Serving God is beautiful...

Ok, so I have had this melody stuck in my head and my heart all morning and I just had to share:
"Serving God is beautiful, serving the King of Kings.
 I serve Him because I love Him you see,
serving God is beautiful to me!
(Copyright, Nelon Music Co. 1986)

If only this could stay in everyones spirit! No matter what today brings, I have determined that serving God is just so beautiful! I am sooooo thankful that even when times are hard AND when times are great, I always have such a beautiful life because of the Lord. Just smile to yourself and say "serving God is so beautiful", trust me, tears of joy most likely will come to your eyes and will make everything worth it all =)

Romans 12:11
"Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;"

Crafty ladies!

Once a month (during non-peak times of the semesters) at ASU me and my coworkers have a "craft lunch". We choose a different craft to do each time and sit down, eat lunch, and visit while we work on our craft. Yesterday we made one of the cutest decorative items! All it takes is a little bit of time to make (about 30 min) if you already have everything prepped. My husband has a machine at the shop he works at that cut out all of the stars for us with wood but you can use paper too. Here is the link with instructions if you're interested: http://www.brownpaper--packages.com/2010/08/flag-blocks.html

Such a fun summer craft!

Josiah's infatuation...

Lately after every church service Josiah loves to find Elder Muth and grab his cane. It is so cute and I just had to share a pic I snapped =)

Memorial day weekend...

I've been meaning to add this post and just haven't had a chance to until now.

My parents came to visit a couple of weeks ago and it was so much fun! Of course after they leave Rachel wanders around the house telling us that she needs to "go over the mountains to papa and nana's house"...that's how she explains Texas, it's over the mountains. So this time the day that they left Rachel was in tears and we decided it would be good to get her mind off of it. We went to the Zoo on Monday (Memorial Day) and had lots of fun! We brought a picnic lunch and just enjoyed the day. Rachel made "friends" with one of the goats at the petting zoo area and kept asking to take it home. I was happy to inform her that our HOA does not permit goats, lol. Josiah just took it all in and loved it too =)

When my parents got here on Friday we drove down to Tempe and had dinner at Ruby Tuesdays (love that place!) before driving to the park and ride near there to hop on the lightrail and head downtown Phoenix...our destination was Yogurtini, and just for Rachel to ride the lightrail. We love people watching so we enjoyed the fact that it was late Friday night AND comicon was in town, trust me the "people watching" was very interesting. After yogurt, we headed back to the lightrail station and were just in time to see fireworks happening at the Dbacks game. It was a wonderful evening!

Saturday we went to Encanto park and enjoyed the paddle boats. Poor Papa had Rachel with him and his legs I'm sure were sore after doing all of the paddling! It was fun none-the-less =)

Sunday was a fun day too, I got to hear my daddy preach Sunday night, which is always a treat =)

Hope that you all are enjoying your Summer too!

Yay!!!

Hope that everyone is gearing up for a fun Memorial day weekend! My parents are coming into town and I am sooooo excited. I haven't been with them since Christmas-time and so it is going to be a real treat to have them here. Rachel can't stop talking about it and has been asking "when will papa and nana get here?!" It is so cute how excited she gets when they get here...she does a little dance around the house and everything...but it breaks my heart to see how she cries when they leave :( Josiah doesn't understand yet just how much fun he's about to have...papa and nana LOVE to play! Their support of imaginatory play is very extensive and has hardly any limits...only thing is when playing cops and robbers, nobody can actually be the "robber", it is a imaginatory person. My fathers brother is in prison for life and was always the "robber" when they played as children, so their reasoning I can understand :)
I was just looking at pictures the other day and found that Rachel and Josiah look so much alike! Below are pics of them both around the same age, of course Josiah has more hair than Rachel did!

Sparky?

As many of you know I have worked for Arizona State University for 4 1/2 years now. In all of my years working as ASU I have never taken a picture with Sparky! This is mostly because I do not go to any of the sporting events, or homecoming stuff and so have just never had a chance to meet the actual Sun Devil. Now, everything has changed...I have been on a staff development committee for the past 3 years and every year we plan a staff retreat day full of motivational speakers and fun activities. We have held it at the Desert Botanical Gardens every year and it always turns out to be so much fun, informative, and relaxing (no so much relaxing for us committee members of course, lol). This year I became very involved in the planning since we had several members leave the college/university...so, we were able to arrange for "sparky" to come to our event. Now, what many of you may not know is that it is a HUGE secret as to who Sparky actually is at an event. When "Sparky" arrived, he (yes, it was a "he" this time) was not able to actually say who he was, it was all in coding and then we realized and ushered him to the changing room...which had to be a very private location so that nobody would know what was going on. This to me was so interesting and I loved the fact that I actually knew who was in the Sparky costume! He came out and did desk excercises with us all and was just a wonderful addition to our retreat...so much so, that I wanted to take a picture with him along with another coworker...she didn't know who was in the costume though...neener, neener! Anyhow, below are some team building photos from the event, so fun!

Photo's...

Ok, so I got busy and totally forgot to post pics from our Easter photo session. Ashley did a awesome job! Thank you so much for capturing such natural and fun pics and just for being a fantastic photographer!

I really like the effect that the early morning light had on the pictures...and how calm the kids stayed.

God is good, all of the time!