good times.

fun new drinking glasses!

Beautiful ivory roses my love surprised me with after passing the final exam! LOVE HIM and them!!!

I saw this on Instagram on Tuesday morning which was my last day at Grady Financial. It was a bittersweet day, but I had so much peace going into this decision that it was more sweet than bitter

Silly selfie taken right as I walked in the door after work. Being home is where I belong.

To make the week even better, I had the chance to baptize another one of my girls at Youth Group, Becca. I will never grow tired of this incredible honor. She’s such a sweet girl with a strong conviction to follow Christ. I can’t wait to see what He has planned for her!!!

Love.

I found a pizza recipe on the Udi’s GF website and decided to try it. (Even though my loyalties lie with Fusion Flours). Oh my was this good!!! The caramelized onions (seasoned with apple cider vinegar) were TO DIE FOR. I have never added that to onions but I will now! I linked the recipe – even if you’re not GF you HAVE to try this pizza. AMAAAAAAZING.

Carbo loading the following day and not even running in Bloomsday! (Baked potato and the leftover pizza with a little reading on the ipad mini with some Coke in my new glasses….oh and the house was quiet with the girls at school, Paul at work. Weird moment for me….)

Paul got to go on a field trip with Megan’s class to the Centennial Trail on Friday. I am so thankful his job is flexible to allow him to make these memories with the girls. So thankful.

Hannah and one of her dearest friends, Mary, registered to run in their first Jr Bloomsday this morning! Future runner?????

Cuteness…..

Before the race!

Megs cheering her sissy on!!!

About 100 3rd & 4th graders ran in the event. They used to have Jr Bloomsday years ago but stopped after disinterest. This year was a trial event to see if there is more interest. They had 200 slots, only a little over 100 registered….we’ll see if they do it again.

Beautiful day in the Northwest!!! (Riverfront Park)

Spokane Falls

2 tired girls!

Little missy wasn’t feeling good after the race…..hours later I would take her temperature and it was 101.7. Lovely….. poor girl!

Our care group planned to spend the day at Triple Play in Hayden ID! What a BLAST!!!!! Love our care groupies and doing life with them. Priceless….
Here, I am channeling my Dad as I dominate the track (wink wink)

And there was bumper boats! We got SOAKED!!

And there was laser tag!

‘someone’ forgot to wear black. Sweet hubs didn’t get the memo

We’ll be back!

our month in pictures

 

 

 

Easter Sunday

I find her like this majority of the time. Read, baby girl, read!!

Megs enjoyed a sleepover at her BFFs house. Thanks Laura for capturing this sweet moment.

Park time with good friends!

They love each other like sisters.

Family pic after church

Took Megs for a coffee & cupcake date. Sweet memories.

It’s Springtime, do you have your trap up?! rescue.com

Stop growing up. Just stop.

Spring flowers!!!

Our Youth Group Leadership had an overnight retreat at the church. Paul whipped up his ‘famous’ french toast. I planned all the food, so there was plenty of GF yumminess

Circus time with Nana & Papa!

Thankful for the chance to create memories with them.

Between her MSP District Testing and my new job Final Exam, we were both super stressed. Such a love

Fun mani to start the week off

At youth group I got to love on Mr Daxton. My favorite baby ever. Well, ok he’s a close 2nd after all my nieces

The message Ryan gave at Youth Group was on serving others, so Paul & I decided to wash our students’ feet. I have 36 girls and he has 15 boys.

This is Rachel, the amazing student I got to baptize last week!

Fun new screensaver on the iMac and another new Apple product

This was too funny not to share! My sister sent this to me first thing the other morning and as I lay there groggy and trying to wake up, I read this. I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard at 6:45 in the morning in my life! (It’s a Crohn’s joke)

Thanks to Lauren and Kate (sisters who each have a blog that I follow), I have found my new favorite clothing store. I had the chance to visit invade one, while in Seattle last year and brought back some cute stuff! Then I heard a few months ago we were getting one here in Spokaloo! Last Thursday it opened and it’s a little bit of heaven on earth, in my opinion And to be clear, Francesca’s now replaces Maurices. I never thought that would happen!

The girls had a sleepover in the fort they built with Daddy. Fun memories!!!

Enjoyed my first (Paul’s 3rd) Shock game the other night with good friends. Thanks to them I will be looking into buying season tickets! It was a BLAST!!!

Miss Blair on her 30th at the game! So fun to celebrate her and what she means to me! Love, love, love her

And Mr Dax again! Can’t get enough of him!!

love him. that is all.

oh sweet Dax I love you too!!

Saturday was a perfect day to take a family bike ride to the park! Absolutely LOVE this stage and how everyone knows how to ride a bike and doesn’t need help. We were trying to think back, but we think this was officially our first family ride without training wheels/assistance of some kind, and it was a BLAST!!!!

I am SO using this in some way related to Hannah. Typical big sister acting like she doesn’t like her younger sister. But truth is she ADORES her. Too funny!

After almost passing the Final Exam for my new job, (got 66% and needed 70%), I was incredibly discouraged, which is totally normal for this test taking nightmare of a woman and sweet Hannah left this on my desk in the office yesterday morning so I would see it before I retook the exam. It helped because….

I PASSED!!!!!

One irritating thing about WordPress is as I caption the pictures, it moves them around. Grrrrr….so annoying. The next 2 go with the sister picture at the park.

so much to say, so little time….

I have about 5 posts brewing in my head, but what a whirlwind of a month it has been and I’m afraid the next few weeks will be the same, so for now you get my TOP 2 FAVORITE things that happened in the month of April!

1.

Untitled a video by iammrscrooks on Flickr.

Baptizing one of my 6th grade girls has got to be one of the most memorable things of my life! It was an honor and a blessing to see this girl become a true follower of Christ and make that public declaration that she’s ALL HIS!! Her parents are unsaved and were there to see this huge moment in their daughters life. We’re praying for them to make the same decision soon and I’ll have a front row seat to that too! Being a youth leader has proven to me over and over, that God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called. Without Him, I could not lead these girls. I pray for them daily and I am blessed to have 36 (and counting!) girls that I get to watch grow in their relationship with the Lord.

 

2. God has provided an opportunity for me to work from home! Tomorrow is my last day at my current job, and starting Wednesday I will be starting with US Reports doing contract work as a phone/insurance auditor! My sister has been employed with them for a year and a half now and loves it. It will provide the flexibility I need as a wife and mom with the perk of setting my own days/hours! I couldn’t be MORE excited to have this opportunity to be back home, where I belong. I’m thankful for the last year and a half, as I have come to appreciate working moms in a whole new way.

 

Blessings to you this week! I’ll try to be back soon with pictures from the last month! There’s some GOOD ones!!

xo,

Heather

this is what it’s all about….

 

{via pinterest}

***

⁵ The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

Matthew 28:5-7

food review.

I’m not a pizza connoisseur by any means, but I love me a good pizza. When I went gluten free I attempted to make my own using several different crust mixes and they turned out less than impressive. I took a break (aka gave up) from trying to find ‘the perfect’ crust (I’m a bread girl, so no thin crust for me…plus all GF crusts I’ve had or made are thin crust and taste like cardboard.) Until I had a GF pizza at Twigs. For the first time in over a year (at the time), I discovered that a good GF pizza crust actually existed. They use the crusts made by Fusion Flours. By the name, you’d probably think it wasn’t GF but alas, it is. Since that first pizza at Twigs, I have purchased quite a few mixes from their stand at a local farmer’s market (or at Yoke’s grocery store) and have continually been amazed. My friend Kris was the one who first told me I could purchase their mixes from the market and that the lady who owns it is Celiac {You can read her story here}. Not only is she local, but being Celiac hits home personally because both of my nieces are.

Fast forward to last week….. I ‘like’ a Facebook page called Gluten Free Spokane {glutenfreespokane.com} and they posted news of Fusion Flours opening a Take-n-Bakery located across the street from NorthTown Mall. I’ll admit, I did THE HAPPY DANCE right then and there.  Due to my work schedule, I had to wait until day 3 of them being open to go….Yes, I would have been there the moment they opened, I’m one of those people. What I love most of this place is it is strictly GF. No cross contamination to worry about. No sounding high maintenance while ordering (Like at Domino’s: ‘Could you please cook it on a piece of foil and DO NOT cut it’). No uninformed/lazy employee using glutened utensils. No accidentally getting a REGULAR gluten filled pizza which we are about 99.9% sure happened at Garlic Jim’s last year…yeah, talk about scary allergic reaction – almost going to the hospital, that bad!) I had serious peace of mind while eating THE BEST piece of pizza I have EVER had. If you saw my post on Facebook, you saw this picture. It’s called the Mediterranean {pizza cheese, feta cheese, artichoke hearts, olives, chicken, and topped with fresh spinach}. Hands down, the best pizza ever. Oh wait I just said that! Well it’s worth repeating!!

almost the size of the passenger seat. 12″ turned out to be HUGE and plenty for our little foodie family!

and for dessert was this little slice of heaven. Cinnamon Apple Pizza Pie. I’m drooling just looking at it again. If I didn’t have to share, I would have consumed the whole thing myself. I would have regretted it, but I would have done it.

 

I love food. I love sharing about my food. And when I find a favorite, I HAVE to share it with the world (at least my local friends) so they can experience it as well. Even if you’re not gluten free, you really should give this place a try. Paul and the girls couldn’t believe it was GF because the crust was so thick. There was groaning at the table and 3rds were taken until the very last piece was left. And that was mine. When you’re the only gluten free eater in the family, you can be selfish I took that piece to work the next day and it was amazing – not soggy or dried out like I’ve had before. The flavors were even better and had ‘married’ like my mom says {love my foodie mom & sis – they truly get my obsession with food).

Do you ever think ‘if only a place like that existed?’ and then months later, come to find out a place like that is now open and all is right in the world? That’s how I feel with the opening of Fusion Flours Take-n-Bakery. All is right in my world.

So there you have it, my food review for the week. This could be a new tradition…we’ll see!

Happy Tuesday everyone!

desperate measures.

Our Youth Pastor, Ryan filled in for our head pastor last Sunday and spoke on a subject very close to my heart. Please take the time to listen to what he shared. {key moment at the 20 minute mark}

{click here then click on ‘desperate measures’}

@valleyreallife

~When we find out who Jesus is, it changes who we are~

our week…

 

….according to instagram.

the first little bit of sunshine we’ve had and we soaked it up as much as we could!

Paul & I were driving downtown and I caught the CRAZY beautiful sunset. This picture doesn’t do it justice. The sky looked like it was on fire!

went on a baking frenzy one night….flourless chocolate chocolate chip cookies from glutenfreeonashoestring.com

good ole Bob’s Red Mill GF Shortbread cookies with the hubby’s help. Realized the next day that the fabric sleeve for my rolling pin was contaminated with flour from several years ago (1. I don’t bake much 2. yeah, I should have washed it or thrown it out 3. dumb me) and I ended up having a massive allergic reaction. Needless to say, Paul threw it out. So the 3 of them now have a dozen shortbread cookies they get to enjoy.

This. made. my. day.

haircuts for my beauties from my cousin’s cousin at her new ‘all organic’ salon.

Mom’s Night Out was spent here. Amen.

my adorable new iphone 5 case from a husband and wife Etsy shop. Love me some Etsy.

Paul has been in a routine of playing worship songs for us Saturday mornings. Absolutely love it.

A good friend is in Hawaii this week. She sent me this picture. I may or may not stare at it for looooong periods of time, dreaming…sighing….wishing….

had brunch with my cousins this morning at a yummy place called Clover. Always fun times

my sweet friend Laura loaned me her Vitamix while she is out of town so I could try my hand at making Almond Butter for Megs. It was fun and by her reaction, I’d say it was a success! Now I REALLY want one!