Guess it's time to try this again...

So as the title suggests I have once again failed at keeping up with a blog....it has been over a year since my last post! At any rate a lot of things have happened and life has changed (but I believe for the better). My husband and I recently experienced our first PCS (permanent change of duty station) as a married couple. We are now stationed at Ft. Lee, VA (just south of Richmond, Virginia's capital). So far I have to say we are loving it! We are in a new house (ranch style) that feels like home, and is about 25 minutes from post. I jumped right in with PWOC (protestant women of the chapel) and am about to jump into Club Beyond (a youth ministry for military kids). We have gone to a picnic on post with Chapel Next, movie night (Courageous) and to an awesome show that had Attaboy, NF, The Wedding and Nine Lashes. Eric helped with setup/tear down for the concert and I ran the merchandise table for Nine Lashes. I was able to minister to a young lady at the concert who has been struggling with her faith. She is a huge Nine Lashes fan (even though she does not consider herself to be a christian) and she struggles with anxiety being inside a church. She lost 2 of her sisters in a car accident (7?) years ago. But I believe God will do amazing things through the music she listens to and in her life. I also had a chance to spend quite a bit of time chatting with one of the band member's wife. All and all it has been a whirl wind of a trip. Prayers are appreciated as we look for our new church home and as we spend the next 3 years of our lives down here. Oh yeah, and prayers for me while I work on my M.A. in Christian Ministry through LUO are apprecited as well. Well until next time, enjoy some of the following pictures from the last year :)

 

An Earthquake, a Hurricane, and some flash floods

So obviously, I have failed at keeping up with a blog in a timely manner. Since my last post we have experience a 5.9 earthquake, a cat (2?) hurricane, and now we are experiencing flash flooding. During the earthquake I was sitting in my home office and thought that there was someone outside using a jack hammer...however after a few seconds I realized that the house was also shaking (meaning it would have had to have been a HUGE jack hammer) at this point I start to panic slightly and then position myself in the door frame to the office. There is still a lot of shaking going on, a ceramic tumbler and believe plaque fell in the bathroom, some books fell off the bookshelf in the office, and I found a few items on the floor in the bedroomt hat also fell off of a shelf. Now had we put 2 and 2 together we would have realized that something was going to happen as our kitty cat had been acting very strange for a couple of days (actually, we thought it was just because she didn't like the cat door that my amazing husband put in). Now this happened on a Tuesday (and was felt almost all the way up and down the East Coast). That weekend Hurricane Irene was to come to town. now thankfully for me I was scheduled to be out of town at the Young Life Regional Weekend. Our speaker was Susan D. Hill and she spoke about hearing God, the reasons why we have difficulties hearing God and how to hear God, etc. Now none of it was a new concept to me, however it was quite refreshing to to have the gentle reminder and to worship with other believers from our region. I also had a great opportunity to spend time with some of our high school girls and fellow leaders. Now this all happened by August 28, 2011. Almost 2 weeks have passed and for the last couple of days it has been raining. We lost power for about 2 hours, and there has been flash flooding in Fairfax, and roads have been shut down. I even saw a video of a guy tubing down one of the roads. Sadly, while we are receiving an abudance of rain, there are fires throughout Texas and Oklahoma. It seems like there have been a lot of crazy weather patterns recently and of course people have their theories as to why (such as God is trying to shake up the country, or the end times are near, etc, etc.) Truth is we may not have an answer, it is what it is. All we can do is continue to put our faith, trust, and hope in God.

In only 72 hours :)

So on Saturday morning I had this brilliant idea to write a blog post about the reasons why Chick-fil-A is amazing, however, I have had such an eventful weekend that that particular post is going to have to wait. :)

Starting with Friday, We had a wonderful sleepover for KRHS girls at the lovely Kristin's house. We thought it would be a great way to kick off the new school year. It was the Best "Worst" Dress sleepover. Basically the girls had to wear "hideous" dresses. Some of the dresses were quite cute and I would probably wear...Sam J was our "prom queen" winner. She wore the bridesmaid dress from her mothers wedding. It was sort of a bubble gum pink with a huge bow on the butt. (Very common to that time frame) and she won a spa basket. We ate a lot of goodies (I made Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes, and they were a hit!) played Celebrity, voted on Superlatives, studied about what it means to fellowship and be Christ's example and then the girls played rock band. All and all it was a great night!

Saturday morning I had training for my new job (I am going back to teaching dance and couldn't be more excited!) (I stopped at chick-fil-a on my way out to training from the sleepover, hence why I want to blog about its awesomeness...) Then my husband and I went to Levi & Alison's wedding at Fairfax Baptist Temple. I had never met either of them before, but Eric knew Levi from when he attended FBT. It was an absolutely wonderful wedding ceremony, that was of course (by request of the bride/groom) overshadowed by how amazing our Heavenly Father is. Levi & Ali did the sweetest thing I have ever seen done at a wedding, they invited this parents up and thanked them in front of everyone for everything (training them up in the way of the Lord, etc) it was very touching, and if I ever have kids I will count it an accomplishment to what God has called us to do if they are even just as grateful and God-fearing as these 2 individuals are. Later that evening Eric and I went to see Final Destination 5. Now let me preface this by saying that I do not like nor do I watch scary movies, but for some reason I love the Final Destination series. With that being said, this was not the greatest movie, but it did wrap up the series and bring it full circle. I love the humor found withint it and I love the mind games these movies play, always trying to figure out whats going to happen next.

Then on Sunday, we had an opportunity to ride down to Fredericksburg and go to Biker Sunday at Salem Fields Community Church. We met up with a group of fellow Thieves down there and were amongst other M/M as well (CMA and HSMM to name a few). Not only did they have a church service but they also provided food and had motorcycle games as well. We did not stick around for the games as much (there was a storm brewing to come through) so we thought we'd try to beat it home. We got about halfway home and Eric became VERY TIRED (at this point I had already fallen asleep on the back of the bike...) so we did a (surprise surprise) starbucks stop. Now prior to falling asleep I had been praying for a hedge of protection over us from the rain (which the Lord had been faithful to thus far) As soon as we pulled into the starbacks it started to drizzle, once we got inside it poured. When we had finished our drinks, the storm had passed, and we were smooth riding the rest of the way home :) However, it was evening when we arrived home. I made Cheesy Chicken Enchilada Chicken Helper and then we played DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) for a while together (first time since we got it as a wedding present, I had played once at my mom's as I received one as a bridal shower gift as well) It was so nice to have 2 DDR mats and to be able to do something together.

All in all it was a nice weekend!

What's in a name?

Yes, be amazed, this is my 2nd blog post, in the SAME DAY! Ok, so maybe that would be over posting? However, I feel that I have so much to share I want to get it all out there at once...I will try to spare you and spread it out over the next couple of days or so (that is, if I can remember that I a.) have a blog b.) how to log into it and c.) that I actually have stuff to share).

So I'm sure you are wondering (as I would be) why theHopkins4, I mean we just got married so isn't there only 2 of you? (or there are those whisperings of oooh they had kids before they were married, or oooh they're expecting twins etc etc) Let me put those whisperings to rest, no we do not have any children of the human kind, nor are we expecting any or trying for any right now. However, we do have 2 (in my opinion) very adorable furry babies. And believe me, I do mean FURRY! Coal is our old man dog as I like to call him (he will be 11 in December!) Coal is a German Shepard/Lab mix that I acquired when I married my husband. He has been Eric's right hand dog so to speak for the last 6 years or so. He is all black and sheds a lot! Coal can also be quite clumsy, I don't think he realizes how big he is (90+ lbs) or that his tail is killer! (Ok so the tail hasn't actually killed anyone or anything, but it has knocked over and destroyed what we refer to as C3PO (our stand up fan thing) and it has smacked vicously across the face/body of the next adorable fuzzy thing I will introduce you to). Which brings us to the baby of the family. Her full name is Sassafras (but we rarely if ever call her that), she goes by Sassy (which most definitely fits her personality!). However, she doesn't know her name (that could be my fault...I have been known to call her many many different names, baby, sassypants, fussybritches, and whineybritches to name a few). She is my 7.5 lbs of fluff kitty, who turned 1 in May (ok thats when i dubbed her birthday...we really don't know, she was adopted in Novemeber as a birthday present for me, prior to this she had been left at a high kill shelter, so we could only guess her age) Her favorite "toys" are twist ties, milk carton rings, random string, and of course daddy's clothes! She is your typical cat and your typical girl, she only wants to be loved on when she wants it, and don't even think about it if you want to love on her....She also is a fan of walking on us in the middle of the night for lovin. But I wouldn't trade either of them for the world. And I apologize ahead of time for the over abundance of pictures that will probably be posted of the 2 of them :)

First BUT hopefully not last

So let me start off by saying that I am terrible at keeping up with blogs....This is probably the 3rd or 4th blog I have ever attempted to start in my lifetime. And well, there has to be a reason I said attempted and start in the same sentance. I have always thought that it would be a cool idea to keep some sort of online journal so that those who know me can keep up with what I am doing, or more importantly what God is doing in my life. But at the same time I have seen so many people abuse blogs to be their outlet of woe is me I have a horrible life everyone please take pity on me. And believe me I DO NOT want to be that person, nor do I want to have that many dramatic problems that I could become that person. Continuing on then. Recently I have seen many people start blogs during their first year of marriage, be it a generic blog, a blog about married life, daily pictures of the first year of marriage, etc. This really sparked my interest! So Eric and I have now been married for 4 months and I decided, although late in the game, it's finally time I started a blog. Plus, I would like to get away from Facebook (but still let people know what's going on). With that being said, you have stumbled upon the creation that is my first blog post, but hopefully not my last on this blog.