Busted.

Oh gosh...the last post I wrote was in December...that's just embarrassing! I was at dinner with two of my dearest friends, Julie and Lynsey, and somehow we got on the subject of blogs. I confessed that I hadn't updated mine in a while and Julie replied "Yeah...about that..." Ha! Busted!! I promised I would get an update out soon! We've had SO SO much going on and I've just decided to list all the fun things that have happened in our lives over the past few months :) and I WILL do better about updating this thing! Promise! Here are all of the amazing and not so amazing things that have happened over the past few months, in no particular order.

-  My wonderful sister got engaged to her amazing boyfriend of 6 years!!!! They are getting married July 1. I am beyond excited for them and can't wait to welcome Greg (officially!) into the family. Over the years we've all gotten to know Greg and he's pretty much part of the family already, so now it's just time to make it official! When I look at Malissa and Greg's relationship I see God glorified in so many ways. As they love, serve, encourage, and even as they fight and learn to forgive each other Jesus is made known to those around them. I'm so excited for the lifetime of marriage that they'll have, God willing!

- We said "see-ya-later" to two of our amazing friends, Trey and Erin. They are now full time missionaries in Africa! Selfishly our hearts ached to see them move, but we cannot express how excited we are that they are doing what God has called them to do since the beginning of their college careers. You can follow all of their adventures here. They are working with a church in Uganda to help raise up and train leaders and teach them how to be disciples and growing followers of Jesus.

- WE ARE BUYING A HOUSE! Wow...it still feels crazy to say that! Yup, as of May 11 we will be homeowners! The current owners have children and so we will lease the house back to them until May 31st when their kids finish school, and then we'll move in. We'll be moving to New Territory in Sugar Land and can't wait to leave apartment life. Our latest neighbor finds joy in blaring his rap music loud enough that we can hear every single word at 6:30ish every morning, and then raps along...in falsetto. Yeah... We can't wait for many years of dinner parties, future kids, and loving on our neighbors! Pictures to come.

-  My grandfather, Dandy, as we called him, passed away a couple weeks ago. He passed in his sleep and went to be with Jesus. He was 94 years old, and lived a great long life. He is terribly missed, but from everything I know was a strong believer and is now in the presence of the Lord. It's such a paradox that our flesh deals with the ache of the loss of a loved one but we can rejoice now that Dandy is home with his eternal Father. Check out 1 Corinthians 15: 50-57. Good stuff.

- Adam has *almost* survived his 18 hour semester from you-know-where. He has one more final this coming Tuesday and then he is FINISHED! One more summer semester and then he's done with school forever! Or at least for a while... He has handled all the craziness with such grace. As nutty as it's been, I think we both agree that this semester has been one of the best things for us. We have had to communicate like crazy just to make sure that everything is being taken care of with all the new house stuff, and we've had to be in constant communication with each other to make sure that the other one is doing okay (spiritually, emotionally, etc.). And by no means have we done this perfectly. There have been several nights of tears and hashing out issues. We are two people with two sometimes very different opinions and we have to compromise. Just keeping it real people...

Again so sorry for the terrible delay in posts. We'll try to do better to keep you updated!

Sarah

Oops!

HOW in the world is it DECEMBER!?!? Time has flown! And I never posted honeymoon pictures...my bad... Although I would like to post them all, here are the highlights. We had a blast!

Leaving on the plane to Miami at 6 AM! All smiles :) 

The first thing we did was go check out the beach. Even though we got there at like 5pm

With on of the clowns at the shows they had nightly. We only went to one of them because we heard tho others were pretty lame

Eating lunch in our little hut :)

This was on the "safari" that we went on. It was really cool! We got to see some of the Dominican day to day life. 

On the beach drinking Coco Locos!

Yay!

At the Italian restaurant at the resort

We actually DID go zip lining!!! I may have been shaking the whole entire time and one of the guides may have very sternly told me that I had to listen to him because I was freaking out, but we DID IT!!! An awesome victory that we got to celebrate together

After the zip lining

we also got to ride horses on the beach!! 

And we had a spa afternoon

Last day...sad to be leaving.

Overall we had an awesome time. There were tons of cultural differences that we just embraced, and the food was very hit or miss. One of the most memorable things for us both was the safari that we got to go on. We were able to see some of how the Dominican people live day to day and it impacted us both in pretty big ways. The country is stricken by poverty and as we were paraded through the small villages in an oversized truck, God began working in our hearts. We have just come out of a season where we have been so abundantly and richly blessed, and our hearts are ready to spill over. As we looked into the faces of these children and families in these small villages we realized that God was tugging at our heart strings to give back to them. As we talked over dinner later that night and were thinking about how we could help, we decided to sponsor a child in the Dominican Republic through Compassion International. No, it isn't very much, but if we can help one child hear about Jesus and receive the resources he or she needs to go school and learn, maybe, just MAYBE the Gospel will infect that child just as it has us and that child will make a difference in his or her community by showing them the love of Jesus. As we praised God for this small revelation of how we could help this country we were filled with gratitude. Gratitude for the grace He has lavished upon us to know Him and have a relationship with Him, so he can change our hearts and let them pour forth His love to those who need it. As we continue our journey of marriage we look forward to many of these revelations in the future. How awesome is it that God chooses to use sinners like us for His glory?! 

There is so much that can be done here in our community, too and we can't wait to see how God is going to use us as a couple to serve him here.

Sorry for the long post, just wanting to keep everyone updated with what's going on with us :) I seriously can't believe it's already Christmas time...We finally put the tree up, but there still aren't any ornaments on it yet... Hopefully we'll get to that today. We'll see!

much love,

Sarah

Punta Cana Bound!

Soooo....we leave TOMORROW at the ungodly hour of 6 AM (which means leaving our apartment at 3:30 AM......) for the Dominican Republic for our Honeymoon!! We are quite excited and have enjoyed being able to pack together :) the pictures that follow are what we hope our trip to be like.

This is the resort where we'll be! Doesn't it look heavenly?!

This would be fun to see :)

Sailboats are great! Wouldn't mind doing this at all :)

Not so sure about this...although this guy looks like he's having a pretty great time.

And I really hope to God that I don't see anything like this...

 And if this happened I wouldn't be complaining one bit!

Stay tuned for the actual pictures...I'm not sure they'll be anything like this, but we're EXCITED!!

Retreatin' and Relaxin'

Hello all,

This past weekend I had the incredible opportunity to go on the Crossbridge ladies' retreat. Let me just say...this retreat was amazing. And so needed. After all the wedding craziness it was so great to get out in the middle of nowhere and be alone with God. As I write this I'm even having trouble describing the whole thing. It was just plain fun. The crafting, the snacking, the laughing, the zip-lining (which I did not do, and have NO regrets whatsoever) it was all so great.

The speaker was so great, too. Such a gift that woman has for sharing the Word of God. The main focus was Womanhood and how to not be a wimpy woman. Because in Jesus we are all called to be active warriors in our homes. There are so many things that are trying to attack our families, and we have the active role of encouraging, fighting for, loving, and praying for our husbands and children. But at the same time we are called to be vulnerable with our husbands and families. I use the word vulnerable because I feel as though the word submissive has so many negative connotations these days. It is a delight, though, to be vulnerable and submissive with our husbands. Whew! I have so much repenting to do... Praise the Lord!  I know my own heart had been so hard to being submissive to my husband, and the way that God so gently and tenderly spoke to my hard heart made the stone melt away. Have I mastered it yet, oh no...far from it, but I do praise God for the revelation and pray that He will continue to lead me to the foot of the cross so I will leave my old self there and put on the new person that Christ says that I am.

Love love,
Sarah

Adventures in Baking

Sorry for the delay in the blog posts! We've been getting settled in and enjoying life as a married couple. I've been back to work and have had to accept the fact that my little ride on cloud 9 is starting to come to an end. I think my first day back at work I made a comment to Adam that was something like "you mean married women still have to work?!" Ha...I was only kidding of course :) The real world has crept it's way back into our lives and we are continuing to learn how to live with and love each other and honor Jesus above all else.

Lately I've been trying to focus on meal planning and grocery shopping and keeping my man's belly satisfied. Today I spent HOURS slaving over a hot stove to bring you....drum roll please...FRESH BAKED WHOLE WHEAT BREAD!!! I know, I know...try not to be too impressed. Okay, so I really didn't slave over a hot stove for hours, but I did make 2 loaves on homemade bread! It was my first attempt, so some things need some tweaking, but it got approval from the mister! He does eat anything that's put in from of him, but I'll take what I can get at this point ;) I got a KitchenAid mixer from my awesome hostesses at the Bridal Shower and I've been dying to use it, so this was my first time to use it!

 Here she is in all her glory!

Some of the main ingredients

All dumped into the mixer

 Lettin' the yeast do its thing

The dough!! About to let it rise

And into the oven in goes! So proud of this little loaf!

BREAD! Overall it turned out pretty good :) I'll definitely keep trying until I perfect it.

This afternoon I'm making cake balls for the ladies retreat this weekend :) So excited about this retreat. It's so needed. We need time to get away and be with the Lord from time to time. I sure am thankful for this opportunity to meet some new people and sit before the Lord. I'll post more about it when I get back!

Much Love, 

Sarah

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! We are newly married (on October 22nd!!) and wanted to create a place that you can keep up with our lives. We may not be very interesting, but we'd love for you to keep up with us!! Please continue to check back for additional updates and wedding photos when we get them.

A little about the website address. So we have been thinking...and thinking...and then thinking some more about what we would like to all this blog. We had some good ideas, and some really bad ones, and some pretty plain ones. And then we had this one...somedirtandaprincess. We took the meanings of our names-- Adam- "of the earth" and Sarah-- "a princess" and came up with somedirtandaprincess. We think it's pretty great! So no...I'm not some hoity-toity girl that thinks she's supposed to be treated like a princess...we just though it was funny!

A little about the title of the blog. Falling Forward. In our premarital counseling we read a book called Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas (which is an EXCELLENT book...even if you're already married!) and one of the Chapters is called Falling Forward. In a nutshell, the idea of the chapter is that no couple is perfect, and everyone is in need of the saving grace of Jesus. When one or both partners mess up, fall forward and get back up and continue on the wonderful journey that marriage is.  There is no backsliding. Divorce is not an option. It will not be something that we choose to speak of in our home.  Marriage is going to be difficult, and both partners have to be willing to work. Hard. We know this and will do whatever it takes to make out marriage succeed! Sorry if this is too much for the first blog... But we're really excited and can't wait to have you along on our journey! Stay tuned for pictures!!