Last week...

Last week my heart was broken.

Last week I felt a burden and an ache that I've never experienced before.

Last week I met Susan.

 

Susan grew up in Sierra Leone.  Until she was nine, she lived on the streets.  Susan's mother was mentally ill and unable to care for her or her older sister.  Susan talked about how the streets were full of danger and how violence lurked everywhere.  They had no security or shelter and no guarantee of food.

Susan was a sponsored child and last week she surprised her sponsor family and met them for the first time. I feel blessed to have been able to witness it.  

See last week was State of the Church.  State of the Church is an annual event where all of our church’s different campuses come together.  And at State of the Church we were talking about Child Sponsorship.  One of the pastors was talking to the Gallegos family who shared about the child they had been sponsoring for 8 years named Susan.  They spoke of the joy they had watching her grow and how blessed they felt to be able to help.  Then the most crazy thing happened… they showed a video of Susan in Sierra Leone.

You should have seen the shock on the Gallegos's faces.  They got to see the child that they had prayed for and watch grow up...  they saw where she lived, they heard her talk!  Wes asked Ruthie (Mrs. Gallegos) what she wished she could say to Susan if she had the chance.  She replied, "I don't know.  I know I'd want to give her a big hug!" 

And then the unthinkable happened... Susan walked on stage and took Ruthie up on her offer and they hugged.  After all of those years of sponsorship, letter writing and pictures they finally met. 

It was beautiful and I (of course) bawled my eyes out.

Last week my heart was broken because my eyes were opened.

Last week I felt a burden and an ache that I've never experienced before.

Last week I thought what if that was me?

  What if I couldn't feed or take care of Jay?  

What if we lived in poverty?  

What if on the other side of the world while people were freaking out about the new iPad, my baby starved? 

In the Bible there is a story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people with one child's lunch.

Imagine if you gave up your lunch just one day a week.  With that money you could change a child's life.  What could Jesus do with your lunch?

http://www.feedthe5000.org/

Hey stranger!

Suprised to see me?!

I took an unexpected blog vacation.  I needed it for my sanity.  Please forgive me, but this mama has been busy!  There have been some major changes around here, so let's catch up...

My sweet "baby" is now walking.  How did this happen?!

(not the best picture but I took this shot quick and then got back to running after him) 

(and I'd just like to say for the record that the hat is my brothers, he thought that he would put it on the smallest size and let Jay try it on... and then Jay didn't want to take it off!  Quite fashionable, I know...)

I feel like this happened way too quickly!  Everyone told me before Jay was born that it goes by so quickly, but you really don't understand until it's happening.  He is learning and growing so fast, I feel like he learns something new and changes a little more each day.  Tonight when I was putting him down to bed I just stared in amazement at my precious boy and then the tears came. I am so thankful for my sweet little man, he is always so happy and so full of life and energy.  Jay makes me want to be the best I can be, he helps me notice the little things in life and I couldn't be more in love with him.  I could seriously stare at him forever.... bah! No more tears tonight!

I put in my notice at the cafe and will be done there at the end of the month.  I don't want to go into too many details but basically, life is too short to be miserable and it's not healthy to let people treat you badly! (...and I've gotta say, there's something so powerful about taking control of your life and standing up for yourself.)  All of that said, I'm really excited to be moving on to the next adventure... which starts in April. ha!  I'm going to be working for the Fire Department's sister company, driving the ambulance and they are putting me through EMT class in the fall.  I'm really excited!  (Driving fast with lights and sirens, who wouldn't be excited, right?! Just kidding, but seriously... ;)  When Josh was going through his EMT class in 2009 I loved quizzing him and going over what he was learning and am really thankful for this opportunity.  I'm also so thankful that they are willing to be flexible with me and my schedule.  I will be on call when Josh is home so that when I go on a transport he will be home with Jayden.

I also just got my hurr did.  I didn't realize how long my hair had gotten until a few weeks ago, so yesterday I thought I'd switch it up and chop 7" off.  Ok, so not ME exactly, I went to the salon and let the professionals (aka Lisa my hair doctor) do the dirty work.

Tada! What do you think?  It's a lot shorter and a lot blonder than before.  If you don't remember what before looked life then let me refresh your memory:

See! I told you it had gotten crazy long!  I'm not totally in love with the new 'do yet, but it's always nice to switch it up and my hair feels so much healthier now.

...and that's what's new with me!  I do have to admit I am a bit fearful that you may have forgotten me in my blogging absence.  Hope all is well with you lovlies!  

greetings from vacationville

Can I just tell you how overwhelmed I am by each of your sweet comments and e-mails after my post last night, thank you!  I sincerely appreciate your kind words, encouragement and support.  

Sometimes it just helps to talk about the real stuff and be raw.  

I know that God has a plan for our life and even though I don’t know why he puts us through different situations, I trust that he knows what’s best.  And if nothing more, I have learned what I don’t want for my family/kid(s).  

In other news, vacation is still AAAmazing.  Jay woke up at 7 and is still nap free & going strong right now (@ 7:30pm) aka we have a teether Grumpy Gus in the house.  Josh sent me these pictures today of us and the face in the hole mural outside of the Old Schoolhouse Brewery yesterday:     

and look at the funny bathroom signs on the restroom doors:

Today has been a pretty uneventful but very relaxing, which is my kind of vacation these days!

 Exhibit A. That would be Josh(Ty's friend), Josh(my honey), Jay and Ty playing xbox on 2 different tvs.

 I spent some quality time with le poochies.

 How cute is this little pup?  My in-laws are fostering him until they can find him a new home and I.am.in.LOVE.  I think he would make a perfect addition to our little family, don't you?! 

 See! Oakley and Jay are already best pals :) 

And I tried about a million times to put the little beebs to bed!

Ok, Grandpa just got Jay to bed so we are going to watch American Idol as a family.  Oh, and it's SNOWING!  Hopefully we can take the snowmobiles out tomorrow.  And thank you again for your kind words, they truly mean the world to me.  I am so very thankful for the beautiful life that God has blessed me with.  You can't appreciate the sunshine without a little rain, right?! ;)

Happy Humpday!

And of course I can't resist showing off my cute baby in his snow gear:

Today

 Today was a good day but it was also a hard day.  We went on a day trip to Winthrop (which is about an hour away) with Josh’s family.  I had so much fun looking at the local shops and checking out the town.  We went to the best restaurant called the Old Schoolhouse Brewery.  

The food was amazing (can you say guacamole, pepper-jack, bacon burger with sweet potato fries- yum!) and after sampling some of Josh’s beer I was kicking myself that I didn’t order my own (and I’m not even a beer drinker).  We met up with one of my Josh’s dad’s firefighter friends who now lives up there and checked out his place up in the snowy mountains.

On the way home I ended up riding home with the in-laws and my sister-in-law, Kenzie & Josh, Jay and Ty (my brother-in-law) rode together.  We drove into the mountains through the most beautiful scenery and I started reminiscing about family trips of my own.  I started thinking about the good times that my family had.  I hurt hearing Scot talk about plans he wanted to make with his family and the love and interest he had in each member of his family.  I wondered how my dad could have given up on our family.  I wished that my dad would have that same interest in me that Scot has in his kids, instead of the reality of my dad only talking to me 3 or 4 times since August.  I fought back tears and focused on the scenery, I bit the inside of me cheek and tried to keep up with the small talk. 

After we pulled in the driveway I went to our room, I crawled under the covers and just let go.  I don’t understand.  I don’t understand how you can cheat on your wife for 24 years of your 28 year marriage.  I don’t understand how you cannot have time for your kids who so desperately want your attention and approval. I don’t understand how someone can stand in front of a church pretending to be something they aren’t.  I don’t understand how someone could live a double life.  I don’t understand how you could hurt your kids so badly and not show any remorse.  I don’t understand. 

I laid under the covers in the dark for what seemed like hours.  I heard the door open, the covers lifted and Josh’s arm wrapped around me.  He held me and I cried.  I cried until I had no more tears.  He held me and made promises to me about our life and our future.  He held me and prayed for me, for us.

Today was a good day, but it was a hard day. I am so thankful for the amazing man that I get to call my husband.  I love that we get to write our own endings and I refuse to let the past shape my our future. 

Marvelous Monday

So far vacation is MARVELOUS!  

This morning Josh, JAY and  I slept in until 9!

It's so beautiful over here, just look at the view from our morning walk:

I've seen this "write it out" challenge on a few different blogs and wanted to participate.  There are 8 questions and you hand-write your answers out instead of typing them so that everyone can see what your handwriting looks like.  

Here are the questions:

1. What's your name / blogger name?
2. What's your blog's URL?
3. Write "The quick fox jumps over the lazy dog."
4. Favorite quote?
5. Your favorite song?
6. Your favorite band / singers?
7. Anything else you want to say?
8. Tag 3 - 5 other people.

Here goes...

 After writing this out I realized that my handwriting is so much different than it used to be and basically changes daily.  I really don't ever write much more than drink orders in coffee short hand these days {speaking of, I need to do another Barista Blabber... I have a few doozies for you guys!}  You should play along and show off your penmanship, good or bad.

Hope you all have a great Monday.  My challenge for the night is to try to convince the family to watch The Bachelor tonight, wish me luck!!

Greetings from the road...

We are mid road trip and everything is going great.  I have my Sbux, my buns are toasty {thanks to the in-laws for letting us use their Denali with glorious heated seats}, my honey, good tunes, a cinnamon crunch bagel from Panera and a sleeping baby in the backseat.  What more could a girl want?!

I wanted to share something with you that made me giggle... one of my Valentine's Day cards from Josh.   The perfect card for your barista/wife:

-Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Friday Favs

ThankG

od

It's

F

riday

!  

Ok, was it just me or was today the hardest day ever to wake up?!  I hit the snooze button until the last.possible.second. and it was definitely "one of those days" @ the cafe today.  Which makes me even happier that next week = our full week vacation to Brewster!  I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am.  Knowing that there was a vacation light at the end of the tunnel is what kept me going this week!  

I plan do to a lot of sleeping in and hanging with the family.  

I haven't done a Favorite Things Friday in a few weeks because honestly I didn't have any life altering products to share.  But now I do.  

Life Altering Product #1

Ok, so maybe a Kinect isn't "life altering" but it's pretty dang sweet.  The thing I love most about the Kinect is that there is NO remote or controller, you are the controller.  We all worked up a pretty good sweat after playing it for a few hours, which is probably the main reason why I like it.  I'm not a big gamer.  My favorite game so far is Dance Central, it is especially fun to play after a few cocktails! 

 Another cool feature is that it is has a voice control start, I literally say "x-box" and it perks up... I feel like I'm in the Jetsons.  

Life Altering Product #2

highlighter/blush

First off, how come nobody ever told me about highlighter/blush?!  I recently bought Smashbox's soft lights in Shimmer and HOLY COW it is aaaaamazing.  It gives your skin the perfect healthy glow, I love putting it on my cheek bones/ brow bones for a little luminescent dewiness.  My sister got a sample of benefit's highbeam as a bonus the last time she went shopping for makeup and gave it to me.  It is also a great product, but I think it is meant to be used with a liquid foundation because sometimes when I put it over my BareMinerals it looks like a hot mess.  Anyways, bottom line: a good highlighter is now a necessity for me and if you haven't tried using one yet GO!   

Life Altering Product #3

I've been wearing NARS Super Orgasm blush for awhile now and as a lip sauce junkie I don't know how I'd never heard about the Super Orgasm gloss.  It is seriously the most gorgeous sheer pink color, it has sparkle without being too in-your-face.  It has a really smooth texture and that's really important to me, I hate feeling like I have heavy makeup on my mouth.  Basically if you like the blush you should definitely give the gloss a try. It's my new fav.

Super Orgasm blush

And those, my dearies are my favorite things this Friday.  I hope you have a fabulous evening.  I just found out that it is National Wine Day so I'm off to celebrate!! *Cheers*