Did He plan this?

I'm writing this with a heavy heart, with a heart that still feels broken and still picking up the pieces each day.
I want to share with you how God has picked up my life and changed it in a way that I could not have ever imagined. In a way that I can't believe I am deserving of, and I am humbled and feeling open and raw, to the glory of God.

On Tuesday, April 17th I got a phone call from my good friend Michelle, letting me know that I needed to pray for our friends Matt and Tammy and their baby girl Emma Joy. Emma had been having seizures off and on that day and she had taken a turn for the worse.
The Doctors had told Matt and Tammy a while back that they thought Emma had cerebral palsy, the last few weeks before this, they were questioning if this was the issue.
Over the next 48 hours the Grubbs came to find out the Emma was blind and the issues she was having coincided with Lysosoml Storage disease. A disease that they are yet to find a cure for.
That Thursday night I went to the hospital with Matt and Tammy, sitting in a quiet room, it wasn't hard to feel the pressure of unanswered questions and fear of what was to come. I choose the word fear here, not because we weren't clinging to God, but because we were overcome with the unknown!
Over the next few days that fear for myself and I believe I could speak on behalf of Tammy to say, that fear was mostly subsided with heart gripping trust and tearful dependence of God.
They spent a few more long days in the hospital being monitored and loving on their baby girl.
On Friday the 27th the Grubbs asked that a few close friends and family come over and help plan out the remaining time that Emma had with us. You could see the pain and questions on each and every persons face in the livingroom that night. But praise God for His faith and encouragement, because I got to see my dear friends cling to the God they trust while answering questions and encouraging other not to be scared. Tammy said something that night that I don't believe will ever leave my mind, because to me, to me it was God opening my eyes to Job 2:10. Tammy was able to tell her family and people she loves the most, that this IS Gods plan, they are heartbroken, but they trust. She told us that her baby girl would be brought up to heaven and made into an angel at the foot of Christ. What would they have to be fearful about?! She told us that her flesh and pride says God why and leave her with us, but Tammy knows her good God and she trusts!
As I started making phone calls and finding out details on how to plan a funeral, it became unsettling to me, to plan a funeral of a baby girl, that sits beside me. I started to question if it was time for that already? As I sat and told my small group about this feeling and where I was with it, it came to me that this was something that Tammy and Matt wanted done, so that when this time came, they would not have to plan everything, and mourn the loss of their baby girl at the same time. It hit me that this was God calling me to do the harder thing, to set up and be Christ to them. WOW! GOD CHOSE ME! This wasn't what I wanted, this wasn't something I saw myself doing or took pride in. I did it because this was God plan for me to be apart of! Praise Him!
On Sunday the 29th I sat next to Matt and Tammy in church while Brad preached on Real Worship, and kneeling and bowing down to God. What a sweet memory this is to me to watch them sit with their baby girl and bowing down at the foot of the cross. They were broken with all the unknowns.

Over the next few days Emma was back in the hospitals with more seizures, and had not been eating. When I got to the hospital that night Tammy told me that after 30 seizures she stopped counting, I don't tell you this for a shock factor, although it was shocking, I tell you this to speak of Tammy's faith. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. (Psalm 16:8)

Over the next few days, people were in and out of the hospital with prayers and encouragement, it was a great thing to be able to see our Church body at work. I would go to the hospital anytime Tammy wanted, but my favorite time was at night, after the people had gone and the Doctors had done test. I felt that I could sit with Matt and Tammy and cry and laugh and see a side of them that was so powerful to me. To watch their relationship at such a raw moment in their lives, was a treasure I am so grateful for. Only by Gods grace.

Friday afternoon May11th I sat in the hospital room with the Grubbs, sweet Emma Joy, Tammy's parents and Matt's brother and sister in law. It was a quiet afternoon, and as each day was so sombersom, this day started off different. Tammy said they were able to give Emma a bath and she was doing well that both her and Matt were able to go down and get breakfast together outside. It really was a beautiful sunshine day.
a few minutes past 8:00pm Emma Joy, by Gods grace, went to be with my God that I praise. My God that I honor and love. My God that I server and trust. She went to be with my God! I have no words to tell you how I feel about being in Emma's story the last few hours she was with us here on the earth. I do have great words of power knowing I'll see her again!
There were so many moments that day where I can clearly say, God works in big ways, God saw the pain and the hurt, He moved and comforted. Those moments are precious to me and I would be honored to share them with you one on one.

Over the next few days I began feeling off and wondering if I might have been pregnant. I have to be honest and say that my first thoughts were, that would be awesome, but I want to wait until after Emma's funeral and things settle down. Well knowing me, Monday morning I took a test and saw both lines, I was am soo excited about this little human I am growing.
After the funeral was over and normal fine wanted to get started again, I was faced with a unsettling emotions of sadness and joy. I woke up the next few days wondering if I should be overwhelmed by grief for the life that was taken so soon or overtaken by the joy of God's grace and the new life He has placed inside me. This at times seemed so burdensome I wasn't sure what to think. I feel as though I'm just sitting with a blank mind. As I shared this with friends, I came aware of something that I had been praying for over the last few months.
My prayer was that God would grow me in a new way this year, that I would become a stronger rooted, more aware and a deeper Christian, I wanted my life to be moved and pushed in a way it haded been moved before. Although I can promise this was not the way I would have come up with or would have asked for it. This is God's good plan. While I still wonder why I carry this baby right now, why this month. I know that God has not given me anything I cannot persevere through, and I will carry my banner of faith, even in the valley. I can say now, the valley will make you more than Christ, and who am I, for Him to choose me to be in this valley. What a great God Emma and I praise together on this day!

Psalm 18:16-19

¹⁶ He sent from above, He took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
¹⁷ He delivered me from my strong enemy,
From those who hated me,
For they were too strong for me.
¹⁸ They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
But the Lord was my support.
¹⁹ He also brought me out into a broad place;
He delivered me because He delighted in me.

Lord, I pray that your will be done in my life, God I honor and lift up your name on High, Lord would you show me how I am to take each step, and Lord would you lift up my broken hearted, dear dear friends Matt and Tammy, Lord would you show them your unconditional love. Lord thank you for giving me people to show me what it looks like to be humbled by the name of Christ!

May 11th 2012

Lemon chicken, made in a bubble...

Last night my parents came over for dinner, I decided to make my favorite meal. Its easy, it’s the only meal I’ve known how to make more than 3 months ago when I started to cook, and I knew I couldn’t mess it up…until I did.

WHY does that always happen to me?!  I’m still getting the rhythm down that no one is standing over my shoulder saying, maybe you should add this or try that, or, NO DON’T DO THAT, while I’m cooking. Not that it’s a bad thing, I miss it sometimes! (a lot of the time) It’s a weird kinda refreshing thing, that my poor husband hasn’t ever had any of the meals I’m making, so what does he care what it turns out like as long as its eatable! ;) Last night I said, well that was ok, not what it should have turned out like, any guesses what the loving man said back to me?! “Man I thought it was great, but I was hungry, feed me anytime I’m hungry and I’ll eat it!” Awesome. Thanks babe.

What you need: 4 boneless chicken breast, flour, salt, pepper, oil, butter, 1 med onion, chicken broth, lemon juice, thyme, parsley, egg noodles.

Combine flour, salt and pepper in bag, add chicken, reserve excess flour aside

In large skillet heat 1 tablespoon oil, add chicken and brown on low heat

Turn chicken and add 1 tablespoon oil, once chicken is brown on both sides, take off stove and set aside.

First mistake, I wanted to do more than 4 pieces of chicken, remember how I said to reserve excess flour?! Lame sauce, I didn't do that. Don't be like me.  

Chop 1 med onion while your chicken is browning.

Next mistake, don't be like your sister Kate, calm down and remember that just because chicken in frying and making noice doesn't mean its going to kill you or burn down the house. Let it fry so that its nice and crispy. I don't don't have a picture of this because I was too busy freaking out!  

After you take the chicken out and set it aside, add your 1 tablespoon of butter.

add in your onion and scrape off all the golden goodness off the bottom of the skillet! Cook onion until soft – 2-3 minutes. Then add in your excess flour and stir for about 1 minute (that i forgot about, I know, maybe I'm not the best cooking teacher) 

Pour in your cup of chicken broth, lemon and thyme stirring continuously

Next add your chicken back into the skillet, cover, and let cook for 10 minutes on low heat. Add remaining lemon and parsley and serve.

While that's all going on, find time to boil half bag of egg noodles.

I did this while my chicken was browning and I was freaking out about it, my water started to boil over, I set my oven mitt down to tend to my water and started to smell something burning, *sniff sniff* ohhhh! That would be my oven mitt trying to burn because I set it on my hot burner, but because the water was boiling over, it as wet and didn't catch on fire.

ugh...ok wow.

Welcome to cooking in the bubble. If you can manage to NOT do the stupid things I do, this will be a good meal. Promise!

Lemon Chicken

3 tablespoon flour

½ teaspoon salt

2/5 teaspoon pepper

4 chicken breasts

2 tablespoon oil

1 medium onion

1 tablespoon butter

1 cup chicken broth

3 tablespoon lemon juice

½ teaspoon thyme

2 tablespoon parsley

Combine flour, salt and pepper in bag, add chicken

Reserve excess flour aside

In large skillet heat 1 tablespoon oil, add chicken and brown on low heat

Turn chicken and add 1 tablespoon oil, once chicken is brown on both sides, take off stove and set aside.

Boil ½ bag of noodles

Chop onions

Add margarine to skillet

Cook onion until soft – 2-3 minutes

Stir in flour, about 1 minute

Add chicken broth

Add lemon and thyme stirring continuously

place chicken back in skillet

Cover skillet and cook about 10 minutes

Add remaining lemon and parsley



"This is legitimately wild"

This week was a loooooong week! Zach is a manager at Kerry Toyota in Florence and every Memorial Day weekend they have a tent sale out at NKU. He has to work the whole week from 9am until about 10pm.
So Monday we did a spontaneous date night and went to one of our favorite places to eat. Terry's!

Have you been here before?! Go! You.Must.Go! This guy says, “I’ve been to some crazy joints, brother. This is not schtick-crazy. This is legitimately wild.” Ha!
This place makes the best burger I've ever had, some people will say that Zips is the best, but this place blows it out of the water! Plus, amazing fries! If you go here, the best thing I can tell you is, don't go on a weekend, if you do, be ready to wait over an hour just to sit down, then make sure you get goat cheese on your burger! WOWZERS!

So this date started off my week without much of a husband in sight. Let’s just say, I tried to stay busy, but I did try and keep my mind clear, I went about this week really praying for my new marriage and trying to help husband out as much as I could. I tried to remember as I prayed for our marriage, to pray for my sister Krissy's marriage also. I can't really imagine being a mom and a wife, to a husband that can be gone up to 5 days, yuck! Zach works a lot of hours, but I'm so thankful that he comes home to bed every night.

Mom had a cookout yesterday, I found this little thing playing in her diaper bag, happy as could be!

Hope everyone had a great long weekend also!

Charley...oh you...I like you "friendy"

Man, just coming up with a title for this post and I'm crying! This is going to be fun!

My friend Carly, my good old pal Charley, Car Car, my friend, she has a birthday tomorrow. She should be celebrated because she's super, and its her birthday. I love birthdays, I always have. I'm one of those people that go all out for friends birthdays, my birthday, anyone's birthday I can.       I.love.them.

This one is special to me, last year it was too. I just like this friend a lot, every year this birthday comes up, I want to celebrate it, because she deserves it.

last year I, long with her sister Anna, threw her a SURPRISE party!

This girl is the best, if you don't know her, you are missing out! Golly, you need to change that, you should just walk up to her and say hi, she will love you right off that bat, that’s how she works.

This girl, she loves a lot of things, she loves her family, her best friend is her sister Anna. I like that, I think sisters should be bff's. She loves to spend time investing in her friends lives and showing them good things to do with their time and not just waste it away because we are young, this is something big she has shown me. She is a role model. She is beautiful, there isn't anything in the whole world that would break her relationship with the Lord, and she's not boastful in that, she doesn't need everyone to know that she is a woman of the Lord, but anyone that knows her at all, knows that she is. She is quiet a (not always) spirit and a loving heart.

Peter 3:3-4 Do not let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel⁴ rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.

This girl, she has helped me through more than she knows, she has never given up on me, she is there for me through things that I can only assume she doesn't want to put up with. She loves me, and she respects me. She is awesome...she is Charley...

My best friendy... :)

I just flew in from the windy city, but they aint got what we got!

You shoulda seen me a window shopping
window shopping with eyes a popping
at the sites that you see there,
yes sirree press a bell and a moment later
up you go in an elevator
just as fast as a polecat a climbing a tree
 

I heard claim hundreds came
to a thing they call a baseball game
Seaguard stores revolving doors
Men wear sideburns and they aughta
cause a haircut costs a quarter

I just flew in from the windy city
the windy city is mighty purdy
But they aint got what we got

The whole time I was in Boston I was thinking about this song, we had such a fun time together walking around. Aside from Maui, Boston is Zachs favorite place to spend time. Zach is a huge Red Sox fan, and loves the city of Boston. I however, I loved spending time alone with my husband and seeing his face light up every time he said, "oh and look over there! How amazing is that!" Anyone that knows Zach at all knows that he is a passionate person, but man, put him in a town he is passionate about...well...he is happy!

Ohhh....Oh how I was so looking forward to blogging about my trip to Boston! I was taking so many pictures and every time I took a picture of something weird, Zach would look at me funny and I just said...don't worry, its for the blog. But then my camera was doing something super weird and I couldn't look at any of the pictures I had taken! UH! Yup, just checked out the situation and looks like all my pictures are stuck on my card and I have no idea how to get them off. LAME!

I did however have my little point ad shoot camera some of the time so I have a few sad pictures...

Anywho, I'll pull through without any of my lovely pictures of Mark Wahlberg shooting a movie in a park and breakfast with my friend Phil that I haven't seen in a year. :(

 Speaking of Phil, He lives a few blocks from John Eerry's house.( I know, not that exciting)..Now even though I don't know which house is his, this one was beautiful and so I thought maybe it was this one...

Oh...how sad this pictures makes me, this was a wonderful place that I took a lot of pictures of. (on the other camera)...Quincy Market. It was a market that I like to think was like Findley Market, but about 1000% bigger than that! It was beautiful with lots of shops and people everywhere selling everything. ahhh..lovely!

 Our first night there we had a great dinner together. Zach loves seafood so we went to a place he has heard great things about. And great it was, I ate a lot...too much, but hello if I'm paying THAT MUCH MONEY...I'm eating all I can! 

Not these though...Zach had these...I don't eat things that are still in a shell and haven't been cooked...

 Mmmmm...Pleaseandthankyou!

The next day we went to Sam Adams brewery where we got free beer...a lot of free beer... I don't like beer...Zach's favorite beer is Sam Adams...Did I mention he was a happy camper. (by camper I mean hotel-er) :)

That night we went to the Red Sox game, which was the whole reason we flew up and back home so soon...we wanted to see the Red Sox...Ok, ok...He wanted to see the Red Sox...I wanted a cute new hat!

Man...the pictures I had of this game, ok fine. I'm over it. Stop talking about the amazing pictures I had and I lost...Done.

Hightlights of the trip

• Time with my Honey, just me and him. Gosh you sisters are right! It is GREAT to just have him!
• Great time seeing my friend Phil and meeting his soon to be wife Meghann!
• Vendor at the Red Sox game yelling "clam chowda hera! Get'cha clam chowda hera!
• Christmas Shop and getting a fun ornament

BAM...Not good...

What the heck is this?!

I told Zach last night in the car, *little girl voice*
Me:"iiiitttt hhhuuuurrrttts!"
Husband: "I'm sorry, I can't help you"
Me: “Ugh it feels like I got "bammed"
Husband: "uhhh...what?"
Me: "Bammed, like, it hurts"
Husband: *funny face, trying not to laugh and be sympathetic"
Me: "like, ya know *me making a fist, acting like I'm going to hit my eye"....BAM!"
Husband: " Like you've been punched in the eye honey?"
Me "Yeah, like that....bammd, punch, whatever! I've never been punched in the eye though, so I don't know what that feels like"

LIKE I'VE BEEN BAMMED IN THE EYE?!? ugh....think Kelly, think!

Oh, by the way...this would be an infection from my contacts...let’s not talk about how long I've had them in my eye... I don't want Kara to call me anymore names...

JUST KIDDING KARA!

Babik Apples

So, the other half of my bubble, her family makes these apples, they are AMAZING (to say the least!)
I love to make them for Christmas gift or baby/wedding shower prizes. They work great for that! But, beware, they are not fun to make! They take a long time, hours. Blah! But, the outcome is so great and tasty. So wonderfully sweet, they can't be beat!
I've made them with a few different kind of apples, but it’s a waste of time, the only kind I use now are granny smith. I don’t really care for granny smith just to eat, they hurt my teeth! But for this, it’s perfect!

What you’ll need:

·         Granny smith Apples

·         Apple sticks – the only place I’ve found these are Fantasy and Frosting in Newport they are cheap cheap cheap!

·         Caramel

·         Chocolate – White and Milk

** Side note about the chocolate and caramel. You can get all of these things from Fantasy and Frosting, but its expensive there. I use a friend I call “the candy lady” she buys and sells candy in bulk! I can get you her info if you would like!

·         Cellophane – Walmart

·         Ribbon – if it’s a baby shower I’ll use ribbons with ducks or something fun!
First you'll just wash the apples and pull the stick thing out of the middle, so you can push the apple sticks in.

After that, you’ll want to melt your Caramel.  I think its easiest to boil a pot of water and then get a metal bowl and put it on top of the water to melt the caramel. *NOTE* be sure you don’t get any water in the metal bowl with the caramel, bad things happen and you can’t use the caramel anymore! Yikes!

I just cover the whole apple and let all the extra caramel fall off and place it on wax paper.

Once you’ve covered your apples with that, then move on, to your white chocolate!

I just melt the white chocolate the same way I did the caramel and then dip it on in. But watch out! The same thing happen's if you get water in the bowl!

 

Here is one of the hard parts, if your chocolate is too hot, it will not stick to the caramel, last time I tired rolling the caramel covered apples in powdered sugar, but that didn't help. :( I'm still working on getting the chocolate to not fall off. ??

After you get them covered and they are cool, you can melt your milk or dark chocolate in the microwave and then I add it in, what should be a ketchup bottle, I use it for this! If you don't have a sister to buy you one of these and put it in your Christmas stocking, like I did. You can always use a fork. haha that's what I did! Don't use your icing bags! It will either met them or just leak out! Trust me! Its a mess, and then gets all over your sisters kitchen. not fun. don't do it.

and then just spray it onto the apples, I've done all kinda fun things on them, but this is my favorite look.

Add your cellophane and ribbon and they are ready to be given out!