Moving With God

Baby steps of faith, hope and love

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Sunglasses Recommended

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life

That's my kitchen sink - sure looks clean and shiny, doesn't it? My Mom gave props to flylady.net on her blog so I checked it out again and may or may not attempt this method at housekeeping. Step one is shine your sink, so I did :)

Dear Mom, sorry you had to look at that dead mouse so much. I have been busy AND procrastinating, which is a terrible combination for blogging.

Dear everyone else, I am still trying to figure out a routine for this new semester that involves not only housework, school and work but also contact with the outside world. We'll see how it goes, lol - until then, I thought I'd check in to let you know of my good intentions, and hopefully there will be more posts soon!!

UPDATE

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life


Twist-tie the cheese to the trap? Yes, I outsmarted a mouse!

A New Year

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life

Ah, sitting down to write a blog with no idea where to go with it - great start eh? Well, a couple days have gone by in 2011, and I don't want to fall out of blogging habits! I have no resolutions to report, but it's not because I'm lazy or anything! Okay, it might be a little bit of laziness, but I think it's mostly just being satisfied with my habits - I have a membership at a MMA gym where I do kickboxing 1-3 times a week (I accidently went to a kettlebell class on Monday - THAT is crazy!), and the elevators in our building are going to be replaced one at a time over the next few months (meaning only one elevator functioning at a time, meaning lots of taking the stairs to our 11th floor apartment), so I'm giving myself an A for physical activity. My dental hygiene remains good, and my eating habits are.. decent!

So the only resolutions I can come up with are: graduate, stay married, kill the mouse that keeps taking cheese off the trap, love Jesus AND people, and don't let Nimoy die of neglect. Amen.

A Cleaning Day

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life

Ah cleaning... Matt was out today, so I had many hours to fill, and I decided to be wifey and do the bajillion chores I/we've been putting off for weeks.

First up: our storage closet
Before, then after - you can't really see, but there is about 9 square feet of floorspace that we didn't have before!Also, yesterday, Matt and I did some re-arranging in our living room because we got some new furniture from Ikea that is great!! (The white chair, and the coffee table are new)And we are very excited about our music nook now that it is a real nook with our new bookcase to store music! Music used to live in a cardboard box, so Matt is very happy to have the boxes gone, and our whole apartment just feels even cozier and homier than ever before :)
Wanna come over??

Merry Christmas!

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life

From Matt and Me and Nimoy!! No, we didn't give him any presents. He has a big beef chew thing he's working on though, so he had a nice Christmas :)We had a great Christmas because we were able to DRIVE to Orillia for Christmas dinner!! In our car, the Blat. It's a '95 Honda Civic, 5-speed, and a little drafty. It is beautiful :)
This is a picture I took of our office window a couple weeks ago because the ice was too beautiful to stand. It just froze like that! It felt like a present.

WWJD

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life
What would Jesus do... for Christmas? I've been thinking about this since our church Christmas dinner on the weekend. It was a great time - delicious food, good to catch up and visit with some people, really fun to sing carols and enjoy decorations. We also had a sermon. The message itself was good - "don't miss the invisible" by giving into stress over Christmas. Don't get caught up in busyness, because when you are stressed and agitated you feel nasty, and that's not Christmassy! The speaker (God bless him) took longer than I would have to get his point across.

Read more: WWJD

Appreciation

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life

Matt and I met one of our neighbours from the building next to us this weekend - a young man from India (younger than us!) who is here studying. We got his number from the Keidanns (Pastor John met him on the TTC, need I say more?) and invited him to church with us. He is a Christian and doesn't have a home church here yet, so he came with us, and then he came over last night to watch a movie with some friends of ours (thanks for the Christmas baking Mom, it helps us be star hosts even when our fridge is empty!).

I don't know how his apartment is, but it might not matter because it sounds like he's not there for much more than sleeping. While he is doing post-grad studies, S (no need to drop his name on the internet) also has a job doing cleaning work - sometimes a 12 hour night shift from 8pm-8am. After he finishes work, he goes to school. After school he sleeps until work - he said usually about 4 hours. I almost felt bad for inviting him over because he could have used the two hours we spent watching X-Men to sleep!
SO I am making an effort not to whine about the fullness of my life - waking up around 6 for work, seeing friends, having hobbies, trying new recipes, finally blogging some of the thoughts that have been bouncing around my mind. I am grateful that I get to sleep at nighttime, that I come home to a husband and a dog, that our apartment is Christmassy as of yesterday. I am grateful for a job I sit down at, where I use the internet on my lunch and hope for a year-end bonus.
God is truly so good to us, and when I realize how abundantly generous he is it makes my fears and clingyness seem very small and foolish. So I am hoping that the fullness I feel shines through, that I continue to appreciate what I have, and that maybe all of the goodness will catch on for others as well. In the busyness of life, just feeling happy is very refreshing :)

God Helps

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life

I have been in kind of a funk the last few days especially, feeling generally cranky and disconnected from life and God. My devotional time has been minimal, which always takes a toll on me, and I was having a hard time being caught in the vicious cycle of "don't spend time with God, don't want to spend time with God."

I tried to pray about it last night and asked Matt to pray for me as well with no epiphanies, but I think God has answered those prayers in a couple of ways today, so I wanted to share!
First of all, my friend B called me this morning out of the blue after probably more than six months if not ten of not being in touch with each other. She has had a crazy life and crazy journey with God, so I thought it was really cool to hear that she is currently attending a Messianic synagogue! We made plans to hang out, and I am going to try to go to a worship service with her some Saturday because I would LOVE to see what a Messianic synagogue is like. Apparently they give out bagels after the service :)
B is pretty mystical and open as far as Christians go, and when I told her how happy I was for her to call this morning because I have been not feeling very good about God or life (not that I have complaints, just my mood has sucked) she told me to look at my hands. She said that when I feel sucky I should look at my hands until I'm sure of God's existence and presence. I am going to.
Then at church this morning I felt really connected to God during the praise time. This was strange because when I play keyboard I usually focus on not messing up and maybe singing and that takes up all the thinking I can do, but this morning during one song especially, I just stepped back from the mike and played strings of notes instead of chords, and it felt like prayer.
THEN after church I had a great conversation with a newish friend and it was really encouraging to just connect with someone.
So God is all over me today, and I am so grateful.

New Sponsor Child

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life


Matt blogged about this, so rather than re-tell the whole story - you can read about the little girl we now sponsor, named Fabiola!

(click an ad while you're there!)

Four Great Years!

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Written by: Alyssa
Category: Life
I guess Matt and I are officially an old married couple since we both forgot that November 8 marks four years since he asked me to be his girlfriend :) Ah well, since we both missed it neither of us feels too bad lol. Here's a cute picture of us on the subway and...

Here is a picture of us the night we went to Dirty Dancing for our one-year (aww!) Is it just me, or does Matt totally look like a hockey player in this picture?

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