Playing Tourist with Tiffany

A couple weeks ago we got to see a friend from Thailand. Tiffany lives in Hawaii now, but she was in Charleston for a friend's wedding.

Matt and I got to meet up with her downtown for a nice lunch. Then we walked around downtown for awhile. It was a GORGEOUS day in Charleston, and it was nice to do something a little out of the routine.But the BEST part was connecting with a friend from Thailand, such a fun stage in our lives. And one that can really only be understood by people who were there too.

By the way, we are ALWAYS up for visitors, so come to Charleston anytime... :)

Hardly Blogging

So, I received a message lately from a friend in Texas asking me to update my blog.

It made me smile and cringe at the same time. I love that she (you, T!) wrote because it shows that she cares and that there are actually people who read this thing and may be interested in what's going on with the Flaglers. That's the part that made me smile.The part that made me kind of cringe is multi-faceted:
1. I don't like to feel like I'm letting anyone down.
2. It made me feel even more behind on yet another thing.
3. I don't like writing about things that are boring/sad, so I feel that I've been limited in writing material lately.
4. I don't ever want to say things like #3 because I don't want people to get the wrong impression or to feel that I'm pining for attention. (In fact, it's the opposite. I want to glaze over the not-so-fun things and put the attention on the fun things.)

Though I've wrestled with all those thoughts this week, the smiling side won out. I'm ever-so-grateful for the many friends and family members who use this blog as a way to stay in touch.

We love you and are thankful for you and will, therefore, try to be more consistent with updates.

A first for me...

So, last week, I wrote about having an excuse to bake. I was really excited as baking is a good stress reliever for me, but I didn't have any mixes in the cabinet and didn't want to go to the grocery store.As I was rummaging through my cabinet, I found a recipe for chocolate cake (and frosting) on the Cocoa container.I made this cake ALL from scratch. It was SOO much fun and reminded me of cooking/baking in Uz, where I got to learn a lot of the basics of made-from-scratch cooking from my friend Emily.

Though it wasn't the most structurally-sound cake I've ever seen, it tasted just fine. :)

'Gift' of Compassion

We recently started sponsoring a little girl in Thailand through Compassion. Her nickname is Gift. We got a letter from her recently and are so excited for how we can be part of her life. A small sacrifice of $38/month is totally worth being part of how God is working in this little girl's life. Do any of you blogging friends sponsor a child through a similar organization? How do you keep in touch? What works well?

Thankful Thursday

I'm thankful for the leak under our house getting fixed rather quickly and our kitchen being torn up for only about 24 hours.

I'm thankful for a working washer & dryer.

I'm thankful for an excuse to bake (asked to bring dessert to a friend's house for dinner tonight.)

I'm thankful for being invited to a friend's house for dinner and games tonight.

I'm thankful that I'm going to be an aunt!!!!!!!!! (In May 2011. Matt's sister, Stephani, is pregnant!)