After work on Tuesday, I came home and made crock pot lasagna, spinach salad with homemade Olive Garden Salad dressing, and garlic & cheese bread (see "Recipes" to see this recipe) for my Hubby and I. And, then we just chilled and had a relaxing evening with each other and our kitties :) 

                                                                          My outfit for today (see "Fashion"):

On Wednesday, after work and leftovers, we went to church for our young adult group. Tonight, one of our dear young adult group member gave the lesson. The same guy who lead prayer for the congregation the other Sunday. It was a great and challenging lesson on "Selfie Society" and where our hearts are-with God or with ourselves.



                                                                My outfit for work and church was..... 

Sorry guys for not keeping up with the blog like I should this week. Since it's back-to-school for the kids, and work time for me, it's been extra busy and later nights, so I haven't been able to keep up with the blogs this week. So, for future reference, while working, it might end up being around the weekend when I post my daily moments.

On Monday, after work and a quick run through Burger King, my husband and I saw "A Thousand Horses" and "Lady Antebellum" at Rockingham County Fair. They put on a great show!! :))

                                                          My outfit (Please see "Fashion" for more info.)

                                                               Started the day off with a yummy breakfast......

                                                                                  ....and, then church....
Today, my husband & I, and my parents decided to visit my brother and his wife's church. My sister-in-law's dad is the pastor for their church, and he definitely had a great message this morning on choosing life! (Stay tuned for more detailed notes that I took on this lesson that I will post under the "Personal Insights" sub-category). 
                                                       
                                      My church outfit today (see more details in "Fashion" sub-category):

After church and a nice family luncheon at Applebee's, my husband and I came home to squeeze in another wee wittle nap (we love our naps, can't ya tell? :)). I woke up to find these two adorable little critters :)

And then, it was party time for Emily ( my husband's younger sister)!! She turned 8, beautiful and sweet as always :)

                                                                                       My "party" outfit:

After my husband and I slept in a little bit this morning, we went to our church's annual big yard sale that helps to fund for our teens to go to this really awesome retreat called Winterfest. Along the way to the yard sale, I had to make a pit stop to Sheetz for another frozen mocha ;) I'm seriously getting addicted to these things haha.  

                                                Also, along the way, we listened to Luke Bryan's new CD :)

And, this is all the goodies we got at the yard sale all for about $25...I thought it was a pretty good deal:

After we had lunch at Chick-fil-a (the best fast food place there is, by the way ;)), we came home and washed our vehicles while listening to music :)

Since it was so hot outside, when I was done, to cool off, I threw the leftover bucket and bubbles over my head ;) And, of course, my hubby filmed me....soo, here ya go ;)

                           Here is my outfit that I wore in the morning before I got all dirty and wet haha...

After getting cleaned off, my husband and I had a wee wittle nap, and then we had dinner at my absolute FAVORITE restaurant with my husband's mom :)

                                     After our meals, we went for another evening walk with this crew....

                                                                        My 2nd outfit of the day was...... 

                                                                     Again, see "Fashion" for more details :)

Today was my first official day back to work before the kids start on Monday!! I'm getting so pumped as the days go by for a new exciting year! I'm excited to grow, be challenged, learn a lot, and most importantly to be involved with the children and the school staff! 

In between meetings, I enjoyed some lunch and hang out time with some of my fellow co-workers, who are more like family to me :)

Once, my work day was done for the day, I then went to Walmart for a grocery trip. While at Walmart, I also restocked some of my school supplies that I may need when working with a child or teacher....

Soon after I got home, unloaded, and set up my school supplies, it was time for my Honey to get home. We decided to have KFC for din din this evening....on our way to see my Brother (Tony), my brother's wife (Naomi), and precious Baby Pearl!! :) 

                                                                            
                                                                              Pictures of Baby Pearl :):

                                                                         We ended out visit tonight with.....

                                                     

                                                             My outfit today (go to "Fashion" or to this link: 
http://bakersjourney.weebly.com/fashon/friday-august-14-outfit to find where I got my wardrobe from):

Well folks, today was my last day of summer break. It's sad that it's coming to an end, but yet very exciting for a new year! But, since it was my last day, I decided to take this time to relax some and to get the house in shape before going back to work. 

I started off with a hearty breakfast of leftover pancakes, and some milk while taking in the morning sunshine and chirping birds.

After breakfast, while relaxing on the couch, I took that time to update my blog and the "Baker's Journey" Facebook Page. By the time I was done, my bottom was tired of sitting. Sooo, I started to clean the house. I did the dishes, did some laundry, dusted (I'm going to vacuum tomorrow ;)), and put some things away. 
As I was cleaning, I kept being reminded of a song that Point of Grace sings called, "Love and Laundry". It's a cute, fun song; and you can listen to it if you click on this link: https://play.spotify.com/track/7ypQAHMf9Xm37HHxoQtvku

Now, I have to take time to brag on my husband. I have such a thoughtful, caring, loving husband. With the intention of helping me with the laundry, when he gets ready for bed, he takes time to button up his shirts and pants. Even though this seems like a small gesture, it is actually a bigger deal when it comes time to throw them in the washer. Yup, I got a good one, and he's alll mine ;) :)

When I was done cleaning, I made some tasty banana bread to use up the ripe bananas we had. It made the house smell sooooo gooood!!

You can find the recipe for the banana bread under the "Recipes" sub-category, or by clicking on this link: http://bakersjourney.weebly.com/recipes/banana-bread

Not long after making the bread, my husband, Brandon came home, and it was time to heat up dinner. And, you can probably guess what we had again....yup, pancakes haha. You'd think I'd be tired of pancakes by now haha.

And, now we are enjoying some yummy banana bread with butter on it :) Mmmmmm...

Since I stayed home today, I didn't wear anything fancy today. I was in my old, comfy, holey jeans and a t-shirt that says, "I LOVE my Husband", in which I do :)

Today  was a bittersweet day, it was my last day subbing for the day care that I have been subbing for this summer. This same day care is the place that I used to work full time at for about 2 and a 1/2 years, before I got a job working with the public school system this past Winter. I love working for the public schools, but I also thoroughly enjoyed working at the day care when I worked there full-time and when I subbed there throughout the summer, so I will definitely miss seeing all the faces at the day care. 

It's kinda funny though, this morning as I was driving to work, I kept telling myself "if there's any donuts leftover, DO NOT get one since I already had the two yesterday"....but when I got there, there were FRESH, NEW donuts from Dunkin' Donuts ;) A parent brought them in because it was her child's last two days at the day care before going to Kindergarten. She left a very sweet note thanking all the teachers. So, again, a very nice gesture that I couldn't resist ;)...but, I only had ONE this time lol.

After saying my good-byes, I then headed over to Convocation (a big "back-to-school" meeting for the supportive staff). On the way though, I was craving a blue raspberry slushy...so I went to Sonic and got me one ;)....

Little did I know, when I got to this really big meeting where there would be important people there, such as the superintendent and such, I had blue lips, blue teeth, and a blue tongue haha. Oops! I honestly didn't even think about that when I ordered the slushy lol. 

Anyways, I thought the meeting went really well. It got me excited about starting up again. It also gave me a good perspective for the upcoming school year. Here are some of the key points that was talked about in the meeting, and that I will strive to maintain this school year:

When the meeting was over, and after a nice, well-needed nap from going to bed late and getting up early for work, it was time to start dinner.

We had a "breakfast-kind of dinner" with pancakes and scrambled eggs with cheese in it :)

It tasted pretty good, but boy did I have a hard time flipping the pancakes at first lol...I'm still learning how to get that down. And yes, it did get me frustrated because I wanted to flip them perfectly so that they would cook and look perfectly ;) lol.

As I was making dinner, my husband (Brandon) planted the trees that we got as our wedding favors from the wedding on Saturday. I'm excited to see them grow! :)

After dinner and planting, it was then time to go to church for our young adult group.

 It was a great lesson this evening on "Good News and Bad News". Our leader used the story in the Bible of when Jesus walked on the water towards the boat that his disciples were in, and asked if anyone wanted to come out of the boat to join him. The only one who did was Peter. Peter got out of the boat, and walked a couple of steps on the water, but once he took his eyes off of Jesus and looked down, he became afraid and lost his focus, so he started to sink. He cried out to Jesus to save him, and Jesus was right there to reach out his hand to lift him back up. (It's a great story! And, you can find the whole story in Matthew 14, verses 22-34). 

Basically, the point of the lesson this evening was that there will be good news and bad news that will come our way, and it's up to us how we choose to live out those times in our lives. Will we keep our eyes on the Lord, or will we loose our focus due to being afraid? If we do loose our focus though because we are human and we make mistakes, then all we have to do is turn back to Jesus and ask him for help because Jesus is ALWAYS there ready to reach down with his hand and save you from your "bad news". And, if you are saved by His grace, then no matter what the "bad news" is, in the end, there WILL ALWAYS be "good news". For instance, I think most people, if not everyone would agree that the worse "bad news" that could happen to you while here on Earth is death, but if you are saved by His grace, then not even death will end in "bad news" because you're end result will be you get SEE JESUS FACE-TO-FACE!! And, it can't get better than that!!

When we got home, it was such a nice night, that we decided to go for a little night stroll around our neighborhood :) We saw some stray cats along the way, but I never could get a good enough picture of them since it was so dark out :/

We ended the night with our favorite TV show, called, "Heartland" :) Such a great show about family, relationships, and of course, the horse ranch life :)

*Please see "Fashion" to see what I wore today and where I got it, or just click on this link: http://bakersjourney.weebly.com/fashon/wednesday-august-12-outfit

      Today I subbed at the day care again, so that was the gist of my day. When I got there though, there were these tasty little things in the teacher's lounge for us :).....

      For the past several weeks, my husband and I have been using the "MyFitnessPal" app to track what we eat and how many calories we in-take each day as we are both trying to loose weight. But, considering I didn't have much to eat today, two of my meals (breakfast and lunch) consisted of two of these precious donuts ;) Needless to say, donuts are my weakness, especially ones from Dunkin' Donuts haha. 
      But, I do want to point out that these yummy donuts came from the director of the day care. The only reason she did this was to simply thank her employees for all the hard work that they do for the kids. I thought that was so sweet and thoughtful of her!

      After work, I then had dinner with my darling husband and his mom at Pizza Hut, which by the way pizza is also one of my favorite foods, and Pizza Hut is my absolute favorite pizza place. And, because pretty much all I had today was two donuts, I consumed a lot of pizza at dinner lol. So, even though I was a happy camper, my calorie in-take was not ;)   

      After pizza, we all went for a walk together to walk off all that pizza :) Those who went were, my husband & I, my husband's mom (Kim), and my husband's aunt (Tal; her real name is Crystal, but we call her "Tal" for short). 
                                                                                While on the walk..................

      After the nice long walk, we decided to get some ice cream....there went my "walk off the pizza" idea, but hey, who can say "no" to ice cream?? ;)

Prior to getting ice cream and while getting ice cream, I got bit at least 7 times by a mosquito lol...so when I got home I took a nice, warm, bubbly bath to see if it would help the itchiness lol...and it did, yay!! :D

Sooo, this is where I left off at last night...and you're probably wondering what makes this dinner so special for it to have a story behind it, well, this is why.....

The day before Monday (so, Sunday), I had planned what I was going to do for dinner for Monday night. And, when I plan things, especially meals, in mind it has to be perfect. It has to look perfect AND taste perfect (please see "I am a Perfectionist" blog post under "Personal Insights" to read more about this topic, or you can click on this link: http://bakersjourney.weebly.com/personal-insights). So anyways, as I was fixing this dinner last night, when I first started the process from the looks of it, it looked like it was going to go smoothly....BUT, boy, was I wrong!

I ended up putting way too much water into the pan for the noodles. Once you cook these types of noodles, you're supposed to take the cooked pasta off of the heat so that the other ingredients will absorb into the noodles, making the noodles tasty. It called for 1 and 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of milk. But before, I read these directions, I just added water to the pan to where I thought would be good enough to cook the pasta. After reading the directions, I realized that I put WAY more than enough water in it. So, instead of having a tasty flavored pasta, it was like having soup with non-flavored noodles. 

Then, when I was preparing the meat and the gravy for the meat, it also seemed like it was going to taste good...but because the meat is venison and because there wasn't enough flavor to add to the meat, when you bit down in the meat, it definitely still had the wild taste in it. Now, I love deer meat, but it has to be cooked to where I can't taste the wild part in it. And, in this case, it was a bad taste of the wild ;)

So, needless to say, the corn was the only thing that I made that tasted good...but that was probably because it was from a can ;) haha. 

Although in the moment of all of this "dinner catastrophe" I felt like a failure as a wife and as a person because the dinner that I had made did not turn out like I wanted it to which was perfection, sitting here now, thinking back on it, I learned that things in this life just may not happen the way we think it should go, and we need to learn to be okay with that, to be okay with NOT having everything perfect in our lives. 

Sooo, since most of our dinner was fed to the trash bin, we decided to get some ice cream for our dinner instead ;).....hey, at least it looked good AND it was tasty!! ;)  

I didn't do a whole lot today, but I still was thankful for each moment given to me :)

I started off with a yummy bowl full of Froot Loops and a Popsicle  (we/I might not ever grow up ;))

My Bible study today was on: Genesis, Chapter 18, verses 16-33; Job, Chapter 24; and Psalm 15. 

The story in Genesis was about God and Abraham talking back and forth about whether or not God would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah (if you don't know the story already, you will have to go read it in Genesis, Chapters 18 and 19...it's pretty intense!). As I was reading this chapter, I couldn't help but think to myself how COOL it would be to carry on a conversation with God while here on Earth the way Abraham did!! 

My devotion out of "Devotions for the God Girl" book today was:  

After God time, it was time to get ready for work. I got to work with 6-12 month olds today at the daycare that I have been subbing throughout this summer. They were all so cute! 

                                   ....Here's what I wore (I will post where I got my outfit under "Fashion" tomorrow): 

I came home, had some Bella time, and made dinner....

There is a kind of a funny/not so funny story behind this dinner that I want to share with you.....BUTTTT....it's getting late, so you will have to tune-in TOMORROW to see what happened!!!! ;)