L2YL

At Central, we have an amazing video team that is incredibly creative and very talented!  If you haven't seen any of our videos, you gotta check them out . . . just check out Justin's Youtube page.  

Anyways, we are in a relationship series . . . which always lead to some making fun of either guys or girl stereotypes.  The video this weekend, titled "Listen to your Lady" is gonna rock the house.  I don't want to give too much away because I have a feeling these three guys below me are going to be some memorable characters this weekend!!

I'm a painting man!

So if you have been over to my house at all in Vegas you know that we have some very tall ceilings! I don't know exactly how tall, but we have a 20' ladder that doesn't get all the way to the roof . . . so they are TALL. Anyways, when we first moved in we painted like crazy for about a week and then never finished! There was a corner up on the tall wall that I never finished painting. Mind you, this was all a year and a half ago :) But this last week I was painting our loft for the baby room and just got a surge of motivation to bring back out the 20' ladder and FINISH!!!

I wish I had a camera to take pictures of the finished product, but it is still in repair at Best Buy (worst warranty ever!) It's been sent back 4 times with the same problem!!

That is besides the point . . . I feel fulfilled this week . . . I'm a painting man.

What projects have you been putting off for a long time that you need to FINISH?!?!

New Budget

Well, Karyss and I have been on a new budget for the past two months now and it's going great!  We started going through Dave Ramsey's 7 baby steps and it is really challenging us.  One of my best friends got us started on this process and we have been going through the Financial Peace University class at Central.  I'm telling you right now . . . IT IS HARD!!  But we are finding that it is so worth it!!  I really believe that God has brought this plan into our life to give us some discipline and perspective.  We were never living outside of our means, but we are now able to feel that we are being the best stewards of God's money that we can be as a family.  I strongly recommend going through FPU no matter where you are at in life and with your finances!!

I love to register!

So one of the best parts of getting married was registering at some of our favorite stores.  For those of you who have not experienced this yet, this is how it goes:

step 1: tell an employee you want to register at their store

step 2: they say OK

step 3: They give you a scanner (looks a lot like a laser gun or something)

step 4: You shoot every item that looks even close to cool with your scanner

step 5: Receive gifts that are awesome

It doesn't really get any better!  I registered for a big screen tv, an xbox 360, an ipod . . . i didn't get any of them, but it was still fun to register :)

Now . . . this being my prior experience with registering for gifts, I got really excited when Karyss reminded me that we needed to make a baby registry.  Naturally, I thought this would be just as fun and I would probably want to have a lot of babies, just so i could register over and over again.

However, I can promise you that trying to pick the right design and weight limitations for a car seat, crip, pack n play (i had no idea what that was before yesterday), and sink bath (seriously??) is not nearly as fun as registering for a big screen tv.  We were at the store for about an hour and I was about to explode.  There is NOTHING cool in a baby store . . . at least not for the dad!

But alas, I have a lot to learn.  I have a feeling that is what life is going to be like in just a few short months . . . pray for me :)

5 year plan?

I was hanging out with some great friends last night in the spa just talking about all sorts of things going on in our lives, and one of them asked me what my 5 year plan was . . . or where i wanted to be in 5 years.  I was shocked that I really didn't have a good answer.

I came up with something to say that was true, but it was so vague.  I feel like right now I don't have the "luxury" of a 5 year plan when Karyss and I have to take it one day at a time.  But I found myself challenged by this question and challenged to really evaluate the goal setting in my life.

I've always been a more rational, in the moment, short term thinker.  It works to my advantage in getting things done in the short term, but I also know that is something that will hold me back from ever reaching my dreams.  Is this justified?  Am I just making excuses?  I don't really know the answers to those questions . . .

Elevation part tre

Ok, so Annalise got upset at me for not posting more pictures of Elevation, our high school winter retreat that happened in November. It's actually quite funny because she is the one who took all these pictures and I got them off of her camera . . . but alas . . . here they are.

We were at UCYC in Prescott, AZ for three days. It was an awesome weekend for our students as we talked about what it meant to be a real man/woman of God. Some really powerful messages from our speakers and some incredible worship moments where our students were able to meet God in a real way.

2009

Again, I apologize for the gap in the updates . . . I guess you'll just have to get used to it :)

Karyss and I have decided that our New Years Resolution every year is going to be a prayer. We did this two years ago and our prayer for 2007 was to be generous. In 2008 we somehow forgot to make the resolution . . . quite an interesting year for us anyways :) But now, in 2009, we have decided to once again make our resolution.

This year, our prayer is simple: GROWTH

In all aspects of our life, we are praying that we would grow. 2009 promises to be a year full of new experiences for us as individuals as well as a pair (and soon to be trio) of a family!!

- - -Just a quick update that everything is going really well with the pregnancy. We have decided to name our baby boy on the way Oliver Alexander Bollen. We'll call him Ollie!!