Adios to 2014: Looking ahead to 2015 and what's to come

Holly and Kelly: With the end of 2014 just 2 days away, we thought this would be a good time to wrap up our blogging for the year and look ahead to what the new year may or may not have in store for us. We decided to do this today because tomorrow we're packing up to head to Ohio, working, taking care of things before we ring in 2015 on the road. To start, 2014 was a great year for the two of us! We both experienced some firsts, went to a lot of concerts and met some awesome musicians who love the Lord, went to A Long Expected Party and bonded with fellow Ringers and bonded over why and how Tolkien's work has changed our lives for the better. Saw the end of an era with The Hobbit. Holly found a job that makes her happy (from Holly: finally) and as for me, even after thinking earlier this year I was going to lose my job found myself getting my act together and not only being a better nurse but just an all around better person. Having said that, here are a few goals we have laid out for 2015 and perhaps beyond:

Remember who we are and whose we are: A simple reminder that we are children of God and that God made us because He loves us so much! This point was in a sermon a few months ago and it has really stuck with us. It reminds us of what He has brought us through and that He will continue to provide our needs, no matter what they are. It reminds us to not worry about what may or may not happen but to really just trust in Him because He's going to take care of us!

"Let me get that." From another sermon that the youth pastor at our church gave. The youth group went on a mission trip earlier this summer, and this was their mentality and sort of motto in order to prevent burnout from a long week of hard work. For whenever we are feeling worn out and just tired, this simple phrase will hold with us to remember to always extend a helping hand, whether we're at work, church, home, wherever. This rolls into Romans 12:11-13, which starts out by saying never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically. It's so easy to do that when you're doing something you love. It's easy for the two of us because we absolutely love our jobs. But even the best loved jobs have crappy days, and sometimes we really don't feel like being enthusiastic for Jesus. But we've found even the simplicity of just putting on a smile can go a long way. Give it a go.

Clean up song: I know some of you are thinking....ok, what? When we saw tobyMac last month, he was talking about when he was cleaning up the kitchen with his family he played one of his new singles as the "clean up song." We just looked at each other and were like...we need to do that. So before we clean up the kitchen or whatever, we pick a clean up song, usually a dancey one, and clean up while we sing, dance and whatnot. It's prevented a lot of arguing about who does what and it makes the mundane tasks more fun!

Eat at the table: I know this seems simple, but we rarely eat dinner at our dining room table. We did this while growing up as kids, and it helped us all reconnect with our days and just life in general. Granted, this won't be possible every night, but we're going to try and make it a regular habit.

So there you have it! We hope that 2014 has been great to you all and that you have some goals set for the new year to come. We'll close with a bit of this awesome song from for KING & COUNTRY and we hope these words encourage you. Thank you all for continuing to follow and read our blog! We can't wait for what 2015 has in store for us!

When I'm stuck out in the cold, let me be warm hearted
When the weight's too much to hold, let me be light hearted 
When all I have is not enough, I won't be broken hearted
'Cause you taught me how to love, to live, to learn, to live whole hearted. 

Family pic from Christmas! 

Food, Cheer and Song

Kelly: So before I went to bed last night, I wrote a thing. It's kind of a long thing. Bear with me, for sometimes when God speaks, He speaks volume!

If more of us valued food, cheer and song over hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. 

Thorin Oakenshield utters those words to Bilbo as he takes his final breath. Prior to these words being spoken, a great battle took place in Middle Earth. But in this battle, no winner was declared. There were no victories to be celebrated. And this battle was over what? A pile of coins and perhaps a teeny bit of redemption. How often do we do this in our own life? Fight over and sometimes for things that in the end leave us with nothing? I know I have many times before, and like Thorin, I'm questioning my choices to God, because others like Bilbo along the way have showed me how much greatness God has given me. God promises us food that will never leave us hungry! In His word, constantly, all the time. His word is always there and we can go to it anytime and our hunger won't return void. It's never ending food, full of promises from THE ultimate Provider.

Philippians 4:4 says to rejoice in the Lord always. God has given you and me plenty, and over and over He has proved to me just how worthy He is. Like Gandalf says to Bilbo near the end of their journey "for you are one small hobbit in a wide world." Bilbo's response is "thank goodness!" That's exactly how I feel. I am so humbled by His grace and grateful that He is God and I am not. Thank goodness that God knows exactly what He is doing, because if it were just me on my own, I don't even know. There is absolutely no way all that has occurred in my life is mere random chance. Absolutely no way. It's God and God alone, because to me nothing else makes sense. So I have no choice but to thank Him for all He has done for me and will continue to do for me, because I sure as heck don't deserve it.

Psalm 100 says to shout for joy to the LORD all the Earth, and to worship the Lord with gladness. We are to enter his praises with thanksgiving. I've had people say to me they know I am a Christian and admire me for the way I handle certain situations. And I say it's not me; it's God in me. The way I see it is this; I can hold onto all my junk that comes my way, be angry, swing at anything that moves and hoard all my anger, frustration, bitterness, whatever, just like Thorin did with his gold. He refused to part with it, even though he promised to share in the wealth. And look what happened! He went nuts! He doubted himself, his mind, and even his own family. He reached a point where nothing or no one could be trusted, even himself. It's not easy sometimes, but instead I resound to do my best to lay it all down to God's feet and let Him deal with it. Because we can't carry all our junk to Heaven anyway, so why not do our best to just let it go? Trust me, I'm writing this for myself as much as I am to anyone who reads this. We are called to store our treasures in jars of clay so they don't collect dust or moth balls, and that we don't end up like Thorin. What treasures do you have in jars of clay? What do I have? What would you like to have stored that would please God?

These words are what Tolkien's work has done to me. Exploring hidden theology in a movie or book by digging deeper into Scripture and examining my own walk with God. I think that God wires us to like what we like. Seriously. And there are foundational reasons for our likes, but I think in everything there's perhaps something a bit deeper as well. And I think it's true when they say God is in all things; all we have to do is let Him in to all of our things. Even our love for Bilbo's adventures.

One Last Time

Holly and Kelly: Dear readers, we apologize for not updating in a while. It has been a very crazy month of going here there and everywhere. But we are fine, all is well and now we are back. Thanks for hanging tough and bearing with us.

Yesterday was the final hurrah. The big finale. The movie to end all movies. The Battle of the Five Armies. And it was glorious.  It was also a time of gathering. As you all know, in September we attended ALEP (see our post on ALEP weekend here!) and met some pretty awesome people during that time. It was discussed at that time that there was a group who usually met up in December to see the current Hobbit movie in Nicholasville (about an hour from Berea). This group met up at Shaker Village the night before for a merry gathering, since it's almost Christmas. So needless to say we jumped all over that! We stayed at the village Friday night and got to meet up with some of the folks we met in September for snacks, conversation, laughing, a long slideshow and a little bit of tasty wine. Come Saturday we rolled out to Brannon's Crossing in Nickyville and gathered at the theater for pictures and a bit of singing, such as Misty Mountains and I See Fire- which was pretty incredible. Before we knew it there were other people taking pictures and videos of all of us, as the majority of the group were in costumes. It was awesome. Truly awesome. We kept saying "I love us." This group, these movies, as Kelly said, it was a celebration of the Christmas season, the love of Tolkien and Peter Jackson's work, how the books/movies have impacted us and our lives, and celebrating each other.

Now for our movie opinion; we LOVED it!!! We don't want to give too much away, because that's just not nice and we went into this movie having read no reviews, not viewed any clips, or seen anything else other than just the trailer.  We expected a few things, naturally, just because we're fairly familiar with the book, but it far surpassed our expectations!  There were quite a few moments that really surprised us, and of course, there were things that we weren't too thrilled with (but that's the case with the previous 2 Hobbit movies, and even LOTR too).  But what really made this movie special, aside from it being the last Middle Earth hurrah, was the company that was able to witness this cinematic adventure with us.  Many we met from AL3P, but we didn't get to have as many in-depth conversations and fellowship as we had wished (though there was still plenty!!), so it was really memorable to share life with these people.  We all come from such different walks of life, such different parts of the world, and when we all come together united by this love for Tolkien, wonderful things happen.  Now every time we see Five Armies, we'll think of this group, this family that we've been so fortunate to be welcomed into.  Plus...Billy Boyd's closing song is complete perfection to the end of an incredible movie series...and to our parting.  We will see each other soon, though.  There is no such thing as goodbye!

So ends this day
The road is now calling
And I must away
Over hill and under tree
Through lands where light has never shone
By silver streams that run down to the Sea
Under cloud, beneath the stars
Over snow one winter's morn
I turn at last to paths that lead home
And though where the road then takes me, I cannot tell
We came all this way
But now comes the day to bid you farewell

One Last Time! (Photo c/o Kelly Gable) 

Excerpts from H and K's cookbook

Holly: Ok, let's just be honest here...they're mostly from Pinterest :)

In the spirit of holiday gorging ourselves, we thought it would be fun if we shared a few of our recipes that win us over every time! We hope you try some, and if you do, we hope you love them all as much as we do!

1. Coca-Cola Chocolate Cake

Kelly doesn't even LIKE chocolate cake, but she'll devour this one!  The secret: Coke! :) Added with cinnamon, milk, and cocoa powder, it makes for a surprisingly light cake.  I've never frosted it- it's perfect as is.  I may try it with Dr. Pepper or Coke Zero in the future.

Recipe here: http://mayflaum.com/2011/06/08/the-chocolate-cola-cake/

2. Pumpkin Muffins

You guys, these are the EASIEST muffins you will ever make.  2 ingredients, less than 30 minutes.  These muffins are SO moist!  I've made them with yellow cake, as the recipe calls for, but they're excellent with spice cake as well.  Bonus: They are WW friendly :)

Recipe here: http://sweet-verbena.blogspot.com/2011/08/pumpkin-muffins.html

3. Crockpot Cheesy Chicken and Rice

One of our go-to recipes.  Easy to put together and it makes a TON.  Great heated up the next day (and beyond!).

Recipe here: http://www.southernplate.com/2010/09/slow-cooker-cheesy-chicken-and-rice-the-downside-of-being-a-swan-princess.html

Kelly: 

1. The first recipe I am going to share I actually don't have a link for, but it's one of my favorites and it's so super easy! It's called my healthy chicken nuggets (I don't even remember where I found the recipe) But it's simple; grab 3-4 chicken breasts, thawed, and cut them up into bite-sized pieces. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. While the oven's preheating, mix together Parmesan cheese, olive oil, a tad bit of water, salt and pepper and bread crumbs in a bowl. Take the cut-up chicken pieces and swirl them around in the mixture listed above and place the chicken pieces on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes and voila! Nothing to it.

2. I make a MEAN wedding soup! Delicious and again, quite easy. Instead of ground beef though I use ground turkey. It makes a good bit too.

Recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/italian-wedding-soup-i/

3. The last one also doesn't have a link, but we got it from Pinterest. Though it isn't the healthiest of recipes, it sure is tasty! We call it our chicken and veggie of awesome, or CVA for short, NOT to be confused with the proper medical term for a stroke. Haha!!! Here it is: 3-4 chicken breasts, chopped up potatoes, any green vegetable (we've done green beans, brussel sprouts and broccoli), all together in a 9x13 baking dish, one stick of butter melted all over that, and packet of italian seasoning.  Cover and bake for one hour at 350 degrees. Delicious!!!!

So there you have it. Any recipes you have that you would like to share with us? Let us know!