Pam's Sweet & Spicy BLTs

We just got home from a weekend with my parents for an early Thanksgiving celebration.  Since everyone will have turkey in different places next weekend, though, we did not have any Thanksgiving food.  We did, however, have awesome food.  My mom made a life-changing BLT.  Life-changing.

Pepper bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, mayo, provolone cheese, pepper bacon with brown sugar and Famous Dave's BBQ sauce, and Crasins.  Yes, Craisins.  They are awesome.  ALL on toasty Italian bread.  So good.

Wedding Fun

Mark and I have impeccable manners...especially at formal events like weddings.  We always let each other know if we have boogers hanging out of our noses.  And, if we do have a dangler, we are quick to pick it out of each other's noses.  Isn't that just the nicest?

We went to two different weddings in about a month.  I will let you in on a secret...we both wore the exact same outfits...to both weddings.  We are classy like that.  Can you guess which pictures were from Sarah & Brenton's or Tyler and Cassidy's?

AND, guess what?  I got my dress on clearance at Target for six bucks.  SIX!

Sara, Mark's sister, and her husband Jarrod are in the bigger picture with us.  We love them.  They are fun wedding buddies.

Well, that's all she wrote, folks.

To wrap it up, the moral of this story (or post) is that we, Mark and Liza DeYounge, are classy, thrifty AND polite, and we have awesome family.  :)

CASTAWAY GOOD STUFF

We're home!  Back from Young Life's Castaway Fall Camp.  Mark was invited to be the camp speaker, so I went along as his "ministry assistant".  ...at least that's what I called myself.

Okay, fine.  I was just along for the ride.

Fall Castaway "Good Stuff":

• A room with a lakeside view
• Douwe Egberts Coffee every morning (and afternoon).  Holy moly.  If I had a genie, I would wish for an industrial coffee maker full of this stuff.
• An entire afternoon, away from home, to do absolutely nothing
• Beautiful sweatshirt, jeans and knock-off Ugg boot fallish weather
• Listening to an awesome podcast by D.A. Carson on Faithfulness and Flexibility in the car.  Listen here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gospel-coalition/id270128470
• Watching Mark ace all four of his talks about the Person of Jesus and the fullness of the Gospel.  The Lord has really blessed him with crazy talents in this area.  Watch out Louie Giglio!  I am so proud of him!
• Praying Psalm 67 for the four hundred and some high school students at camp.  

May God be gracious to Mark as he speaks.  May God bless him and make His face shine upon him - so that Your ways may be known on the earth, your salvation among these high schoolers!  May all these young people praise you, God; may they all become worshippers of You!  May these 400 be glad and sing for joy, for You rule them with equity and guide them on the earth.  May they ALL praise You!  The land yields its harvest; God, our God blesses us.  May God bless us still, so that ALL of the ends of the earth will fear Him!  

If Mark was writing this post, I'm sure he would add one more good thing:

• Roosevelt High School (the school he coaches at) just won the STATE championship in football on Saturday.  ...and Mark got to watch the game online.  Woo hoo!

O COME, EMMANUEL

I am not ashamed to admit that our Christmas tree was up on November 5th.  I had waited long enough.

I am also not ashamed to admit that I didn't take the tree down until around Easter last season.

Since I wanted to put it up early, Mark made me promise it would be down at least by President's Day, which happens to be February 20th.  Fine.  Deal.

98 days of goodness left.

Although it is socially unacceptable to leave your Christmas tree up year round, I am thinking about writing a petition to accept "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" as a year-round, socially acceptable praise and worship song.  It is NOT just a Christmas song, folks.

Think about it.  It is VERY good stuff.

O come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel, who mourns in lowly exile here until the Son of God appear. 

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high and orderest all things far and nigh.  To us the path of knowledge show and teach us in her ways to go.   

O come, O Come our Lord of might who to your tribes on Sinai's height in ancient times gave holy law in cloud and majesty and awe.

O come, O Rod of Jesse's stem, from every foe deliver them that trust Your mighty power to save.  Bring them in vict'ry through the grave.

 O come, thou Dayspring from on high, and cheer us by Your drawing nigh.  Disperse the gloomy clouds of night and death's dark shadows put to flight.

O come, Desire of Nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind.  Bid envy, strife and quarrels cease.  Fill the whole world with heaven's peace.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel! 

Costume Night ...and Star Wars

Mark asked me to design the Costume Night Invitation for our Young Life friends.  Harmless, right?  I happily obliged.  Later, Mark was sorry that he had asked me to design the invitation.  He should have known that I would use my wifely powers to snag a picture of him and doctor it up in Picnik.  (insert Wicked Witch of the West laugh here...)

Actually, subtract the Wicked Witch's laugh.  The Witch and her flying monkeys still scare my mom half to death.

Sorry, Mom.

The Costume Night was fun.  (sorry about the crappy picture)  I got to fulfill one of my life-long goals to dress up like Princess Leia, thanks to my sister-in-law scoring the costume on the clearance rack.  At this time, I would like to take a moment to proudly announce two very special things...

1) I did not even have to use the Leia costume wig.  That's my own hair, folks.  Well, it is my own hair plus Mark's black socks that I stuffed inside the buns.  Clever, huh?  I thought so.

2) I happen to be a Star Wars fan.  ...Which is sort of an understatement in itself.  When it comes to the original trilogy, which happen to be A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, which also happen to be the middle three of a NINE part series that George Lucas dreamed up, mind you, I am a pro.  Do you know the difference between an AT-AT and an AT-ST walker?  Do you know what planet Chewbacca is from?  Leia's home planet?  Her dad's name?  Can you name three beasts of burden?  .....  Told you.

So there you have it.  Now you know what a weirdo I am and why I was so flipping excited to play dress up on Monday.  It was a great night.

Anniversary Adventures

Well, folks, we had a great anniversary.  Since we'll be in Florida in January for a Young Life thing, we decided to stay in town and save some cash.  We made a list of fun things we've been wanting to do in the area and added them to our weekend agenda.

Friday - We took the day off.  I slept in and Mark made me breakfast in bed.  See below for the "anniversary edition" of our peanut butter toast.

Mark: I made an "M" and "L" for Mark and Liza in our toast!
Liza: Oh, look at you!  That's so nice....
Mark: beaming proudly
Liza: finally putting two-and-two together...  Did you use your finger to write in my peanut butter?
Mark: Yep!

We also went to a newer local winery called Calico Skies near Canton, SD.  It was beautiful and wonderful and fantastic.  You should visit there.  Later, we went to the Backroom Bistro where our friend Giovanni cooks A.Maze.Ing. Italian food.  We had our rehearsal supper at the Bistro, so it was fun to relive some memories.  We also stopped at Butler's, the coffee shop where we had our first one-on-one chat, for late night coffee.

View from the Winery 

Saturday, we had lunch at Kaladi's, another coffee shop, (which we do not recommend for a variety of reasons), and went to an apple orchard to get fresh, drizzely caramel apples.  I also talked Mark into buying me a two dollar pumpkin.  It was so cute and tiny, I just had to take it home.

After THAT...(here comes Mark's favorite part)...  We went pheasant hunting.  Yes.  We did.  On our anniversary.  We went "spot hunting" (that's what Mark calls it, anyway), which meant we drove around on gravel roads and looked for pheasants in the ditches.  If we saw one, Mark would get out of the car, grab his shot gun, rustle them up and shoot them.

Mark LOVED it because he got to hunt.  I LOVED it because I got to drive around on gravel roads and look at the countryside in the fall and read my bible and soak in the warmth of my seat warmer.  It.  Was.  Glorious.  Seriously.  Gravel roads are one of THE best forms of therapy.

In the evening, we brought the pheasants out to our little deck, and, like any good wife would do on her anniversary, I held the pheasant upside down while Mark ripped it apart and got the meat out.

Cue the dramatic music.  (At this time, I would like to thank my Aunt Trudy for the times when her and I went down to the creek, found dead frogs and dissected them to "see if we can figure out why they died".  I would also like to thank my late Papa for encouraging me watch him cut the heads off of chickens and clean fish.  You both have made me who I am today...)  End dramatic music.

After ripping the pheasants apart, we primped a little and went to Minerva's - a really classy restaurant in town.  Don't you love the contrast?

SUNDAY (don't worry, I'm almost done), we had a picnic at Palasaides park (where Mark proposed), hunted pheasants a little bit more, ate frozen pizzas and cheesecake, watched a movie and played my all-time favorite game, Monopoly.  It was just awesome.

I'm not kidding.  It was one of the most awesome weekends we've ever spent together.  There is something about being HOME, enjoying the simple things, and spending time with the people you love the most without any distractions.  Fantastic.