Where Is My Shoe?

Things in the Messick household frequently go missing these days. Right now I cannot find my left tennis shoe (which is a nice tennis shoe, mind you!) or my toothbrush. Most every day we find items in the trash can that somehow were deposited there. Or, we find items misplaced in other drawers in the kitchen.

What is the reason for this phenomenon? Who is the little guilty party of all of these strange disappearances and happenings in our home? Well, we have a special little gal named Victoria Jayne who is the culprit!

Victoria has a thing for our cabinets, drawers, garbage cans and pantry these days. The only thing I can figure is that maybe Victoria is feeling "big-time" now that she is tall enough to reach drawers and shelves in the house. She is constantly opening drawers, raiding the pantry and pulling items out of place. It is a big job to keep the house in any type of order ... which doesn't happen very often!

To date, I cannot tell you how many pieces of silverware or utensils that I "may have" thrown away by mistake! And, I can only assume that maybe my good tennis shoe found its way into our big kitchen garbage can and I may have thrown it out without realizing it was in there.

Oh well! I guess one day my house will find order again and in the meantime these little mishaps give me good reason to go shopping!

9 Years Already?

I want to say a simple "Happy Anniversary" to my wonderful husband of 9 years! On May 4, 2002, Mark and I said our "I do's" and it has been a full journey of life together ever since!

In our 9 years together, we have served at the same church in Saraland, AL (First Baptist North Mobile), which is a big part of our life. We have loved being a part of that ministry!

We were blessed to have 3 little girls (in 33 months) that we adore.

Our first sweet girl came in 2005 and we named her Elyssa.

Our second little girl came in 2007 and we named her Natalie.

We entered the world of the "special needs community" when we had our third little girl in 2008. We named her Victoria.

In 2008, our youngest girl, Victoria, had open-heart surgery and you better believe that draws a couple closer because of the emotional nature of such a surgery.

Along the way, God has blessed Mark with many speaking engagements. He is a wonderful communicator!

God has also opened up lots of opportunities for me in the way of speaking and singing engagements at women's events.

It has been so wonderful to share in some of these engagements together as a couple. We experience so much joy through encouraging others and reminding them that God loves them and wants to walk with them in a personal way on their journey of life. We would've never have imagined how wonderfully God could take everything we have experienced as a couple and as parents and use it to minister to others.

We have had our ups and downs as any other couple does in marriage, but we know that God had a plan in placing us together. We have laughed together, cried together, been overweight together! You name it and we have probably experienced it! But, through the past 9 years we have just been thankful to be able to experience life together!

Happy Anniversary, Mark Douglas Messick! I love you!