We Heart Kisses Photo Challenge - Week 6

Because this picture was too good to not enter.  This was taken at a wedding this past June.  The happy couple announced their engagement this fall. 

Check out the other "Kisses" at:

My 30th Year

What some may characterize as a critical of coming of age year (it gets older every generation), I felt as though my 30th year was less about coming of age and more about celebrating life. 

30 meant:

1. Becoming parents on another level.
2. Re-examining our work life.
3. Re-organizing our priorities.
4. Opening our home to friends and children.
5. Following our dreams.
6. Knowing who our friends are.
7. Knowing what our limits are.
8. Challenging our faith.
9. Challenging our sanity.
10. Acing, like 99% acing, my first graduate course.
11. Realizing potential.
12. Understanding heart break.
13. Witnessing miracles.
14. Celebrating love.
15. Walking with each other in love.
16. Watching heroes fall.
17. Forgiveness. 
18. 10+ pounds that came out of nowhere and landed on my waist.
19. Realizing that I was only human.
20. Leaving a job that I really loved.
21. Commitment.
22. Bernina.
23. Nikon.
24. Drinking lots of coffee.
25. Learning to drink a little less coffee.
26. Driving grown up cars.
27. Accepting and loving baldness (Brian's, not mine).
28. Challenging ourselves (Game On! among many other more important things).
29. Giving Thanks.
30. Receiving Grace.

30 was not what I expected.  I loved harder, hurt more, and received more Grace than I had ever before in my life.  30 really was an epic year for me.  I look forward to 31 - I think...

Bible Coffee Holder Bag

Don't be jealous.  You know you want one too.  This was all my husband's genius.  The above pictured bag was based purely out of need.  Let me explain.  We started going to a church where you actually had to bring your Bible with you every week - and, uh, use it.  No kidding.  This new church also has this deal called the casual venue where you can be in church but without all the "liturgy" (that's church speak for "old churchy stuff"), you can dress in your jeans, and if you really wanted to, you could sit around a table and drink your morning coffee during worship.  Now, we worship, we sing, we listen to a good sermon every week, so don't be thinking I went all "weak church" on you here.  "Casual" just implies the ambiance of the setting.  I digress.

Anyway, so at this new church we began toting back and forth our Bibles and our two coffee mugs (spill free, of course).  This became quite an ordeal when you have four kids ages seven and under.  Brian and I would begin doling out our coffees for the kids to carry and then trying to make sure we got it all back as we delivered all four to Sunday School.  From the beginning Brian was prodding me to make him a "Bible Coffee Holder Bag".  I laughed.  He did not.  So this is the result: a tote like bag with a sleeve for the big Bible and two elastic loops to hold our coffee upright.  There is then space for a second Bible or all the things that the kids bring home from Sunday school.  We are two Sundays into carrying this and so far, so good.  Brian calls this Prototype #1.  Apparently he feels there are still some tweaks we could make.

Boots

Can you even be Texan without boots?  I don't think so.  So, after the destructo dog ate my beloved pair of butterfly boots, I was left with a sort of identity crisis.  Am I just another impostor implant to this beautiful place?  Would they find me out by my improper footwear?  After a long delay, the situation was finally remedied tonight. 

My dear sisters (because they are wonderful to their big sister and they know me well) got me gift cards to Cavender's for Christmas this year.  For some reason, tonight, it became urgent that I purchase a pair of boots.  Perhaps it was the posse narrowing in on my lack of sanctioned shoes, or it could have been my dearth of good church appropriate kicks.  Maybe it was that I just really wanted boots and since my birthday is on Tuesday I decided to get 'er done.  Whatever it was, I got my boots.  Check 'em out.

In a mood.

It's a don't cross me, I will bite your head off, kind of night for me.  I have very few of them.  Really, I am being serious.  Ordinarily I am very even tempered.  But tonight, no way.  I got on the elliptical to work out my frustration (get it, work out as in workout, never mind).  I burned more calories in 20 minutes than I ever had before by like 50 calories.  Um, yeah.

The cat just looked at me and I hissed at her.  I am not proud.  I'm going to bed and praying for a new day.

It was very important - the Girl Scouts were at the door.

Last week sometime Jacob (age 7) was on the phone with my mom (Queen Ree).  They were chatting away, Jacob pacing in his normal fashion when he talks on the phone, when suddenly the conversation stopped.  Jacob said an abrupt goodbye and returned the phone to the base.  I must have looked puzzled so he decided to explain, "It was important, Mom.  She had to go.  The Girl Scouts were at the door."  I questioned why that would be so important.  "Because they have cookies, Mom! And those things are good!"

Pardon my stupidity, child.  Clearly I have not grasped the importance of the Girl Scout Cookie.  Really, what the boy doesn't know, is that I have long understood the power of the Girl Scout Cookie.  I was a Girl Scout once - Troop 14 in the San Gabriel District.  We went defunct by the time we were all in the 7th grade, but never mind that.  I failed at cookie sales.  My mom would buy a couple of cases so that I could, at the very least, earn my stupid badge.

Those cases didn't last long in our house.  We could devour sleeve after sleeve of Thin Mints in one sitting (or standing, because who sits when eating a sleeve of Thin Mints?).  We would finish our cases by, oh, a couple weeks out of cookie season.  If my mom was really smart she would hide a couple of boxes in the deep freeze - but once discovered, those were demolished too.  Invariably, just as the last cookie was polished off, my dad would be standing there, proclaiming that he "didn't get any of that!"  You snooze you lose, Old Man.  Girl Scout Cookies were fair game in our house.

This brings me to my adult home.  Stupid Game On! has me rationing my Thin Mints to 2 a day (allowed by the 100 calories of anything rule) and I have managed to stick with this plan.  My husband (who like my dad would wait until all cookies were gone to decide he was going to partake) has a different approach (see photo above).  Stupid man.  Like labeling your box keeps people from actually eating it.  These are Girl Scout Cookies, and "those things are good!"

I made a commitment

I made a commitment right here on this blog that I was going to write everyday for a while until I found my creative sweet spot again.  Little by little I feel the fog lifting and that thing inside of me reigniting.  I don't have much to say tonight - I will probably be able to put it together better tomorrow.  I promise a post on whatever it is I'm not posting on today.  But since I made that commitment to you, me, and well, to my Game On! team (and you know how I hate to lose), I needed to write just a little something.

Oh, shoot, I have to go to bed immediately - I am about to lose my sleep points for this darn game.  Gotta go, I'll catch up tomorrow.

P.S. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the beautiful comments yesterday.  I am truly touched.