Carowinds and other Adventures!

My blogging has not been up to par as it usually has. Sorry I have not written in a week.

Well last weekend was the best ever! Me, Laura, Quinn, and Sandy all drove down to Concord, NC to Mikes house and met Ythol, Yaron, and Andy there. We all had plans to go to Carowinds Theme Park the following day!!

Carowinds was awesome!


Mike and I waiting in for Rip Roarin Rapids


Laura and I


we love our chacos!


Quinn and I!

That night Baird and Aaron came by to visit which was terrific!

girls being crazy in the bff circle!

The next day we all got up and went to church at Hickory Grove then had a big photo shoot in Michael's front yard!






the whole group!

Instead of going back to Raleigh with the gang I stayed in Concord til Tuesday! We went to dinner with Mike's awesome family to this barbecue place and I think I laughed more than I have laughed in awhile!!


eating my wings!


mr. napkin head


miss napkin head


Me, Mike, Mi Ma, Carolena, and Brad :)


Carolena (mike's sister) and I






Mike had to drive me back to Raleigh on Tuesday cause I had to work that night but He got to stay two more days!!

This week/weekend has been great got to hang out with a lot of awesome people!

Weekend with the goober :)

So Michael Stemler came to visit this weekend, which we really didn't plan but it happened and it was awesome :).
We did all sorts of fun things such as go to Crabtree mall, learn to drive stick shift (which he let me take it on Raleigh roads after learning for only 30 minutes :-\), get new nose rings, introduced him to my awesome high school friends, went to see the dark knight, took him to goodberry's for the first time, watched Beauty and the Beast (we decided to assume that we were Beauty and the Beast haha), had awesome Jesus time, went to the pool, watched 10 things I hate about you (and quoted every line), went to church with the parental units, went to Cracker Barrel and got meatloaf, went to visit Ashley, Whit, Bryan, and Kevin in Durham and took him to Brueggers Bagels for the first time.

It was an awesome weekend. I love spending time with my goober :) :)

It has been awhile so this is going to be long :)

For all of you who check my blog frequently know that I have not updated n a long time! My computer's hard drive crashed and I have been without a computer for the last week :(. I had to get a new hard drive so all my files were deleted I'm a little upset but its okay everything is fixed now :)

Well I have done a lot in a week I won't go into every detail of every day but it has been a pretty exciting week :).

Last weekend I went to my annual family reunion. It was really great to see everyone I haven't seen in a long time. It just reminded me how God has blessed me with an amazing family :)


grandchildren and grandpa :)


My sis and I in the backseat of our rental convertible


My cousin Brooke and I! She's adorable :)


the whole clan!

This past week I didn't do too much just worked and relaxed.

Now on to this weekend, which has been the thing I have looked forward to the most this past month!

I went down the Michael Stemlers house in Concord to visit him and meet his family :). It was probably the best weekend I have had all summer long!

I arrived at the Stemlers Thursday evening and met Barb and Wayne (his parents) they are SO great I had a lot of fun with them. I also met mima (Mike's grandma). I brought mima a chick-fil-a milkshake because they are her favorite and she just fell in love with me haha! We all ate dinner and then watched sound of music! We didn't even get to finish all of it cause it is like three hours and we were all getting tired. After the movie Carolena (Mike's sister) came home and me, barb, and carolena chatted about things :).

The next day was probably my favorite of the whole weekend. We woke up and mima treated us to breakfast at cracker barrel, delicious! After breakfast Mike, Carolena and I went over to Wayne's work (Hendricks Motor Sports) and got to take a tour around :)


Mike and I by Jimmie Johnson's car :)

We then proceeded to the house to get ready for the exciting event of the day, white water rafting!! We went over the White Water Center and walked around a bit and then went on our adventure in the raft. We had a really cool raft guy, his name was Craig and he was probably the biggest nerd that I have ever talked to. He was obsessed with star wars but he was hilarious. It was pretty much an awesome time!


its not us but i just wanted to take a picture of raft going :)

We then got ready for our evening event. To my surprise Mike took me to
Cheesecake factory because 1. I have never been and 2. cheesecake is my favorite desert! We even valet our car like high class people haha! After dinner we walked around the mall and looked at 2,000 prada purses it was good times.

I have never been downtown Charlotte before so we decided to go and walk around. We got some starbucks and just sat and chatted. Walking and Chatting..its what Mike and I do haha.

Here comes my favorite part..
We come home and decide to go on walk around the neighborhood. While we are walking Mike pulls me over by this pond (HA!) and reads me this letter he wrote. At the end he asked me to be his girlfriend and I said NO WAY..haha jk I said YES of course :). So we are officially official everyone!
We had a hard time going to sleep that night we were both really excited!

Saturday we woke up ate some delicious breakfast that Barb prepared and headed over to Holly 's! I got to meet all of Mike's really good friends..it was awesome they are great :) After hanging out on the lake we all went out to Chili's for dinner and our table was way cooler (sorry bryan!) We then went back to Holly's and played some brain buster games and chatted. Mike and I finally arrived home and decided to watch Hercules haha SUCH a good movie. After the movie we stayed up and talked until 4am ha!

Today we woke up went to Panera for lunch and then came back to do our devotional that Mike got us. It was really cool. These times are my favorite times I spend with him. We talked a long time about everything going on in our lives right now and prayed for each other :)

After Jesus time Mike and I went to Journey to the center of the earth with Barb and Wayne. The movie was alright, a little unrealistic, and cheesy but it was fun to hang out with them! After movie time we went over to dinner and Cinco De Mayos..delicious.

It was then time to get ready to leave which was probably the saddest thing ever! I headed out around 7pm and got home around 9. I got my computer all set up so now I have internet access again yay!

--this weekend has been so great and I only have God to thank. It is just crazy to look back at my life 6 months ago and how much my life has changed. I am so much more closer to Christ and I now have amazing friends and amazing boyfriend:). I am really excited to see what Jesus has in store for me for the future!

Fun, Laughter, and The Morning Of

Yesterday was quite a splendid day.
I woke up around 11am cleaned some of the house, ran some errands, and got ready for Mike and Bryan to arrive.
They came to my house around 5pm. We just hung out and chatted and then Aaron Brooks came over!
We all ate dinner. My dad grilled out and then made delicious strawberry shortcake!! YUM. We just chatted and laughed it was fun!
After dinner we went to the brewery to see this awesome band the morning of..little did we know that they were the last band to play so we had to sit through some sucky bands..but we passed the time by dancing around acting like goons!!
The Morning Of finally came on.. and they were SO good. Seeing them live just made me like them 10x more! The girl singer can SING!!
After the concert we all hit up cookout..of course we're with Mike haha
We then all came back to my house and Mike and I decided to go on a walk..which was great :).
Then it was sleepy time.

We woke up this morning around 11:30 went down and had some breakfast. Then the boys packed up and headed out to greenville.
I decided to go to the pool after they left. I only stayed for an hour because there was a little kids birthday party going on and there like 30 kids.. CRAZY.
After the pool I just laid around and acted lazy.
I got ready then headed to work at 6pm. Work wasn't too bad tonight it was a lot better than the other day I worked. My coworkers were fun tonight and I heard some entertaining stories hahaha!

Now I'm jammin' out to the morning of cd I purchased on itunes..so good. love them.

"From the fullness of his grace we have received one blessing after another." John 1:16

These past two days have been so great!
As everyone probably knows Mike came to visit which was AWESOME!!
I woke up on Thursday morning at like 8:30 because I was so excited/nervous that I couldn't sleep haha! I cleaned the rest of house and spent some time with Jesus just praying for my time with Mike :)
He called me at about 10:30 saying that he left Statesville yay!!
He arrived at my house about 12:45. It was so great to finally see him :) He came in and met my mom and gave her two boxes of Russel Stovers chocolate.. she about peed in her pants she was so excited haha she gave him a big hug..it was great! I think gave him a tour of my house.. tours are always fun! He wanted to see some baby pics of me so I got out my good ole scrapbook..that was fun times!
We then decided to go to Pullen Park. We swung on the swings for a little bit and then realized how extremely hot it was so we went to Crabtree. He of course had to go to Best Buy first so we chilled in there for awhile and he purchased the Across the Universe Soundtrack (so good) we jammed out! At the mall we just walked around a bit and ate some lunch at Chick-fil-a.
We then passed by a Build-a-Bear store and Mike was like "oh Build-a-bear that place is so fun" and I was like "oh haha I've actually never built a bear before" and Mike about freaked out so he was determined to get me a build-a-bear! This was actually one of the highlights of the trip. They treated me like I was 5 years old. It was awesome. The guy made me take the heart that you put into the build-a-bear and do a bunch of corny things like rub it between my hands so the heart isn't cold, rub it on my nose so the bear doesn't smell bad, rub it on forehead so the bear is smart, rub it on my kness so the bear will always "NEED" me.. the guy thought this one was hilarious. Then he told me to raise my hands while holding the heart and shouting "WOO HOO" Mike thought this was the funniest thing ever. The bear that I picked was a light tan color with 4 patches on its body and I picked it because the money you spend on the bear some of it goes to children who have health issues and I just thought that was awesome. I ended up naming it Patches! That build-a-bear experience was just terrific..made me smile!! Patches is an awesome bear btw we like to hold hands and frolic through the meadow!
After build-a-bear we headed home and chatted with my mom a bit. We then decided that it would be a great time to do the devotional that Mike made for us! It was so awesome! It was all about communication which is really important in a relationship. It was really great to pray and read the bible together because God being in the center of our relationship is the one thing that Mike and I want the most! It just made me thank God so much for mike :)
We waited for dad to get home from work which by the way Mike was ridiculously nervous about meeting him. My mom was trying to lighten the mood so she decided to tell stories about my dad farting..it was a good time haha!
My dad came home and met Mike and Mike gave him the nascar stuff that his dad got from work! My dad was really excited about it so that chatted about nascar for a little bit. We then got ready for dinner both of us looking very fresh haha.

oh look at us!
We realized that it was our "first date ever" which is always exciting! Olive Garden was delicious of course. We came back chilled for a little bit ate some cheesecake and hung outside around the bonfire with the rents. We then went on a walk around the neighborhood to burn off that cheesecake and that is exactly what we did! We decided to dance around like goons in the middle of the street pretending we were in a musical... those are the awesome things that Mike and I do when we are together haha!
We came back to the house and decided to watch "Billy Madison" cause I found it on this VHS tape that my mom taped off the tv. We were only through the credits and found out that my mom taped over the movie!!! Mike flipped out it was probably the funniest thing ever! I was like "you know what lets just go to Blockbuster and rent it!" So we did that came back and watched it. best movie ever!
We then decided to chill on the driveway and chat. We ended up talking to 2:30 in the morning. It was really great though I could talk to him for hours and hours!
That was the end of fabulous day number 1!!
I woke up today at 9am to go and make some pancakes! I got mike up at 9:30 and he was not too pleased haha!! We chilled around the house for a couple of hours played with Patches for a little bit...thats always fun.
We went to the pool around 12 which was kind of a bad mistake cause it was like 101 degrees outside!! But we just stayed in the pool the whole time. We got hungry so we went to Cook Out..of course! SO good I haven't had that place in awhile. We chilled there for a little while and chatted it up. We went back to the pool after cookout but only stayed for a little bit cause Mike had to leave :(.
Him leaving was a little sad but we such a great two days that I was in such a good mood! He is great and I just thank God for this awesome blessing in my life hence the title of this blog!
After he left I was exhausted so I decided to take a nap with Patches my new best friend! I got up spent some time with Jesus. The devotional was about fulfilling God's will in you and pushing your selfishnesses aside. It got me really excited for Ayden Grifton Young Life next year! The more I think about it the more I thank God for such an amazing opportunity to chang Ayden Grifton High School!! I am so excited for what next year brings for the AG team!

God is so great and it is just crazy to think about my life 6 months ago and how much He has changed it! Only God could do a transformation like that!

:-D

So I'm in a really good mood right now one because I just got off the phone with Mike and that is always great and two I'm eating some cantaloupe and cantaloupe is delish!

I just realize more and more everyday how God works out everything according to His purpose, and it always turns out great. God knows what He is doing!

Today was just dandy. Woke up a little earlier than I wanted to but thats all good. I went to lunch with Caroline at Moes today and that was great to chat with her. I saw ALOT of people I knew there so that was fun got to catch up with some high school friends yay :)

After Lunch my rents and I went to the Smithfield Outlets cause my mom wanted to go to this store that they only had there. I helped my mom pick out some outfits which was fun! Then I got to get some clothes. Driving home we went to McDonalds because my dad really wanted a Parfait so we all got one but I think it made me sick to my stomach cause I did not feel well the rest of the day :( stupid mickey d's! (they did have a sanitation score of 92.3 :-\)

Anywhoo I came home and relaxed for awhile. My mom and I Jammed out to Culture Club hahaha (no one probably knows who that is but whatever). My dad grilled some hamburgers outside and we ate dinner out on the Patio it was fun!

Later that evening I went over to Sarah's with Laney, Kate, Scott, Juliana, Andrew, Trent, and John. We all went over to this place called Pelicans and got these snow cone things SO GOOD!! Then we came back and watched National Treasure 2.
Then I cam home and chatted on the phone for awhile!!

Today was an okay day and realize why it was not the best. I did not spend time with Jesus like I normally do. It is so crazy how you're whole day will be different because of it! I just realize how important it is to set aside time for Him daily and that is one thing that I need to focus on!