Quotes

I'm currently swamped in grad school papers and working on completing my portfolio (so close to the end, but yet so far!) and I have to do several book reports (flashback to 4th grade). One of the books that I have to read is a book that my professor required us to purchase and read, nevermind the fact that it's a book that he is featured in...geez! However, despite all of that, I found a few quotes that really spoke to me today that I thought I'd share. The book is called "Leading the Way to Success" and while it is not written for the education field, there are several ideas that carry over well. Both of these quotes are from James Kouzes.

"The secret to succes is: Stay in love. Staying in love gives you the fire to really ignite other people, to see inside other people, to get more things done than other people. A person who is not in love doesn't really feel the kind of excitement that helps him to get ahead and to lead others to achieve. I don't know any other fire or anything in life that is more exhilarating and powerful a feeling than love is."

It's no secret that I want to be in an administrative role in the future in the schools whether that be a principal or curriculum coordinator or something else. All of my classes have dealt with leadership and I think staying passionate about teaching is a must in whatever position one is in.

"You find your great call where your great joy meets the world's great need. I think that comes as close to a formula for success as I can find. Watch your great joy. Watch the great need in the world that enables you to use your great joy and therein lies your calling."

I think of my brother when I read this, but I also think about how blessed I am to know my calling and am able to do something that I love. Regardless of what position I hold in the future, I have found success because I found a way to use my joy to meet the world's needs. Cheesy, I know. Just bare with me. I've had to do a lot of reading lately!

Family Photos by M Photography

Back in July, we had our family pictures taken by our longtime friend, Melissa Cooper. We wanted to get some pictures before my brother left to travel the world for a year so we ventured out to the farm where my mom works to snap some photos. Melissa took some outstanding photos and there are so many great ones to choose from, but I am including some of my personal favorites from the day (there's too many for me to load all of them).

Enjoy!

The family

My fantastic parents that raised me into who I am today

My brother simply doesn't take a bad picture!

The three most important men in my life.

Now of course you have to a pic of the ladies!

Seriously, could I have married a more adorable man? I'm smitten by him...

This is one of his favorites so I figured I'd include it.

I am so proud and honored to have him as my "little" brother.

We always said we needed to get one of all of us in our Bengals gear. This is what we typically look like on Sundays in September to January. Sundays will be one of the times I will miss my brother the most.

I just love the sky on this one!



And my personal, absolute most favorite........


This sums up my intense and ever-growing love for this incredibly handsome man that made me his bride several years ago. Sure, everyday life gets in the way of our love and respect for one another at times, but this man is my rock and I am forever linked to him. He makes each day special and meaningful for me. I consider myself extremely blessed and I thank God often for such a beautiful, full life that is full of love and joy.

Melissa, you captured our family beautifully! I can't say thank you enough!

A Gorgeous Gal

I am proud to introduce to the world my beautiful baby niece, Noa Grace!

Isn't she just perfect in every way???

I am a glowing aunt!!!

Since she was born in CA, it will be some time before I'm able to meet her face to face, but I can't wait to see her and kiss those sweet little cheeks! I haven't been able to stop staring at the picture since I got it. What can I say, she's a Bennett!

You can be sure I'll add plenty more pictures as I get them!

Christmas Gift

Ummmm....can we say best Christmas gift ever???

Jordan got Mark and I two lower level tickets to the bowl game. As if that wasn't great enough, he also gave us a UK football signed by the ENTIRE team!

Pretty amazing!

Mark and I are often amazed at what wonderful friends we have. We thank God on a daily basis for such good people in our lives.

California: Day Six (Our Anniversary!)

On our sixth day, which also happened to be our anniversary, we decided to sleep in. When we finally got up and going, we agreed that we both really wanted to go to The Getty Center. The Getty Center is a state-of=the art building that features art throughout the ages. It was featured recently on Project Runway, which we both LOVE to watch, so it was a real treat to go together.


Mark and I are nerds and we both have the best time going to museums. In fact, Mark wants to be a curator after he retires. As a teacher, I could spend hours in museums and be content as ever. The Getty is free admission, but you have to pay parking. I've come to discover that parking is how all of L.A. makes their money. You HAVE to park, so they get you there. After the $15 (yeah, that's right) parking pass, you take a small train up the side of the mountain to actually get to the museum buildings.



The architecture and sculptures of The Getty

The fountains outside the buildings


View of the cactus garden and the city


Just some really cool trees

Besides having remarkable architecture, breathtaking views of the city, and amazing furnishings gathered from over the years, there was an outstanding amount of artwork. All of the artwork is on the second level of every building with skylights so that the art can be seen in natural light as it was meant to be seen. We saw paintings from Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Rousseau, and my favorite, Monet. It was a wonderful day and a fantastic way to spend our anniversary!


Vexed Man

French bed featured on Project Runway

(I loved all of the light blue and gold in all of the French furnishings)

Rousseau painting

Irises by Van Gogh

Monet

(I recreated this painting in art class in high school)

That evening, we went to Cha Cha Chicken, a caribbean restaurant (another favorite), in Santa Monica with Ticean and Amy. It was delicious like all of our other meals! Then we went to the Promenade (outdoor mall that takes up blocks) to see the different acts in the streets, window browse, and get some Pinkberry frozen yogurt. Yum!!!

Date Night

Now that I'm at Williams-Sonoma, I am constantly getting new ideas for dishes. I'm trying to step out of my routine box and try at least one or two new recipes a week. Last night was a spur of the moment date night for Mark and me. We went to church last night in Lexington, but on the way I mentioned that I would make some brownies for dessert.

I've been making these Double Chocolate Brownies that Ami made for Mark and I one day. I wanted to step outside of the box brownies and this recipe is just fabulous. I stole Ami's idea and I put grey sea salt on them right before putting them in the oven. I just LOVE the salty-sweet taste! I made them for Labor Day and for our small group dinner the other night (I paired them with some homemade pumpkin ice cream!), but that only left us with one each. I decided I'd make a whole batch just for us last night. I also decided to make some homemade vanilla ice cream to go with it.

At this point, we were ready for a good meal to go before it. We literally spent an hour and a half at Meijer just exploring all of our options for a great meal. Mark even had the great idea of going over to their book section to look up some new recipes!

We ended up buying some ciabatta bread that I paired with some fresh sliced mozzarella, roma tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar. Yum! We also sipped on some shiraz by Barefoot Wine. It's a very tasty wine that is very reasonably priced.

For the main course, I made ravioli with a creamy pesto. It was SO good! I can't find the recipe anywhere online, but I have it in my cookbook at home. It was so colorful because it had green beans, yellow peppers (I added some extra grilled peppers that Mark grilled up), and roma tomatoes. The creamy pesto sauce was just a mixture of pesto, sour cream, and lemon. It was such an easy recipe and just full of flavor (but they all paired together so well).

For dessert, we had our brownies along with our fresh ice cream. We also got some french vanilla coffee beans that we ground up in our chopper/grinder. Mark made us coffee for after dinner in his french press. I am just starting to love coffee, which could be very dangerous. I still like cream and sugar in mine so I took a small spoonful of the vanilla ice cream and plopped it into my coffee. Delicious!

By the end of the night, we were absolutely stuffed. We had a multi-course meal for a fraction of what it would have cost us to go out on a date and we have leftovers to boot! Great night!

Next time, I'll take pictures so I can actually display the dishes!

Heading to the Lake

I'm heading to the lake today with my mom (the boys are following after tomorrow after their softball game tonight and work tomorrow)! I'm so excited! This is my favorite time of the year. I plan on catching up on lots of reading and spending plenty of time on the water!

See ya in a week!

Mr. and Mrs. Hurst- June 5, 2009

Oh my gosh, the highlight of my summer was Em and Chris' wedding! As I've stated before, Chris is Mark's best friend and obviously E is mine. This wedding was a dream come true for Mark and I because we know how happy our friends are and as we joke, we always have a built-in double date.

I was a little too busy the day before and the day of to take pictures, but I am including some of the pictures from the rehearsal and wedding taken by the photographer, Mary Lashbrook. You can look at her other photos here.

The rehearsal was at Talon and the dinner was supposed to be at Jacobson Park where we'd eat Fazoli's and play wiffle ball. It poured that day, so we moved it all to church and it turned out great! Here's some pics of all of us playing ball.

Glen was the champ when he slid into home!

I was speechless!


The wedding was at Talon and it was the most beautiful day! The clouds looked like cotton candy and there was a cool breeze throughout the ceremony. At one point, this flock of geese flew in V formation over the ceremony and it was just breathtaking looking over the lake. The wedding was so personal and so unique and it's just so obvious how much they love one another! I just absolutely loved it and cried through the entire thing! It was so great to look over and see my amazing husband on the other side and it reminded me what a lucky woman I am to have married such a wonderful man 5 years ago.

I will say that it was unfortunate for Jen as she stood in an ant hill for the entire 40 min ceremony. At one point, I looked over and she had approximately 15 red ants crawling all over her legs and through her toes. Yikes!

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Hurst

I'm also including a couple videos from the wedding that my brother filmed and edited as the videographer. I'm telling you, he has a gift! So great!

This first video is the beginning of the wedding.

This second video is during the song and the unity art done by Amy Cranfill. You can see the geese about 35 seconds into this video.

Women's Weekend Pt. 3- "I'm on a boat!"

This year, we had to go see the S.S. Paradise before E got married so we loaded up all of our gear the weekend before the wedding and headed out to see our true love. This year, we had Erica join in as the 4th in our Trio (it works) as we took to the open waters!

We did however make a tiny pit stop at the original KFC's Sander's Cafe. We grabbed a full bucket of chicken with all the sides to take onto our vessel. It was delicious, the water was cold but great, and the sun was shining without a cloud in the sky (which means we all lathered on the sunscreen to prevent sunburns or tan lines right before the wedding!).

The Colonel and I spending some quality time together

Me and Erica at the historic landmark sign.

NOTE: Check out how sneaky that little step is that I'm on.

It may or may not have resulted in me falling into the sign.

My favorite girls

Graduation #2

Towards the end of May, Mark and I also planned a trip to see Chris (Mark's best friend and E's now husband) graduate from West Point Academy as a 2nd Lieutenant. The thing is, he had no idea that we were coming to see him. The funny thing is that I can't imagine how we wouldn't know we were coming. We wouldn't have missed it for the world!

The other thing is that we couldn't leave until around 2 PM on Friday because Mark had to work. Keep in mind that the graduation was Saturday morning. If you're not aware of the location of West Point, it's in New York. It's over a 12 hour drive. We got into our hotel between 2 and 3 AM, slept for literally 4 hours, then woke up to drive to the graduation.

After the graduation, which went from about 9 AM-2 PM, we got right back on the road and followed behind Em and Chris all the way home. We got home Sunday morning at 5 AM. If you're keeping track, that's 52 hours with only 9 of which we weren't driving. I can honestly say that I have never been more tired in my entire life.

Was it worth it? ABSOLUTELY!

Would we do it again? IN A HEARTBEAT!

But let's just pray that we NEVER have to do that again!

E and I in the stands-we're such schemers!

(By the way, I cut all my hair off to donate it!)

Chris on the Jumbotron receiving his diploma
(He still doesn't know we're there!)

Mark and I on West Point's campus overlooking the Hudson River.

Absolutely beautiful campus!

Chris and Mark. Best buds!

Me and my 2nd husband

We are so proud of Chris! Congrats 2Lt. Hurst!