It’s always Autumn in England

For those of you who read this, but don’t have Facebook, here are a few pictures from the ceremony I attended in England to accept my British Citizenship. Just CLICK HERE

Enjoy!

I’m siting in JFK airport in New York right now. I’ve been here almost 6 hours. I’ve already been travelling for 14 hours. As soon as I get on the plane, I plan to fall asleep…at least that is the plan.

Evan and I got the first $100 for Costa Rica. I don’t think they would want their names written on here, but if you’re reading this, you know who you are and thank you!!

I am going to start a blog just for Costa Rica using blogspot because from what I have used it is easier than blogsome. I will post here when it’s up and running. Well we should be boarding soon and since this is the first time I have used my phone to post on my blog I want to se how it works!

I am going to Costa Rica. December 13th to 21st. I am still at work tonight, waiting for a meeting to start regarding this trip.

I have also convinced Evan to come with me! I am really glad. Even though I will be "working" during the trip. It will be good to have Evan there and be able to relax in the evenings with him, rather than try to figure out if I can email/call/text him. However, it does mean we now need to raise around $2,000 for him to be able to go. All of my expenses are covered. If we get any extra, it will go into a pot that goes towards the cost of the building materials for the houses we will build. I believe the goal is 12 houses by Christmas!

Please be praying for Evan and I. I know I mentioned it a couple posts ago, but I do believe this is a time when the enemy will strike hard, because we are doing something for God. I am still excited!

Now, I need to get a new camera! Anyone want to donate about $150 for that cause?? lol Just kidding. It will be an early Christmas present to myself for this trip I think!

I have a list of around 50 blogs that I read on a regluar basis. On that list are around 10 of people I have never met in real life, but I found their blog, found it interesting and kept reading. After reading one of them for several months, I finally commented, and she emailed me back personally. I was impressed! I have continued to read her blog and continue to comment when there is something I have to say. It was kinda cool to make that connection.

I know many who read my blog and write with them in mind. Some are college friends (grete, samantha, suzie); some from high school (tammy). I know I have lots of family (angela, jay) who read and several life long friends (alley, jill), there are also some friends who I met randomly (janelle, katie) who follow along on my ramblings…but I certainly couldn’t name 131 people who read this on a regular basis.

Why I am thinking of 131?? Well, the last month or so, I have been watching the stats on my blog and I just figured out I am averaging 131 hits per day. I had over well over 4000 hits in the last 31 days.

So, this is my proposal…if you are lurking…which means you are in the 131 readers, who are not in the listed categories above, or have never commented on my blog, then reveal yourself now!! Some of the people I listed above are some of the coolest people you will ever hang out with on a blog. Plus, if you leave a comment, we might just get to know each other and that could be kinda fun too!

I have seen some fun blogs that offer prizes for de-lurking. I’m not gonna do that, but I will try to answer anyone who decides to respond.

I hope each of you has a blessed weekend!

My tickets are booked. I head over on the 21st and return on the 28th. By the time I get back, I will be a citizen of both the UK and America. I am excited. Plus, I intend to attend ALC while I am there. I also plan to hang out with as many people as I can and just generally enjoy being in England for 7 days!!

The last couple weeks nothing much has happened for me to update on, and today I have several things I want to write about.

Last night Sam did really well in Football. He had his name announced several times for tackles he made against the other team. A lot of the time, the other teams send the ball down the other side of the field, but last night he got lots of opportunities to get the first touch and he did!!

This morning, Evan’s sister was here and was showing us this house she had found that she was considering buying. It is in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Lafayette, but from the pictures it looked like no one was living in it and it needs a LOT of work outside. There were no pictures of the inside of the house…which to me says bad news. Anyway, we and Jane, convinced Sarah it wasn’t the kind of house she wanted because it was too much work. However, Evan and I are seriously thinking of going and looking at it! It is less than we thought we would spend, but we could fix it up and because of the neighborhood it is in, we are sure we would get a return when we sold it…even if we just kept it a couple years! I have always wanted to buy and fix up a house to resell and make a profit!

Now, one of the exiciting things I found out this week, is two travel dates. I am going to be going to the National Missionary Convention in November and in December I am going to be going to Costa Rica! My expenses will be paid for the NMC and Costa Rica, but I will probably need to raise some of the cost of Costa Rica. I will certainly be sending out letters asking for people to be praying…and that is far more imortant than the money really.

I have come to see more and more how the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy and if you are attempting anything that goes above the daily living of the Christian life, I think he hates that even more and will do whatever he can to steal, kill or destroy whatever it is you are doing. It is as if you are sticking your head above the crowd and the enemy doesn’t want you to do that. Anyway, I have to confirm with Gary what will be paid and make sure I can really go these dates, because when I found out about the opportunity, Gary wasn’t in the office, so I haven’t had a chance to tell him I want to go!

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives. Of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six. According to some other bloggers, they encourage us to:

*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman  
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo