Funny Video

This video is from my old camp days. The guy, Ross King, was a worship leader. He wrote this song for his wife, before they were married. The song is called, "If I Didn't Love You Anymore."

Also, I just learned that somnambulate is actually a word. Hmm...wierd.

New Games

So there are a couple of new games the wife and I have been getting into lately. The first, and probably the best, is called Settlers of Catan. It is a land-grab sort of game involving building and trading. So far, everyone we've played with has loved it, and most of them beat us at it, but that's ok. If you've played it before, we would love to have you over for a game, and if you haven't played before, you should definitely check it out, or come on by and we'll show you how to play.

The second game (and this is one of my new favs, but probably the game that Sarah hates more than any other) is called Fluxx. It is called Fluxx because the game fluctuates constantly!! There is no set rule, and in fact, the rules even chage in the middle of turns. The object of the game is to somehow get your cards to correlate to the everchanging rules and goals. It's harder to explain, but again, you should check it out!

And last, but certainly not least, "Pass the Pigs." Now this is a game we both love. It is like a dice game, but instead of throwing dice, you are actually throwing little toy pigs. Wierd, I know, but very competitive and fun!

We love games and thought it would be good for you to see some of the stuff we're getting into. Anytime one of you wants to challenge us, we're game!

Love you!

Ben <><

Snow Day?!?

So last night we had snow. Normally, in February, it wouldn't be wierd to see a little bit of snow, but this winter has been very warm for us. AND, there was no forcast for snow at all. In fact, I checked the local weather forcast and there was only a 10% chance of any precipitation at all.

So that's a pretty nice Valentine's day present I guess.

Ben <><

Halo 3

So, Ben loves Halo. He's very good at it. He yells A LOT while he's playing it. He plays LIVE with friends online, and talks to them.... talks a lot as a matter of fact. He's playing it right now actually, so he's currently saying things like:

"To the left of the sniper spawn. They're all over there. Look out."
"Gimme those back."
"Alright, that felt more like what we're s'posed to be doin."
"I thought you had to've been playing with like one hand again."
"I know what we can do. This'll cheer him up."
"You're what? Your mic's lagging BJ." (lagging means that his internet connection is too slow for whatever is going on - causes slurred/garbled conversation, inaccurate shots/kills, etc...)
***Hysterical laughter*** "That's Hilarious!"
"But it didn't give it to me though. *sigh* Wait, there he is."
"Come ON!!!"
"Tick just got a free ride on the 'Owned-Ben Express.' Double-Kill. Oh. Oh no!"
***More Laughter***
***High-pitched Laughter w/old man wheezing involved***
"Did you hit me with a frag? Aw, aw..."
"WHAT?!"
"You gotta be kiddin me. ***sigh***"

These are direct quotes from the mouth of Ben Niemann... that's all from within the past 5 minutes. Seriously. Like I said, he talks a lot while he's playing. And then I hear lots of gunshots & explosions, and buttons clicking, weapons changing, beeping that indicates injury. And I can't hear what the other people are saying, so it's quite humorous just hearing what he's saying and like background garbled voices in between all the ruccus. I feel kinda left out though. He's in the room with me, but he's not really. He has no idea that I'm writing all this right now, but I'm painfully aware of everything that's going on on his side of the room. Mainly b/c he's so flippin' loud. :-) He is so hilarous.

Funny boys. I love Ben Niemann. He makes me laugh... in a good way... most of the time. K, I'm going. Night folks <><

events of the day

Ben asked me to come over and say a few words...

Today's been semi-eventful.

It's Saturday, so we both slept in - Ben a little longer than me. I got up and did "The Firm" - I may be skinny, but I am in no kinda shape. I could only do the aerobics stuff for less than 15 minutes. But, hey, I did it. I really want to get in the habit of doing something active at least a few times a week. Being a graphic designer leaves you sitting in front of a computer for hours on end, so I have to make myself do something so I don't melt away. I've been really tired lately, for no apparent reason, so hopefully exercise will help rememdy that.

I went to a movie with my friend, Laurie Couch, & her sister, Michelle, who's in town visiting. We saw 27 Dresses - it was pretty cute. I had Junior Mints & Dr. Pepper. Mmmmmm... it was a HUGE box of JMs - and when we left the theater, the leftovers ALL spilled into my purse. It was lovely. :) Fortunately, only one or two got squished, and on nothing important. If you've ever seen my purse/"sack of wonders," you'll understand that it did take quite a lot of searching & unpacking to be sure I got them all back into the box. Quite an adventure.

Then I went to Target. I love that place. I finally had a prescription filled for some extra-strength fluoride stuff that my dentist gave me like 2 months ago. I have very soft & cavity-proned teeth apparently, so I need it. Then I bought a bunch of groceries... half of which were things to make dishes for our Sunday School potluck tomorrow. Pretty excited about that - loads of really good homemade food for cheap is always exciting. I'm taking my grandmother's "Book Club" dessert, & my mom's potato casserole. Figured I can't go wrong with food my mothers have been making since before I was born. They're both huge faves in the menu options of my family.
And of course, I'm trying to get into the habit of eating more fruits & veggies, so I bought apples, plums, green peppers, mushrooms, & salad stuff. Speaking of fruit - I LOVE fresh pineapple... we got one last week. It was delish!

After checking out at Target, I went to get gas. No debit card. Crap... went back to Target. The card machine at my register was down, so the girl had to swipe it for me & neither of us realized until I was long gone, that she hadn't handed it back to me. I was so relieved that it was actually still inside the store, & I hadn't dropped it in the parking lot or anything.

So, now, well, I'm writing this blog, but I was making the stuff for the potluck tomorrow - potatoes are boiling & the crust for "BC" is in the oven! Yum, yum.

Hope you enjoyed learning about what I did today... I gotta go finish working on my dishes & figure out what we're doing for dinner. Lots 'o cookin' going on in the Niemann kitchen tonight. :)

peace,
Sarah <><

And We're Back!!

Well here we are, a little less than a year after our last post to the site. I don't know what kept us from blogging for so long. Maybe it was laziness, or the newness of posting worn off, or busyness, but either way, we're back!

This is my first of hopefully many posts to come in the near future.

We love you all so much and can't wait to hear from you again!

Ben and Sarah <><

Always in Awe

This morning as I was reading through some Scriptures, I found an old note in my Bible that caught my attention. Psalm 8 is really where I took the name "Always_in_awe" from for my blog account, so I thought I would share that with you. The Psalm starts out with a description of how great God is:

"Oh LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens." (8:1)

Then it goes on to describe the response of man to this realization of God:

"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place," [and this is where it gets really good] "What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (8:3-4)

Sometimes when I read through the Bible, I forget to think about the fact that God created the heavens, the sun, and the moon. Yet, he is mindful of ME! He thinks about me! It's amazing to think about how big and spectacular the sun is as a created object, and yet, we humans are so much more complex and detailed than the sun. In the created order, God used a lot of care weaving us together. We are valuable in God's eyes, no doubt about it.
The Psalm ends with a reverberating declaration:

"Oh LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" (8:9)

Remember today how great God truly is!

I love you all!!
Ben <><

Random Assortment of Pictures

This is a very random assortment of pictures from our lives since the wedding. There is no sense to the selection of these pics, I just like them and wanted to share them with you all.

From our honeymoon...


From Halloween...

Sarah's grandparents...

Me getting beat at Scrabble...

Our trip to Texas...


Me and my brother-in-law...

The happily married couple...

Sarah and her grandmother...

We saw an AWESOME Switchfoot show down at Bouis Creek...

Right after the show...

Practicing to play with Jeff Capps...

This one is just for Robert (my brother-in-law)...

A little something

Hey, so I know we haven't posted in a while. Sorry. Just to let you know we're still here, I thought I'd post a video just for fun. This is something I made for the summer camp I worked at for 5 years. It's not that great, just a fun little video we made. It's set to look like MTV's Cribs. The funny thing is, the guys' name really is Dave Matthews. I hope you like!




We love you!!
Ben and Sarah <><

A Photo Montage

Make photo slide shows at onetruemedia.com

Long time

Sorry for the long span of time in between the last post and this one. Sarah and I have been SUPER busy. I just started on three major term papers, Sarah has been sick for a solid week now, and on top of all that, our cars are both out of commission, so we've been trying to coordinate our lives around that. Hopefully, we'll be buying a car sometime in the near future (maybe two weeks), so you can definitely pray that it works out. We still need to get a down payment and figure out exactly what kind of financing we're ready to get involved with. The car we're looking at now would cost us roughly $225 a month, which is just about what we can afford.
We still haven't gotten around to getting our pictures from Ohio uploaded, but once we sort everything out, I'm sure we'll be able to get those up.
Our prayer is that all of you are doing well and that you're being blessed!
We love you!
Ben and Sarah <><

"Having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness." Romans 6:18

Lots and lots of snow!

So we just returned yesterday from Troy, Ohio (which is just outside of Dayton). We went with our friend, Emily Poling, to play at her church up there. I have been Emily's guitarist now for about a year and she asked us to play two small shows for First Baptist Church of Troy. We played for the youth group on Saturday night at the Atheletes in Action campus in Xenia and then we played a full concert Sunday night for the whole church. We had so much fun and we WELL taken care of. Sarah and I would both like to thank our hosts for being so wonderful to us all weekend and for being such spectacular people while we were there.
I will try to get Sarah to post the pictures ina day or so.
Love you guys!!
Ben and Sarah Niemann <><
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Crazy weekends!

So we've just gotten through one crazy weekend in time to get ready for the next. Sarah had an old friend stop in for the weekend. So Sarah spent some good quality time with her friend, Stacy, and Lona, Stacy's daughter. I went down to South Carolina to conduct interviews for potential camp staffers for QuestCamp this summer. Everything went well, but it was our first time spending time apart since the wedding. I was definitely glad to be home. This weekend, we're both flying to Ohio to lead worship at a church in Dayton with a friend of ours, Emily Poling. There are going to be about 400 people there for a youth weekend. We fly out on Friday and will be returning Monday afternoon. Please pray for us as we travel and perform. When we get back, we'll try and post some pictures.

Sarah's job is going well. She's a great fit and is finally getting used to her responsibilities. I am super busy with school this month (weekends away make this even worse). I got a promotion at school which is huge because it pays better and gives me a chance to really do more at work.

Oh, AND today is our 6 month anniversary!!! Time flies doesn't it?! We can hardly believe we've been married that long, even though we know there is tons more to come... tons more that we're really excited about. Hooray for anniversaries!

That's all for now. We love all of you and pray that everything is well.

Ben and Sarah Niemann <><
Proverbs 16:9 - A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.

Wake Forest in the Snow!

Alrighty - I finally plugged in our sweet little camera, and downloaded our beautiful snow pictures. Hope you enjoy them! These pics are from both times that it snowed... once this past Thursday, and once about a week ago. We hope that it will snow a little more before this winter is over. It was barely enough to play in - but still gorgeous.:)

New Job, New Semester

Hello again! So we're both really excited about having this site now to stay connected with everyone out there. I've been wanting to post for a couple of days, but I wanted to wait to hear the news about a potential job for Sarah. Well, the verdict is in and....I am now married to the newest member of the Wake Forest Chick-fil-a marketing team. Sarah will be working as an "Outside Sales Representative." That basically means she will be in charge of contacting potential clients for catering and then she will be driving a ridiculous "cow car" (a 4-runner with cow spots, ha ha). You can definitely pray for her to do well in this job. The guy she'll be working for is totally cool, and I think she's gonna be a great fit in this position. It pays pretty good and it will afford us Insurance and hopefully a new (used) car, which is another HUGE thing that everyone can pray for us about. Our cars are hanging on by a thread and it's about time to put them out to pasture, ha.

As for me, I'm in full-swing now with school. I am taking 5 classes: English, History of the Sixties, World Cultures and Religions, Christian Theology 2, and History of Ideas (philosophy). This kind of course load means that I will be stuck in a book most of my waking time for the next 15 weeks. If I'm not reading, I'll be writing papers; I have a billion due this semester. I am still working at the school, looking forward to a promotion at the end of the semester that will just about double my pay, praise the Lord!

It has snowed here twice in the month and it has been lovely! Wake Forest is already such a beautiful town, but when the view is dusted with snow, everything looks so much better. As soon as Sarah uploads the pictures from her camera, we'll be posting those, so be on the lookout.

We love you all!!
Ben and Sarah Niemann <><
Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, "Be holy for I am holy."

1 Peter 1.13-16