Familia!!

We've been super busy these past few days...last Saturday my Uncle Ralph came from Buenos Aires to spend some time with us!! He is my dad's older brother, and the last time he was here was for my HS graduation! The only graduation my family ever got from me, haha. I think it's funny. They are just now starting to find the humor in it I think :)
Okay, soooooo. When you have company, you know, it's always about eating out--showing your guest all the new places around town, movies...etc. Well, I thought that's just not going to cut if for someone that comes to the States once every 6 years!! So, I decided on the FORT WORTH RODEO!! hahaha! I wanted to pick something realllly Texas. I don't think there could be anything out there more Texas than the Ft. Worth Rodeo. No way. It is full out, calf-roping, anthem-singing, hat-wearing, boot-wearing, bull-riding, kind of fun! We all know how much JR and I love rodeos and such so we took the whole fam out there! Yep, mom, dad, and Ralph!! It was a lot of fun, and I really do think he enjoyed it! Here's a quick video of what you all missed ;) **Cody & Holly, this is a special "shout-out" to you guys. I recorded this sweet piece of video for you Thrashers. Enjoy!



We have started a new tradition at the Pettijohn-Heffesse house! You see, we both always have a bad case of the Monday's. We get home, we don't want to do anything at all, but lay in our sweats on the couch and watch our one favorite show--What About Brian, ha! It's been that way pretty much since we moved in actually. Monday's are our one lazy day of the week. I started to make a pasta Monday night, and JR said that he'd rather just have pizza instead. So, we tried out this new pizza place (new to us) called Brothers, thus was born our new tradition--Monday Night Pizza Night!! I love it! It's pretty ideal for me---pizza, JR, the kitties, and tv on the couch, ahhhhhh. Lounging around with our little family :)

Okay, so that was Monday! Now, Tuesday night was fun too! We decided to make dinner at our house for my parents and Ralph. Make note that we've lived here 9 months and still have not made dinner for mom and dad. Oops. So, this was a big deal. My mom helped us out soooo much. Thank you mom! Gosh, mom's are good. She helped get all the stuff we would need that night and so on the menu was JR's sausage/bell pepper/onion dish with a side of Nancy's Fried Potatoes, Mom's Salad, and my special corn from the can, haha! It turned out to be a lovely meal, although my potatoes weren't perfect but they all got eaten sooo...
Here's mom and JR cooking up a storm, haha!

Cute cooks!

My DAD!!





Ralph's 70th birthday was last week so we surprised him with a birthday cake!






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Now here are just some random pictures from our 2007 so far! Just us, with some friends, family, and our babies!!

Happy Friday!

Here are some CUTE CUTE pictures I came across today, that remind me of our what our kitties might have looked like when they were babies!! Hope you all have a great weekend!!

Love!!

JR and Nat

I love him. and cobbler.

I love this man!!



















Do you know why!??!




He brought me cobbler from Meer's!!! My very favorite!!











I love you JR!

Ice, Ice, Snow!

I feel compelled to begin this post with an apology...to all of you looking for a witty, self-indulgent read, much like the blogs of many of my friends. I however, can never come up with funny, sarcastic, make-you-think style blogs. Our blog is designed to keep in touch with our family and friends dispersed throughout the world-literally. From Central High, Oklahoma-Weatherford, Oklahoma-Los Angeles, CA-Buenos Aires, Argentina, all the way back to Stillwater, OK...always with a few pictures to keep you non-readers at ease. So, there's my apology. My "I lack wit while writing our blog" apology. I hope you all accept, and remember how truly funny I am in person. wink-wink!!

Okay, now for our real life! Ashlee, has again notified me of my slack in posting lately--so once again--this post is dedicated to Miss Ashlee Blackstock.

Um, did you all happen to hear that Texas got SNOW?! Okay, all you Okies think we're crazy for getting excited...but we don't get snow, EVER! I love that the year JR moves here he gets a tiny bit of snow, to help him feel at home since Oklahoma happens to get the most extreme weather in the whole entire world. The most wonderful part of the Texas Snow Freak Out (it deserves a title, given how Texans act as if the world is coming to an end, when a tad bit of sleet comes down and hinders their usual 2 hour morning commute) again, the most wonderful part of the Texas Snow Freak Out is that I got to miss alot of work this week! Hooray! I love that! It's like my own little mini-vacation! I can only imagine how incredibly lazy I would be if I lived somewhere like Colorado where snow falls half the year! It would be sickening!

So, now you understand the severity of our winter storm. Tragic. Oklahoma though, has encountered a vicious cycle of this storm leaving so many people without power and well--most of our readers are in OK so I don't need to further describe your conditions seeing as how you are there prob right now. Soooooo, as I was saying--ADD. Um, oh yeah! Basically, this storm has made national news this whole entire week, and on every news channel they are telling people to absolutely not be on the roads unless it is an emergency. DUH! JR decides he wants to take his scheduled road trip up to go pheasant hunting. **Insert: disgruntled Nat** Soooo, we had a little "tiff" if you will, nothing out of the ordinary when JR does something I don't necessarily love. Fortunately, he did make it to the Farm okay, but I had to watch a little Oprah to help calm my nerves. I have no dare-devil in me. None. Nada. Void of it. I am slowly conditioning myself to not worry about him so much, but it seems like some sort of genetic pre-disposition to somehow, in some way, worry about JR. Nancy knows. I'm getting better a little bit every time. Am I? He hates it! But, what he doesn't know, is that for as long as I love him, I'll worry. The End.

Haha! Just playing! The boys have decided to go ahead with their hunting trip and if JR doesn't come back with 1,283 birds he'll be in trouble. By me :) I'm funny today! I very much wish that I would have been able to make it up this wknd, especially since Blake and Jenn's shower is on Sunday but it looks like I'm gonna have to join the Lone Star State in their Texas Snow Freak Out.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX!!

My baby brother is turning 21 today!! Ahh! I can't believe that my little brother is going to be 21 finally!

Alex,
I'm not sure if you're even gonna read this but we miss you and we wish you THE HAPPIEST BIRTHDAY in the world!! We love you so so much! Have fun in Stillwater tonight!!

JR's 26th Bday!

These are some pics from my mom's camera that I just now scanned from JR's birthday last year, but I thought they were cute so I decided to share them with you! If you want to actually stop and look at a particular pic, just click on one and a little play/stop button will pop up at the bottom! FYI!

Happy New Year!

Wow! I can't believe it's already 2007! So much has changed for JR and I over 2006! It's funny to say, "Where do you think we'll be in one year?" because you really never know! We've been incredibly blessed this past year, and we are both looking forward to what life brings us in this new year!

For 2006, we spent our New Year's Eve with some special friends! Us,Blake,Jennifer, Cody & Holly all met up at Blake's in OKC and went and had dinner at Red Rock for some delicious steak, and went back to Blake's and rang in the New Year with some card games and champagne! Haha! I wasn't on my A-game with my picture taking that night, but I do have a couple to share!

We wish you all a very happy 2007!

Our Family Christmas *2006*

Christmas 2006

I uploaded all of our pics to one album--just click on the picture then select the "slideshow" feature to go thru the entire thing! We hope you all had as wonderful a Christmas as we had!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night!

I usually don't like all the stuff that gets forwarded to me, like the jokes and all that, but I got this one sent to me today and I couldn't help but find it so true and comforting. It's an interview with Rick Warren, author of "A Purpose Driven Life". If you haven't read it yet, you should!! It's awesome!

I wish you all a safe and happy holiday wherever you may be!

Merry Christmas!

xoxo
Natalie

This is an incredible interview with Rick Warren, "Purpose Driven Life" author, and pastor of Saddleback Church in California.

His wife now has cancer, and he now has "wealth" from the book sales. In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said: People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.

One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body--but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act-the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense. Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys-you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.
Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.

Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is my problem, my issues, my pain. But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.


You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before.

I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases.

Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.

Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.

Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?
When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST GOD.
Every moment, THANK GOD.

and more...

So, I have a hobby...

and that hobby is photo-editing! I'm not sure that's one of the options that surveys have like, sewing, cooking, art, reading...photo-editing! Nah! I think JR is somewhat relieved to find out that I do have another hobby besides what he thinks are my others, eating and sleeping. So, here's a little of my hobby-ing (it's my own made-up word, leave me alone).

Our Babies

I thought I'd post some pics that we've taken over the last couple of weeks because they are growing really fast! Mom feeds them too much!

This is Charlie sleeping on his daddy after he got home from work!

Sam loves to watch TV! Football is his favorite, because there's lots of movement!

This is a picture of the boys doing what they love to do most--fighting! It's funny how much their personalities are like their mom and dad! Charlie is the mama's boy who loves to cuddle up and sleep and is usually the initiator of the fights b/w him and Sam. Sam, the bigger one is most like his daddy--more independent, but when he's sweet he's reeeallly sweet. Ha!

I'm a bad mom b/c I have no clue who this is. Until we get colored collars, the main way we tell them apart is that Sam got into the fireplace and got soot all over his neck, so he's now left with a gray-ish tint to his neck. Can't see the neck here, therefore I have no idea which kitty this is!




Charlie loves his mommy!