thnksgvg hoo-rah

Wow, so the break was sooo lazy. I was going stir-crazy. But me and Corey had a lot of fun cleaning out his bedroom/family storage unit. We found lots of cool crap. 5 bags of trash, 1 bag and 1 box for Goodwill and 1 box of the coolest things to bring home, like books about and souveniers from Rome, a pretty stationary set (probably Paiges'), a quilt his grandmother made, lots of CDs, winter gloves, I can't even remember what it all was. After that, we raked leaves. About 6 hours and 14 trash bags later, we went back to bummin' out. Such a nice break with just enough work to make it progressive. :) Here's just a couple of the pics I took during the week- check out the album 'stop and look' on my facebook page to see a bunch others, including a super cool reel of pics of the sis-n-law. :) You know you wanna see it, Paige!

And yes, that is a turkey carcass.

Gluttony I say

So the weekend that Hope came here, Corey and Wes went to Cincinnati for the "Horrorfest- 8 Films to Die for." It's an annual thing that started last year and they kept the tradition this year as well.
Corey told me when he got back about how much they had ate, but it was just like 'yeah yeah', it wasn't that impressive. Not until he wrote out a list of everything they ate that weekend. It's pretty funny and very disgusting. Check it out.

26 cheese coneys
1 3-way
2 Buster Bars
4 Dilly Bars
1/2 16" supreme pizza
2 apples
2 Hot Pockets
1 lg. popcorn
1 single cheese burger
1 double cheese burger
2 fries
2 bowls of chili
numerous Reeses
numerous M&Ms
2 fruit leathers
7 bowls of oyster crackers
2-3 gallons of Mountain Dew
1 Pepsi
3 Vanilla Cokes
3 Andes mints

How gross is that.

all was right in the world of wheat and duck

hope came...and she left.
but we had loads of fun- wore ourselves out actually, which is how it should be. i didn't want her to come here and be bored.
we went shopping A LOT!, going a couple places that we couldn't with our boys, like the Dish Barn. sounds corny but it was so cool. yeah, corey or sam wouldn't have went in there with us. there's a lot of christmas presents i want in there.
so we shopped, we baked donuts, we cooked stir fry, ate dippin dots, watched the Bee Movie, ate Panera (Hope's first time!), watched our movie the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (a movie corey would not watch with me. We also went grocery shopping, had gourmet hot chocolate and fell asleep and woke up to Friends. It was all fun, but put Hope and me together and the mundane (i.e. grocery shopping) becomes excellent fun.
it was super sad when she left. we procrasted by going out for lunch before she got on the road and after that i was lonely so i got a new friend. it's called a fittonia, which means 'striped forever' and it's so pretty. if i get a new plant everytime something happens in my life, whether i'm celebrating a new job, my first photography sell, or bumming about a friend leaving or corey being away or missing the fam, my apartment's gonna be a jungle. and that's okay. :)
but the weekend was great beside the last few hours of loneliness. fun times, i loved being with hopie and it felt like my life was back to normal with her here. i can't wait till the horrorfest of nov. 08 takes corey away and brings hope back. ;)

ours is cuter than yours

so me and corey want to get a dog right away after getting our first house. i've even talked about getting him the night before we move and him be with us in the moving truck. ;) i mean the sooner we have him, the happier danessa will be. our dream dog is a chocolate lab. i absolutely love them, almost as much as i love corey. chocolate labs are the cutest dog God ever made. that perfect brown fur, blue eyes (brown eyes are way precious too) and the perfect little pink nose. i found THE picture of our future 'Barker'.

holy ice cubes batman!

I got hit by ice today!
I had my kids outside on the playground after lunch for about 10 minutes when I felt a single drop of rain. I tell Mateya, "Oh no, I think it's gonna rain!" She starts mumbling the word "rain, rain, rain" and a full minute after that drop, it starts to pour with no soft warning. I grab the clipboard and my jacket and start yelling, "Guys go to the gate! Let's go inside, hurry hurry!" Before I can get that sentence out, the rain turns to ice! So all my kids start to panic. Their teacher is shouting,"Come on, let's go!" and they're getting hit in the head with bottle-cap sized chunks of ice.
It was insane. We got everyone in, towel dried and calmed down before nap time.
What a day.

today's bad news

Our pastor gave his intent to resign this morning.
I can't help but think that its a couple families in the church that are causing him to leave. He has spoke honestly and openly about people sending him emails complaining about every little thing, gossiping about each other, telling lies about people. It sounds like harrassment.
And the rest of the church suffers for those stupid people. We are losing one of my favorite pastors (Pastor Kevin is ranked first) and a great wonderful funny comical man while still being stuck with whoever is doing this ridiculous crap!
To me, they won. The villians won and the heroes lost, lost bad. But it was an unfair fight because we wasn't even aware there was a battle being fought, much less one that was gonna cost us our beloved pastor.
Because of this, I look at everyone differently. I don't know who to trust (with some exceptions) because no one knows who these idiots are. I'm not comfortable in my own church family.

I'm not comfortable in my own church family.
What does that say about my church?

the latest

So I survived Halloween! I had help though. Kelly D. and Laura were both stressing about me being home by myself Wednesday night and came rushing to the apartment as soon as they got home. It was so nice. It meant a lot that I had good friends that knew that being terrified of people in masks was a serious thing and nothing to be taken lightly. They really watched out for me that night, inspecting everyone that was near the apartments when we heard voices or random sounds. Laura even answered my door as I went running into the kitchen, just to make sure it wasn't someone dressed up. I'm so thankful that people take it seriously and want to look out for me. Thanks, girls.
I've been missing family really bad the past couple weeks; when Corey told Nancy (my mama-in-law) about it, they decided to make a trip down here to see us. They'll be here tomorrow for lunch and a movie and another few minutes in the apartment. It'll be so nice to be around family, even if the Barkers are the second best thing. No offense, but I will always prefer the Pollards.

We've started officially talking about where we would like to live, or at least possible places to live. Y'all at home will never guess the place that we researched today. Take a wild guess.
Roanoke, Virginia.
Yeah, that's 2 hours and 28 minutes from Crumpler, NC. I'm so freakin' excited. Y'all have no idea how much I would love to live there. There was possible job opportunities for both of us, a couple to pick from actually, including Pastoral Counseling and Special Education. :) And taxes are lower there and there are several houses for sale that are within our desired price range that are so cute. It's 2. 5 hours from mama and daddy!
There are two bad things about moving there. One- it's farther away from Corey's parents. We would just be switching distance to each place from what it is now. Two- the dream of living in the same vicinity, if not next door, to Hope obviously won't happen. We'll be about 4 hours away from each other, which isn't ridiculous but its definately not the 4 yards we were dreamin' of.
So all I can do is pray: God show us, tell us where You want us to make our home. We know You know what's best, not only for us as the married couple but for us as the best friends, and us as two sets of families. Lead us to the place and we'll trust Your will.