YC

We're back from a crazy weekend spent in Edmonton at YC! This was our first year ever going and we loved it! When the conference started on Friday night, I was overwhelmed with emotions as I sat in a stadium filled with 17 thousand people who were there to praise, or learn more about God. Living in our world that is so consumed with sin, it was great to have a weekend that was focused only on God. It was so encouraging to be able to know that there ARE people out there who don't want to conform to the world but want to be set apart for Christ. What an amazing experience it was to worship God with all these fellow believers!

We took about 30 youth from our church. During the day, we tagged along with them to all the different concerts and sessions. I was so glad to be with a group of younger girls who didn't like the heavy loud music :)

I thought this was too funny not to post. You can tell this was a tiring weekend. This is Chris from our youth, who fell asleep during the Tobymac concert. If you don't know who Tobymac is, he was probably one of the loudest concerts there :)

Some fun pictures

My good looking hubby enjoying the concert, even though he doesn't look happy, he is actually enjoying himself :)

No more mustache

Here's another quick post to display more pictures of John without his mustache. The last pictures weren't so good, and his family and friends need to see the huge transformation...well maybe not that huge. So here are some before and after pictures.

Before

Rachel, I stole these from your blog...Thanks :)

After:

Pretty different eh?
Onto other news I'm so happy to say that my beautiful sister and her husband are having a baby. I'm pretty sure everyone that reads this blog, also reads hers but I'm just so excited to be an auntie. So Congrats again Brad and Sarah! We are so happy for you, and can't wait to see and hear all the exciting things that are in store for you!
I hope you all have a great LONG weekend.

Clue Game

For youth on Friday, Josh and I planned a real life clue game. Our leaders dressed up as the characters and hid around the church. They each had clue cards and the youth had to run around and ask them which cards they had, to limit it down to the last three choices. Here's some pictures of the fun that we had...

All the Characters dressed up

Professor Plum

Miss Scarlet

Mrs. Peacock

We added a little twist to the game, having an FBI agent running around catching the kids and putting them in jail. Does anyone from the Phillips family recognize him?

This is Josh's dad, who was our FBI agent. This picture may be a surprise to some of our blog viewers because after 25 years of having a mustache, John came back from his trip to Europe with no mustache! Josh didn't even recognize him when he picked him up from the airport.

He played the FBI part perfectly. Here he is catching some youth in the Library. He even had a real radio and was calling in for back-up. He played the part so well some people actually believed he was a police man in real life :)

We headed to Boston Pizza last night for our Anniversary Supper. We had our classic barbecue chicken pizza with a bandera bread as an appetizer. Yummy! Then Josh and I both decided we were hungry enough for dessert. Big mistake! Josh got the biggest dessert, the Rolo ice cream cake, and I decided on my favorite, the brownie a la mode. After about 2 bites we realized our eyes had been bigger then our stomachs!

But Josh was determined to finish it....So here's the pictures I took while enjoying the agony he had with every bite :)

To start off, it wasn't so bad.

Josh is starting to second guess this dessert idea.

Laughing at Josh, trying to finish his dessert :)

I couldn't believe it! He actually finished it!

This is how we felt afterwards.

The moral of the Story is: ummm...don't eat dessert after having a whole pizza and appetizer, even if you think you're hungry.

1 Year Ago Today....

I was walking down the aisle to be united with the love of my life. I can't believe the year has gone by already! Josh, you are an amazing man of God, and an unbelievable blessing in my life! It's been an incredible year, and I look forward to so many more! Happy Anniversary Josh, I love you.

Extreme Makeover

Meet the Design Team

My parents came up this past weekend to help us renovate our house. Our weekend was filled with painting, ripping up floors and carpet, more painting, and some good visiting. I think we're on a first name basis with the people at Home Hardware because we made so many trips there for paint and supplies. I finally decided on my colors...I stayed pretty safe with a light sandy brown for the living room and hallway, and a green in my kitchen. The house isn't anywhere near being finished but we still got so much done! Thanks Mom and Dad for driving all the way to help us with the house!
This week our project is the floor. We're going to be buying laminate to lay down so we can start putting in our cupboards and re-building our kitchen.

Here's more pictures of our not yet finished house:


This is the green I chose for the kitchen. I was really happy with how it turned out

Here is what's left of our kitchen after Josh took out all of our cupboards. We'll definitely be doing a before and after picture for you all to see!

There is still lots to do! I can't wait to show you all the finished product!

Our eventful weekend

Josh and I had another very eventful weekend!
On Friday night, Josh and I were in charge of planning youth so we played the "Amazing Race". It was so much fun! The youth had to drive around town and video tape themselves doing certain challenges that Josh and I had made up. Since we were in charge, we thought we'd take advantage of all the youth and use the game to get our yard cleaned up a little. So one of the challenges was, "Video your entire group picking up dog poop in Josh and Laura's new backyard". We made sure it was worth a lot of points towards their team and they actually did it! Other challenges they had to do were serenade a rubber duckie with, "Rubber Duckie, you're the one" in a church members bathtub. One of the groups videotaped Josh's grandpa (one of the elder's in our church) and a youth in the bathtub singing. It was so funny that they showed it in church on Sunday!
Then on Saturday Josh had to work so I headed over to our house to do some painting. As I pulled up, I saw a family from our church doing yardwork for us! The people who we bought the house from had decided to leave the front yard and backyard full of dog poop, cigarette butts, and lots of garbage. Josh and I had planned to take a day to clean it up, but instead it was all done for us! We felt so blessed by this family considering two of them are youth and they could have been taking a day off but instead came and cleaned up our messy yard!
After Josh got off work, we headed into Edmonton in search for new kitchen stuff. We spent the night at "Alissa Hotel". It was great to visit with her and she even came shopping with us the next day!
So onto Sunday...we spent the whole day at IKEA! I think Alissa just came for the hot dog deal but it was still so much fun to have her around and give us advice on certain kitchen stuff. We got to IKEA just after 11 and Josh and I didn't leave till 6. We couldn't make up our mind on what cupboards to buy, but finally decided on the Antique Finish. Thankfully it all fit into the blazer and we headed home!
Josh is starting school again today in his 2nd year apprenticeship and I'm sure as soon as he gets home, he'll be ripping open the boxes to our cupboards to start assembling them. Then my parents are coming up on Thursday to help us paint and bring up some furniture! I'm so excited to see them!
Well thanks for reading my ramblings and I hope you all have a great week!

Thanks everyone for all the painting tips...

Friday night Josh and I had our first meal in our house, a subway picnic on our living room floor. yum yum

We then went around the house making a list of everything we need to change and therefore buy. We are planning to renovate most of the upstairs, putting new laminate floors and paint everything. On Friday night, we decided that we would love to renovate our kitchen and so Josh has been on the IKEA site designing out a new bigger kitchen. Thanks for the IKEA tip Alison...

Now I'm getting really excited because I get to have a big kitchen, which is something that I didn't have in the apartment.

Josh is excited about our new house

Enjoying our subway Picninc

Josh got a little distracted while measuring the house

It's official, we own a home! We got the keys today so now all we have to do is move all of our stuff in! We're heading to Edmonton this weekend to buy everything we need to renovate. I'm really excited about all the painting I get to do. There are so many color ideas I like, there just doesn't seem to be enough rooms. The people who lived there before didn't like too much color, considering the walls are all white. But if anyone has any paint colors that they've used in the past and have liked, I would love hear them. We'll have to post before and after pictures as soon as we finish renovating everything!

Here I am holding up the keys to our new house!

Moving Day

Last night we moved out of our apartment. As much as Josh and I disliked living there, it still was a little sad to say good-bye. It was our first apartment, filled with a lot of great memories :)
We were so blessed to have some of our friends help us move and clean. Here are the girls helping me clean.

Jesseca got the job of cleaning the kitchen...poor girl. She did a great job :)

Lillian washed all my walls, and did all the vacuuming. She's one of my work buddies

And here I am in my empty apartment. Got to love the brown shag carpet :)

Now Josh and I are staying at his parents place till we move again to our house!! It's been great, no gross smells, hot showers, and cable...we feel so spoiled :)

It's just been one of those days...where everyone is grumpy and nobody wants to be at work and all I do is crave chocolate! So here I am sitting at my desk being all grumpy, when all of a sudden Jesseca (my new best friend) comes into my office with the best present ever.... A Dairy Queen Buster Bar!! Now everyone is happy...Jesseca has saved the day!

Well the hunt is over...we found a house! The market is pretty crazy where we live so when we saw a house and liked it, we had to put an offer on it right away. There was another couple who also had an offer but had 3 days to remove their conditions or else we got the house. So this past week I was trying not to get my hopes up too much but was anxiously waiting to hear if we got the house. Then yesterday our real estate agent called us and said that the other offer fell through and now we have till Monday to remove our conditions...Yipee!! We have to get a home inspection done and do all the lawyer stuff, and signing stuff, and then we move in on April 13th! Crazy!! Josh's parents are letting us stay at their place while they are away in Europe so we'll be able to paint and do some renovations before completly moving in. Everything has been going so smoothly and I hope these next couple weeks aren't too insane with packing and moving from house to house.

Here's some pictures Jesseca took after I just found out. I was so excited and was being silly and dancing around the office.

To celebrate, after work we had a girls night at Jesseca's place. She made us a fabulous dinner and we did masks and watched a movie! It was just what I needed after the crazy week I had.

We're buying a house

Exciting News...Josh and I are going to buy a house! We've been quite frustrated with the apartment we've been living in. We have random days with no hot water, gross smells, smoke and pot, and pretty freaky neighbours :) We've been very excited for when the day would come that we could move out and now the day has arrived! It works out perfectly because Josh's parent are heading to Europe for 6 weeks at the end of March and we'll be housesitting for them. So we gave our notice to be out of our apartment by the end of March. That will give us about 2 and half months to hopefully find a house and be ready to move in soon after. Now we're on a hunt for a house. We will keep you all updated on our progress.

God has blessed me with such an amazing job here in Alberta. I work with an oilfield company in accounts payable and I love it. When I was younger, Sarah and I used to play "office" because it was our dream job. We'd have little meetings and I'd be the boss and Sarah would always be the receptionist. Now I actually have my dream job.
I've also been blessed with the girls that work here. I've built such great friendships and we all get a long so well. It's funny how God works, because just recently my good friend Jesseca, who discipled me at PRBI, started working here as their receptionist. It can get pretty silly with her around but we've had lots of fun. Don't worry...we do work most of the time :)

Jesseca, Charity, and I in our office.

Josh and I headed to Edmonton this weekend for the PRBI girls and guys soccer tournament. It was so great to watch soccer again but made us miss playing so much. We both played on the Ambassador team our 2nd year at PRBI. We're hoping to one day join a team again here in Bonnyville when they get their sports center finished. We were surprised to see so many PRBI students from past years that also came to watch. It was great to visit with everyone again.


I am loving Alberta because they have random family days...so we all got a day of yesterday. Josh and I spent the whole day watching Lost, our new favorite T.V. series. It was a pretty lazy day, but so nice to relax and not do much.

Youth Alert

Sorry it's been so long since we last updated this thing. We've been keeping busy with life but there hasn't been much going on that was worth blogging.
Until this past weekend when Josh, John and I took some of our youth to Youth Alert. It was great to be back at PRBI again, but it made us miss being there so much. Maybe someday we'll go back as married students, you never know... :)
PRBI did such a great job with YA this year. The events were a little more simpler but were done so well. Here are some pictures of our eventful weekend...

On our way to YA... We had the wild group in our van, well the backseat was wild. Chantelle and Stephanie were a little out of it for part of the way.

Some of our youth playing extreme games at the Sexsmith arena. I was counting in my head how many years I've been to YA and I think this was my 8th year. Crazy!


Josh and I being silly at the Rally.

We got to see and visit lots of our friends. Here's my crazy roomates from first year. It was so good to see them and catch up.

When our Vernon group used to go to Youth Alert, we would travel all night to get there and have to travel all night to get home. It was a nice change to get home at 8:30 last night and not be too tired for work this morning. We did have an eventful morning though...Josh woke up and went to start our car. We haven't plugged our car in yet, which is probably pretty stupid considering the -30 to -40 degree weather. Anyways, of course the car didn't start this morning but not only that, we had left a Dr. Pepper drink in our car and it had exploded during the night. So now we have a car that won't start with Dr. Pepper all over our seats and windows. Now we know what we'll be doing tonight :)