life is good!!!

Hello Friends! I am so sorry for not having any pictures to share! Please forgive me. I have been without home internet for awhile. (Ollie the cow dog chewed through the chord, I recently discovered. More on that later.)

I'm back to school and I am taking a full time load. I am enjoying my classes so far. My professors are all so very different, which makes for not so ordinary days. I have recently applied for a job at a fun restaurant/bar kind of place and I feel that the interview went well. Still no word... but I figure it will play out just as it should. I have started yoga and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! For the first time, I feel as though I have found a form of exercise that I would love to do every day. The girls are doing well. Brooklyn was recently recognized for being a good citizen in her class. Charlotte is suddenly saying everything. Lately she asks, "Whas dat?" about nearly everything. This is how they learn. I love her curiosity. Brooklyn is getting long and lean, her little face is just looking so much older. We have talks frequently. Sometimes we snuggle and talk about horses. Sometimes we snuggle and talk about dreams. Sometimes we snuggle and talk about our lives and what our goals are. I know better than to treat her like a grown up or a friend, but I think it is important to have these kinds of talks with daughters. I want her to know me. Really know me. She knows where I go to school, and what my dreams are. She tells me what makes her happy and how friends at school treat her. Sometimes parents can get so caught up in the everyday rigamarole and the never ending to-do list that they forget to slow down and just enjoy the company of their babies. I really like my kids. They are turning into way cool people. They are so very different and yet so similar, and I wouldn't change a thing about them.

I recently had laser surgery on my eyes. I refer to it as my own personal miracle. It is a miracle. I was previously legally blind without correction- worse than 20/800. I had surgery on a friday morning, and on saturday morning I read 20/15! God is good. That is all I have to say about that. And, it is amazing to wake up, open your eyes, and see. I will never take it for granted.

The bathroom is almost finished! I have a shelf and mirror to paint... then its done! I am trying to work steadily through one project at a time, but I must admit I have home project/painting ADD. Of course, you know this about me and love me anyway.

I have some amazing friends. Like, sisters-from-another-mother-that-really-love-each-other kind of friends. I am so blessed to have authentic, humble, loving women in my life. You won't hear a one of us talk bad about another. You will never feel judged. You will be told the truth, not just icecream cones. In our circle, you are welcome and beautiful and adored. When you are hurting, the group will nurse your wounds. When you are afraid, they will lend you their courage. When you overly excited, the group will get excited for you. We break bread together. We laugh til we cry together. We cry til we laugh together. I believe we all walk through life, stronger women, because we have each other. The funny thing is, I am not so good at intimacy with women. Or at least I wasn't. But I desperately wanted real friends. I'm not the girl who has BFFs from high school. I prayed for friends. For months and months. It started with one, and now there are many! Ladies- make friends. Pray for them. Find people who inspire you and who are positive and gravitate toward them. Now, more then ever, I believe that good friends are crucial to discovering yourself and finding your bliss. I had one friend: Emily. Through some prayer and putting myself out there, (including a blind friend date :o) I now know and love: Vanessa, April, Erin, Abi, Chandra, Emily, Laurel, Kat, and I am making new friends all the time!!! I have to say, my mom is my original, til death do us part best friend. Emily is my angel friend. Vanessa is my soul mate friend. April is my older sister/motherly friend. Erin is my quietly bold, encouraging friend. Gosh, I'm feeling like the luckiest girl ever!

Life is so good.

I'm going to need my internet for school, so I will get it up and going soon. Which means pictures of my bathroom, of my besties. And who knows what else...oooh...I have some fabulous flea market finds to share! I haven't done that for a while.

I hope that your year is off to a great start! I hope that where ever you are, you have some joy to share. I hope that you know some amazing women, who are only a phone call away. I hope that you dream...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Friends!!! I welcome 2010, and all that it will bring! I am optimistic about this year. I am hoping for a year of simple things. Simple joys. Simple days. Simplicity. Over the last seven years, my life has been complicated. I have been on one long roller coaster ride, and I feel like I have finally gotten off. It is so hard to surrender things to God. For me, it is so hard to trust. I have been trying to get to know God as my Dad, and thankfully I have some wonderful friends who are helping me with all of this. I am hoping that wherever I am, whatever our circumstances, I can feel content and peaceful. I have started yoga and I love love love it! The girls and I are making one big girly room out of our downstairs family room, and we are redoing the downstairs bathroom. I hope to host many girl's nights in our new creative/office/workout/sewing/whirlpool tub/big tv space! I have some awesome helpers... Please notice Brooklyn's fabulous outfit...tights, shirt over shirt, swimsuit bottoms, fuzzy backpack. My girl puts together the craziest outfits! I am convinced she will be famous one day. She really loves helping with projects, and here she is taking out screws for the door pulls.

We are painting the room a pretty blue green color. (Well, I am. ;o) And I painted the awful builder honey brown cabinet a creamy white.


Charlotte helps too. (Ignore the mess.) Here are my girlies sanding one of the cabinet doors prior to painting. I look at these pictures and I feel this sense of pride... like my little girlies don't yet think that there is any task they can't do or help with. In our home, women change light fixtures and tile floors and mud walls and paint rooms. We also have toenail painting parties, do our hair and make-up, dance and sing, and snuggle. Life with my two daughters is amazing. It is beautiful. Sometimes I have these moments when I just look at them, and I feel like the luckiest woman in the whole wide world.

(Charlie is wearing a diaper in this picture.)

I read blogs of other families. Every once in awhile, I long for a more traditional family. I long for a partner. I long to know what it feels like to be married. I wonder if I can be enough for two girls who deserve the best life has to offer. God kinda shushes my thinking. This is my lot. This is my life. And there is no point in wishing it to be different. And I have a feeling that the three of us are going to be just fine. Better than fine. I think our little family will be strong, beautiful, bonded, best friends, and we three girls will know God so intimately that nothing else will really matter. I like that. I like knowing that God lives in our home. I like knowing that when I lay in bed at night, finally quietness exists, and half my bed is full of notebooks and journals and self-help books and a Bible that has surely seen better days.... God is right there with me. He is enjoying watching me smile as I find that scripture that is perfect in that moment. He is in every cup of hot tea that warms my body. He is in the soft pillows, the warm quilts. The pretty dresses hanging in my closet. He is in the warm socks from a woman I love like a sister. He is in the unexpected late night text from Emily, who just thinks of me. He is in the pretty metal bed that was exactly what I was looking for, and $20 at a thrift store. He is in the comfy jammies that are completely practical and not at all pretty. He is in my heart. He is in my heart.

This year, I want God to fill up every nook and cranny of my life. I want to exude His love, as well as I can. I want to make people laugh, and give away love like its my job. I want to smile and laugh and wear pretty vintage dresses. I want to take care of body. I want to try new foods and stick with yoga, and travel. I want to snuggle my girls until they are sick of me. I want to cook big dinners for the people I love. I want to fix up my home, one room at a time, because I love my home. Because it is a home to royalty- princesses who surely deserve beautiful surroundings. This year, I want to serve. I want to just love on people. I want to love better- starting with loving myself.

Here's to the miracle of a new day! Here's to a new beautiful year! Here's to the chance to create the life we were designed to live! Here's to inviting God in your home and heart! Here is to finding peace and contentment, wherever you are...

one eyed one horned flying purple people eater

I am alive. I have been MIA for some time now. I hope you will forgive me.

I am wrapping up the semester, and I have just one final left! I am very ready for Christmas break! I am ready to be home. Stay home. Paint home. Decorate home. Cook at home. I have reclusive tendencies anyway, but in the winter, I just love especially love being home.

Brooklyn lost her first tooth the first week of December! Charlotte is talking all the time, in full sentences. She is very ornery. Brooklyn loves kindergarten. Charlotte's favorite meal is "peadabud" which means peanut butter. The girl wants peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast lunch and dinner. Brooklyn just went to the princess and the frog movie with her dad, and she really liked it. She may have to go again with me.

I have been journaling a lot, and just enjoying the girls. We spend a lot of time snuggling under a quilt and drinking hot chocolate, watching all those "Christmas progrums" as my grandma would say. I enjoy school, but it is always a relief to knock out the semester. I have been cleaning and organizing in my spare time... and there is still so much to do. I keep taking things to the salvation army, and still I come up with more stuff to donate. You know me, I still visit the fleas. I went yesterday, in fact. I have some great things to share. Soon.

Twenty-five isn't so bad. It is actually kinda awesome. I am feeling so blessed, and I feel like things are going to be okay. Hopefully next semester I will be working at one of the local schools, and I am very excited about this possibility!

I am going to finish up my Christmas shopping this afternoon! Now I just need to get the trees up. Yep. I am that far behind.

I will be back with pictures. I promise.

25

Today is my last day of 24. I feel strangely about 25, but I don't know why. I will be lucky if 25 years is a quarter of my life. For my bfather, it was nearly half of his. Which brings me to the little thought that is making me so uncomfortable.

We only get one shot at this.

I have one chance to live. To really really live. I could never know when my time is up. I have to make everything count. I am building a legacy with each day of my life. Who am I? What do I stand for? Do I live a life that reflects what I believe in? Do I love well? What are my daughters learning from me? What is my love life with God like?

God has been loving me til it hurts. I am hurting. He feels distant and close all at the same time. I cry for Him and I don't really know why. I feel hopeful and lost and blessed and sorry for myself and it doesn't make sense. You know, for a long while I was just complacent. I was going through the motions of life, spiritually numb. I had knowledge of God. I knew some scripture and the all the churchy stuff. In March, a beautiful girl spoke prophetically over my life in an airport. It was a surreal experience that I couldn't quite grasp in its entirety. I will never forget her face, her eyes, the truth that she shared. It was an emotional experience, and as strongly as I felt at the time it soon faded from my mind. Then, the drought. A large portion of my twenty-fourth year was a spiritual drought. I was dry and barren, with little to offer anyone around me. I wouldn't have known God's presence if He had sat down next to me on a park bench. One by one God starting putting people in my life and answering prayer. I could see the work He was doing in people that I love. I started attending AA meetings with Austin and I witnessed miracles in the lives of strangers and I loved God more for it. I couldn't feel Him for myself, but I could for others. My mom was baptized again and so was my little brother. I remember him asking me if I saw anything in his eyes. (My mom told me to be sure and notice the "sparkle".) I said, "You have a sparkle in your eyes!" He said it was from Jesus being in his heart. I remembered for just a second how real God felt to me as a child. I just felt it for an instant. I longed for it again. The next day Brooklyn was looking in the mirror. She turned around and asked me, "Mom, do I have a sparkle in my eyes?" 

I realized my spiritual drought was costing me dearly. I told her she absolutely had the brightest sparkle in her eyes. She told me she wanted to be "babatized" and my heart was heavy. I felt guilty. We don't even go to a church for her to be baptized. Here was my five year old daughter, hungry for a God that I once knew intimately and chose to disconnect from. We pray together. We pray together as a family. It was a sunny day this summer, while we all sat around the table outside with dinner, that Charlotte prayed for the first time. She bowed her head and closed her eyes and put her little hands out to be held. It was a beautiful moment. I was overcome with a feeling I can't explain. My children are not my own. I am just a facilitator. I have a job and obligation, and if I fail to do it now, I am changing their whole lives. God gave them to me, trusting that I would raise them to know and love Him. How was it my babies were teaching me about God? 

God seems to use vacations to get my attention. My mom and I went to San Francisco last month. It was such a great trip. She had been telling me I needed to read this book. I saved it for the trip, knowing I would have plenty of time to read on the plane. It eloquently painted a picture of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It helped me understand that I was struggling to know God as a dad. The whole trip long I just felt so blessed. So so so blessed. I am so poor, I hardly get to go out to eat. My clothes come from thrift stores, or occasionally target or old navy. In my twenty-fourth year, I had to make $5 last three days. Staying in a new city, eating wonderful food, drinking up every bit of my mom that I could, buying over priced make-up and outfits for my girls... it is like being a princess for a few days. I feel like God gives me a few days to treat me, to remind me that I am special, to just lavish me with joy, and especially the gift of my mom's time. It's funny how you can build walls all around your heart, shutting God out, and what does He do? He pours out His blessings until you can't help but feel the richness of His love right through those wretched walls. He never stops pursuing me.

Never in my whole life, have I wanted God more than anything else. I have always loved God, but I haven't desired Him above all else. I have wanted relationships, and things, and direction, and to be changed. I have prayed for selfish things. I have allowed myself to become consumed with people and situations and circumstances- my whole thought life revolves around them. Never have I genuinely prayed to know God, to have a relationship with God, to live for God, and truly yearned for it with all my heart. I have never worshiped God with my life. I want that to change. I have only in the last few days been praying to want God more than anything else and above all else. I want to let God be my father.

I have this book of 100 favorite Bible verses. I sat down at the computer to type this post. I asked God to speak to me through a verse. I closed my eyes and "rouletted" until I felt the feeling to stop. 

The Never Ending Story

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

If I am to have everlasting life, then 25 really isn't such a big deal. I don't need to be afraid of a life that doesn't matter. I matter. I matter so much that God gave His Son for me. I look for meaning in all these extrinsic things. They are not what gives my life meaning. It is an empty search. My time here is so short. And however long I might have left, I want to worship God with my life. I want the way I live to reflect what I believe. I am a daughter of the King. Jesus is the ultimate Bridegroom. The Holy spirit lives and breathes in me, and I know what it is like to be loved completely and perfectly. Someone died an extremely painful and agonizing death, so that I wouldn't have to. He took my place. He took my place. 

The prayers for my twenty-fifth year will be seeking to know and love God above everything else, and of gratitude for my Savior. Every day, I will pray these things. I can't wait to see what God does with me during my twenty-fifth year. 

Ideas for Brooklyn's room!

I love light, subtle colors, sparingly among whites. I want an all white bed. I have slowly been incorporating brighter colors into Brooklyn's room. With her sixth birthday having just passed, I decided it is time to let her have just what she wants. PURPLE!

I stopped by TJMaxx today, not really intending to buy anything. Then I found this duvet cover with little embroidered flowers in all shades of purple... hmmm... price check : $12.99. I thought it would be very pretty for my purple princess. It is from designers guild. I had never even heard of the brand. I googled it when I got home, and currently their website has this listed ON SALE for $130!!! I am glad I picked it up!

I like these sheets from Walmart. I don't like Walmart. But I like their better homes and gardens line. Twin set for $12.88! 

Now, watch me attempt "Modern" with this giant polka dot bedding. It is just all the right colors. Brooklyn loves it, and it is $39.50 for the comforter/sham. And it is reversible. I will find some way to layer all the bedding, and it will look lovely.

I am thinking of painting one wall that pretty raspberry color... way bright. And she needs this for her closet:
I already have a chandelier that I thrifted for $7.98 to spray paint purple. I have been saving these tissue paper poms from Martha Stewart's bridal party line. I am getting so excited! I think her room will be perfect for her. Because if she were a color, she would be a very bright one- and I love that about her.

This Sunday is the monthly flea! I hope to find some great things for my home. Wouldn't it be awesome to find some sort of vintagey purpley goodness for Brooklyn's room? Next up: Charlie's big girl room!

Best Friends Forever

I love Mondays. Monday nights are when we girls get together. We bounce around to different venues. It isn't every Monday that we all can make it. But it is always a great night.

These women represent so much to me, but most of all they are answers to prayer. I have prayed and prayed for real friendships, for Godly women in my life. Slowly, God answered my prayer. And now, these girls make my life richer. They mean so much to me. And I am so so so grateful.

April, you definitely put the R in Rad.

stale blog!

I am sorry. It has been too long. The least I could for you is post a few pictures! My goodness!!!

I have so much going on, and every spare moment I have at the computer is spent editing pictures from that wedding. Hundreds. of. pictures.

I hope to get back to regularly scheduled programming soon. :o)

sending some love your way,

kali