I've been wanting to post for a while now but haven't had the chance to do it yet. I am feeling better and recovering from my surgery. If you want to know what surgery I had just email me and I'll tell you. :)

This past weekend-week has been crazy (I feel like I say that all the time...ha-ha). On Friday night Eric and I met some friends and headed over to the young adult camp-out. We didn't end up spending the night but we stayed until midnight and had crazy fun playing night time corn-hole, roasting marshmallows, and just chit-chatting around the fire.

Saturday, Eric and I slept in and then got up to clean the house just a little before we headed off for the craziest Buckeye Party ever. We went over to The Meyers house and had such a good time. I can honestly say that I maybe watched about 1/2 hour of the entire game. I was too busy talking to Mindy and laughing at everyone else that got really excited when the Buckeyes scored. :) Around 5pm on Saturday, Adam, Abbey, Jon and Annie stopped by to pick up their car, go to the restroom and be on their way home from vacation. I didn't get to visit with them for long due to prior commitments, but I did have a good 1/2 hour with them.

After they left Mindy and I headed back over to The Meyer's house and finished watching the game with them. Around 8pm, Kara Decrastos called and said she was finished with the wedding and was heading over to my house. So I got to the house at about 9sh and Kara and I stayed up till about 1am and then headed to bed.

Sunday, we all got up for church and accidentally missed Sunday School (oops). We had a great service with Pastor Marty. He talked about being the salt to the unsaved world. Sunday afternoon we went out to eat with a few people after church and then Kara and I headed to the Thrift Store. Unfortunately, we didn't have as successful of a trip as Mindy and I did a few weeks earlier. I only managed to find one thing and Kara nothing.. although she almost did grab the yellow sweater on her way out. :)

Sunday night came too fast. This was the night that we were to speak in front of our home church. I wasn't nervous until I realized how many people I knew at church. Little side note: Eric and I realized that we do much better speaking in front of people we don't know as well, rather then our good friends. Speaking of friends, our friends made a HUGE line right in the front row Sunday night. They were all smiles and giggles, however they managed to be pretty good... or so I thought. I will tell you that I did see out of the corner of my eye two signs. One read, "Go Chicky (Eric's sign.. don't ask..ha ha) and the other "You go girl". Those were held up by the lovely Miss LuAnne and Miss Lisa. HA HA! Now I said that my "front row friends" were good, however at the end of the service we sat down and my friend Mindy handed me a mysterious note. I flipped it over and all I could see were tally marks and the word UM across the top. I discovered that Mindy had counted individually how many times Eric had said um and how many times I had said um. Eric won. HA HA! :) It was really funny! Thanks Mindy, I'm so adding that to my scrapbook.

Well, I think that is all for now. Oh yeah, I would add some pictures but I forgot to take any this entire weekend. I'm so mad at myself. :(

Off.

I know what you're thinking... Shelly is posting at 6am did Eric pray that God would wake her up again? The answer is no. I am going in to the doctor for some medical reasons. I won't be around to blog for a few days. Please pray for me as I recover. Everyone have a great Wednesday... (it seems like I always post on Wednesday's.. hm.. weird).

Love,

Shelly

ps. don't worry.. I'm okay! :)

7:30am.

Do you ever have those days where you are just really excited to wake up. I usually don't, however, today I did. Every morning around 7:30am, out of my half open eyes I see Eric walk around the bed and come to my side. He usually says something like, "Bye..love you" or if he's late, "Bye... gotta go, I'm late, love you" then I see this dark shadow slowly leave the room. Still not sure if this is Eric leaving or me falling back asleep. Well today, the dark shadow never came, Eric left, but the shadow never came. Instead, I tried to close my eyes and go back to sleep but all I could think about was hair dye, cleaning out dressers, looking for winter coats, mailing my special package, and hearing more about missions. Now, I know that I've lost a few readers because you're probably thinking... who gets excited about hair dye and cleaning out dressers... haha!

Just a few minutes ago I got off the phone with Eric. You're never going to believe what he just told me. First let me give you a little background information. One thing that I have always loved about Eric is his dedication to God. It never fails that EVERY morning he always has quiet time with God... I'm sure there are some mornings where he misses... but maybe not. :) I also know that Eric prays for me everyday, he may not always tell me, but I just know. Well just a few minutes ago when I called him we talked a few minutes, I told him what I was going to do for the day and I hung up. However, right as I was hanging up I could barely hear a muffled... "Shelly"... then it was too late because I had shut the phone. OOPS! So I dialed his number again and said I was sorry for hanging up and he said.... I just wanted to let you know that I prayed for you today. I thought to myself that's weird that he didn't just send that in an email with a little smiley face. So I said, "oh yeah, what about?" I should have known.. He replied, "Well I asked God to wake you up when He wanted you up and to make you excited about the day. " I paused... and replied, "Eric, please don't ever pray that again". HAHA!

Isn't that funny how God answers our prayers. That is a true story. It was so funny. After Eric told me about what he had prayed for and I told him not to pray that again I told him I was just writing a blog and the first sentence just happened to say.... do you ever have those days where you wake up really excited. :) You know I think God has more of a sense of humor then we think.

Well, I need to get off here so I can spend some time with the BIG MAN who decided to wake me up excited! :) Have a great day... and remember... be excited about your day, even if it means you will be cleaning out dressers. :)

Busy.

Judging by the title I'm sure you may assume that I am busy, however what you don't know is that I've been run-around-like-a-crazy-person-busy. Thank goodness busyness doesn't always have to be a negative thing. My busyness has been good!

Well we made it through speaking at Marysville Church of the Nazarene. Surprisingly, I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would have been. I will admit though that when we first got up to speak I thought to myself... "Run... don't look at anyone just run". Thankfully, common sense has been instilled in me, so I decided to stay. It was really scary and exciting to be apart of that service. It was weird to here them say we have some missionaries here from our area and then say our names. Weird. This coming Sunday we are speaking at our home church. Hopefully it will be as good of an experience as Marysville was. Our friends from church said they were going to hold up signs for us and ask all kinds of silly questions. I will die if they do. HAHA

Aw, I just washed Lucas and he is just sitting here looking at me like "yeah i know I look good". hehe We went for a walk today and he took a little dip in the pond! He loves swimming!

There was so much fun stuff that went on last week and this week that I want to share it with you all. First on Thursday I got to go and work for a little while at Eric's parents house. I started working on laying the carpet in the bathroom downstairs and I started painting the cabinet and the mirror. It's fun! On Friday night we had some out of town visitors come and stay with us. Adam, Abbey, Jon and Annie all went on vacation together so they wanted to know if they could spend the night on Friday and then head off for vacay the next day. So of course we said yes. Plus, on top of that Laura Lynn came over from Cinncy. We seriously had such a good time with everyone. We ended up staying up till about 4am (at least Abbey and I did). That's what happens when you put 4 girls in one room... they talk. :) It was so nice to hang out with all of them.

Saturday Eric and I scheduled a work day at Eric's parents house. We got there at about 1:30 and stayed till around 8:30pm. It was such a long day.. but a good one. We worked and worked and worked some more. I did a power-washer while Eric did all kinds of hard stuff. Needless to say we ended up going to bed at 9:30 that night. It was nice. I don't think I've gone to bed that early since middle school when that was my bedtime. HA! :) Sunday was just as much of a crazy fun day. My friend Mindy (Spencer) Jones came to church with us Sunday morning and we had a good time. After church we decided to make a trip to Dublin to run some errands and then stop by the thrift stores. I actually found a few shirts there that I am really excited about. They were like $2 each! SWEET! I love thrift shopping. Luckily, we ended up making it to church right in time. After church we went out to eat with a bunch of friends from church and had a really funny time at DQ! LuAnn about got us into a fight with some Browns fans. HAHA (She was wearing a Steelers jersey and these people were seriously glaring at us out the window!)

Monday, Eric and I continued the daunting task of packing and cleaning our our garage.. we are no where close to being done. :( We had a good time just being together and looking through yearbooks and old things we hadn't seen in a while. Tuesday we had a Deputation Service at the church for the Sidle family. They are missionaries in Zambia. They did an awesome job. After church Nick and Mindy came over and we had a really good time laughing and telling stories. I won't say what the subject of our stories was about. HAHA! Some things must be kept in the Slonecker house! HAHA That brings us up to today. As I mentioned above I just got back from walking Lucas and now I'm just getting ready for tonight. Eric and I were invited to a cookout with our Bible study class. We are really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, with us keeping so busy we haven't been able to meet as many people at our church as we would like to. Everyone that we have met at church has been so friendly and been such an encouragement to us. :)

Well I should get off here and finish getting ready. Have a super Wednesday. Enjoy some fun pictures from our crazy weekend and week. :)

I love Labor Day!

With everything going on lately, Eric and I decided to take a little weekend getaway! Eric's parents just bought an AMAZING house and happened to be going out of town this weekend, so we got to pretend like we were country livers for a little while. :) It was fun! We did lots of fishing, riding on the Gator, playing basketball, shooting guns, swimming in the pond (well, more like jumping in the pond than screaming because I was terrified a big fish would eat me). Not only did we get to spend a little time away from everything but Tim, Trina and Claire came to visit. We had fun showing them around the house and hanging out at Bob Evans. On Monday we came back to Reynoldsburg. It's amazing how small your apartment looks when you spend a few days at someone else's house. :)

Monday we drove all around and managed to go to Chipoltle, 2 Half Price Book Stores, Cold Stone Creamery, and Barnes and Noble. We also watched The Burbs and ate Donatoes pizza. It was a fun weekend of books and eating.... just happens to be some of my favorite things...not to mention it was with some of my favorite people. I had such a good time seeing little Claire. She has gotten bigger and sure is so cute! :)


I can't believe that today is already Tuesday! Tomorrow evening Eric and I have to speak at Marysville Church about our missions assignment. I'm a little nervous, but trying not to be. Actually, I was trying to think of what I was going to say and I was reminded of when all this mission stuff started to happen. How confusing! So rewarding now, but very confusing at the time. I remember when I wrote this post, What do you desire and I was really struggling with selfishness, which was keeping me from accepting my call to missions. I still struggle with selfishness, honestly I probably always will. I guess that's what comes with being human. I do know that God has changed my heart a lot. This weekend my brother was asking me about our call and I started to remember all the struggles that I had and all the selfish desires that were within me. Wow!

Please pray for us if you remember. We actually are speaking at three different churches within the next three weeks. We want to make sure that God does the speaking and we do the listening. I don't want people to hear my words. I want people to hear Jesus and to see Jesus in us.

I'll try to update more regularly. It's just been hard with so much stuff going on lately. We've been trying to get as much time with our friends and family as we possibly can. I can't believe that we will be leaving for a year in less than 3 months! AHH!! :) I'm ready.. well as ready as I can be.