The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.

We got a little bit more snow in our neck of the woods this past week.  However, we've learned since we moved here that everyone has this idea that Buffalo is constantly covered in several feet of snow...and that is true in some areas...but we live in the actual city of Buffalo which doesn't get nearly as much snow.  The "Lake Effect" which is what causes all the snow actually hits the counties south of us, and sometimes even the southern part of our county, but we usually don't see all that craziness. I have enjoyed what little snow we have gotten, though, and I think if we have to deal with the freezing weather, we might as well get to enjoy some snow with it!

On Saturday we braved the freezing temperature and went for a walk at Delaware Park near our house with some friends.  It was a gorgeous day, but my legs were numb halfway through the walk.  Here are some shots of us at the park.  There was this area of ground that had a thick layer of ice on it, and it looked really cool because you could see the colorful leaves under the ice.





We had another Restoration Church gathering on Sunday night, and Wes got some pics of some of the cool folks there.  You'll notice in the last few that Dan's (the pastor) son Nicky managed to get in all the shots and it's hilarious.  

Last night we had our first meeting of what will become our small group.  Only a few people could make it, but we had a great time doing some singing, praying, eating, and of course playing some games.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving this week enjoying family and friends, and thanking God for all His amazing blessings!

Firsts

Well, a few hours after my last blog post where I said we had not seen any snow yet, it started snowing!  We really didn't get much, and it was all melted the next day, but we got some shots of our first snow.  Here is our porch and the front of the house:

This past Friday Wes did his first gig here in New York.  He was searching myspace for artists in the Buffalo area to connect with, and he came across a guy named Tim Andrews who was kind enough to split a 2 1/2 hour set he had at a Starbucks with Wes.  They were both great!

At the end of the night, Dan Trippie, the pastor of Restoration Church who had come out to see Wes, requested that Tim do a John Denver song.  And then he got up there and sang it.  It was hysterical.  If you'd like to see video footage of this, go to Wes's facebook page.  It will be worth your while. :)

Several people came out to see Wes, which was really cool.  Here is his youngest groupie, Amelia.  She is the daughter of our Executive Pastor, Alex, and his wife Jennifer.

Dan, Wes, and Patrick:

Jennifer (Alex's wife) and Gina (Dan's wife):

These are our sweet new friends, Adrienne and Patrick:

Last night we had our 6th Restoration Church gathering, but it was the first at our new location.  Up until this point, we have been meeting in people's homes.  After many other meeting spaces fell through, we finally found a wonderful space to use until something more permanent happens.  We will now be meeting at Park School, a private school in Buffalo.  Right now we are using their dining hall, and it's the nicest dining hall in a school I've ever seen!  It worked out wonderfully last night, and we had a fantastic group of people show up.  Here are some shots of setting up the room and then of the gathering:

Here's Wes doing his thing:

All in all, it's been a great week and we're thankful for what God is doing here.  I'm still looking for a job - to no avail yet, but God always provides for us so I'm not too worried yet.  Honestly I am loving all my free time right now!  We miss everyone, and hope you're all doing well.  Love to you all!

We went to Canada, AY!

Wes has Fridays off, so this past Friday we decided to head across the border to Canada to see Niagara Falls. We did get to see the falls on our first visit to Buffalo, but several people told us that the view from the Canadian side is much better so we wanted to see it. When we decided to go and got directions, we realized that our house is less than 5 minutes from the Peace Bridge that you cross to go into Canada. Pretty cool. Here we were crossing the border for the first time!

Everyone was not lying -- the view of Niagara Falls from Canada is amazing. It literally took my breath away when I first saw it. 

 





At one end of the falls, when you are standing at the railing you are SO CLOSE to it you can almost reach down and touch the water.  It almost feels like it's the end of the earth dropping off there.  I don't know if this picture does it justice to how close you are, but this is not zoomed in at all, it's just where I was standing.

The mist coming off the falls is unbelievable. You definitely feel it from where we were. It's just gorgeous, and we had a great day.  I'm so thankful that we've been able to see it in person! Come on up to visit us and you can see it too!!

So, we're doing well here in western New York.  No snow yet, but that may change this week! We shall see!

Um, we freakin' live in New York.

This is a sentence we've said to each other a couple of times over the last few weeks.  It's kinda surreal still.  We are loving it so far, and we've met some really cool people already.  

We're still working on getting every room "finished" in our place.  Here's a little story about one of our first home improvement projects... We needed an entertainment center.  We had to sell the one we had in Nashville because it was too large, so I searched craigslist for days and finally found one that was cheap, and we thought we could fix it up a bit.  Here is a "before" picture:

Wes is holding up the glass doors because he had already taken them off, and he'd also already taken off the wood hardware, so you don't see that here.  Anyway, we went to Lowe's, bought paint, new hardware, and supplies.  Came home and sanded and painted a first coat on it.  The next day we painted the second coat, and after it had dried and the new hardware was put on, it was time to get the TV and all the goodies in there.  We were very excited.  Now, let me mention that I had specifically asked the seller if a 32" TV would fit in there, and he assured me it definitely would... You can probably see where this is going.  We did not think to try it out before we did all the work making it pretty.  The darn TV would not fit in the space for the TV. Well, after trying a couple of other things, we decided to do this:

My handy husband put the shelf right in the middle of the original TV space, and we just made it into a TV stand instead.  We're pretty pleased with it, and it was cheap so there you go.

So Boston is loving that our couch is now in front of the bay window and he's found his new most favorite warm spot in the sun:


Oh, and he's also warm because we bought him a doggie coat.  Yes, we are those people.  But you cannot deny how cute this is!

Here are some shots I took today on our walk.  I'm obsessed with how beautiful the trees are and it was a gorgeous day today.  This was taken one street over from the one we live on:

And this is my favorite tree which is also on the street one over from ours:

And here are my two favorite boys under my favorite tree:

We had our 4th meeting of Restoration Church tonight, and that went great.  We've got a great group of people so far who are committed and excited about the vision of Restoration Church. If anyone is interested in learning more about the church and why we are here in Buffalo, you can go to www.restorationbuffalo.com.