My Birthday!

Was actually 2 weeks ago, but pictures are pictures, even if they are grainy cell phone pictures.  I love birthdays… I love my birthday, and it was a good day.

 

Best part of birthdays are pedicures.  I get 3 pedicures a year… my birthday, my mom’s birthday and my SIL birthday.

After pedicures I drove home… and was grateful for the beautiful day.

 

the sun was shining, it was warm…

That night we did dinner at Cheddars (I love Cheddars… better food than Applebee's, cheaper too…)

After that?  Girl time!  We went to old town… and was entirely unimpressed.  That being said, I love the girls I was with, so it was fun :)

Karina and I.  I have the best sister in law ever…

Corrie… Jolene… Elizabeth.  And a green beer bottle.  Necessary on St. Patrick’s day!

All in all… it was a pretty awesome day.  It is my plan to enjoy birthdays for life… because getting older? not a bad thing.

March rocked… Happy April!

the vibrance of my garden

I had grand plans for this week’s you capture.  Vibrant… there are all sorts of vibrant things growing in my yard right now. Then… life got cold and gray randomly, and the sun is refusing to shine.  This morning, however, I decided enough waiting on the sun and to just enjoy the colors I do have.  I therefore bring you my garden, courtesy of Billie the previous owner who apparently liked to garden as evidenced by the amount of stuff growing in my yard.  I have no clue what most of it is, and definitely no clue how to keep it growing, but it is beautiful all the same…

some sort of ground cover?  I love purple…

I just set up my picture wall in my dining room, and there are a couple of snow pictures.  I think they might be getting replaced shortly.  I believe these are hyacinths?  I want to plant a boatload more… beautiful and they smell good.

I thought this bush was ugly yellow leaves until I looked at it and realized it was really pretty yellow flowers.  No leaves on the entire bush, but it is covered in these flowers.

I think these tulips used to be best friends, being neighbors in the garden and all, but apparently they must have had a fight because they are now facing opposite directions the way my best friend and I used to do in sunday school when we weren’t getting along, you know, opposite directions but at an angle so they can see what the other is doing out of the corner of their eyes.

(what? You didn’t instantly come up with that story?)

White tree… no clue what it is.  one would think it is a Bradford pear like the rest of Wichita is covered with, but it is huge and covering my house so I am thinking no.  Beautiful, however.  I quite love it.

Amazing thing is that even though I was running around in my packers pants taking pictures in the dreary cold I kind of love them.  Shows me… I need to take pictures more even when the conditions don’t seem perfect.

As far as I can tell I have some rose bushes that are turning green, some grape vines that still look dead, a possible apple tree, and a crazy amount of what looks like sticks pretty much everywhere.  It is going to be interesting to see what else appears in once spring actually arrives.

Youth

This is my cousin Jessy:

She is definitely young.

This is me:

I felt really old next to her. 

This is us on top of a really tall mountain.

 

I did really nice, slow, wide turns all the way down the mountain.

Jessy pointed her skis downhill and went for it.

This is her and Aunt Anne putting back up a fence after Jessy knocked if over and ran into a tree.

This is Aunt Anne:

She likes my style of skiing better than Jessy’s.  

The view from the top of the mountain.  God does some amazing work, doesn’t he?

The last day it snowed so hard I melted into the background:

We drove to the bottom of the mountain and the world looked like this:

It was a pretty awesome trip.  By the end she learned to stop and I learned to go a little faster.

Jessy is pretty much my favorite youth:

 

Part of you capture

Ghosts of Birthdays past

Today is the best day of the year.

Really

23

19

 

21

 

 

Get your green on!!! 

The first birthday message posted on my wall:

"May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
...And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand."

My favorite birthday message of all time:

Corrie
let me tell you a story
you came here on St. Patricks Day
This poem is getting a little gay
We'll just stop now!!!
We Love you, Chelsie and Tiffany

 

I am very grateful to be alive, and although 23 wasn’t the awesome year I thought it would be, it was good.  Good things happened and I am excited to see what 24 holds.

Happy St. Patricks day!

Bodies

I am in love with the nose on my new dog. 

(okay, she belongs to my new roommate, but I quite love her)

My friend Tiffany?  She has tiny feet.  really.  like size 5 or 6.  However, when I am lifting tiny feet into a tree, they don’t seem so tiny:

I need to work on my body mechanics. 

Her knee didn’t much like being wedged in a tree much, either.

These girls showed up on my front porch Friday night to surprise me with a birthday weekend.  It was one of the best surprises ever.  I love them.

(And I hate how much time they spend talking about what is wrong with various body parts.  They are beautiful.  Their parts are beautiful.  I wish I knew how to talk the girls in my life into loving their bodies.)

That being said, the best pictures I took this weekend(with the assistance of the stone tower at the end of the driveway) was this set. I love the way we move over 10 seconds :)

 

I seriously thought she was going to fall on her head.  Got to love the trouble we can get in.

Oh!  and the most important body parts of all:

After years of me wishing and 2 years of her trying, my big sister is having a baby!  I am so very excited!!!

Life is good :)

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Learning to have faith in Him whom I believe.

(this equals the honesty that has been building in my for so long I don’t even know.  I don’t like flat out talking about it because I feel like a failure, the good Christian kid who can’t handle grown up faith. and yet, it is all true.  Today more than most.  So… mom, you aren’t going to like it, but this is not a reflection on you, k? this is just me.)

Sometimes I think life would be easier if I didn’t believe.

If I didn’t have this deep, inset belief that God exists, that He is the ruler, the Father, the Creator of all good.

If I could just believe that crap happens and there is no explanation.

If I didn’t think that prayer is suppose to change things.

It is supposed to change things, right?

I pray.  I pray so hard. Not for myself, but for them.   For peace. For him stop punishing himself, for him to believe it is okay to be happy.  For smiles and not tears.  For God to make himself known.

I don’t see it happening.  I found out today that the third of the 3 things I have poured my soul out praying for the past 7 months is failing.

Why bother?  Tell me that.  If there is this cosmic plan and nothing I say changes anything why do I have to talk to God about it?  I know… conversation and all that.  But still…

I try so hard to keep faith, but really, as the months have gone… I don’t.  I hardly go to church.  I don’t read my bible, I don’t pray.  Not really. Not anymore.  The faith I fought so hard to make my own in College is circling the drain. 

and yet I still believe.  I still believe he is God.  I still believe he has a plan.  I don’t know what it is, and up to this point I don’t like anything about it, but I still can’t make myself NOT believe.  Sometimes I can feel the broken dreams surrounding me.  I can hear it when I talk to the people whom I love.  I can see it in my life when I see the decisions I made last year, that now maybe weren’t the most logical, but at the time… when dreams start dying it is so easy to give up. Do the easy thing.  I am so scared for them… that they give up and do the easy thing.

I feel so alone sometimes.  So alone, in my world where people believe and I struggle so much.  Where my friends love me, but they don’t understand the pain I can’t explain.  How the pain of others’ broken dreams are dragging down my spirit so much more than any dream of mine.  How I can admit out loud that I am angry at my God and not really talking to him anymore.

I went to WinterJam last night, and it was awesome. Halfway through the first band, RED, they played a song that made me sit up and listen.  Made me want to start communicating again. 

Reminded me that even when I can’t see Him, can’t feel Him, can’t make myself want to believe in Him, I am not alone.  He has been with me through this whole journey, and HE has been with them, the ones I am hurting for, and when we are ready, He is waiting.

I want this to be my attitude.  I NEED this to be my attitude.  I don’t know how to get there anymore, but maybe… maybe I can rebuild my faith, so that it once more is something worth talking about.

I wonder, deep in my soul, if God knew this week would push me past my limits, and gave me a night of praise to build me up first.  Music means so much more than words sometimes… sometimes music is what gets into my brain and stays there.

I believe.  There is a God.  He is good.  I have to believe that.  So now, I guess my job is to learn to translate that belief into a faith in Him.  Believing He exists and having faith in Him, 2 different things I am learning.  Sooo… we shall see.

It is time to start praying again, I am thinking. 

Longing for a life…

I have a dream.  A dream where people in Wichita stop getting crazy sick and I can actually stop working 20 hours of overtime a pay period. A dream where my house is picked up and I can find my camera and go take pictures.  Until then, I will continue to take crummy pictures with my cell phone, because at least then I get to pretend that I have a life with time to pursue my favorite things.

So… things that start with L.  The first thing that came to mind is Laundry room.  Want to see mine?

My dryer is covered with sheets, which is okay because they are clean.  Clean counts for something, right?  The box next to the washer is full of paint cans and paint supplies and other random stuff. because right in front of the basement stairs is a good place to store boxes of paint, don’t you think?

L=laundry+love.  I have developed a weird love for bird fabric.  I don’t even like birds, and yet, by the time the presidents day sale was over, I ended up with this:

The top one I have had for a while, with the plan of making a curtain to go in the doorway next to the washing machine. And yet, when I saw the bottom with the green background?  I am in love.  So now… green in laundry room, and I am thinking… white in kitchen? Am I going to get horribly made fun of for 2 rooms with bird curtains?

Okay. Back to L.  My favorite thing in the world that starts with an L is Lanyard.

My sister in law makes the most wonderful lanyards for me to wear at work… this one is my favorite because it sparkles. It is the perfect length, most of the time it just hangs there but if I am doing something where i need it to not swing it is long enough to tuck into my pocket.  And the most important thing, it gives me a touch of sparkle and personality to wear with my boring scrubs.  Last night Karina texted me some more lanyards that she has made to sell, and I am pretty sure I need them all:

aren’t they pretty?  If I have to wear a name badge I am going to do it in style, that is what I think.

Okay… that is the end of the sad picture show.  Next week will be better!

Part of you capture