Fall Farmal

Some pictures from our school's "Fall Farmal," held at Hubris Orchard, just across the border in Indiana. Sina, Jen, the kids & I made an afternoon of it, packing picnic dinners and playing in the animal part/playground. Dave, Peter (Jen's hubby) & Ryan drove up after work.

Proudly displaying their entry bracelets: Sina, Morgan, John, Jenna, & our friend Jen Sieg

At the top of the 40-ft. slide
(So hard to get those crazy Shuey kids all looking at the camera!)
Heheh... at the bottom of the 40-ft. slide...

I honestly don't know if I've ever seen Jenna more excited about anything than these goats. "You just GOTTA see deese, Crwisteena!"

Desserts were not! lacking. HEehe we took some home, too.

One of my students (they were all QUITE enthused to see me. Ryan's words: if you ever want to be one of the most loved people in the world, teach pre-school!)

On the way to get our pumpkins
(that's Jen's hubby Peter-- Ryan's work buddy, and our fellow church members)

The guy who agreed to drive us out there even though it was dark. We owe him so much!

Pumpkin fields by night. Our pumpkin was so much better than the Seigs'.

For all you Non-Facebookers...

Mr. and Mrs. Claudio Molina
October 4th, 2007
Carlos Paz, Argentina

Ams, talking to you for 10 minutes on your wedding day made my own day! :) I wanted so badly to be there, just to see you smile! God's been so good to you! Faithful in and through everything!

Better than Folgers to Jumpstart the Day

"Entering the day without a serious meeting with God over his Word and in prayer is like entering the battle without tending to your weapons. It's like taking a trip without filling the tires with air or the tank with gas. The human heart does not replenish itself with sleep. The body does, but not the heart. The spiritual air leaks from our tires, and the gas is consumed in the day. We replenish our hearts not with sleep, but with the Word of God and prayer. Thousands of saints have discovered through the centuries that starting the day by filling the mind with the Word of God will bring more joy and more love and more power than traveling on yesterday's gas."

John Piper When I Don't Desire God

Unedited Comment

I just have to share a comment from one of my students yesterday, said during Bible Story. It's still crackin' me up today. We're discussing Samson, and how he was attacked by a lion and was strong enough to wrestle it and kill it. This is her un-edited comment:

"If I was attacked, I'd fight back too. Hmm, I'm only strong enough to fight maybe a small dinosaur. Unless it was a mean one. Then I'd probably go outside and yell for help. But if it was nice, I'd keep it and it would be my pet."

The logical leaps from Samson to dinosaurs to pets is just... unique!! I LOVE PRESCHOOLERS!!! =D

Another one, this time from a little boy (they love the "what if's"):

"Mrs. Srama?" "Yes?" (walking up to me, very thoughtful, looking up in my face) "What if your head was... a dollar?"

LOL!!! I answered that it would be rather floppy...but I never did get where he was going with that!

--"mrs. szrama" (I'm still in the school building, so I have to call myself that.)

My Little Loves

... you've just GOT to see some of these sweet faces I get to love and teach every week: for security reasons, I can't put their real names, but they are so beautiful I've got to let you see them!









And, last but NOT least, here is a picture of Alexis, the oldest daughter of our pastor Jeff & his wife Christy. Don't let her pensive expression fool you. The cookie provided a RARE moment of stillness: she's quite a spunky little girl, and as Ryan says, we don't know anyone with more energy than she has!!

~proud to be called (100 x a day) "Mrs. Szrama" :)

Better than all of Italy

Our scrumptidiliumptious evening l Thursday consisted of our own cozy version of Italian favorites: pizza, wine and chocolate. This was complemented perfectly by a new wedding-gift-video, The Cinderella Man, which neither of us had seen and both of us enjoyed... and of course, each other.

Having Ryan with me, as my husband, made it all quite better than all of Italy to me.

Maybe being married makes you boring, that a quiet evening home becomes tantalizing. Or maybe it just makes you appreciate the beauty of simple pleasures all over again. I've often felt that the moment I said "I do" I was catapulted back to age 6...

A blessed, happy wife, ~Christina

[The pizza was homemade gluten-free, and quite tasty (turkey, gluten-free amazingly good pepperoni!), the wine a White Zinfandel (yummy!) from our honeymoon visit to the Biltmore estates, and the chocolate Belgian loveliness from the airport in Holland!]

Progress!

Our Upstairs, Before:

(and NO he is not peeing; he's painstakingly pushing a sander!)
Our Upstairs, After:

Ten hours, 9 rolls of sandpaper, hundreds of steps and sweeps later, we can see the beautiful grain of our hardwood floors!! We can't wait to enjoy it for the years to come... though another day of sanding isn't exactly appealing... For those of you who are disappointed that we already did so much work without you, there's still edging, staining, sealing, and buffing to be done! Plenty of work to go 'round!! :)

Proud proprieters of the house with the bowling alley upstairs,
~ the Szrama Clan, KY

Teenagers?

"Oh, you're too young to be getting married!" "Why do you want to end your life so soon?" "But you have your whole life ahead of you!" These were the sorts of comments I got when my friends & family found out I was getting married this past August. While none of my immediate family or close friends was inclined to think I was missing out on some great opportunity by wedding my best friend at the age of 21, it was still hard to hear... especially after the 30th time or so. Our pastor's wife, Christy King, said something in telling Ryan & I their own "falling in love" story, many moons ago at Josh & Amanda's wedding (last July!) that stuck with me, and helped offset all the disparagements. "It was such a blessing to spend our 20s together; we grew so much as people, and it was wonderful to grow together, as a couple through it." I remembered that, said so "in passing" and have already found it to be true. Who better to grow with than with my best friend and the one I both love and am in love with? Who better to help me, hold me, encourange and challenge me than the one who pursued my heart in the first place? And who would I rather go on adventures with, say to Barcelona or the Biltmore, or downtown Louisville?? (I wonder- did people think marriage would HINDER my travels?) There's no one I know with a better imagination and creative will to make it happen. Together, we're unstoppable!! :)

Seriously, though-- I'm not condoning rash marriages or ill-advised unions arising out of infatuations, flings, desires to cover past sin, or merely to slake lust. But Scripture does speak glowingly of the joy of the companionship of "the wife of one's youth" and I am so thankful to be that to this man who has given me his name. I love you, Mr. Ryan Szrama! :D

Ryan & I at the Old Louisville Coffee Shop, which was HOPPING during the St. James Art Fair. This is where my blogspot blog started-- free wireless in this little joint right behind Ashlea's & my old place. We were walking around the art fair, enjoying the booths and each other, holding hands and laughing and marveling at how hot October in Louisville can be... and I realized just how young we looked -- like two teenagers in love. :)

Our neighbors, the Carnifax-Needlers, whom we came to support. He's becoming quite the local folk artist. Sweet Christian couple-- and ("Mrs. Debbie") Ryan's high school FCA coach! Who knew he'd move in with his new bride across the street from them??

Me slurpin' the last of our shared Frozen Mint Mocha... this is what's great about being young & married: you still get to wink at each other over a shared coffee drink and then go read Tolkien in the park, baseball cap and all. Ok... so we plan on doing that when we're no longer young...

Continuing on the "Adventures of the Young and Married" theme: Ryan & I were given a rather diseased-looking... cactus?... by our neighbors. Until one of us has the time to adequately disinfect said organism, it resides happily enough on our back porch.

More Barcelona Pics Up

PS- if you want to see pictures from our trip to Barcelona, check out the link to our Flickr (pictures) site, as well as my photography website, and scroll down to see if I've added any to the posts you've already perused!
PPS- for a really cute video of Luke Fullerton (taken during VBS 2007), click here and scroll down to the entry entitled 'He's Southern?'. (that's my lap Luke's lying across)

Sweet Bride & Cute Fullertons

Today was our friends' Lynn & Jay's wedding. It was a morning wedding with a lunch reception... we're always looking for something to distinguish "this wedding" from other weddings, right? Well, this one had three distinctives, I thought:
- the sweetness of the bride. Some brides look happy, some are nervous, some are overcome with emotion... Lynn radiated sweetness. It suited her perfectly.
-- the consideration of their guests. Lynn & Jay are known by all to be servants of servants (Ryan referred to their "particular holiness" in their wedding sermon, and right he was!), and their reception especially showed this-- a kids' area with coloring books for the littlest guests, a kids' buffet that opened immediately, drink stations all around the room, and hors d'hoeuvres served while pictures were being taken.
-- the food. Jay is a chef (as well as a nurse), and the food showed it! I ate all the cream parts of the tiramisu, and my Ryan & Christy Fullerton agreed that the chocolate fondant cake was among the best they'd ever had!

I love every chance I get to hug on my little friend Jordana!

It was the first wedding Ryan & I have attended as Mr & Mrs Szrama ourselves. I was quite emotional about it, crying because I remembered all the joy & anticipation Lynn must have felt, all the expectations; because I shared their joy more fully, having experienced it myself so recently; because I saw the good faithful care of God and it was sweet to me; because I heard vows quite familiar, and realized how short I've fallen in 6 weeks, and was convicted and repentant, and finally because I know the disappointments that come so soon in marriage, and how much I'm prone to be willing to settle for less than what God offers.

This video of James Fullerton asking for "more" (watch the hands for the CLEAR insistant sign language) cake is adorably pitiful. Definitely inherited his mother's eyes and his father's singularly expressive face...



And the newest Fullerton, Christopher, looks like a very meatless version of his brother, Luke. Ryan (the proud papa) says "we've had the same baby four times now"... even though you may not be able to tell from this picture.

Mrs. Übercart, indeed

These two were taken at Drupal Con by fellow attender, Boris Mann.

...or at least Mrs. I-support-my-Drupaler-husband... ;D (this was taken after we got home & I WASHED the conference T-shirt. I always do that before wearing new clothes...ever since that one House MD episode...

Blessings on My Birthday

I've already been quite blessed in little (and big!) birthday treats:


Cards from my M/W Preschool Kids & their parents. Talk about sticker explosions! :) I love them! And the moms were SO sweet; gave me this adorable gift basket with my favorite candies/candy bars and a Q'doba gift card (Ryan's & my non-fancy restaurant of choice. It's much a la Moe's). AND they bought a rug for our classroom! I meant to get pictures of all the kids sitting on it-- I don't know if they were more excited about it or if I was! :)


I Ryan & I went to a school "Vision Fellowship" last night, and two of my Pre-K students were there. I found that out only when (on two separate occasions) WHOOSH! "Mrs. Szrama!!" *legs nearly bowled out from under me* They're small and quick enough that you just don't see them coming! They were very happy to meet Mr. Szrama. [Long aside: hehe, turns out one family of girls had a running argument about what his first name was. One of their girls is in my 5-6th grade choir, and another is in my Pre-K class, and the other two I see in the pickup lines and hall ways... anyway, Mary Kate (aged 4) settled it by just asking me "what's Mr. Szrama's name?" innocently in class. The older girls were shocked that she got at it so easily and, their mother laughingly told me, swore "I'd NEVER ask that way!" Goes to show-- innocence and honesty over guile and speculation! Not that the other girls aren't perfect dears.]
There isn't another school on earth that could beat the amount of parental support and student adoration that I get at Dorothy Sayers! As another example, my T/R Pre-K class moms went in together to give Ryan & I a generous Gift Card to Target as a wedding gift on Tuesday!! And my administration is even supportive and encouraging!... and I'm starting to get to know my fellow teachers. We had a grading party at Starbucks last Wed., and I think I'll join them again next week...



And this morning, Sina, John & Jenna showed up on my back porch with a bag of gluten-free baking mixes (YUMMY) and a pan of oven-fresh, piping hot, gooey GLUTEN FREE cinnamon rolls! Happy Birthday indeed!!