It was EXCITING. here's why:

Last week Keith hinted around that we would be going somewhere for our anniversary. He also said, "Don't ask me any questions about this weekend because you always ruin the nice stuff I try to do for you." Thanks for that, babe.
So Friday morning I took the kids to Meridian to meet my mom and went to get my hair done and he texted me: "Come home and pack an overnight bag". The ladies at the salon were all a-twitter.
So I came home and packed my little bag and waited on Keith to get there. I asked him when he would tell me where we were going and he said, "You'll figure it out".
At first I couldn't figure it out, because after 10 years of living here I still have no idea where cities are in relation to Jackson... but in reality I can get lost I my hometown :)
So after a bit we ended up on the Natchez Trace and I think at that point I started squealing.
I have ALWAYS wanted to go to Natchez. After heading into Natchez we pull up at a beautiful antebellum mansion named Dunleith. The original house that was on this property was given to a girl aged FIFTEEN who had three children and was a widow. Madddness I tell you. Anyway, her family gave the original house to her and her new hubs and it burned down like three years later. So, they built Dunleith. Although Dunleith was built on 40 acres it wasn't a plantation house. More like a town mansion- all the houses in Natchez were. Most of the owners had plantations over in Louisiana.

That night we ate at The Castle, the carriage house turned restaurant. The food was fabulous and almost too pretty to eat. Our waiter was a trip, everything we thought we wanted he had a better plan and he was too enthusiastic to resist. We ended up enjoying it all. This carriage house was older than Dunleith, and belonged to another mansion. It (the mansion) must've burned down at some point, because there wasn't another house anywhere except across the street. From what we heard, it's amazing that any of the houses survived fire. This shot was actually prettier than what my camera captured. I'm sure you can tell :)

 

The next morning we woke up and took a tour of Dunleith. I honestly didn't think a second about it, but a lot of the houses in Natchez are supposedly haunted. I think that would've freaked me out a bit if I'd given it any thought before we checked in to the hotel. This is where we slept. Our room was in the attic of all places. Never thought for a second we could be sleeping with ghosts. Thankfully, we weren't!!

This courtyard was original to the house. And, you can kind of see the 250 year old magnolia in the background. Oldest one in Natchez!

The next day we ended up just wandering around Natchez. I believe there must be some sort of city ordinance that states no buildings can be torn down whatsoever. The shack and the mansion must stay together. Outbuildings, slave quarters, lean-to sheds, all there... and not necessarily being kept up either. There was not a single new building in downtown. Not that I minded that AT ALL. I love to look back at the past. I love history. Not Civil War or political or even dates and facts. What I'm interested is people. Who they were, where they lived, what the did. I think it's as my favorite history teacher from high school would call Gossip About Dead People. That's the kind of history I like.

We ended up driving through Natchez Cemetery, not because we planned on it but that was the kind of day we had. Just ending up wherever we ended up at. No serious plan, I just loved taking it all in and seeing everything there was to see. We enjoyed reading the headstones, a lot of them were neato. It was also very pretty as far as a cemetery goes. Old headstones mixed in with new ones. Huge statues, small crosses, un-named soldiers from the Civil War, just interesting.

 

I'm really glad my name's not Lillicrap. How about you? 

After we left the cemetary we ended up walking a bit downtown and went into the oldest Presbyterian church in Natchez. Old church. Anyway, there was  photographer that lived in Natchez and took pictures from about 1850's on and then passed the torch onto his son. Both were very talented. A man who lived in Natchez bought the negatives from the photographer's son's widow (you following me?). There were like 75,000 negatives. 50,000 were unusable; 20,000 went to LSU (as the photographer lived out his last days in LA and the buyer was an LSU alum); and the rest went to this little church. Not only were there family portraits, kids, bridal portraits and advertisements, but also snaps of just everyday Natchez life. It was fascinating. My favorites were of Dunleith and the family that lived there. They seemed like a fun bunch. There was lots of commentary to go with the photos that connected them all together. Something I didn't know was that before the Civil War Natchez, MS had the highest income per capita of the entire US. 

After grabbing some lunch and wandering downtown a bit, we decided to head home. Instead of taking the Trace back home, we decided to go through Port Gibson so Keith could show me the Windsor Ruins. There's another plantation home nearby called Cane Mount that Keith stayed at once (of course he was hunting!!) and it was pretty, but vacant. I'd love to buy it. But then I'd have to live in the middle of NoWhere. And also the state owns it now, and i'm not sure they'll sell it to me. It was beautiful regardless.

These are the Windsor ruins. Pictures can't do justice to how magnificent they were. It must have been an incredible house, the likes of which would've probably dwarfed almost all of the homes in Natchez. The story goes that they were having a party and someone dropped a cigarette and the house caught fire. There's only one remaining drawing of the house, and it was done by a Union soldier who sketched it while camping nearby. Y'all need more history? I bought a book. This is like a Cliff Notes version of Cliff Notes about what I can now tell you about Natchez. 

It was the best :) My hubs is the best. I'm already scheming about when I can go back!

all about the new job :)

I’ve been kind of alluding to change (or the coming of change) for a while in my writing on here, and I’m ready to share with you our little journey. It’s been interesting to say the least. I’m sharing our testimony with you not to brag on us (well, on Keith a little anyway) but to show you how faithful God is. If I’m going to brag on anybody, it’ll be Him.

Almost six years ago Keith had a dream one night. In it, he heard the “address” of a verse: 2 Chronicles 2:8, which says: Send me also cedar, pine and algum logs from Lebanon, for I know that your men are skilled in cutting timber there. My men will work with yours (9) to provide me with plenty of lumber, because the temple I build must be large and magnificent.

If you know anything about Keith, you know that he’s a forester, or at least that’s what his degree is in. He does internet marketing for a forestry supplies company, and also does forestry work on the side. That, and he’s just an outdoorsy kinda guy. This verse was just so, him.

After the dream and the verse, Keith did a lot of praying and finally decided that he needed to go back to school to get his MBA. You might be asking at this point, “Ummm…D, how exactly did that verse lead him to understand he needed to go back to school?” Well, the details on that are kinda sketchy to me at this point, not because they were sketchy but because I just can’t remember exactly why. But I promise- the verse is crucial to this story.

So Keith goes to school, gets an MBA, gets a promotion at work, I quit my job and we have little Cdawg. It’s at this point when I feel like God is telling me that there’s more for us than what I can see. That he has something so special for Keith, and it’s more than likely going to involve ministry. I wasn’t thinking like preachin’ or anything, but I certainly wasn’t ruling it out.

I think God tells me things about Keith ahead of time so that I can be praying for him and lifting him up, but in this instance I chose to continually push Keith in the direction I thought he needed to go. As you can imagine, all I succeeded in doing was making my man miserable at times (He does thank me now, because he says he might have needed a little pushin‘). I had good intentions, but Keith is 1) a thinker, he has to consider all options 2) very loyal 3) resistant to change 4) determined to seek the Lord on all decisions before jumping out in faith. I love all of these things about him, but I just saw them as road blocks in my master plan of making God’s plan work in my time. (This makes me think about Sarah trying to “help” God give her and Abraham a son. If you’re confused about this, just start in Genesis 17 and keep going.)

I can’t exactly pinpoint when it began, but I believe God began to stir up a restlessness in Keith’s heart when it came to his job, his ministry- his life. He just wanted more. He began to pray for some specific things:
Courage to step out and do something different.
To never be complacent, or unwilling to change.
To have a spiritual mentor
A business to oversee (and a mentor to help him).
A place where he could dovetail his job and his ministry work (I’ll have to tell you about all that later).
A place where he could use any money, assets or time at work as the Lord saw fit.
A job that would not require us to lose family time.
And, yes, I must admit it, more money. (I’m including this just because those of you who know me know I’ve been whining about money since I quit my job, and you know it was on my prayer list!)

I began praying for those things too, plus some extra little perks that I really wanted for him.

Now, here’s where it gets hairy. All of this started way before Caleb was born. That’s a looong time to wait on a promise. Well, it’s really not, but it certainly was to us. We both lost heart, quit believing, decided we were wrong, and felt sure that we were “stuck”. God, however, is SO faithful.

Although we couldn‘t see what God had for us, He was working all along, and in ways that we could have never imagined. One night at church a dear friend and mentor to Keith said he knew he wanted Keith to come work for him. We began to pray that God would show us the direction He wanted us to go, and it became clear that this was the job. He (Keith's new employer) gave us a job description, and under “salary” it stated: We trust that the Lord is our sole provider who will grant us all our needs, or something kinda like that. Yes, I know, it’s funny to me too. (And yes, there was a salary listed under that!) It didn’t have to be a Christian that hired Keith, but it’s nice that it is. I can tell you without any exaggeration that every request we had about a new job for Keith was answered. It overwhelms us sometimes when we think and talk about it.

Now, back to Keith’s verse. He didn’t see it at the time, because as he admits he’s pretty literal in his thinking, but his left-brained wife saw it right off the bat. Ha! What Solomon was talking about in the verse was gathering resources from several different areas and using different skilled craftsman to build a temple to worship the Lord in. If you want to know Keith’s job description, it’s that in a nutshell: using multiple resources to do the Lord’s work. A verse that was given 6 years ago is now confirmation to us that THIS is the exact job God has for Keith. God knew that Keith would need confirmation, and He knew that Keith would need me to help him see it. (Finally, I was fulfilling my role the right way!)

I hesitate to write all of this, just because I really didn’t want anyone to think that I was putting all of this out there to be a show-off. What my purpose is in writing this is to tell you that if God makes you a promise, it WILL come. He WILL provide. If you need something, trust Him, faith Him- He WILL come through- sometimes in ways we never could have dreamed.

Ephesians 3:20-21
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

courtship

two posts in one night! i really, really like to write. i do not like to upload photos for an hour. bleh. anyway, i'm at home alone and decided to share the story of my courtship with my Man the MAN keith. it's the 10th anniversary of our first date AND i've been reading Ree, the Pioneer Woman's blog about her and marlboro man's love story, so inspiring!
did y'all hear that? it's the 10th anniversary of our first date- no april fools! i can't believe i've known him for that long and yet i can't hardly remember what life was like without him.

we met, obviously, on april 1, 2000. i was teaching kindergarten at a little school in pell city, alabama and living the high life in bham. (on 280 where the summit is for those of you who know birmingham). when i say high life i mean eating out almost every meal, shopping almost exclusively at the limited and banana republic, and didn't think a thing about tanning and getting nails (oh my, i'm going to have to stop talking about it too much or i'm going to get a little depressed!! y'all may not think this is too high but when you're a stay at home mom your priorities shift. just a little!). and for those of you who know what a teacher makes you have to have already guessed that either my parents were sending me money or i was living off of my credit cards. a little yes to the parents and a big HUGE yes to the credit card deal. i went to church sporadically, but was all about being the "good little christian girl" in the bar on saturday night. i'd tell you all about jesus while holding my amaretto sour and shakin' it to "boogie shoes" at- oh my word, i've forgotten the name of the place! it'll come back to me in a moment. it's in southside. there were a few places there that we frequented.

anyway, i was all about NOT having a boyfriend. or so that's what i said. i dated just about anybody i deemed cute and called me and didn't care one way or the other where it all went. but secretly, on the inside i desperately longed for something i didn't even know i needed. i remember telling a friend that i just wanted someone who "loved jesus and wanted a relationship with Him more than anything". well, you wouldn't have known that by the fools i was dating! i serve an unbelievably awesome and gracious savior who heard that one little statement and a few disjointed prayers about direction/marriage and wa-la! in steps the sweetest man with the sexiest voice (sorry y'all, it's my blog, i can write what i want. for those of you who don't know him it's deep and gravelly and COUNTRY. love it!). my life forever was changed, and through a relationship with mr. sexy voice i found a relationship with God that is deeper than anything i ever could have imagined.

well, in the meantime my man was all about HUNTING. (i'm sure for those of you who know him you're thinking, isn't he still all about hunting? well he is, but he puts it into a little better perspective now) he had given up on finding the perfect woman (y'all wouldn't believe the reasons he broke up with girls!) and he also was a bit of a self-proclaimed diamond in the rough. i've seen his college ID- think grizzly adams. he needed to get out of the woods! so my friend's boyfriend invited him to turkey hunt one weekend and meet a girl (me!)

tracey (my friend) and i got all cutied up at her lakehouse in tuscaloosa and waited in anticipation for the boys. the funny thing is that i'd heard about "polky" while in college from some of my girlfriends, but never put two and two together about him until later. he had charmed those girls for sure just being such a fun guy, but didn't realize it. so about 6pm i hear a truck rumbling up and out jumps keith. and i definitely thought he was cute. my first impressions of keith were how nice he was. the boys grilled us some steaks and keith grabs a plate and serves me. like, asks me which steak i'd like and scoops up some beans and fries for me and everything. and then, THEN he said the blessing.

so after we ate our friends claimed the couch and we sat in recliners facing each other. supposed to be watching a movie. i do remember the movie- The Sixth Sense. we still ask each other with a sneaky grin if the other's seen it. keith says he remembers i was wearing a toe ring and he thought i might be kinda wild. really, he'd been in the woods- he didn't know what wild girls looked like because i DEFINITELY was not. i was a kindergarten teacher for crying out loud! we made small talk about life and then, the movie was over and we were done. and, i think, maybe he got my number? but that was it. i knew he liked me and i liked him, but i just didn't see me ending up with some forester from nowhere, MS.

i went back to bham and continued life. about two weeks later, on monday night at nine my phone rang. and so continued a pattern for about two months. he was nothing if not consistent. i do remember telling him how much i wanted to move back to tuscaloosa but had serious doubts about getting a job. his response, "that's just the devil trying to tell you lies. you know God has good things planned for you, get into his word and pray about it". that must have registered in my brain for me to remember it, but at the time i was so caught up with other things that i didn't see how special he was.

our friends the matchmakers decided to pick up our slack and planned our next date. keith was headed to atlanta for a business trip, and we all would go with him a few days early and catch a braves game. y'all, no joke, i fell in love with him on the way to atlanta. we talked about stuff that you just don't necessarily share with somebody who you barely know. on the last morning there he gave me his business card and told me if i was interested that i needed to call him at work. he said he really liked me, but he wouldn't pursue me if he didn't know i liked him. y'all, i'm honestly kinda shocked he did that knowing him now. he just knew how to push my buttons acting all interested but still holding back. he did this throughout our courtship and it made me nuts. i wanted him to be shouting his love for me to the rooftops and he was all, "i'll see you in a few weeks cause i gotta hunt with my friends this weekend, but i'll really miss you." but knowing myself now, if he'd shouted it from the rooftops it would have been siyanara city.

holding his business card in my sweaty little palm i called him about three days later. you know, the perfect length of time to let him know i hadn't forgotten, but i was being nonchalant about calling. in reality i'd told my mom the day before that i'd met the man i was going to marry and he was from prentiss, ms. she got all freaked out and pulled a map out to see where in the world this crazy country boy was going to be taking her sweet city baby girl to. y'all, i was IN TER REST ED. he seemed happy to hear from me. i really tried to play it cool but i thought about him all the time. i dreamed about him, replayed all of our conversations in my mind and longed for the day that he would tell me he loved me. and he did, about 7 months later.

trips to prentiss were by far my favorite. i loved hanging out with his funny family, riding four wheelers through sandy creeks, shooting an array of firearms, tromping through the woods, and riding backroads just talking about life. and while our courtship wasn't always smooth sailing, there was this deep longing in my heart to be joined to him. i just knew it from as far back as atlanta. he says he knew it too, but sometimes i think he had a deer up his butt or something.

in august of that next year we got engaged. i think keith would have let our relationship rock on a little longer, but one evening in june i reminded him that i was a school teacher and if he wanted to marry me we had to get married in the summer if i was going to teach at a new school and i needed at least 7 months to plan a wedding and if we didn't get married the next summer then he was going to have to drive to tuscaloosa for a whole 'nother year. i said it just like that and all in one breath. later he told me he'd been thinking about asking but when i put it that way to him he decided he'd better get a move on. not that i hadn't shown him about a GAZILLION times that one carat princess cut platinum ring with trillions on the side that i wanted in about 50 different subtle ways already. y'all, i can be kinda persistent about things. i wouldn't necessarily call it stubborn- HA!

so anyway, he asked. out of breath and guzzling water and at the deer camp (we'd actually had so much fun and so many memories i hoped he would ask me there). it sounds kinda cheesy now (sorry babe!) but he put my ring in a pair of fingerless gloves so when i tried them on the ring would come out. all wrapped up with a bunch of camo clothes. i was mad when i opened it because i thought when he started acting all nervous that this was IT and then it was just some dumb camo! ohh, but he redeemed himself. i have no clue how he asked me or what he said, other than he was on one knee and i realized that his surprise trip to tuscaloosa a week earlier was to ask my parent's permission. he does stuff right y'all.

well, our wedding and honeymoon was wonderful- we were surrounded by friends and family and we was in LUV and then we moved to brandon... and things were a little harder. i kind of had some post-wedding let-down and summer all by myself with job not started and nothing to do blues. i remember us talking about church and wanting to make it a priority but just never doing anything about it. well, keith came home one evening and drove a stake in the sand. he said the beer in the fridge was the last we would drink and that we were headed to church that sunday. he began to read his bible more and pray for us out loud more often. that's the thing about having a godly man, it makes you desire to have more of him and God. i began to see areas of my life (like being lukewarm) that i needed to change. some of those areas i'm still working on, but nevertheless, what began as "cultural" or outward christianity began to be a relationship with my Father. i've always loved God, but i certainly didn't know him beyond a few bible verses. i watched keith go on to be a faithful tither, leader, mentor, and deacon in our church. now just those things don't mean all that much, but to watch him pray for our family, lay hands on us when we're sick and cry out to God for our needs is, well, inspiring for lack of a better word.

God blessed me with so much more than a man to love. He blessed me with a man who makes me happy- not by just the things he does, but by who he is in Christ. because we both actively seek the Lord we grow closer together as we draw near to God. it's pretty amazing. it's a story only our Heavenly Father could have written. and i hope one day when our boys read this they'll be not only seeking the mate that God has picked out for them, but seeking a relationship with Him, the One who ultimately matters.

the bible says that we, God's people are like his bride. we are made clean, sinless, clothed in white, and ready to spend eternity with Him.

Revelation 19:6-8 (New International Version)
6Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: "Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. 7Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. 8Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear."

June 15th makes 6 years!!!

Happy 6th Anniversary, Baby!!!

One of the best Gulf Shores trips.....

Me and my hot sunburnt husband (Keith gets embarrassed when I call him "hot" on the blog so I mean that literally- he was HOT).

Me and my bestest beach buddy- I think this makes like our fifth trip together!

To me, Gulf Shores is like my favorite pair of flip-flops. They are worn in just the right spots and are the most comfortable things ever. I grew up going to Gulf Shores or Orange Beach every summer- so coming here is kind of like home. My grandparents are in Foley (how lucky is that!) and I feel like I know where everything is and how to get there quick.

Highlights From the Trip:
On the way to Gulf Shores we stopped in Spanish Fort and ate at Panera Bread (love that place, we need one in MS) and shopped at World Market. Ashley and I share a brain, so of course we were thrilled to get to make a stop at two of our favorite places. I think Ashley could have just gone to World Market and went home, she was so excited :)
We checked in to our hotel, and then made a bee-line for the beach. After that, I think I slept for about two hours. Seriously. There was a fabulous breeze and I pulled my huge floppy hat over my head and just snoooozed. We all did. Just as a side note I thought I coated KP down with lots of sunscreen but I missed a few spots. When he woke up he had what looked like a cammo pattern on his chest. Not the best look. Sorry, babe!
From the beach we hightailed it to Desoto's Seafood Kitchen- completely nasty and in our bathing suits. That's just how this beach trip was, completely relaxed and unhurried. Just whatever hit us at the moment. Desoto's has some of the best seafood on the beach- especially their grilled or blackened fish.
I love to go to places that the locals eat at, so my other favorite restaraunt for fried seafood is Doc's. Not the new one on Hwy. 59, but the old one that's way out in the middle of nowhere. It is completely run-down and is definitely not known for a fine dining atmosphere but the food is out of this world. We have decided that the old one is way better than the new one, go figure. Ashley actually figured this out first, so she gets the credit. Another really touristy place to eat but a really good one is The Original Oyster House. You will wait two hours, but it will be worth it.
Ashley and I had big plans of what we wanted to do during our stay: putt-putt, visit The Wharf, and just a bunch of other miscellaneous traditions that we usually do on our beach trips, but we didn't make it to any of that. We slept late, ate lots of junk, laid on the beach, totally rested. We did however, go to the Outlet Malls and Old Time Pottery to shop.
I'd just like to say a quick thank you to Keith and Brad- they are some of the most patient husbands EVER. I don't know what they wanted to be doing while we were in Gulf Shores- because they just let us spend money and drag them around. They never complained about how long we spent in the dressing room, never even mentioned when we brought a shopping bag out of yet another store, and let us eat to our hearts content- with the exception of Krispy Kreme on the way because they thought we were joking when we TOTALLY were not. Ashley and I live for that "Hot and Now" sign.

Thank You God for special friends and one of Your Best creations- The BEACH in Gulf Shores, AL!!!

AL vs. MSU game

Here's Brad, Ashley, Keith, and me at the game on Saturday. Okay, I admit it, we looked pretty terrible (ha, I just read back over this and I mean alabama, not us in the picture!). I will say that MSU's defense did an awesome job at keeping us pushed back. Poor John Parker didn't have a chance.
I am proud for State though, I guess Keith has rubbed off on me a little. I heard Croom say after the game that you'd have to be dumb not to take State seriously, and how this was a serious point of pride for them. Well, I guess that means beating Bama is a pretty big accomplishment.