In Better Hands

I heard this song the week before Christmas and I am offically addicted to it! I love the words and it came at just the right time on one of those days when you wonder why you got out of the bed in the first place...ENJOY!




In Better Hands - Natalie Grant

It's hard to stand on shifting sand
It's hard to shine in the shadows of the night
You can't be free if you don't reach for help
You cant love if you dont love yourself

There is hope when my faith runs out
Cause I'm in better hands now

It's like the sun is shining when the rain is pouring down
It's like my soul is flying though my feet are on the ground
So take this heart of mine there's no doubt
I'm in better hands now

I am strong all because of you
I stand in awe of every mountain that you move
Oh I am changed, yesterday is gone
I am safe from this moment on

There's no fear when the night comes 'round
I'm in better hands now

It's like the sun is shining when the rain is pouring down
It's like my soul is flying though my feet are on the ground
So take this heart of mine there's no doubt
I'm in better hands now

It's like the sun is shining when the rain is pouring down
It's like my soul is flying though my feet are on the ground
Its like the world is silent though I know it isnt true
Its like the breath of Jesus is right here in this room

So take this heart of mine there's no doubt
I'm in better hands now
I'm in better hands now

Be still and wait...

7 Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when men succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.

34 Wait for the LORD
and keep his way.
He will exalt you to inherit the land;
when the wicked are cut off, you will see it.

Psalm 37:7, 34

Welcome to 2008!

Happy New Year!!!

I hope each of you had a great Christmas and were able to spend some time with friends and family. We are now offically finished with our "End of Year World Tour"...really just a tour of Alabama, but Kenny returned last week and I returned yesterday, so we have offically finished Christmas vacation and have rejoined the real world.

We were able to spend time with Kenny's family on both sides at the beginning of our trip and finished up with both sides of my family, with visits with several friends sprinkled through out. It was good to see everyone, although there were many we could name that we didn't get to see.

As I looked back through pictures from last year, I only had pictures from Kenny's family...it seems that this year, I only ended up with pictures from my family. Next year I'll see what I can do about getting pictures with BOTH sides of the family.

This picture is a little fuzzy, but you get to see everyone! Heather & Cliff, Katie & NEW fiance' Jared, Jana & Kenny and Mom, Kim & Dad after dinner at Nana's house!

And...in exciting upcoming posts: "Gingerbread Land 2007", as well as "New Year's Eve Celebration"...so, stay tuned!!

2007 Year in Review

Janauary...Jana took a much needed Girls Trip 'O Fun to Chattanooga with her college roommates! Kenny turned 30...I mean 27!




February...We got a pretty good snow mid-February and we were the only ones who were out playing in it. We attributed that to being from Alabama!




March...Katie visited Louisville on her first flight ever!!




April...Easter was FREEZING! It actually snowed some. We celebrated our one year anniversary at the Spencer County Campus of Highview Baptist Church!





May...Kenny's college roommate got married, Kim graduated from High School and Jared graduated from Fire College. Lots of parties and celebrations!!




June...Mom Peg and Pop FINALLY came up to visit!!




July...Kenny learned how to play "Corn Hole" at the Church Picnic (it is imperative that you know how to play Corn Hole if you live in Kentucky!).





August...We went to the beach and Kenny's parents and Cliff and Heather visited Louisville.



September...ummmm...seems I don't actually have any September pictures, but I know Kenny played lots of golf, so here's a shot from the beach trip in August!



October...We bought a HOUSE!! We are just growing up so fast!



November...We did lots of work on the house, Kenny's parents came up for Thanksgiving and we enjoyed Cool Whip a little too much...



December...We spent a lot of time hanging out with family and friends over the Christmas break!

Check out our moves!

In lieu of a Christmas card, you can enjoy Kenny & Jana dancing to a little Christmas tune...Click the link below and ENJOY!!

We got elfed!!

A Progressive Life...

Instead of our progressive dinner that we have done the last two years around Christmas, we just opted for getting together at one house this year. So we had everyone over last night for dinner. This was a special get together because this was the last time before some big changes take place for our little group...




Well, we are staying put for a while, but Dustin & Lindsay are moving this week to a church near Chicago where Dustin will be serving as their worship leader. Nick & Kristen will be adding to their family with the birth of baby Emma within the next couple of weeks. And Grant & Melisa just found out that they will be adding to their family sometime next summer!!

So, we started out 2 and half years ago, all new to Louisville and not knowing a soul. But God crossed the paths of each of us and has formed special friendships. It was inevitable since we are all preparing for ministry, that we would part ways at some point, but who knew it would happen so soon. Dustin & Lindsay--We love you guys and are going to miss you lots!!

Guatemala or Bust!

As most of you know, Kenny and I both have a heart for international missions. Sometimes when I think about being overseas and all that it entails, it scares me to death!! Other times, I think about it and just ache to be able to go...now! And sometimes, just when you need it, God places opportunities right in front of you...

We found out Saturday night about an incredible opportunity for Kenny to go to Guatemala in January. Our church is starting a missions campaign for 2008 called "Millions to Missions" and one of the countries that we are beginning a partnership with is Guatemala. Some of the first few trips that will be taken will be men-only construction trips. Long story short, one of the men going from our campus in January was unable to go the week they needed him to go, so our pastor asked Kenny to take his spot on the trip. The timing of the trip is incredible because it is before classes began for the Spring semester, so Kenny won't miss any classes. Kenny is so excited to be able to go because it has been several years since he has been able to go on a mission trip. Please pray for a few specifics...

*Finances...that all will work out!
*For all of the men that are going...their safety and for their families as they are separated from them.
*For the people that the men will minister to as they are in Guatemala.

You guys are some of the greatest prayer warriors I know, so I know that we can depend on your prayers as Kenny prepares for this trip!!

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On a completely different note, and in case you were needing a good laugh for the night, Kenny and I were in the kitchen tonight cleaning up from dinner and joking around. I'm not sure exactly what happen, but for some reason I ended up sitting on the kitchen floor laughing my head off at something. Kenny was making a pot of coffee and was filling up the pot to pour into the coffee maker when he apparently decided that it would be a nifty idea to pour the entire 12 cups of water from the coffee pot into my lap and onto my head!!! So there I sat in the floor in my soaked pajamas, completely shocked that I was sitting in a puddle of water!! I know this is a side of Kenny that some of y'all don't see often, but it's just proof that he is as crazy as the rest of us! I love that crazy boy!! :)

"Jingle Bells" again...?

Can y'all believe it's DECEMBER?!? Really seems like I just took the Christmas tree down from last year! Speaking of Christmas, we put our tree up last weekend while Kenny's parents were visiting for Thanksgiving. I am loving Christmas decorations in our new house...having a decorated tree in the living room just makes the whole place feel more homey and inviting. (I would leave it up all year if it was up to me!)

We have had a busy couple of weeks...Kenny has finished up this semester of school and has welcomed the break by helping me cook dinner, taking evening naps and watching lots of football at night!! He will have a break from class until the end of January. I went on our annual women's retreat with the church a couple of weekends ago and it was a needed time to be with friends, spend time in the Word and listen to wise women teaching from God's word. I've had a rough time here lately just being homesick for friends and family and the weekend, which was appropriately themed "Called to Belong", really hit on our need as women for relationships and friendships. It made me think twice about how I am as a friend and family member to those around me and it hopefully will make me a less selfish person as God uses that information to grow and stretch me. Kenny's parents also visited over Thanksgiving and it was great to spend some time with them since we hadn't seen them for several months.

Hope you all have a great weekend!! Be sure to treat yourself to a nice Sunday afternoon nap tomorrow!

Don't eat too much turkey...

Pie Your Leader!

Tonight was Pie Your Leader Night at church. Since August we have been keeping up with how many verses each child has learned and memorized and for every 5 verses they learned they earned a pie to throw at the leader of their choice. So, combine 50 cool whip pies with lots of eager kids and you have yourself a big mess! It was all worth it just to hear them laughing at us...(see ALL the pictures)


Me & Nicole suited up and ready for the pies...Bring it on!!


That's right...go after Pastor Nick!! (Yeah, that's me in the background licking cool whip off my fingers! Yummy!)


Tricia, Nicole, Jana, Dwayne, Nick & Matt...thoroughly covered in cool whip!


Jana, Nicole & Tricia...I think I was sucking cool whip up my nostrils!!

Achoo! ...God bless you!

I am laying flat on my back on the couch as instructed by the doctor. I, being the inury prone person that I am, had a sneezing fit last night, which sent my back into spasms of pain. You all have permission to laugh at the fact that I hurt my back sneezing. I'm sure once I'm out of pain, I'll laugh, too...it has been bothering me for a while though, so it's not like all I did was sneeze! And Kenny is laying flat on his stomach in the floor trying to finish up the semester with his final paper which is due Thursday. Of course I'm stressed out that it's Tuesday night and he's not done with it, but that's the difference between the two of us!!

We've gotten lots of work done on the house lately. Mom and Dad came up to help us with our "Daddy/Honey-Do List"!! We got TONS of painting done, hung up beadboard in the kitchen, painted lots of trim, took out some old wrought iron posts from the carport and replaced them with wooden posts, and got lots of other odd jobs accomplished...actually, resident handy man, Daddy, did most of the work!! And his trusty painting contractor, Mom, did the other half!! Of course we helped, but it would have taken us weeks to get done what we did in 4 days with their help. Thanks guys! Y'all are the best!! I posted a few pictures of the hard work and the rest are in the photo gallery to the right...


This is dad on an unoffical break from manual labor...He actually had to do his real job while he was visiting, so I had to let him sit at the computer every once in a while to get some stuff done. (In case you are wondering, that's the color asparagus on the kitchen walls and it looks AWESOME with the finished white beadboard!!)


Katie and I painting trim in the basement.


Kenny & Jared hanging beadboard. They were such hard workers...Jared may never visit again if we make him work that much again!!


Mom painting our bedroom...We weren't going for a cloud motiff, but that's just what happen after priming the blue walls. Don't worry, it's all one color now!

Fall has Flung!

Fall is finally upon us in Kentuckiana! And although we went from 90 degrees to 50 degrees in a matter of a week, I am welcoming the cooler temperatures. I was over summer a LONG time ago!! If you are an avid reader of the blog (which I am sure numbers into the hundreds!!), you know that Fall is one of my FAVORITE seasons! (See last Sept/Oct/Nov posts!) I love all the colors of fall in the trees!! At our new house, we have a huge tree in the front yard which I am anxiously watching and waiting for it to turn.

We are slowly progressing on the house. The kitchen has gone from red to green, the bathroom from purple and green to blue, office from purple to khaki and we still have several rooms to go. My parents are coming up next weekend to help us with a few projects around the house. (Katie and Jared, I'm putting you to work!!) I'm sure I'll have some interesting pictures to post after next weekend! My project today is to finish unpacking the rest of the boxes, which should result in the discovery of the cable needed to transfer pictures to computer from camera!

Have a great weekend and enjoy the fall weather were every you are!!

Happy Anniversary!

In August 1999, Kenny and Jana met on the campus of University of Alabama. On January 26, 2003, we began dating after 3 and half years of being best buds. On December 14, 2003, Kenny proposed to Jana in from of 600 plus friends, family and church members as part of the sermon illustration for church that Sunday morning at our church, Northpark Baptist. On October 16, 2004, we were married at First Baptist Church of Pinson and began the most awesome journey that God has ever sent us on...

Happy Anniversary! God has blessed me beyond anything I could have ever imagine! I love you more!!

So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate. Matthew 19:6

new.beginning@spencercounty.com

(The above is not an actual email address, only my attempt to be as creative as possible and keep your attention for as long as possible!)

As you can see from the picture below, we are now the proud owners of a little piece of land, with a little house on it in Spencer County (for those of you in Alabama, we are just outside of Louisville).

We have purchased our first home!! No more rent down the drain. No more battling for parking spaces. No more dealing with finicky management at an apartment complex. No more white walls. No more quiet hours when the only time I have to clean is when others are already asleep. No more maintenance guys. Welcome to...a mortgage (YIKES!), color galore on the walls, our own driveway with ample parking, not worrying about hammering on the walls or vacuuming at 10:00 pm, a lawn to cut, gutters to clean, and yelling neighbors who already have issues with me missing our driveway and turning around in theirs! (I've only lived here a week...give me a break...it's dark out here!)

I know I promised more pictures, but y'all are going to have to hold your horses because I can't find the cord to transfer pictures from the camera...I know it's in a box around here somewhere...

The story of how we came across this house is nothing short of a God thing...Let me indulge you! We had been keeping an eye out for some time for a house, knowing that we were tired of renting and that we would probably be in Kentucky for several more years while Kenny finishes school. Houses in the area of Louisville we lived in were WAY out of our price range, so in order for home ownership to be possible for us, we needed to get out of the city. We have been attending church in Spencer County since April 2006 and have always felt very much at home out here, despite the lack of conveniences that we have gotten used to being in town...Target, Kroger, malls within 5 minutes, restaurants galore. In Spencer County, we are blessed with a Dairy Queen, Subway, pizza place, Chinese buffet, and the wonderful Country Mart!! Despite this, we had been looking at homes online. One particular Monday night, I emailed about a home that was listed as being open on Sunday for open house. Turns out the listed was old and the house had been on the market since February. (Rewind to February...the youth minister of our church and his family, who we knew, moved to Las Vegas, following God's call to anther church, leaving a home behind...see where this might be going...) The next night a friend from church called me to inform me of a wonderful idea...it had just dawned on her that the youth minister's house was still up for sale and would probably be something in our price range. We talked for a while about it and she gave me the address...turns out, it was the same house I emailed about on Monday night!! What a coincidence!! We ended up looking at the house on Wednesday night because we go to church with the seller's sister and we really liked it. We felt like we needed to look around some more, though, instead of just going for the first thing we looked at. So we did just that and found that no matter how new the house or the area, that we kept coming back to this house because it just felt like home from the very beginning.

Well, in the meantime (I know, I am probably boring you...you can stop reading whenever you want...no one is making you!), someone else put an offer on the house. Bummer! We figured this was just God directing us in another way...but as fast as the offer came, the contract on the house fell through and the seller got in touch with Kenny to see if we were still interested! Well, of course we were...to wrap this up in a somewhat timely manner...the finances, interest rates, lease at our apartment, timing all worked out in ways that could only be described as a "God thing"! We signed a contrac, closed on the house and moved all within 2 weeks! We couldn't have done it without the help of many friends who helped clean, feed us and move us while we endured 2 weeks of chaos.

As I was packing our apartment to move, I found an engraved door knocker that was given to us by Kenny's brother and sister-in-law as a wedding gift. It says, "The Cook's"...I had wrapped that door knocker up almost 3 years ago and packed it away, thinking that I wouldn't have a door of my own to hang it on for years to come, but God has blessed us beyond anything we have ever expected and now, I have a door! We are both thrilled to be in Spencer County and although it means a 25-30 minute drive into Louisville for work and school, we were more than willing to sacrifice to move into the area that we will call home for the next several years. (Don't ask me to define "several years"...it could be 3, it could be 10!! Who knows what God has in store for us!!)

We did have a horrendous experience with our realtor, who has subsequently been reported to the Kentucky Realtors Association and the Better Business Bureau, but that's a story for another post. It was minor when we look at the big picture of all that God has provided for us!

So, if you were thinking about visiting, come on up! The Cook Bed & Breakfast has relocated to a more rural, peaceful location...although if you come in the next couple of months, you might be handed a paint brush or a hammer and put to work!!

I'll post pictures soon...if you would like our new address, feel free to email me.

...as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. Joshua 24:15

Marco? Polo.

Where have you been?!? Never fear, we are still here...but when you are without the modern conviences of the internet (and spare time!), you feel totally disconnected from the world!! More to come this weekend (pictures included) on why we were without internet...

What could it possibly be?!?

We remember...

New hair...

For you Kim...I cut it all off!!

The cheapest B & B in town!!

The fall season of The Cook Bed & Breakfast is in full swing, so call to make your reservations ASAP!! Complete with a private room with twin bed and option of a full floor palet or the large oversized couch. A desk is included in your room to sit and enjoy a book from the small library located in your room. Enjoy the shared bathroom with the other guests in main hallway. Most days include breakfast if the owners get out of bed on time. Lunch and dinner are on your own, although the owners will tag along. Friday night and Saturday excursions could include, but aren't limited to: Six Flags, Huber Farm, Louisville Bats game, golf at one of the stellar Louisville Metro courses, a tour of Southern Seminary, Church Hill Downs, etc. Sundays include a scenic drive to Spencer County to attend church, see the cows and enjoy lunch. See below for real life visitors accounts of their fun over the past couple of weeks...

"We had so much fun we have already booked a trip back for Thanksgiving!! The hosts are great and they took us to Huber Farm for fried chicken and then to a Bats game, thanks to free tickets from Kenny's office. We love The Cook B & B so much we will never vacation anywhere but Louisville again!!" --Johnny & Lisa (Kenny's parents)**


"Kenny & Jana took us to Six Flags on Saturday and we got to ride The Chang four times!! We had a blast even though the splash pool closed early...probably some kid forgot to get his diaper changed...Gross! We cooked out on Sunday night and enjoyed the company of many of Kenny & Jana's friends...This is the greatest place to visit!!" --Cliff & Heather (Jana's brother & girlfriend)**


"We like to visit The Cook B & B frequently to get away from the busy life back in Birmingham. Mark and Kenny are playing golf in Lexington on Saturday, while Jana & I go shopping. The service here is great, although some how I usually end up making biscuits and fried chicken...I need to talk to the manager about hiring a good cook!! We will probably be back before the year is over...We love it here!!" --Mark & Pam (Jana's parents)**


**comments not actually made by the visitors!! Ha Ha!!

Call soon for your reservations!!

Allowing God's kingdom to break through on Earth today...

God, grant me the serenity to accept the tings I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

--Reinhold Neibuhr, 1926

Mastercard should pay me for this...

1 pair of linen pants from Eddie Bauer Outlet: $11.99
1 pedicure with the girls: $25.00 (don't get used to that!)
1 round of golf at Robert Trent Jones course: $75.00 (don't get used to that!)
Week at the beach with the family: PRICELESS!!





11 hour drive one way. Overnight stay in Spartenburg, SC. Lots of seafood. Lots of sand. Lots of sun. And rain. Learned how to play poker. Shopping at the outlets (no sales tax weekend!). Eating at Fudrucker's for the first time. Yea!

We went to Hilton Head Island, SC. Now we are back. Click here to check out all the pics from the trip!!