Blast from the past

Because of the change in our holiday plans I was able to go to church with my Dad again and visit the church I grew up in. I was so excited to see everyone again, but also cos my Dad brings Wine Gums to church too.

It was strange, because it felt like I'd never been gone, but at the same time so much had changed - kids had grown up, there were more regular family services, there were new groups, new people (and new babies!). I miss my home church a lot, and now I've been back for a visit I miss it more. Please don't interpret that as being unhappy at Bannside because I am happy, and I'm excited about things to come - we'll be officially without a minister this time next week meaning we can start looking for someone new. I'm excited about potential, I'm excited about change, but I know the journey to change will be long and hard.

Married to a Youth Pastor

HT to Matthew McNutt for this link to Married to a Youth Pastor. I've only been reading this blog for a couple of days but it's been very informative and interesting in all sorts of ways. I imagine it might be of interest to others who read this little corner of the web still and that it may be of use and/or interest to youth workers, ministers, and of course their spouses!

Our First Anniversary

Today Rob and I are celebrating our first wedding anniversary! It's a year to the day when we stood in front of all our family and friends and became husband and wife, then went off and started cooking for them all!!!!



Only kidding, but it's one of my favourite photos from the day.

It's been a fantastic year! I've really loved being married and making a home with Rob. I'll share more tomorrow about our celebrations and what we did to mark the occasion.

Spray tan

This time last year (almost to the minute) I was standing in a booth getting a spray tan done.... my sister was treating me to this in preparation for mine and Rob's wedding 2 days later. I remember my sister and I feeling wet and sticky, I remember going into Debenhams to pick up the guys suits, I remember the Bible Study I led that night where I was surprised with a mini party and was also bashed for being so orange. I also remember the shower the next morning with the orange water running down the plug hole and how clean I felt after it!

This Sunday is our first wedding anniversary and I'll not advertise what we're doing to celebrate but I promise to tell all afterwards.



Picture from Online Tan Shop

Ed's Bar & Grill

Rob suggested going out for dinner last night and I jumped at the chance. We decided to try the newest restaurant in Banbridge: Ed's Bar and Grill I've held a few meetings in there with some of my volunteer youth leaders and so on but was excited to go for a proper meal and with Rob too because we usually get takeout instead of going out for food.



I was also excited because they have a great mix of a menu but not so mixed that it overwhelms you.... OK I did struggle a little to narrow down my choices to what I was actually going to have, but it gives me more reason to go back and try all the other dishes I like the sound of!

It's a fantastic atmosphere, perfect for families, parties, couples and lots more. The staff were very friendly and in fact while we were having our order taken a customer interrupted and handed our server the bill, he looked at us with that look of "I'm sorry" mixed with "What was that about?", but he was very professional and carried on with our order after that.



We were served quite quickly and everything was hot, fresh from the kitchen... in fact so hot that when I ate one of the chips I burnt my throat swallowing it meaning that today has been a struggle swallowing. But they were good chips!

I had some delicious "sweet and sticky chicken" described as marinated and seared chicken, in a sticky mild whole grain mustard and honey glaze....... how good does that sound?!?!?!?! And it was, absolutely delicious, but I would have like a little more of the marinade for some of the chicken that had none underneath... or even just for having as a dressing on the salad bed it came on.



My dear plain eating hubby had a plain burger and chips... that he says were very good, he was well happy with it.



I was very impressed with the friendliness of the staff, the great atmosphere, great menu, quick service, very tasty food... however there is one thing that has bothered me each time I've been there, which I'm sure some think is an excellent idea. They have nintendo DS and mini DVD players along with a selection of games and movies for entertaining your children during the meal. It makes me sad that families can't sit down to a nice meal together without distractions or having to be entertained, but then again I'm not a parent so I shouldn't judge. But a great place to go for a meal, I highly recommend it... but if you can't get to Ed's Banbridge, check out their Lisburn branch.

2007 Review

Many blogs have done a review of 2007, mostly using the format of "highlights" or the "best blog posts" or "my tops tens of x, y and z for 2007" etc. However I was reading fellow April 07  bride Chris Cool's blog and loved how she reviewed the year by what happened month by month and have decided to do the same seeing as the last year has been very eventful for me too!

January
We spent New Year's Eve in 2006 with some of Rob's classmates and their significant others by having dinner at our new house. We had just got the keys to our house a few days before Christmas and I had insisted on having a tree put up, my first ever Christmas tree and it was a real tree. Mum and Dad have always had artificial trees so this was a real treat, but soon after the turn of the new year we had to remove the decorations and say goodbye to our first tree.
On the 2nd and 3rd of the month I starred in a play put on by the church called, "Don't Tell the Wife", where I played Hilda, a girlfriend of Cyril who was a little odd.

And a lot of wedding planning took place, as well as Rob and I going to a marriage preparation course run by Christian Guidelines

February
Wedding invites were sent out, replies started coming in as well as some wedding presents!
I went go karting with the BB as the only girl!
Tried my wedding dress on for the first time, it was rather big and was taken to the seamstress for alterations.

March
Had my first wedding - in a play, not a real wedding - a short sequel to "Don't tell the wife" was written where my character got married and was performed exactly a month before my own wedding at the church annual review. Like my dress?

I also went for hair and make up trials for the actual wedding - it was so much fun being pampered - and did lots more wedding prep.
And more wedding presents came!

April
The first Bannside Youth Retreat in my time being there was held in the first week of the month. There were about a dozen of us altogether and we had a great time.
A few days later I had my hen night at Fat Buddha which was great! Gorgeous food! Fantastic company! And great craic!

I had wedding dress finally altered and picked up just 3 days before the wedding!!!!
And on the 20th Rob and I became Mr and Mrs Ruth! lol We had an amazing day, it was so much more fun than I had ever imagined it would be! I'm a very forunate girl to have married the love of my life.

After the wedding we had our "minimoon" as I called it. We weren't able to go away on our honeymoon straight away seeing as Rob had his final exams to do for his degree, so we spent a few nights in the bridal suite of the Malone Lodge Hotel which was fantastic! Recommend it if you can afford it!
We came home and I started living with my new hubby.
About a week later I turned 24!!! and I got birthday presents!!!!!
And we had lots more wedding presents!!!!

May
Rob took part in the Megaw Memorial Lectures and came second. In my humble (and unbiased lol) opinion I think he should have won, but I was so proud of him!

We got our wedding photos, and i added loads on flickr and bebo. I was so happy with how they all turned out. Our photographer, Michael Taylor was amazing and did so much for us, he really understood what we wanted. We would recommend him to anyone! And he doesn't just do weddings, so if you're after a good photographer check him out.
On the 10th we got our wee puppy Stewie. And here he is the first day we got him:

He was so scared and still is a little scared of things but he's come out of his shell now and become a cheeky spoilt pup lol. But we love him lots.

June
The first 3 days of the month saw a huge fundraising event for the church that had took the best part of 2 years to plan. The Bannside flower festival where we served over 2000 meals as well as serve a huge amount of tea, coffee and scones. We had thousands of people come to see the beautiful flower arrangements. But the biggest success was having members of the church all working together, getting to know each other, involving new people and having fun together!


This year was the first ever Kid's Praise Party held by PCI. It was a fantastic event, I can't wait to see what happens at this year's party.
On the same day, straight after the Kid's Praise Party was Youth night, another great year, however as usual it ran over time a little.
The last few days of the month were spent at Summer Madness which was known as SBSUSM07 (meaning "stand by or stand up, summer madness 07) for the year and was the last year of the StreetReach outreach project, with over 2000 (if memory serves me right) people (mostly teenagers) hitting the streets, to clean up, serve, play with kids and much more.

July
The first few days of the month saw the second half of Summer Madness with Rob's Graduation in the middle

Another day where I was all proud of him!
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out at the cinema. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released.

August
August saw the start of this blog. which has been going very well if I say so myself.
And soon after that I started "Just add eggs" which is now "ruth's kitchen experiments"
We booked our honeymoon.
And I went to the second PCI Youth Ministry Summer School

September
We cut the grass for the first time
Rob and I headed down to Kilkenny to see his mum and brother.

October
We went on our Honeymoon in Menorca and while away got to finish reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Then about a week later I took a crowd of 16 to the MAD weekend and we had a great time

November
November was a challenge for my blogging because I signed up to do NaBloPoMo and decided to post about things I learnt everyday.
I also had my annual review this month and was offered permanent contract which was rather exciting!
My lovely hubby bought me an iPhone
I had also made my 100th post

December
December was it's usual self - extremely busy but lots of fun. Especially seeing as this was our first Christmas together married and New Years was celebrated in style, just the 3 of us on the sofa watching TV.


What a fantastic year!!! I'm looking forward to the next one! Happy new year everyone!

Christmas catch up

I've been bad and neglected my blog the past few days, however I did post 4 times on Christmas Eve! Well I'm back on this blog now, however I did post the following on ruth's kitchen experiments:

This year, Rob and I celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple and had fun cooking our own Christmas dinner.


For starters we had crispy duck with Chinese pancakes, hoi sin sauce and spring onions.


And for our main course we made Turkey, Ginger Glazed Gammon, Stuffing and roast potatoes, carrots and parsnips and had cocktail sausages and Yorkshire pudding along with it all.



I even made doggie treats for Stewie
What a fantastic feed! We had a great day!

We also spent Christmas evening at my parent's house playing on my sister's Wii. On boxing day Rob was working and i headed up to my parent's with Stewie to have another Christmas dinner. The following day Rob and I headed up with his 2 brothers to Donegal to see his Dad and almost Step mum, while Stewie spent the night with my Mum and Dad. We had yet another Christmas dinner in Donegal, swapped more presents, played beetle and did a mini pub quiz. We stayed overnight and spent the day, went out for dinner in the evening to a local pub and headed back home, picking up Stewie on the way.

Now today has been relaxing, Rob has lit the fire, I cooked lunch from leftover turkey and ham, made some Baked Alaska and am now updating my blog while watching the West Wing with Rob. Tonight I'll be heading out to see some old school friends for Chinese and a catchup with them too!

I have the best hubby!

My hubby doesn't surprise me often, no flowers or chocolates etc, but when he does, he does it in style!

Tonight as I was waiting for Rob to call home to say he had left work so I could start cooking dinner, I was starting to worry because he's supposed to finish work at 9, doesn't usually get to leave until about 9.15ish but tonight the clock was nearing 9.45 and I hadn't heard anything yet - I was starting to worry. I txted asking if he was leaving soon, he replied saying he was leaving. Then he called a few minutes later and said he was on his way and to make up for being late that he'd get me something pretty.

So I got on with making the dinner (which i'll blog about here tomorrow) and when he got home he told me to close his eyes because he got me something already. I closed my eyes and got excited, when he told me to open them again there I saw a fantastic little box that contained a brand new iPhone! All for me! Isn't he the greatest?!?!?!? He bought one for himself as well so we'll be all like a weird couple with matchin phones, but who cares! We have funky cool iPhones!

He's now having fun getting the 2 of them set up and ready for use.... he's like a kid in a candy shop and I love him to bits!

NaBloPoMo 6

Rob and I went out tonight to celebrate his birthday tomorrow. The plan was dinner in our favourite Indian, Jharna, followed by Ratatouille: Rat-a-too-ee at the cinema. However it didn't go according to plan and also gave me my "what did I learn today" for NaBloPoMo.

We arrived at Jharna and discovered that it's been totally renovated! It used to look like the photo you see here ->
That helped give a very authentic Indian dining experience, however now it has been given a very modern, "trendy", generic restaurant look thus loosing all the atmosphere it previously had. The waiting staff seem to have lost some of the pride they originally had in serving and the food didn't seem to be as tasty as it used to be. A really sad day for both of us loosing our favourite restaurant, but I suppose it'll be fun looking for a new favourite!

Happy pretend birthday for today and happy real birthday for tomorrow honey!!!! Love ya!

Change of plan

Poor Rob. He's supposed to be going to London tomorrow for a training course for work and they told him today that it's cancelled, so now we're hunting for a flight for him for Thursday and looking at tube maps and train timetables to work out how he'll get to London for heading away on holiday.

How frustrating, but means I'll not be on my own the next few days until I'm in London.

Meanwhile I'm still working on the packing and getting ready to go, and have a few loose ends to sort out for work before I leave. I have all Stewie's food ready to go with him when he goes to stay with some friends while we're away, but still feel there's so much to do before Thursday morning!

Building excitement!!!

I've spent some time this morning going over my Sunday School lesson in my head while also getting packed for our delayed honeymoon: it wasn't half confusing! I'm so excited about getting away, I was reading through all our documents for travelling yesterday and I could feel butterflies of excitement in my tummy as I read and now looking at where we're staying on the website I'm getting more excited! I'm even opening up google earth to have a wee look and see if I can find it there!!! I need to try and focus on what needs done before I go, like packing and making sure we have everything we need with us! Rob leaves on Tuesday morning to go to London for training for work, then I'll meet him in London on Thursday once he's done and we leave for Menorca the next morning! Two weeks of sunshine and reading Harry Potter (I know it's bad.... I'm still finishing book 6 but plan to have finished 6 & 7 by the time I get home again).




It looks gorgeous right? I can't wait!

Catch up

Oops.... I didn't get time to blog over the weekend. Was a crazy time.

Friday was spent in lots of preparation for work on Sunday, as well as some general admin and making out lots of information sheets.

Saturday Rob and I travelled down to Kilkenny and back to visit family, in particular his brother who is real sick at the minute. I'll not go into online, but if you're the praying type please pray for Jason.
Stewie was left up to Belfast for the day and sounded like he had fun with my sister. Initially when we were picking him up he seemed to forget who Rob and I were. Silly dog.
After all that I was doing nightreach in the town. I had a great time, met so many young people and plenty of them with opinions about a rape that was reported to have happened there on saturday week. After all that I was in bed for about 3.30am

Sunday was filled with lots of work. Youth Breakfast, Bible Class, Church, Xtreme Team (Sunday school for P4-7), quick meeting with boss and grabbing random people about all sorts of things.
Afternoon was spent having a little nap, walk with the dog and some very quick chinese before heading out for the youth rally in Clonduff. The worship leader, Jon Batholomew, was really good, he played a lot of his own songs and made the praise a very reflective time. Really enjoyed the speaker (whose name has escaped me), he kept the message of "You are loved" very simple, very clear but very relevant.

Monday, today, so far i've been relaxing after all that happened over the weekend. Rob has been having fun this morning though as today our new iMac arrived so he's been playing away with it and getting it all prepared for what we'll be using it for.
The rest of today for me should include walking the dog (hope the sun stays for that), getting the shopping in, cleaning the house a bit and starting to sort what's going on holiday with us. But for now I'll chill out a while longer.

Congrats Mum and Dad!!!

Today is my parents 27th wedding anniversary! Congratulations! Love you both loads!

(This is a pic of the two of them having fun at my own wedding earlier this year.)

Mustard

I met up with a friend today who had been away all summer on work placements. She has just got engaged last weekend and I couldn't be happier for her and her fiance. Don't want to mention names here because I know they're still trying to tell people the news themselves. But congrats to you both!

So anyways we met up today and got some subway to take to the park and eat there, then walk wee Stewie. We arrived at the park and found as we were looking for a bench that we had a stray labrador following us. He and Stewie played for a while and we noticed that there was no one else around and looking for this dog. I called the dog warden and it ended up that we had to walk the dog with us (fortunately Stewie's collar fitted the dog seeing as he didn't have one and we had 2 leads to walk both dogs on) until the warden came. This dog was great walking on the lead, didn't pull or anything, meanwhile Stewie who's used to being let loose in the forest was pulling and yanking on it and pulling my arm out of it's socket. We ended up nicknaming the dog Mustard because of the colour of his fur (and yeah I know what you're thinking, wouldn't Goldie or Honey be a better way to describe the colour, but we liked Mustard). Eventually the warden came and picked the dog up.

Hope Mustard finds his way home, if not that, I hope he ends up in a good home.

Fat weekend

Recently I've been trying to eat healthier and exercise a little more to try and lose a little (emphasis on little) weight. However, this past weekend has been filled with a LOT of eating.... grrrr.

Saturday night, Rob and I went to dinner at Rob's Dad's house with his stepmum and my parents. To start there was crisps, carrot and celery sticks and dips... those crisps were addictive. Then dinner was BBQed chicken breast, potato wedges, green leaf salad, potato salad, coleslaw...... so yum, but think I had too much of that. Then dessert: strawberries, marshmallows, chocolate dipping sauce, lemon roulade, chocolate cheesecake..... i thought i was gonna explode, but again dead yummy.

Then Sunday night was a meal with the church music group seeing as I ocassionally play or sing with them. We all met at Christine's house (she organises the group) where she had put on an amazing spread:
lasagne, quiche, green leaf salad, waldorf salad, orange salad (grated carrots and mandarin segments in orange jelly), green salad (chopped apple, celery etc in green jelly), sliced ham, pineapple, prawns (with thousand island dressing), crisps and dips, scotch eggs, pork pies, bean salad, peanuts, morrocan salad, potato salad and lots more which i'm struggling to think of right now. I had filled my plate and cleaned it then went back for some more..... not realising there was dessert to come too! Dessert: fruit salad, pavlova, bannoffee and pecan roulade. Then there was tea and coffee with little tray bakes and the like! Again I thought i was going to explode.

It was all very impressive, however now I'm feeling the guilt of all that eating after trying to eat sensibly and healthily.... I fear I'll be eating carrot sticks this week lol

16 weeks

I was out at the butchers with Rob this morning, where he noticed a sign for their Christmas club saying "16 weeks til Christmas"

16 weeks? Not too far away but far enough away to start thinking about what to be getting for people. So I'll need to make a wee list of who I'm getting presents for and start thinking of what to get them, because I find that is more than half the battle.

Audio books and podcasts

Recently I've been taking my iPod into the park with me when I'm walking Stewie on my own. It started with listening to a bit of music, then I moved on to catching up on some podcasts I subscribe to and today I moved on to listening to an audiobook. I had bought the Chronicles of Narnia audiobook on iTunes ages ago and listened to the first two books then stopped, so it was fun to start the third book today and live in a wee imaginary world while I walked. I highly recommend it!

For those who might be interested in the podcasts I'm subscribed to here's a list of a few of them:
> Best of Chris Moyles Advanced
> Best of YouTube
> Christ Fellowship Church
> Dylan's Couch
> Jamie Oliver's Podcast
> Life in Student Ministry
> Scott Mills Daily
> Simply Youth Ministry
> Who are these guys?
> Youth Specialties.

Autumn already?

We (Rob, Stewie and I) were walking in the park today and as we were walking I notices the leaves starting to drift down to the forest floor and make a carpet over the soil and twigs that were there before. It was beautiful but really I'm not ready for autumn yet..... we've hardly had a summer!!!!


Please please PLEASE God give us a bit more sunshine!

My wonderful hubby!

I really love my husband lots, but one of the reasons I love him lots today is that my laptop was connecting to our wireless but not connecting to the internet. Being my amazing geek he fixed it and I am now back online. I love my geeky hubby! He's just so smart, I'm continually in awe of him when he talks computers and so on. Love you hun!

Park life

Nearly everyday, we walk Stewie in Hillsborough Park. He has a great time there and goes nuts, he loves to play with other dogs, chase some of the birds and so on. But he also loves finding new toys and to date he has found:

> twigs
> leaves
> branches
> stones
> socks
> tennis balls
> tissues
> newspaper
> empty plastic bottles
> empty coke cans
> a plant pot
> some dead fish
> a dead frog

and much much more

It's rather entertaining.