Well that was a dumb idea...

So for the past week we've been in Vermont on vacation during my favorite time of the year in vermont, summer! We've spent lots of time on the lake and we've done a lot of fun things plus a lot of nothing. All good things. On Sunday we had a family bbq at my mom's house, a perfect way to see everyone at one time.















On Monday we went to the Colchester Causeway. The causeway goes several miles out into Lake Champlain. It was originally built as train tracks that went all the way to Montreal. Now it is just a biking/walking dirt path. It ends now just before South Hero, Vermont and there is a break for the boats to get thru. So you can only go just so far but at the end there are docks and after a good bike ride we were hot and jumped in. We were trying to jump and get a good picture. Here they are. I think I'm a better photographer than jake...or he's a better jumper one or the other.













Later on that night we went with our good friends Tyler and Nicole to the lake house. My mom and dad were there too and we were going to jet ski and have a bbq. Jake and Tyler decided to go jump off of Barn Rock. A well known place to cliff jump on the NY side of Lake Champlain. I've seen people jump but have never jumped myself. So off they went on the jet ski just the two of them. They came back an hour later and Tyler said Jake wasn't feeling so good and that he didn't remember jumping. Tyler said they had jumped from the top which is about 80 feet! Here is a picture of the famous rock.





























Jake got off the jet ski with the blankest look on his face. He stood on the stairs and asked my dad and Nicole, " This might be a really dumb question considering I'm standing here with you, but am I in Vermont?" This made us all panic a little bit but he had this smirck on his face like he was joking around. Then he asked again...and then he asked again...

He kept saying, "Tyler, did we just do something we shouldn't have done?" and he had this smirck that I wish I had captured on camera because his question combined with the smirck was hilarious. But then we kept asking him questions and he kept answering wrong. What year is it? 2009 What did we do this morning (the causeway was the right answer)? He didn't remember. Didn't know when we got to Vermont or who the president was. SCARY. I called my nurse friend, Maura, told her his symptoms and what she had done and she said take him to the ER. So off we went. Tyler and Nicole came with me, which I am so thankful for because Jake got sick on the way to the Hospital and we had to stop on the side of the road. Not to mention the moral support.

We got to the hospital and the nurse started asking him questions to which he answered with a blank look. I started answering for him and she picked up on the amnesia side of things. I swear she thought he was just being rude though because he looked fine. Wasn't bleeding or having problems doing anything. He was walking and could talk fine, he just had no idea what had happened.

They did a cat scan pretty soon after we got there and then when that came back clean they sent us home. The doctor said the amnesia could last 10 minutes or hours but to wake him up once or twice in the night to make sure he was rousable. This was the fastests ER trip ever. Thank goodness we were in Middlebury Vermont on a Monday night. It was pretty quiet. We were there for an hour and half.

So anyway the ride home was so funny. I'll try and insert a video of Jake being sarcastic. We knew he was going to be okay when his sarcasm came back! He kept saying to me "Long day, huh?" and I would say Yep babe you were a handful. Minutes later he would ask again and kept saying the same exact answer. After 3 or 4 times i could hardly get the phrase out correctly because Tyler and Nicole were busting out laughing in the back seat. This cycle of asking and forgetting and asking again and forgetting and asking again when on the whole ride home and then for a full 2 hours in the middle of the night.

The middle of the night was a little scary because I woke him up at 2:30am and he had NO CLUE what had happened to him. I had to tell him the whole story...cliff, 80 ft, concussion, hospital, etc. So for the next 2 hours he would ask me the same 15 questions and then he would forget which was followed by panicking which was followed by asking the same 15 questions again. I was definitely praying through all of this because I was starting to get scared that this might be long term. That every time he slept I would have to tell him what had happened the next day. Just like 50 first dates?!?! ahhh. Funny part of all that though...He would say, "I jumped off a cliff?" Yeah babe you jumped off of an 80 foot cliff...then he would say, "Well that was a dumb idea"...Yeah babe it was a dumb idea. too funny. At least he realized in his amnesia that jumping off a cliff was a really bad idea.

Finally he fell asleep and when we woke up at 8am the next morning he remembered that he had jumped off of a cliff and had a concussion. THANK YOU JESUS.

He is feeling a lot better now but still has about a 48hr time period missing from his life which is very surreal for him. He didn't recall seeing tyler and nicole at all. So when we saw them a few days later for him it was like seeing them for the first time in a year and a half. We had lots of good laughs about that.

Moral of this Story....listen to your wife! ;




Even with a brain injury he beat us at quiddler...he gets no sympathy from us anymore!

Give me a 10 for Sean Kingston's Best Couple

Give me a 10 for Sean Kingston's Best Couple

Planned Parenthood is ridiculous....

http://www.voicescarryblog.com/planned-parenthood-accepts-money-earmarked-to-kill-black-babies/

Wow is all I have to say...this Autumn girl might be dumber than the chick from the Miss America Pageant.

Derek said it would be like this.....

On one of the local channels here the weather man's name is Derek Beasley and there are these commercials with a jingle that says "Derek said it would be like this". Well Derek is always wrong. But it seems this time we misjudged Derek. We did get a dumping of snow between yesterday and today. There is a foot of snow outside of our apartment complexes with some areas around Cincinnati getting more more and some getting less.

The dogs are loving it...Jack needs a snow suit because the snow gets clumped in his hair, poor guy.

I'll try and get some pictures of them playing later....

Friday Night Excitement

While our husbands enjoyed hours of xbox Ashley and I did some organizing.

I am new to this whole coupon thing but...yesterday at Kroger I saved almost 25 dollars. INCREDIBLE. I got 2 boxes of cereal completely free. That's what happens when cereal is on sale for 1.99 and you have a 2 dollars off coupon. Who knew that even happened. They only had two boxes and I had 9 coupons for 2 dollars off, you had better bet I'm going back.

I have to give credit to http://www.moneysavingmom.com/ for filling me in on these deals and where to print the coupons off of (and to ashley for finding that website). But I also clip coupons every sunday now....

I think I have nearly 50 categories in my coupon box. Which seems ridiculous but now I won't be as slowed down when I'm shopping because I won't be searching through a vague category that has 50 different clipped coupons.

So yes that was exciting...I had no idea just how excited i was until i started putting my coupons in their categories...wow.

If this interests you in the least bit check out that website.

Imperial Shih-tzu is equal to half cat.

Part cat...he's part cat...

They spilled his mocha...

Well the Believe conference was awesome. I took this picture right after the middle school boys spilled his coffee. I think jake was actually instigating a little bit of the ruckus. But it stopped after his coffee was spilled. The ladies at the starbucks were gracious enough to make him another one. Despite them being middle school boys, we really had a great time with them and the 2 girls who came with.

The boys stayed the night on Friday night at the Westendorf's house and Jake stayed with them. 6 middle school boys at 11:30 were intensely playing video games and then at midnight God showed up and turned off the electricity! For 4 hours they had no power! haha. Jake was pleased of course....they all went to bed semi-willingly after that. With the help of a squirt bottle ( a method we use on our dogs) he got them to all shut up and go to sleep. He's cruel...and for some reason the kids still love him.

This is sarah and I...she was sleepy. The picture of Jordan and I (the other girl who went) is not a good picture so I will refrain from putting that one up for both of our sakes. Cutest middle school girls in the world though, so mature for their age, i love'em. They spent the night at our apartment and were in bed by 11:30. yay for me!

It's been a while....

It's been a long time since I've posted, mostly because we've gotten back into a crazy busy cycle. But are having lots of fun and doing lots of good things.

My job....

I'm anticipating my largest event ever on April 1st (no joke...it's really on April fools day). It's a fun event. Jake and I just recently got to enjoy our first "tasting" at the Hyatt in downtown Cincinnati. It's the coolest thing, the first thing they do is put 3 salads in front of us to try....we chose the leafiest one with roasted red peppers...YUM. THEN they put 4 main courses in front of us. All chicken of course because that's what goes over the best with 5oo+ people. We ended up choosing this herb crusted chicken with mushroom bread pudding and asphargus. It was very vey good...especially the bread pudding stuff. THEN, the best part is last of course, they put 3 different kinds of dessert in front of us (definitely two S's...because dessert makes you fatter....just like my 1st grade teacher taught me haha)...Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding with a warm sweet sauce on top...Orange Creamsicle Cheesecake....Tiramasu. I didn't even need to try all of them because as soon as he said Tiramasu I knew which one we were going to have at the banquet. But of course i ate most of the desserts that they put in front of me...the creamsicle cheese cake was weird....the bread pudding was awesome...but too heavy for a banquet dinner...i don't want ppl falling asleep before we can ask them for boat loads of money. :) So the tiramasu won out ultimately...which like i said...i knew from the beginning. :) fun stuff...

Jake's job...
He's just been given boat loads more responsibility and not any more pay...which is fine. He's up for the challenge and if I know him at all....he'll do a great job. His strength is "Woo" on the Strengths Finder Test by Gallup. Woo stands for Winning Others Over. He's really great at training up volunteers to lead in different areas of the church. They gave him our churches children's ministry which is missing key leadership in lots of areas. I think it will take time to build up those great leaders. But it will be a wonderful investment of his time for the life of the church.
The youth group is going fine...we are in conference season right now. Tonight the Believe conference for middle schoolers starts...jake LOVES middle schooler's. Okay not really...but hopefully he won't want to poke his eyes out by the end of the weekend. He's staying at a host parent's house with 7 middle school boys overnight tonight. I have 2 girls staying at our apartment. He definitely got the raw end of the deal.

Next month we have Superstart for 4-6th graders (our tween class) and Acquire the Fire for highschoolers, which of course is what we are looking forward to the most. IT's at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and we are staying at a hotel with whatever high schoolers decide to go. I've heard GREAT things about this conference so I'm definitely pumped.

In April we are supposed to go to the final Passion Conference in the USA in Atlanta Georgia with the college/young adults from our church, not sure if that is going to happen though. I'll be bummed if we don't go but we have been to 2 Passion conferences in the past year and half so...we'll get by.

Jack and Ava are doing okay....
Jack spent the night with a family from our church because we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast for Valentine's day and I'm actually writing this from the comforts of this 108 year old house. It's beautiful. They have treated us like royalty and it's so much cozier than staying at a hotel!
Ava had 3 teeth pulled and her teeth cleaned last week...that cost just short of an arm and a leg but she is still cheaper than having a kid so I won't complain. I felt terrible her teeth were so bad but it didn't stop her at all from eating so how was i to know??

I'm REALLY sick of living in an apartment at this point...we are waiting another 6 months though to really decide if we are meant to stay in Cincinnati and then we may or may not buy a house or may or may not be moving which means we may or may not be looking for new jobs. Crazy. I'm BEYOND ready to know whether or not Cincinnati is our long term home. Cincinnati was finally growing on me until last night when we got lost trying to find this B&B because the street signs are LAME. We've lived her for almost a year and I work in the same area of town at the B&B you'd think I could find my way around. Thank the Lord for my Blackberry (or crackberry as jake and tim call it) it got us where we needed to go so you should just be thankful i always have that thing with me!! :)

Tim and his wifey Ashley...are great friends of ours. We would definitely not be as happy as we are in Cincinnati without them. Tim is the pastor of The Bridge (www.thebridgecincy.com) and he also works part time at PregnancyCare and that is where i met him. We spend lots of time with them and their amazing 8 month old Noah. He's pretty awesome.

Well that is enough for now i think...time to wake jake up and go home.

Jake and Jack....the one eyed shih-tzu

We just adopted Jack, he's an imperial shih-tzu which means he will only weigh about 5 or 6lbs at full grown. He's great. Ava is adjusting...she warns him when she's getting annoyed. He only has one eye because when he was little his littermates or crate must have scratched his eye and they had to remove it. I'll get some more pictures soon. This video isn't great, don't get motion sick trying to watch it.

Love to all! Merry Christmas!

Kristin, Jake, Ava and Jack