10 on Tuesday

1. Yes, I realize it is Monday and not Tuesday-so, I am early!
2. Check out my mom's new blog, thrashernuggets.blogspot.com!
3. Mavrick (Joseph's dog) and my in-laws come for a visit tomorrow.
4. Joseph and I had a great Christmas...even though we were snowed in and my family was unable to come because of the weather we still had fun!
5. I did not mess up Christmas dinner this year and Joseph is my only witness to this fact.
6. I may be going through facebook withdrawls! Ha! We disconnected our data packages and got rid of our blackberries to save money, so no more facebooking on the phone.
7. We got 18.5 inches of snow over a period of 3 days!
8. A week from today Joseph and I will be celebrating our 2nd anniversary! Wow!
9. Joseph and I are wondering, besides snow angels, snowball fights and snowman-what can you play in the snow? What are kids playing in the snow these days?!
10. Soon...I hope..to post Christmas pics and blog about Christmas! Until then, have a Happy New Year!

Christmas Letter

Dear Family and Friends,
Joseph and I thought it would be fun for me to try my hand at a Christmas letter this year! Then we decided it would be fun to also send it to all our churches..so, here it goes!
This year marked an end and a beginning for us. We rang in our 1st new year as a married couple and brought our 1st year of marriage to an end when we celebrated our 1st anniversary! Now it is crazy to think that in just a few short weeks we will be celebrating our 2nd year of marriage (01-04)!
During the course of this year we have traveled 18 states, put about 25,000 miles on our van and were away from home an average of nine months! The Lord has been good to us in our travels, He has kept us sage and enabled us to be in many churches to share our burden for Norway! Through our travels we have also made many new friends!
We were able to spend most of our summer at home and enjoyed learning the art of hospitality as we had people from church over for homemade pizza and games once a week. While home for the summer we also enjoyed having Joseph's parents come from Michigan to spend a week with us and my parents came for a short visit as well!
This year Joseph was for the first time able to be the main speaker at a Valentine banquet, celebrated his 30th birthday and was given the opportunity to go hunting for antelope! I have received many blessings myself this year, I was given a Coach bag-which is a very expensive purse that only those with a love for purses dream of! I unfortunately, received the pleasure of singing my first church solo and I am now committed to that never happening again! And, I was able to spend a month with a good friend from college between meetings this past September!
Together Joseph and I have grown in our friendship and love. We have realized this year that no matter what God takes us through, it is always for our good and for God's glory. Sometimes we want things to happen in our time and we forget God sees the big picture and that there is always reason for how He is moving us and guiding us, we just have to find the good and find reason to glorify God! And I can't help but to think of the 'good' we find at Christmas time in the Reason for the Season! It was for our good that God sent His only Son to this earth as a baby to be raised to go in our place on the cross for our sins. I pray that this Christmas, we will remember it is for God's glory and not for how many gifts we give or receive...we should glorify God that we have accepted His Son as our Saviour we have Heaven to gain!
For Christmas we look forward to having both sides of the family coming for visits! Last year I was able to host my first Christmas dinner and experienced it with a dinner disaster of having chicken that was not fully cooked-I am hoping to not repeat this disaster! We will celebrate New Years at home, as well as our anniversary. We will actually be celebrating our anniversary a few weeks late, we are hoping that it will work for us to attend a Detroit Red Wings game in Minnesota!
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Because of the Reason for the Season,
Joseph and Kendra Barnhardt
12-07-09

1 Week!

Yes, a week from today will be Christmas day! So, much to happen between now and then. I have recently sent out a Christmas letter and plan on posting it on here next week along with the self portrait of Joseph and I!
Currently, Joseph and I are at my parents. Joseph laid some carpet for my dad at their church in two sunday school rooms and I helped a little!! Joseph will also be preaching for my dad Sunday night. While here, my mom and I plan on doing some baking-I have been in the mood to bake and just haven't done it. I guess I don't see the point in baking when I have a husband who doesn't particularly like sweets and I definitely don't need to eat it all by myself! I think we are going to make some Andes mint cookies, fudge, white chocolate fudge, orange creamsicle fudge and sugar cookies! Mmm!!
This past week, I finally made home made pizza for the first time since we have been home! I was disappointed with the crust; but I still got rave reviews from Joseph and our good friends Eric and Deanna! We had a great time with them eating pizza and enjoying a good Christmas movie, "The Christmas Shoes". I really am thankful for the friends that God gives to us!
All my Christmas shopping is done! All that is left is buying the finishing touches for Christmas dinner! On Christmas Eve, Joseph and I will make homemade pizza for dinner, watch a Christmas movie and open our stockings! Christmas day, we will get up and enjoy a cold cappuccinno, read the Christmas story, exchange gifts and have my family over for Christmas dinner and more gifts! I am excited for our 2nd Christmas together, as a married couple...still have to iron out our own Christmas traditions!
I haven't been able to do any scrapbooking since I have been home and I am anxiously looking forward to having a good scrapbook day! My friend Deanna and I are bothing dreaming of the Cricut Expression and conspiring about all that we could do with it and how it would motivate us to do some serious scrapbooking! I don't think we have her husband convinced yet though and Joseph doesn't really care! So, yes I better start saving my money! But, nonetheless, I really do need to get more serious-I'm still working on my honeymoon scrapbook and I have so many other scrapbooks that need to be started! My mom keeps trying to convince me to pick up another hobby, like crochet...but since scrapbooking is an expensive hobby and one that I love to do so much I would rather devote my money and time to that! And, besides Joseph has informed me that crochet is an old lady hobby and yes my mom knows that he says this! Over the years, I have picked up other hobbies like candle making, cross stitch, latch hook...but those have all fallen to the wayside and scrapbooking has stood strong!
Well, it looks like its time to play Scrabble with my parents! We should finish the game within three hours...we are kind of diehard Scrabble players-we play to win...well until Tuesday!

Home Sweet Home

Home, sweet home! We have been home for one week now and I am loving it! We have been very busy: unpacking, setting up the Christmas tree, grocery shopping, catching up with friends, dishes, laundry….where and when does the madness end?
Yes, that was a brief summary and now for the full summary! Ha! We arrived home last Thursday and just unpacked everything! It was great to sleep in my own bed that night and rest up for the daunting task of grocery shopping the following morning. Grocery shopping is hard to do, when you have barren cupboards and it took me about two hours to get it all done! So, after the task we had to treat ourselves to Panera Bread and enjoy a frozen caramel for myself and a frozen mocha for Joseph!
Friday night I was able to attend the ladies Christmas party at my home church. It was fun, in spite of hitting the bike rack as I headed to the party. I cracked the front bumper of the van and was very scared to tell Joseph…I strongly considered having the ladies pray for me! Thankfully, I imagined his reaction to be worse than it was! He wasn’t mad at all-in fact it made us even since he broke my reindeer! Though, he does tease me that I owe him a new van since he replaced my reindeer.
Saturday, we were able to set up the Christmas tree! I should post some pictures and plan to do so later! We also had my sister over that night for pizza and movies-it was a great way to end our day.
I am suddenly realizing that you probably do not want a play by play of each of my day since I have been home! Oh well! Needless to say, and once again we have already enjoyed our time home-especially, our time with friends! Tuesday, we were able to spend our evening with some good friends and had a great time over dinner with them. We even had fun when it was time to go and we all got our vehicles snuck in the snow drifts! I tried to take pictures of the guys “rescuing” our vehicles; but the snow was coming down so fast that it was hard to get a clear picture! Apparently, snow was our welcome home gift because we have been told that it hadn’t snowed yet this season until we arrived home! And, believe me I did not bring the snow home with me…you can blame Joseph for that one!
Since being home for Christmas, we have also finished our Christmas shopping and I now just have to finish doing the wrapping! I’m ready for Christmas! “Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas…”

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow is only a day away! Yay! Obviously, tomorrow is a big day-I'm going home! So, since I know that we will be busy traveling and getting settled back in at home, I wanted to be sure and update you all!
We are currently in Marshalltown, Iowa for our last meeting of this trip! We arrived here at 3:30 and immediately fell in love with the Pastor and the church, before we had even met them! Why? Because we are staying in a hotel suite...now, what do I mean by suite?! A hot tub suite! Wow! Well, we were just so excited about this and have been taking complete advantage of the hot tub! When we arrived to our meeting, we thanked the Pastor over and over again and again. He was looking at us like we were out of our minds! He didn't get us the suite-the hotel upgraded us, just because! I almost feel like writing a thank you note to the hotel! Needless to say, this was a great way to end our trip before going home! God is so good in showing us His love!
Before we came to Marshalltown we said goodbye to my parents until Christmas-when hopefully they will be coming to our place! So, we spent most of yesterday and some of today in Fort Dodge, Iowa with Trevor! Now, I need to make sure that I don't call him a kid in this post, I called him that in an earlier post and apparently that is very offensive since he will be 18 in March! We had a great time with him! During our visit with him, my eyes became very opened to some things. Actually, over the course of the last few weeks, I am just becoming more aware of how people watch certain people. Thankfully, God has allowed me to be the right example in most cases-not to brag. But, a few weeks ago someone paid me the compliment of being a good wife and always backing my husband. (They shared that missionary wives in the past that had come to their church, sometimes blatantly disagreed with their husbands in public or would start shaking their heads during the sermon showing their irritation concerning things their husband may have said). I realize it is not always necessary to disagree with your husband and sometimes in my flesh I tend to disagree with him just because. Of course I try not to do that in public and I realized the good testimony it portrays when you show an obvious support for your husband. We need to be unified and when people look at us as a couple they should see unity. And then during our visit with Trevor he was talking about marriage and how he has realized that when the time comes he needs to be wise and seek counsel concerning a wife, because marriage is forever. Well, he told Joseph that he hopes to find a wife like me someday. That was very flattering; but at the same time humbling. I need to be a good wife not only in public; but in private as well. It makes me even more desire to become the right kind of wife and person that I need to be in the Lord. Praise the Lord for humbling moments and the reminders He gives us along the way!
Well, when we get home I am sure we will be quite busy unpacking, getting settled in once again and there is that daunting task of grocery shopping! Ugh! Our cupboards are bare and I don't even know where to begin with a grocery list, needless to say we will be eating out tomorrow and hopefully Friday I will have some time to grocery shop so I can 'relearn' the art of cooking and make delicious meals for my husband! So, until we meet again...have fun Christmas shopping!