Destination: Raleigh, NC - Final Countdown

This last week of home in San Diego is fading away in a hurry. In fact, by the time I'm done writing this post, it will be Friday, December 28th. Our first official send off day at Journey. The way time is ticking away is kind of making me nauseous. Riley had surgery on his ears today (read more about that here), so concerning for him took up all of our strength and attention today. By the time the day was over I felt like I was slapped in the face with a great big "HOLY COW, We have 1 week left!!" Steve actually leaves in 4 days. We have no more time to schedule goodbye dinners with friends, but thankfully my mom has agreed to open up her house this Sunday after church for anyone who wants to come over, eat and say goodbye! If you're interested in stopping by, email me at lauren@journeycom.org and I'll give you directions and details.

Here are some last minute things we need you to pray for:
1. Healing for Riley. That any infection would subside and that he wouldn't experience any discomfort on the plane.

2. Safe drive for Steve and Jerry. They've mapped out their route and have a pretty good idea of where they'll stay along the way. Just pray that God would protect them on the road.

3. Our living situation. We decided in a very last minute sort of way that it would be best to find an apartment to live in for a few months until we scoped our the area to see where exactly we would want to live. We have applications out, and are just waiting to hear back.

4. My stress level. Steve thrives in these sorts of situations. He LOVES trusting God and just knowing that it will work out somehow and someway. I, on the other hand, would rather see the plan laid out with step by step instructions on how it's all going to happen! In the next 2 or 3 days I'll probably have a nervous breakdown, get shingles and a cold sore. Oh GOD, I hope not!

5. Packing up and moving out. Pray that we remember everything we need, and that we leave behind everything we don't. Our moving pod gets delivered on Saturday. It has to be filled by Monday.

Thanks for your support in praying for these things.

Join us this Friday at 7:00PM and Sunday at 8:30AM and 10:30AM at Journey for our send off.And again for our exclusive "after party", email me at lauren@journeycom.org

You're Invited!

Save the following dates!!

Christmas Eve Services at Journey
December 24th at 2PM, 4PM and 6PM. You won't regret going. The entire thing will blow your mind!

Faiai Family Send Off
Friday, December 28th at 7PM and
Sunday, December 30th at 8:30AM and 10:30AM
Journey's pastors will pray along with the rest of the congregation to bid us farewell! Even if you don't come to church, come this weekend if you love me...or ELSE!!

Don't know where Journey is located?
NOT AN EXCUSE.

journey community church
8363 Center Drive
La Mesa, CA 91942
(619) 464-4544

MAPQUEST IT!!
See you soon!!

Thoughts of 3:17AM

1. Gotta nail down place to live in Raleigh (like...NOW)

2. Bills

3. Thank You notes

4. Get food for tomorrows last day at the park

5. Deal with lots of emotions involved with leaving that I've neglected thus far!

6. Start my new book

7. Deciding how much I want to input at tomorrow's creative meeting.

8. Figuring out babysitting for the next couple of days as our rehearsal schedule gets absolutely CHAOTIC!

9. Remembering to fast this week. I have so many reasons to!

10. Get Riley healthy before his pre-op appointment on Wednesday

11. I really hope Riley's ears are healed from surgery before we get on the airplane. He gets tubes in his ears on December 27th. We leave on January 7th.

12. Surgery Co-Pay...OUCH!

13. Pray for Church at the Triangle's Christmas Eve Service. Over 500 invites were passed out this week. HUGE!

14. Make "countdown to North Carolina" paper chain for Cameron. He needs to grasp the concept of time. He tells everyone that we're leaving for "Norf Caronina" "TOMORROW".

15. Make time for us and the kids to hang out with my parents and brother. Since we've moved in with Steve's sister, we're hardly over at my parents place anymore.

16. Figure out what's wrong with my firewire cable

17. Pray for peace in an increasingly busy time.

18. Go back to sleep, and hope to not wake up until 7am.

Ellen's 12 Days of Giveaways Part 3

My mom and aunt Nita went to Wednesday's taping which aired on Friday. Guests were Ty Pennington, David Gray and a special appearance by Richard Simmons.

They walked away with over $1700.00 in prizes including:

1. A digital Picture Frame


2. A David Gray CD


3. A Digital Camera


4. A Printer (compatible with digital camera)


5. HP Laptop Computer


They had a great time and were very pleased with their gifts!
Here's a picture of my mom, Charlie and her sister, my aunt Nita after the show!

My Friend, Fran!

I've known Fran for about 10 years now. In my Junior year of high School, When Steve and I first started "talking", I used to call Journey's church office at least 4 or 5 times a day to talk to Steve. He was on the facilities team, back then. Fran was the lady in the office who would answer the phone whenever I'd call. I knew my calling was getting obsessive at one point, so one day, I faced the bummer reality that I really needed to stop calling so much...and got the bright idea to change my name when I called. So...most of the time, when I used to anxiously await every word spoken with Steve, my name was usually Lauren, but sometimes I'd change it to Vanessa or Julie just so "Fran" didn't think I called too often. After I graduated high school, I heard that Journey was looking to hire a receptionist. Fran was the "office leader" at that time, and although I was intimidated, I filled out an application. She must have really liked talking to me on the phone so often, because she ended up hiring me to be Journey's receptionist in 2001. I truly believe that meeting Fran and working under her leadership has been monumental for me. I would consider her friendship truly divine, and one that I will ALWAYS cherish.

Fran is one of the most INCREDIBLY talented people I know. She is creative, organized, caring, down to earth, extremely passionate about God's calling on her life, and well...she teaches me hip hop! Before Steve and I got married, I'd often find reasons to spend the night at Fran's house and we'd spend lots of time talking about our "high school days". Fran was of course a "goodie goodie" her entire life...like me!

We had so much fun working together in the office, and when we needed to take care of business, Fran always knew how to put me in check!

Last night, we went out to dinner with Fran and her awesome husband J.R. We all love sushi so, Onami was the ticket!


MMmmmmmm!!! Now that's good stuff!


After dinner we went back to Fran's house to hang out with their girls, Malia and Kiani. These girls deserve an entire separate post of their own! I love them so much, and am continually AMAZED at the incredibly talented young women that they are. They're both amazing dancers. I took some time to teach them the "Crank That - Soulja Boy" dance last night. They're really coming along with the moves...Kiani just needs a little more attitude during the "Rooooo" part at the beginning. I'm sure she'll get it soon.





I love you, Fran. Can't wait for you guys to come visit us in N.C. I'll miss you sooo much.

Ellen's 12 Days of Giveaways Part 2

Steve, Rod, Stephanie and Ana all went to the Ellen show today. The taping they went to will air on Monday, December 10th.

They each came home today with the following:

Gift Cards
$50.00 Sears
$50.00 Home Depot
$100.00 Nordstrom
$100.00 Best Buy
$100.00 American Eagle
$250.00 Cost Plus World Market
$250.00 Nike

a world market gift package, an American Eagle scarf,

AND...

Black Jack Samsung Smart Phone

Valued at $399.00

I'd say they didn't do too bad. Christmas shopping should be a little easier this year! And I'm totally stoked because Steve is giving me the Blackjack phone!

Sweet. I love you, Ellen!

Ellen's 12 Days of Christmas

I subscribed to Ellen DeGeneres' blog about a year ago. I was REALLY glad I did when I got first word of when tickets would be available for Ellen's 12 days of Christmas tapings. I was bummed when I read the BIG BOLD WORDS at the bottom that said "ONLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER BEEN TO A TAPING MAY BE PART OF THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS SHOW". This obviously counted me OUT! So...I called about everyone I knew and told them to sign up for tickets. So out of all the people who I asked to request tickets, here's who got guaranteed seats:

My Aunt Dani
My Cousin Whitney
My Friend Stephanie
My Friend Ana
My Mom
My Aunt Nita
My Friend Rod
and my husband, Steve!

They're all going on different days of course, but I still think it's cool that so many of my friends got call backs. I'm bummed for the ones who didn't, like Fran. She was going to take her daughter, Malia for her birthday...Hopefully they get a call.

Anyway...my Aunt Dani and cousin Whitney went today. The show started and they were pretty disappointed for the first 15 minutes when all they had received was a sonicare electric toothbrush. But...Ellen didn't disappoint. Each of them left with the following items that Ellen gave away on the FIRST day of her 12 day giveaway show.

1. Sonicare Toothbrush - Value: $180.00


2. Nintendo Wii - Value: $360.00


3. iPod Touch - Value: $399.00


4. Harry Potter Gift Set - Value: $300.00


5. Entire Seinfeld Series set on DVD

These were all the big ticket items, but they also got a mini Toby Keith concert and his new CD as well. I am soooo happy that my aunt and cousin were able to go!! Here are pictures of their PACKED trunk on the ride home:





Steve and Rod are going to tomorrow's taping. I hope day 2 is as good as day one!!
I'll definitely update tomorrow night!!

If you want to see the show my aunt and cousin were on, it will be on tomorrow, Thursday, December 6th at 3pm on NBC.

Claustrophobic and Comfortable

When we decided to move in with Steve's sister, we knew our patience level would need to rise about 75% higher than it is. There were already 7 family members living in the house before we added our four. The first night, I'll have to admit, was stressful. We arrived at the home at about 10PM on Friday night...both of us were tired and soaking wet. Steve had to jet off to work that night, so he left me with my two boys and a trash bag full of clothes. I hardly got any sleep because anytime one of my boys woke up, I was afraid they'd wake up the other boy or everyone else in the house. We had a busy Saturday, and arrived back at his sisters house at around 9:00PM. Everyone was still awake, but we were tired, so we went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning to take Cameron to the bathroom, I opened my door to see 4 baskets of folded CLEAN clothes next to my door. They were all OURS!! Apparently Steve's sister spent the entire day doing our laundry. So, Sunday was better because I could finally change out of the clothes I was wearing for 2 days straight. On Monday we decided to stay home and spend time with the family and let the kids all play together. Cameron and Riley had a GREAT time playing with their cousins, and Steve and I had some productive time to schedule out the rest of our month and pay some bills. We ate some AWESOME porkchops and after the kids went to bed, Steve's nieces and nephews came over and I whipped out the xbox 360. I introduced my sister in law to scrabulous and we all hung out and had an AWESOME time together. When I woke up this morning, I realized that I need to make up for some lost time with Steve's family. They're all incredibly unconditional people and they're just excited that we're living with them for a few more weeks. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm really glad I'm living here for a few more weeks too!

Moving in the Rain.

Not as much fun as singing in the rain for sure! Oh well... as of last night, we're officially out of our apartment. We knew this week would be crazy. Steve's work schedule is absolutely CHAOTIC, so I knew I'd have to do A LOT of the packing and shipping. The RAIN was never something I planned on! Steve's family was busy watching our children, so we moved out by ourselves. I packed boxes and cleaned the house, and between shifts, Steve came home and shuffled boxes to storage. It rained early in the day, but we were able to use my parents truck for a few hours to take our big stuff to storage, so that worked out fine. Steve worked all day yesterday and had to lead worship at church last night. I stayed home and finished sorting out the rest of our belongings so that they were ready for Steve to pack when he got home. We were making great time when Steve got home at 8:00PM. He had to leave for work at 9:20pm, so we started hustling up and down the stairs trying to get the rest of the stuff ouy of our apartment...and then...the rain! Not just a few sprinkles. It POURED. We looked at each other and decided to pick up the pace. If you were one of our neighbors, you might have thought there was a time bomb about to go off in our apartment. I still can't figure out how we carried everything down as fast as we did. But I will forever keep in mind that my teeth are definitely useful for carrying lots of different things...like pillows and small cardboard boxes!

So...long story short...it was messy, I don't know where any of my clothes are, but...we're out, and I'm glad!