Recommendations...

I have some recommendations to make for movies and books. I have been on a kick lately on bittersweet romances. I didn't really plan it that way, it has just happened. I recently finished reading the book Dear John, by Nicholas Sparks. It is probably my favorite of his books so far. I highly recommend it.



I just recently watched the move Miss Potter. It has Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor in it. It is a movie about the life of Beatrix Potter, the famous childrens author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and many others. It was a very good movie. I learned alot about her. I highly recommend it.




Next, I somehow have gone on living my life without ever reading or seeing the movie Pride and Prejudice. I know go ahead and gasp with unbelief! Well I can't believe what I have been missing all these years! I highly recommend this movie as well. I know there is a 5 hour version out that, but I'm not sure if I could sit through that.



Finally, the next one is not a romance story at all, but it was a very good movie. I learned about history in this movie, it was slow in some parts but it was very fascinating learning about Jesse James. It is good I know of this history since he was shot right here in St. Joseph, MO and because Ricky is related to him. So I highly recommend this movie too!

28 years...

The month of October for the Gipson household is a busy one filled with birthdays and anniversaries. Lots of family members birthdays, friends birthdays and friends and parents anniversaries.

I was swamped with birthday cards, gifts, phone calls, and emails this year for my birthday! I am so blessed with great friends and family! Thank you so much!

This year my birthday was on a Friday so I actually got to celebrate with friends on my actual birthday. It feels like when you have to wait till the weekend to celebrate when you birthday falls during the week, is just not the same as actually celebrating on the day of!

Ricky and I and some great friends we have made here celebrated by going into KC to Buca Di Beppo for my birthday. It's a wonderful Italian family style restaurant! Their salad is to die for! We had a blast, some of our friends had never been, so it was fun to introduce them to the place.

After eating, we walked around and went shopping. We got a little crazy in one store looking at stocking stuffers. Some pretty odds gifts. Such as some really weird motorcycle goggles that of course, we all had to try on. We had tears we were laughing so hard. After making a scene in the store (which no one offered to help us that worked there, wonder why?!!?) we headed down to the Cheesecake Factory for dessert. Can never go wrong with cheesecake. All in all it was a great night spent with friends and laughing the night away!

Other news....

Ricky and I received our blue belts. So we are training for our high blue belts now.

Soon, Ricky and I will be going on a little weekend vacation to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for a Taekwondo tournament. I will just be watching but Ricky wants to participate. It's only about 2 hours away from us but we are making it a small little get away for us.

The food that I received from the Angel Food Ministry has been wonderful! We have only been dissapointed in the bratwurst but everything has been great. We had some of the steaks last night and they were so delicious! So if you have access to an Angel Food Ministry I highly recommend it.

Oh speaking of good deals. I can't remember how I found this website and I haven't purchased anything yet, but it is makeup and most of it is only $1. It's called E.L.F Makeup. Stands for eyes, lips, face. So check it out.

The weather here is really cool now. The leaves are changing pretty colors and I haven't had the air conditioner on for a good 3 weeks now, no heat on either. So our bill is gonna be a good one!

I guess that's all for now. Enjoy your week!

Love ya,
Ashley

The latest.....

Here is the latest in the Gipson household.

We participated in a "Catan-a-thon" last weekend. We have been addicted to the Settlers of Catan board game and have spread this madness around people at our church. We got enough people playing and buying the game we were able to have a "Catan-a-thon" which is a little complicated but it was so much fun! We had 3 different boards, 15 people, so we have 5 teams of 3. We would rotate boards every 20 min. some rotated clockwise, while others rotated counterclockwise, that way we played with different people every time we changed boards. We even had a friend of our make iron on's for everyone to put on a t-shirt and wear it that night. It was cool to see everyone in the same shirt. We had so much fun, Ricky has already design the next t-shirt for our 2nd annual Catan-a-thon. Yes, we know that we are addicted to this game. It has just been fun making friends that can be just as "dorky" as we are!


Here is a picture of all those that participated in the Caton-a-thon.




I (Ashley) have been participating in the Wednesday nights Awanas program at church. I work with the cubbies which is preschool age. Kids that are 3 and 4 years old. I know a lot of the kids so that helps. I get to play secretary at the beginning to check them in for the night and then I listen to their verses that they memorize each week. There are 4 different rooms they go into that night, rotating. So when they come to my class all they do is color and say their verse. If they can say it, I sign off on it and give them a sticker. The other rooms they go to are craft, games and story time. We get about 7 kids every time we rotate. So normally, we have around 30 kids each week. Now it has been a ton of fun, because kids say the funniest things. The first night a little boy just randomly told me that he took a bath! Then one boy said, "My mom isn't going to have anymore babies!" And a girl piped in saying, "Yea, my mom can't either she has something in her tummy, so she can't." One little boy wasn't acting right and he just told me that he was pouting. He just kept repeating, "I'm pouting, I'm pouting" I have been having a ton of fun with those kids....especially that age!


Tonight we had our Taekwondo testing tonight. We are currently high green belts and we tested for our blue belt tonight. They normally test by what color you are currently. And sometimes they go from lowest to highest. Tonight they mixed it up a bit and started with green belts first so Ricky and I got to go first. I liked it because I got it out of the way and could just relax, sit back and watch everyone else test. It wasn't just Ricky and I testing for blue belt, there were about 7 other people with us testing at the same time. It helps to have several people up there with you.


This weekend we are "Serving St. Joe." Our church is having a garage sale on Sat. for the needy. Then on Sunday we are just having one service and after the service everyone is eating lunch at the church. Then we are separating into teams and going to houses and fixing the houses up. Our team has about 20 people on it and we are going to be painting the outside of a house. So busy weekend for us.

Alright, I think that is about it for now. I'm excited about gas prices around here. Today I only paid 2.65 a gallon for gas! I just hope it keeps going down, down, down!

Well, hope everyone has a great weekend!

~Ashley

Angel Food Ministry

If you know me, then you know that I love to save money!! Our church participates in the monthly Angel Food Ministry and I kept hearing about it and how great it was. The fact that there are no qualifications and all you pay is $30 and you get a lot of food. Several people at my church told me that it was worth it. So I decided to try it, especially with gas prices going up and now even in the grocery store just about everything has at least gone up about .20 cents!! Which adds up pretty quickly! I have been so excited about getting this food because it was only $30. I have been counting down the days until today, to when I could go pick it up :)

I am basically writing this post for all those that have been interested in doing it as well. I know my mom was curious and Annie (well, mainly Josh) :) were interested too! So I went to pick it up today and I took a picture for all of you to see. The "menu" changes every month so you don't get the same food every month.

This month's "menu" (which is what I got) included: frozen green beans, frozen vegetable stir fry, dry pinto beans, pork and beans, mac and cheese, chicken fried rice, cookies, eggs, milk, frozen pizza, frozen pork loin fillet, 4 frozen steaks, frozen chicken, frozen chicken nuggets, frozen ground beef, frozen cheese bratwursts, and frozen french fries. Picture below.



Now hopefully all this food will be good! I will get to expand my cooking skills as well. Seeing as I have never fixed a pork loin fillet and I'm not sure if I know how. I have never cooked with any kind of dry beans so that will be a new one as well. They gave me next month's menu when I went and it looks like some good stuff too!

I don't know a lot about the Angel Food Ministry but I think proceeds go to some of our local apartments here in town. (Please correct me if I'm wrong Micah or Tracy if you are reading this)
So you get a lot of food for a great price and then it also helps others out.

Well have a great weekend everyone! We are going on a group date night (no kids) with some friends and I can't wait, it's gonna be fun!