Engaged!

I'm engaged!

I will post more pictures and stories of how it happened but for now, here's a picture taken on August 24th (our two year anniversary!) of when Russell proposed! It's 7 in the morning as I write this and I've been awake for the past hour, after going to bed at 2 a.m., because of my over-excitement. 

Ahhhh! God has been so good and I'm so blessed. 

Learning the Value of Humility

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.  

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Philippians 2:3-5 

I normally have to remind myself of these verses. So often I get frustrated with others around me who are constantly negative, whom complain endlessly, and whom often act as the victim. I get astounded by how they cannot see beyond themselves and their comfortability. But who am I to think that I am any better than these people? How is one sinner any better than the rest?

I need to remember that I need to extend grace to people who are not even asking or wanting it just as Christ gave us grace. God is constantly teaching me the value of humility. While we may find fault in others, there is also fault in us.

The most important thing we can do is work on our relationship with God. Everything else will follow. When I am spending time with God and learning more about His character, then I can take an interest in others without anger or frustration. When I have peace with God, only then can I love my brothers and sisters in Christ the same way God loves his children.

I need to stop looking for the easy way out (getting angry) and start being humble (asking God to help me with these situations). I need to strive to be more Christ-like.

Kenzo's Grad Party + A Lot of Baking

I spent close to 12 hours baking yesterday. I started off hopeful and excited and told myself I'll even take pictures of my progress.

Here's one picture I took while in Hour 4 of baking.

Baking mini apple pies.

After that it was a bit of craziness. Let's get things straight: I was not planning on baking for 12 hours. I was planning on baking for maybe a good 5 hours then going shopping afterwards. But silly me, I forgot how long it takes to make pies let alone 24 mini pies. And how long it  takes to make everything from scratch...I should have just bought desserts.

List of things I made:

• 24 mini apple pies
• 24 mini cheesecakes (12 w/ graham crust & 12 w/ oreo crust)
• 2 batches of jam-filled cookies
• 2 batches of brownies
• 2 batches of chocolate chip cookies

...And that's it. Now that I look at the list, I wonder what happened during those 12 hours.

However! Look how pretty it all looked in the end:

Another Graduation in the Family

My older brother, Kenzo, graduated from his nursing program! He is now officially a RN nurse and soon he will be helping people in hospitals.

I had dinner with my family today and my parents kept talking about how great it was to have two kids finally done with college. James is only a sophomore in high school so it'll be awhile before we do graduation pictures again.

Lovely Food Dates

I'm not normally a salad person but I found this salad (spinach, strawberries, and almonds covered in a raspberry dressing) so enjoyable.

Russell and I enjoyed dinner Thursday night at "Simply Fondue." We wanted to catch a movie afterwards but the dinner ended up being about 2.5 hours long so we skipped the movie. It was nice to just sit and talk for that long. 

After the salad course, we were served cheese fondue!

I'm not a cheese person either yet this was fun to try. 

Russell and I couldn't finish all the cheese and bread they gave us so I considered hiding some of the veggies and bread in the cheese. After about 30 minutes of letting the cheese just sit there, I think our server realized that we were too stuffed with cheese to go on.

The third course was meat and veggies which they let us grill ourselves. I don't have any pictures of the meat 'cause we were too busy eating. 

Then, the fourth and final course (which I had been looking forward to since we sat down) was a chocolate fondue dessert!

Yummy fruits, brownies, marshmallows, rice krispies, and bread.

We finished our dessert the fastest. We took it easy and slow for the first three courses but as soon as they brought out the chocolate and dippers, we gobbled all of it up.

I wanted to write about this date night since we rarely take the time to just sit back and enjoy our food. We're the couple who goes into the restaurant, eats our food, then leave all within an hour. It was great being able to take breaks between all the courses they gave us and enjoy the night.

And here's a picture of our marshmallows lit on fire!