12 Weeks Today!

Well, I feel just awful that we haven't blogged since October! But, really, not a lot of excitement has happened in our lives...until recently!

Jared has pretty much been focused on school (he will be done this summer...yay!!!) and his job at the church. I have been enjoying my new position as the director of Adventure Club's After School and Summer Programs. So, needless to say, we've been busy. But, apparently not busy enough.

So, in case you haven't heard the news, there will be another Norris in this world come July! Hopefully I will get better about my blogging and post ultrasound pics, etc. as we go through our pregnancy. But, for now, this is all I have!

And to all of you wondering minds...we are celebrating 12 weeks today! As for morning sickness, there hasn't been much of it. I have been really blessed thus far with an easy pregnancy (except for getting Vertigo, but that didn't have anything to do with my sweet baby!). So, we are praying that the blessings will continue. But, let's be honest--even if I puke my guts out everyday for the next 6 months, it's still a blessing! Will I regret saying that?

Happy Birthday Elli Bell!

Well, today is a big day for my family. The only grandchild turned 1 year old today! Elli, you are a beautiful little girl! You are so much fun and always lift our spirits. Hope you have a wonderful day. Love You ... mmmmwah!

Honduras Pics

Well, Jared went off to camp with his computer this week, which happens to be where all of our Honduras pictures are. So, here are a few that I just happen to have. Enjoy!

Oh, by the way...Has anyone else heard about the military coup that began in Honduras the WEEK after we left?! The US State Department is now recommending U.S. citizens avoid traveling to Honduras. WOW! Looks like we got back just in time!

Be praying for our hispanic pastor and his son. We left them behind in Honduras visiting their family, so hopefully they will have no problem getting home next week!

On with the pics!

This is the front of the house we stayed in. Jared got kind of artsy with this pic. The house was basically cinder block with a tin roof.
This is my bed for the week. Can I just say, I recommend taking a mosquito net with you to any foreign country in which you travel. It was wonderful! You should have seen some of the things me and Rachel pulled off of our nets. Thank you Jason for letting me have your net!


This is the teeeny tiny oven Rachel and I cooked meals on for 22 people. All I have to say is "Fish and Loaves" because that's about the miracle we had every night!

One of the things we were able to do was put up 2 basketball goals. 1 at the school and 1 up by the pastor's house. The kids had never played basketball, but they loved it...and were really good! So, in 15 years if you hear of this amazing basketball player that came from an obscure village in Honduras, you'll know who gave him his first basketball goal.

Jared got to preach the revival one night. This was his first time speaking with an interpreter...difficult. But he did great!

Another thing we did was a women's Bible Study. One of the girls who went last year really felt like we needed to speak to the young girls in the village about abstinence, since many of the girls have children out of wedlock by age 16. So we spent the first day just speaking about salvation and leading others to Christ; the second day we talked about spiritual disciplines; and the third day Hannah spoke about abstinence and I spoke about God's forgiveness and healing and the ability to "start over" on a commitment to abstinence. The first day we had about 15, the second day we had about 25-30. The third day we had 76! God knew what he was doing (as usual!).

And, this is Jenny. Is she not the most beautiful little girl? All of the kids this week were so sweet and just loved being around us. Jenny spent a lot of time in this tree outside of our house.

So that's all for now. Hopefully I will get more posted soon!

We made it back!

Well, we made it safely back from Honduras. We have so much to tell you about our trip and all of the amazing things that happened while we were there. We have several hundred pictures and a story to go with each one, so hopefully over the next few weeks, we will have the time to post some stuff about our trip!

Check back soon!

God Has Answered

I just wanted to let you all know that (with a little encouragement from yours truly) my sister has finally joined the blogging world! If you would like to check out their blog, you can find "God Has Answered" at www.myellianna.blogspot.com.

Introducing me...as a brunette!

Well, I have had requests from some of my friends and family back in TN to post a picture of me as a brunette. I have now offically been a non-blonde since March. The idea in dying my hair brown was that as it grew out, it would fade to my natural color which is actually a dishwater blonde. The reason: hair color is expensive and time consuming! So, I'm trying to free myself from the bondage of hair dye by growing it out at it's natural color.

So, now, 2 months later, I have about 1/2 inch roots of dishwater blonde hair and a faded out reddish-brown color for the rest of my hair...not quite what I had in mind! But, I am going to just deal with it and have funky hair for a few months until it's all grown out. Though I do sort of miss being a blonde, I have decided this is all for the best!

So, what do you think?

Doggy Yoga

So, this morning when I was doing my jumpstart yoga (yeah, that's right) Asher was in the living room with me. Now, this is not a normal thing to do in my morning routine, so needless to say, he was very curious. Over the course of the 30 minutes, he began stretching with me. I'm sure it was just a coincidence, but it was very funny when Jared walked in and found me and Asher pretty much doing the same stretches. Then, when I layed down to do the ab toning portion, Asher became very concerned. He actually licked my face every time my head came off the ground. Then, after several attempts to get me out of the floor, he just sat on me. It was hysterical. I would post a picture from this morning, but it all happened too quick for Jared to get out the camera...plus, I'm not really sure that I want everyone to see my sad attempt at Yoga!

A Magic Carpet Ride

So, today, I was sitting at work and I had pretty much finished up everything I needed to do for the day. With everyone gone for lunch, I was getting pretty bored. So, as I thought about it, I decided this would be the perfect time to try some of those "desk exercises" that you always read about in fitness magazines and see on Good Morning America. So, I googled "Desk Exercises." I was amazed at what I got. Who on earth would ever feel comfortable doing these in their office in the middle of the day?! Maybe, I'm crazy. Here are a few that came up...let me know what you think.

1. The magic carpet ride-Sit in your chair with your legs crossed and your feet on the seat. Then place your hands on the armrests, suck in your gut and raise yourself a few inches above the seat, using your belly, muscles and hands. Hold for 10 to 20 seconds. Rest for 30 seconds. Repeat five times.

2. Glance at the wall clock and do a minute's worth of jumping jacks

3. Desktop Yoga-Stand up facing the wall and reach your fingers up as far as you can. While you stretch up also stretch down by placing your feet firmly into the floor. Firm up your legs, extend the side of the torso and bring the shoulder blades towards the wall. Breathe fully as you stretch, walking your fingers up the wall. Move little away from the wall so that your torso is diagonal to your hips and press both palms into the wall equally. Press into the ground with your feet, firm up your legs and release your tailbone away from the wall. Lift up the ribs and let your head drop slightly.

I think you get my point. If I started doing the magic carpet ride in the middle of the office, I think I might attract a little more attention than I was going for.

Please tell me that you have better ideas!

Passion...not Fashion!

I have spent all 25 years of my life in church. I have been a Christian for 17 of them. I am married to a minister. I have heard almost every word, euphemism and cliche in the Christian Vocabulary. But, it was not until today that I learned that the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday is considered "Passion Week." It is a week set aside for remembering the passion that Jesus displayed in the week and days leading up to his death on the cross. So, I decided to do some research. What kind of celebration takes place during passion week? I found this article from the Korea Times that briefly describes some of the activities done during Holy Week but it also goes on to talk about what we would do to Jesus today if we were the mob given the opportunity to condemn him. Now, honestly, I don't know who the author of this article is and I don't know what his theology is. But, it made a lot of sense to me. Here is another site that explains the events that took place in the week leading up to Christ's death. So, I hope if you have some time, you'll read these articles and do some research of your own to find out more about Passion Week. It is my prayer for this week, that we would all spend more time focusing on Christ's Passion for his people than on what dress we will wear Sunday and where we will find shoes to match it! This week is meant to be about Passion...not Fashion!

It's Always Hard to Say Goodbye

Well, as many of you know, a week ago yesterday my grandmother passed away. Granny was my dad's 81-year-old mother. She was a VERY Godly woman and left a legacy of God-fearing and God-honoring people in our family. She fervently prayed for her husband for nearly 50 years until my grandfather, at age 75, accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior. That was (about?) 13 years ago and because of her diligence, she is now enjoying eternity with the two loves of her life...her Lord and her husband.

Though it has been a hard week, I have had to remind myself how selfish it is to wish that she was still dwelling on this earth. Though she loved her 3 children, her 8 grandchildren and her 10 great grandchildren, I truly feel like she was ready to go. But, even so, it's been so hard to say goodbye...hard to say goodbye to my loving grandmother...to the home she has lived in and loved in...and to my family as I made my 6 hour trek home the night after the funeral.

But, I have come to the realization that it IS and WILL ALWAYS BE hard to say goodbye and I have decided that's a good thing. Because when it's hard to say goodbye, it means that you have loved well, lived hard and have enjoyed the season that God has placed you in. And though it's scary and hard and sad to move from one season to the next, I hope that I can always see in the "goodbye" a testimony of what the Lord has done and a promise of what he will continue to do.

Time to Catch You Up

Well, it's been a VERY busy couple of months and I figure it's time to catch you up on our lives. Sweet little Elli is 5 months old today. She has rolled over a couple of times but has decided to protest any further rolling for now. She likes cereal and peas, but LOVES pear juice. But most of all, she loves her Aunt Katie and can't stand to be away from her (or is it the other way around?). Elli got to come to Kentucky for her first visit at the end of February. Low and Behold she got to see her first snow. She didn't much care for being in the cold, but she was a trooper all weekend!

She also really likes to dress to match her Aunt Katie!

Other than missing Elli, we have been pretty busy doing lots of things. Jared managed to finish 6 course hours over Christmas break and is about 1/2 way through his fourth semester of Seminary. Oh how we long for Jared to be through with school! Things at our church have been going well. God seems to really be working in the families in our church as we see parents who are stepping out and spiritually leading their children...some of them for the first time ever. It truly is a blessing.

Jared and I will be going to Honduras this summer to minister to a small, impoverished village outside of San Pedro. We are very excited to go on this adventure together and look forward to seeing how we work together as a missions team. We are, however, poor seminary students who can't really afford to go out to eat, let alone go out of the country. So, if you would like to contribute to this ministry, please email me at kgnorris@gmail.com and I will tell you how you can support us financially (and tax deductibly).

I am working two jobs these days and enjoying them both very well. Jared is working hard at church and hard at school, so I guess technically he has two jobs, too. We are both loving our house and can't wait until summer comes so we can work in the yard and make the outside as beautiful as the inside.

Well, as boring as this update is, that's all I've got for you. We really are just "Busy" people...nothing too exciting happening here. Oh yeah, I'm a brunette now!

Tata!

The Grass actually is Greener!

You know how they always say the Grass is Greener on the other side? Well, in this case it actually is! We thankfully got our power back on Friday night about 5:00. So, we were only without for 3 full days and 2 nights....and let me tell you, it was terrible. So, I definitely feel very blessed to be with power unlike the thousands of people in KY still without.

On Saturday my dad came up with a generator and a kerosene heater so we will be better prepared for the next bad storm that comes through. He also brought his chain saw and his new pole saw to help us recover from the damage that the trees caused. It was hard to tell because everything was covered in snow, but 1 large branch in particular was about 1 foot away from falling on our house. So, we are even more blessed than we knew!

Jared also had the opportunity to organize a chainsaw crew from our church to minister to some of the worst houses in our city. At a moment's notice he had a crew of 40 people that was able to service 26 houses in about 4 hours. It was great!

Yesterday we had very warm weather and all of the ice melted away from the trees and the snow began to melt. For the first time in a week we are actually seeing grass! Needless to say, I am ready for the SPRING!

Thanks for all your prayers and encouragement!

Weather Update

Well, we still have no power in our house. Rumor in the neighborhood is that it could be up to 14 days until our electricity is restored. We are still being taken care of by lots of kind people in our church.

There is supposed to be some warm weather this weekend (a high of 35--woohoo), so hopefully some things will begin to thaw. Dad is bringing us a kerosine heater tomorrow so we can heat our house at least enough to keep the pipes from freezing. He is also bringing his chain saw to help us remove some of the debris from our yard and from on top of our house. It will be nice to get this all done before the "Blizzard-Like Conditions" that are supposed to be coming our way on Monday and Tuesday.

My dad is also being gracious enough to take Asher back home with him. He hasn't adjusted very well to moving from house to house. So, he will go stay with his girlfriend Roxy in TN for a few days!

If there's anyone out there reading this blog that knows of a church in FLORIDA looking for a children's minister...give them my number!!! Just kidding :)

Winter Wonderland or Winter Disaster?

Well, it is days like these that I seriously miss my Tennessee home. Monday night we got several inches of Snow. Tuesday night several inches of ice were topped onto that. Wednesday morning several more inches of snow were topped onto that. Oh did I mention that we haven't had power since Wednesday morning at about 9:00?

So, needless to say, it's been a crazy couple of days. Above are some pictures of our house and the trees that are falling in our front yard. Things have been quite a mess.

Hopefully we will have power soon. For now we have some wonderful friends who are letting us sleep and shower at their house. They even let Asher come spend the night!

The Experience

Well, it has been awhile since our last blog post. To catch you up...we had a very thankful Thanksgiving, a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. There. :)

As you probably noticed, the title of this post is "The Experience." Well, last weekend, Jared's brother Jason and his wife Rachel came in town for a visit and to say the least, it was an EXPERIENCE!

They arrived Friday night. We said quick hellos and then all went to bed to get ready for the big day we were going to have on Saturday. You see, Jason celebrated his 28th birthday on Saturday and we had big plans for him.

We all got up pretty early on Saturday...morning pictures, not our best! What's on Jared's shirt?

Jason and Rachel take much better morning pictures than us!After a healthy breakfast of Cinnamin rolls, Jason opened his presents......and Asher helped!After doddling around for awhile, we all got showers and got ready to go...much better! We drove to Cincinnati and arrived on the outskirts of town just in time for lunch in Skyline. (For those of you Tennesseans who read the blog: Skyline is a chili place known for its coneys and chili with spaghetti noodles in it. Yuck!) But, eating at Skyline was all a part of the Experience!

This is the Cincinnati skyline as we were coming into town...pretty blue skies for Jason's birthday!After driving through Cincinnati, we went on to Westchester, OH to the IKEA store. Jared had sold some stuff on Craigslist so we could buy a new desk and Jason and Rachel were looking for some bookshelves. If you have never been to IKEA, you must go! It is such a neat experience. It takes a good 2 hours too look at everything in the store and it is all very trendy, but inexpensive furniture and accessories. I highly recommend going to check it out sometime. Now, let me give you some background information. All week long Rachel had been telling Jason that we had a surprise for him for his birthday. He knew we were going to IKEA, but he didn't know what the surprise was. So, for lack of a better descriptive word, Rachel told him that we were taking him to an "Experience." So, when we came out of IKEA and realized our furniture boxes were a little bigger than we had planned, we were in trouble. You see, we thought we'd be able to fit our furniture in the cab of the truck while we were at the Experience. But, the boxes were so big they barely fit in the back of Jason's truck. So, we kind of went into panic mode. Just as we were about to have to drive 2 hours back to Louisville to drop off our furniture and turn around to come back to Cincinnati for the experience, I remembered that a girl I work with in KY was from Cincinnati. So, I called Tina up and she came to the rescue. She called her mom and dad and asked if we could leave our furniture there until we could come back for it. HOW RANDOM IS THAT???? Well, it was all part of the experience!

So, on the way to Tina's parents' we stopped by a Bob Evans to get a Thank you gift card for being so kind! This is me excitedly leaping from the restaurant out of happiness for not having to drive back to Louisville.

So, after driving about 30 minutes, we finally made it to Tina's parents' where we unloaded our stuff on their back porch. Here are Jared and Jason being troopers in the midst of the hilarity of our situation.
So, we basically, loaded our furniture into the truck at IKEA, unloaded it at these random people's house, only to have to come back 3 hours later, load it back into our truck, take it back to Louisville and unload it again. Whew...that's a lot of work. But, the good news is that thanks to our brief detour we got to see...

a statue of a giant preying mantis in someone's front yard...

and a statue we have come to affectionately call "Touch Down Jesus." By the time this was all done, it was time for dinner. So, we went to P.F. Chang's, Jason's favorite restaurant. If you can't tell, we are a little pooped.

After dinner it was time...for the experience! At this point, Jason still had no clue where we were going. Although, he did guess as many random things as he could possibly think of. So, we all piled in the car and started our drive to Northern Kentucky University, just on the other side of Cincinnati.

We were already parked and on the way into the colisseum when Jason finally figured out what the Experience actually was! It's hard to catch laughter in a still shot, but Rachel did her best. So, you are wondering, what was the experience was...

The MONSTER TRUCK NATIONAL TOUR!!!!
Happy Birthday Jason!