Valentine's Day Banquet

Each year the youth group at our church puts on a Valentine's Day Banquet to raise money for their trip to the Christ in Youth Conference during the summer. This year I eagerly agreed to help!

We met at the church Saturday morning to decorate. They seriously go all out on the decorations. They even have heart shaped salt and pepper shakers! So we spent the morning decorating 20 tables to the nine in Valentine's day decor!

After a short break for lunch, we began cooking. My aunt (mom's sister) was in charge of the dinnner, so it was fun to cook with her and help her out. We served salad to begin with then each person could choose either chicken cordon bleu or finely sliced roast beef with gravy. With the main dish we served texas potatoes (the hashbrown casserole that has a hundred names!), green beans, corn, and homemade dinner rolls. For dessert we made blackberry, apple and peach cobblers that we served with vanilla ice cream.

We cooked it all, and it was the youth's job to serve it all. It works out really well and is a great way for the youth to raise some money. We served 187 people!! It was a long and exhausting day, but totally worth it! I love doing that kind of stuff. Unlike most, it doesn't stress me out, and I enjoy every minute of it!

Spring!

I love all seasons, but I think Spring is my favorite, at least for this year. Here are the top five things I love about spring.

1. Perfect Weather with Sunny Days
2. Rain and Thunderstorms
3. Everything becoming new again, coming to life.
4. Easter
5. Colors-especially in blooming flowers!

For us this year, spring is a new season in our lives as well. Losing our babies has been the hardest thing we have ever been through. There is no way to describe the pain and the emotions we have experienced and dealt with. So much of me has been dead the past 7 months. I know I haven't been myself. But as spring awakens the earth, I feel like it is waking me from my slumber of grief. It is a new season, a new time in my life. Yes, there will still be storms of grief, that is for sure, but I am finally starting to feel like myself again. I feel like smiling, I have energy, I have a desire to get to know people, I feel like having people into my home again, I feel like cooking and baking, I am ready to stop seeing black and gray, and to see colors again, I am ready to live once again.