! :-)

Chalet Blue

(Tune: What a Wonderful World by: Louis Armstrong)

I see chalet blue and rays of light
Paint in my hair and paint everywhere
And I think to myself, could there possibly be....

Another coat to finish tomorrow???? :-)

Here is a before picture:




In the progress and taping:





While my LOML was at work today, I took the Kirbster for a hour walk around town got the lawn chairs out and planted flowers in the pots on the deck, washed some windows! It 60 degrees out today! How wonderful! :-) We even have some budding going on in our gardens! :-)

Check it out!





This is the Kirbster/ loving the weather! He laid on the deck all day in the sun just realxing and playing with his football from LOML and his tennis ball he enjoys running all over the yard, especially after those squirrels. He's such a handsome boy! He does such a good job on walks too, while he gets every single dog in town barking just by having us walk by. Kirbster just simply keeps walking and ignores them.



After the 16 games played today for MARCH MADNESS, which were some upsets I feel pretty good about LOML and myself's brackets. I guessed 9/16 games=56% and I guessed 100% for 2 midwest games played today. LOML is one game up on me 10/16= 63% and LOML guessed all of the games in the East bracket with 100% accuracy! :-) There are my objective writing skills coming into play. :-)

How is everyone else doing on their bracket? Today I made some amazing chex mix recipe I have been munching on all day that I got from a friend! It's quite delicious!

1 C. Brown sugar
1/4 C Light corn Syrup
1 stick of butter :-)

Microwave in bowl for 2 minutes and stir with wire wisk

ADD:

I box of Crispix
2 C. peanuts
2 C. Pretzels
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda

Mix; put the lid on the tupperware container and shake and swirl

place in microwave 30 sec., take out and mix repeat X2
Place in Microwave 15 sec, take out and mix repeat x2

lay out on cookie sheet to break up the chunks and let dry!!

ENJOY!!! :-)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Hope everyone had a wonderful day of the IRISH!!! :-) Alright, so we are wanting to paint the living room or the bathroom. We went to Lowe's the other night to pick out paint and are trying to figure out what colors to do. I will post pictures tomorrow, while the LOML is at work I am going to paint.

We decided to fill out the March Madness bracket and have a little pool of quarters. My brother put in his blog that the less you know the better you do, well I don't have any clue about basketball. Tonight, we rented couples retreat and it's quite hysterical and funny.

Hope everyone had a great day and didn't get pinched:-) Goodnight friends:-)

Substantial Sunday! :)

No Sunday afternoon naps in the Benge household today. With daylight savings time, I feel a little mixed up on my sleep schedule but not too bad. We went to bed early last night after watching a movie from the red box. We rented Ice Castles, which I didn't realize was made in IA and I loved it! It's really a cute movie LOML (Love of my Life) started chanting, "Iowa, Iowa" at the end of the movie. :-) He is so proud of his state. :-)

Amen that God is calling us ordinary people to do extraordinary things. After a morning at church a quick stop at the dollar tree it was time for spring cleaning. I am getting ready for my first garage sale in our new house. If you know me very well, you know that I have a slight clothing problem!!! I love clothes, and today as I was sorting through my two jam-packed closets full I started to feel a little ashamed of myself. No human being needs that many clothes, but what is it in my brain. I DO!!! It is really hard to part with them, but some how I managed to scrape up 7 full bags full by myself, not including my husbands clothes. I also some how managed to end up with like 5 straighteners!!!! Who needs 5 straighteners??? I'm ashamed of myself! Does this happen to anyone else! LOML vaccumed, worked outside, and did some laundry as I tried on clothing I didn't know I had! If anyone wants any of my clothes please let me know! :-)

We also went to town today to take back cans, cans, and more cans. Thirteen dollars worth!!! Once we got home LOML made me dinner. He made smoke cured ham and put a glaze on it with brown sugar and it was delicious! :-) Kirbster also got a new toy today that he loves! It's a camo tennis ball on a camo rope. He took it right off of the counter as soon as he saw it! :-) It was hysterical, because he then tried to hide it from me like I wouldn't figure it out!! ;-)

Don't get me wrong I love my job, but I love Sunday nights that I know I can sleep in the next morning, and not get a case of the Mondays. :-) Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Farewell my friends! I'm in the middle of chapter 3 of my book and she is talking about how all of us, no matter who you are are in a pit at one time in our lives or another. I'm reading about the 3 ways to get into a pit. 1. Thrown in a pit (when we don't realize we are going in until we hit rock bottom), such as Joseph and his coat of many colors in Genesis :23-25. 2. Slip into a pit ( the pit we put ourselves into), check out 2 Corinthians 4:8-9.... I'm still in the middle of this chapter, but there is one more pit.... the kind that we really don't want to be in. The third pit we are thrown into and we put ourselves in a pit knowingly.

As they would say in Japan!

Sayonara :-)

Our first 84 days of Marital Bliss!

Let's play quick catch up, and I will post a couple pictures of what has been going on in our lives. We have been growing, and learning more and more about each other every day.

Our wedding day! :-)



The following Monday we flew to Cancun for our Honeymoon, and we are so blessed to have had this wonderful and beautiful opportunity! We really enjoyed ourselves! :-)

This was a picture from our snorkeling adventure day!
This day we took 4-wheelers & a speed boat on the ocean! What a blast!
Mexican Dinner :-)
One of the pools at our resort!
The 1st of many towel creations left for the honeymooners!

We also celebrated my husband's 25th birthday, Which is only one day apart from my mom's so we all went out for dinner and a fun restaurant!

Alright, so since this is my first post maybe I can get a little feedback each time I post a picture it goes to the top even though my curser is where I want it to be.

Being a teacher has it's perks, such as always getting spring break! I had today off we well as the whole next week. I have the opportunity to relax, while my wonderful husband is working very hard and going to school. On the top of my list of things to do is getting this years taxes done! With all of the snow melting Nolan and I were talking tonight after he got off work about our dreams of getting outside to spend time outside in our beautiful yard with bonfires, gardening, and painting the living room. I also began reading Beth Moore's book last night called, "Get out of that pit" and I'm hooked. :-)

That's all for now! :-) Have a great night! :-)