Praise and Adoration

We have so much to be thankful for this year. Looking back at where we were a year ago, I stand in awe of all be blessings that God has bestowed upon us.

We prayed for friends and God was faithful in unbelievable ways. We feel so blessed to have people in our lives that we can have deep intimate conversations with and then laugh until we cry over pizza and beer. He has given us family in Wenatchee who fill us with unspeakable joy. Wow. He sure does go all out for His children doesn't he?

We live in a beautiful house with an incredible story that we get to share with all who come in and landlords who continue to amaze us with their grace and love.

We have learned so much about each other and our love is growing deeper and deeper as we figure out how to serve each other in love.

We have parents who support us in every aspect of our life and the longer I am around teenagers, the more I learn how rare this really is.

We have careers that stretch us, change us, bring us hope, joy, and frustration, and require us to daily look upon Him for guidance and strength. The way it should be.

We look back on trials that we have faced and how God knew exactly where, when, and how to bring us through them.

We stand in awe at a Father who loves us in spite of ourselves.

Beauty. Joy. Laughter. Simplicity. Chaos. Trials. Love.
We are so thankful!

Gobble Gobble

The Monday before Thanksgiving I woke up tell Kyle that today I hated being a high school teacher. "All I want to do," I said, "is make hand turkeys and talk about pilgrims but instead I have to teach VOCAB! UGH!" Then I went and felt sorry for myself in the shower. Kyle, being the brilliant man that he is, thought of a way to make everyone happy...and vocab turkeys were born!!They put the word on one side of the finger and the definition on the other. I think they thought I had lost my mind, but who doesn't love it when their teacher pulls out the markers and construction paper every once in a while! Way to go Kyle!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Week

Saturday: the most delicious three syllables in the English language

...ok perhaps that's a gross exaggeration (especially since I love the word "acquiesce") but I do love my Saturdays (oh wait...I'm married...OUR Saturdays)!

This week our Saturday began with sleeping in 'till 10. This is pretty impressive if you know me and my inability to sleep much later than 7:30.

We then decided to take on the beautiful Wenatchee day and, as it was my cross training day, go for a hike. We love hiking and went frequently in the summer but haven't been out since. Kyle likes to pretend he is an explorer when we go for hikes. Even short hikes like Saddlerock

Here is the beginning of the hike:

We reached the top!

In addition, here are some pictures of beautiful Wenatchee!!

Lil' snow, lil' green, lil' tumbleweed = Eastern Washington!

The Saddle

After our hike, we went and met up with our good friends Eric and Sarah Duffy. The Wenatchee Downtown Association was doing a holiday open house and wine walk. Different shops were open (and all decorated for Christmas!) and had local wineries doing tastings in each of the shops. It was so much fun to walk around, see the pretty decorations, sip delicious wine, eat some hors d'oeuvres, and spend time with great friends.Cheers!

Mason had a fake I.D.Kyle blinked, but it was the only one of the two of us :-)

The fun day was topped off with pizza and game night at the Borsts with Betsy and Craig. It's hard to beat Papa Murphy's, fall-shaped sugar cookies, and Phase 10. We love our Wenatchee family!! Even though Justin beat us all...

It's the Small Things

TJ, my autistic student who cracks me up each and every day has a routine: He is in my 4th period class (the class after lunch) and EVERY day he comes bounding down the hall, backpack flying behind him like a superman cape. From the door he takes a mammoth, full-bodied leap to stand proudly on top of the first desk. From there he continues his adventure to his seat (which is situated right next to mine) jumping desks like hopscotch squares and knocking down everything and everyone on his way. Finally, he plops down, takes a deep sigh of accomplishment and says with a big gappy grin, "Hi Mrs. Eberth!!"

I had a sub 1.5 days this week because I was sick and than Wednesday, Veterans Day, was off. So today, TJ saw me, bared that gappy grin a little earlier and said, "MAN! That was good! I haven't gotten to do that in forever!"

Thanks for reminding me to find joy in the simple things TJ.

Me without Me

BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) has been such a blessing to me this year. I really feel like God is jump starting my faith that has been, admittingly, stagnant this past year. I wish that He didn't need to use my career to show me these things but His ways are always better than mine (I say through gritted teeth). I often wish He would shoot me an e-mail and say, "Listen Kels, here are some things that we need to work on...I think you are made of more than this". Yet He shows me these things in a way that will not allow me to just sugar coat my life, making it look pretty but really refine me, change me, grow me. For that I am thankful. Tough love perhaps. It says in this weeks BSF notes, "Opposition is inevitable for any active Christian...God allows opposition so that we may be deeply rooted in Him and experience the delights of proving his strength and comfort given in trials."

Last Monday the lecture was on the man whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath. The first thing He asks the man is, "Do you want to get well?" A seemingly ridiculous question to ask a man who has been sick for 38 years. Yet how often do we sit in our own disorders, acting like we want to "get well" but too comfortable to move. What are my disorders? In what is God asking me, "Kelsey, do you want to get well?" So I made a list: I'm selfish with my time, I worry and pull anxiety into my life for the heck of it, pride, jealous and competitive with people I love, impatient. I know the list could go on for years but I'm selfish with my time, so I stopped.

Do I want to get well? Think...Pray...Sip of tea. Yes. I do. I wholeheartedly do. Now what? What did the man do next? Obeyed. He got up, picked up his mat, and walked. Yet it wasn't until he obeyed that he experienced the new life given by God.

But here is where I struggle. What does obedience look like in my life? What is God asking me to do? I want to be nothing so that He can be everything (Phil 2:6-8) but HOW?

To become like Him I need to know Him.

Lord, reveal yourself to me. I know you want my submissive heart but I don't know how to give it to you or, rather, I don't know what to do once I let go. What does me without me look like?

I am copying this idea from one of my friends (and blogger inspiration) Darcy. Every Thursday, post a list of things you are thankful for. I know I did this in a previous post but now I want to make it a more regular thing:

I am thankful for...

• Leftovers
• Runs that are easy now but would have been super hard a month ago
• Pumpkin spice candles
• Thursday night TV (Grey's AND Private Practice)
• Small trinkets of joy that God plops in my day that I savor in order to survive
• Skype
• Audiobooks (perfect for running)
• anticipating Thanksgiving
• Fridays @ 3:15
• BSF
• Crockpots
• When Kyle gets home from work
  
• Knowing that people are praying for me
• blogs as an outlet for reflection
  

Finding Joy in Literary Terms

This is exactly how I felt by the end of the day! Besides the fact that I had one kid suspended, discovered that one kid had come to class high, and found two other kids drinking (yes in the bathroom), my day ended with a bang because of one girl. While writing a description paragraph (or attempting, after I had sent one student out in the hall and threatened the rest with their lives if they didn't stop talking and WRITE) one girl came up to me and asked...."Mrs. Eberth, can we use personification in our paragraph?" Trumpets sounded, fireworks flew, and I seriously got choked up. This question is coming from a class that, last week, couldn't remember what a flippin' noun was and didn't know what an adVERB described (I'll give you a hint...). It's all about the little things...

Halloween Fun!

The weekend began with a fun Friday night of hot tubbing with two of my favorite girls in the entire world: Kelsey and Heidi. It is so wonderful having people to vent, share, love, pray, and laugh...with you and for you. I am so blessed.

Saturday, after a horrible run that consisted of a huge blister, raging shin splints, and unbelievable wind, Kyle and I attempted to rid our big yard of the millions of leaves that I had been admiring days before. They were suddenly the subject of my contempt. Especially the ones still in the tree that I knew would fall right after we raked up the other ones. I wanted to yell, "GET DOWN HERE YOU WIMPS! Man up and jump off your branches like the rest of your friends". It didn't work.

To avoid yard work, as I have done all my life, I decided to try to find some goats to do the work for us. I hear they are the way of the future in yard work. They have 4 stomachs that can each old two points of foliage a day! That's WAY more than our garbage can! AND it's al naturale...and I love going green :-) I still have a few e-mails out so I haven't given up on my goat theory but in the meantime, Kyle mowed 'um up, I put some in the garbage, and there are still two HUGE piles right out side the garage that are waiting to be disposed of. Ugh.

That night we had tickets to go to the Wenatchee Wild (it's all the rage) hockey game for their first annual "Ghouls and Goals" with some of my other favorite people in the world, Betsy and Craig and Don and Heidi. Before the big game we tailgated at the arena...it was a blast!

Heidi made taco soup and, being the classy folk that we are, our tailgating meal came complete with cloth napkins and a tablecloth!

Kyle enjoying some soup
Heidi "high fivin'" Walt the Wenatchee Wild Wolf! She was SO excited and spent the rest of the night howling (yes...like a wolf) every chance she could get. Admittingly, it was contagious.We love Don and Heidi!
It was so much fun :-)Betsy and Craig (eating his $1 hotdog that the boys were way too excited about)It was amazing to me how many people dressed up! Hence, the hotdog that sat right in front of us...We saw everything from the Travelocity gnome, Octomon, a huge gorilla, penguin, slutty Snow White, a wench that sang the National Anthem to Obama chia pet

Since our Saturday yard work plan wasn't as successful as we hope, we decided to get some "winterizing" done and went to pick up some free firewood (gotta love craigslist!) in Cashmere. It was not only a beautiful fall drive, but some much needed Kyle and Kelsey time. On our way we stopped at one of our favorite bakery's in the world, Anjou Bakery. We ordered coffee, tea, and some yummy pastries, bundled up, sat outside,breathed in the fresh crisp air, and read our book for small group. It was heaven.Anjou Bakery...so cute and delicious!

The wood was way too heavy for me...I wasn't much help!

Good job Kyle! Good thing I married a "manly man"...especially since we were expecting the wood to already be cut and ready for the fire...does the work ever end??

Thoughts on "The Weekend"

"The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties, and its announced end, followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it. "
--Fitzgerald

The amount of time spent anticipating, planning for, and dreaming of weekends is never sufficiently paid off in the 48 hours we are given. My frequent and cliche response to the Monday morning question of how my weekend was is, more often than not, "Too fast". The irony in savoring these two days to relax, unwind, and rejuvenate is the abundance of "stuff" we put into our week to make that possible. Perhaps the key is not to see how fast we can make it to the Friday finish line, but to stop and take a breath, wipe the sweat off our brow, throw back a Dixie cup of cold water and continue the race at a slower pace.