I have been a bad blogger...

Hello family and friends. I do intend to start this blog back up again. Trust me, I do.

I have neglected it for so long and soon it will not be the Carolina Living blog anymore. I think I need a generic blog site for Daniel and me since we move so often in the military. I am currently thinking on a good name...ha good.

We are expecting our first child in October, Lord-willing. I know I will have plenty to update family on then. We are also moving in 1 month and that will bring new adventures as well. California here we come!

I do intend to post pictures and keep whoever cares to read updated. I love reading blogs of my family and friends and it is an excellent way of keeping in touch after we move.

So our life this past year, in a nut-shell, has been wonderful. God has blessed us richly with a loving church family, Daniel consistently home and glorifying God in his work, and continual growth in our marriage. I have been so thankful for this time in our marriage. The past year has been such a great time for us to continue to learn how to honor God in our marriage by serving each other. God's grace has been abundant.

Daniel has been challenged in his walk with evangelism and how he conducts himself around non-Christians. God has blessed Daniel's earnest desire to be a light in this dark world and God has presented Daniel with several opportunities to share about Christ and the saving work He has done for sinners. We are both grateful for God's willingness to use His people in this way.

God has been teaching me many wonderful things as well; mainly in the area of confronting sin in my life. I had the opportunity to work through a book with the ladies of our church called Excellent Wife. It is namely focused on the relationship of the wife with her husband, but sin was something that was permeating all my life not only my relationship with Daniel, so several topics in the book convicted me. I know that my thought life and my tongue are major sin areas so learning how to identify and replace those thoughts with biblical truths was helpful and something I know I will struggle with all my life. I am so very thankful for the time I had going through that study with my dear Berean sisters.

Daniel has been given the opportunity to teach in our service at Berean this evening. What a beautiful thing it has been to serve at Berean these past few months! He will be teaching from Colossians 4:2-6. I heard him share it last evening in practice and I pray the Lord will use him to exhort our fellow church members.

Daniel runs his annual physical fitness test in the morning so that means pasta tonight. I need to get dinner started.

I will write again soon. I have a wonderful post about this last weekend. Daniel and two of my friends' husbands surprised us with a get-away to Wilmington Sunday evening. We had a fantastic time. I will share more later.

Thank you for your prayers for the baby and your constant love and support to Daniel and me. We are very grateful and very undeserving. We find out the gender of our little one hopefully on May 8th...stay tuned!

New Pictures!

We went to the Marine Corps Ball last night and I finally uploaded new pictures. Unfortunately, I forgot my old account info and I uploaded them under sarabellum76. You can click on my current flickr account and then search for sarabellum76. You should be able to see all the new photos I uploaded.



I hope to get better at this very soon.



Much Love!

Daniel's Return is very soon!!!

Daniel is coming home soon and I can't believe it. Soon we will be celebrating the holidays with family and friends. We are both eager to see everyone!

Thank you so much for your love and prayers. His team had a very successful time while they were deployed to Fallujah.

I will post more details on Homecoming soon.

Much Love!!!

It Really Happened...

I know I have been terrible with keeping up with this page. I do know that I have neglected to share some wonderful pictures and stories with you all about Daniel and my year apart. Thank the Lord is it coming to an end and Daniel is still safe and healthy. Thank you for your prayers and support. They have been heard by the Lord and appreciated by us.

We really did meet up in New Zealand and it was a wonderful time. I have been bad about posting these pictures for multiple reasons. When I first got back, thinking about our time together was hard. I just wanted to be with him. I didn't like looking through them and remembering just seeing with him. Thankfully that time has passed because he will soon be home. I can look forward to him being here with me. I love seeing all the places we were so blessed to see and experience.


I am not going to write as much commentary. I will mostly post pictures.

We spent the first few days in Wellington, the capital city, and then took a ferry to the South Island where we spent a week touring the island by train. It is an amazingly beautiful country and being there in the winter made it even more special...all the mountains we snow-capped.

We then spent a few days in Nelson, a city on the north part of the South Island before we returned to Wellington to fly out. We stayed in several hotels and traveled by several different modes of transportation. Daniel loved that part. It was a true adventure and such a joy to have Daniel by my side the entire time. We were spoiled rotten!

Enjoy!


First Day together!



So happy together!






Blustery Wellington Day.













Loving the sheep, even the fake ones!


















To see more please click on my flickr page on the top left. Blogger was taking entirely too long to upload all the pictures and I wanted to share several. Let me know if there is a problem with uploading the link. I plan on using flickr more often now.

Love ya'll.