happy birthday, hubby.

It’s Brandon’s birthday. He’s pretty special, so email him, call him, text him, facebook him, tweet him…whatever you have to do to tell him happy birthday

lately…
got to see my college roomies and spend the weekend with them. Whit’s lingerie shower + all day at the pool + 5k with Beth, Mae, and Abi  + breakfast with Megan, Rileigh and her new rock! + lunch @ Memaw’s = great weekend.

this week…
CIU today for a work conference (Hispanic Youth Congress aka True Love Waits Weekend for Hispanic Youth…awesome.) Instead of purity rings, the youth get dog tags. Why am I not hispanic?
Beaufort tomorrow to check on some summer missionaries.
Whitney and Nick’s wedding weekend starting Friday-Saturday.
Family beach trip starting Sunday-next week.

I love summer.

marital bliss.

Weddings, weddings, weddings… that is the theme of our year. But, this does mean so many of our dear friends are entering marital bliss. EP is one of my sweet friends that is marrying her man in August and she is always asking for advice. I tell her it really is the best thing ever, the hardest thing ever, the most fun thing ever, and at the start: the weirdest thing ever… all wrapped up into one! I was reading a blog one day that had “gain” vs. “loss” aspects of getting hitched. I must say she was right on target with those and I laughed through all. So, here is some Kristi Clements’ “I’ve been married almost 2 years” marital advice for all the newly married or engaged people out there:

gain: a man to call your husband!
loss: all of the decisions, insanity, and time that it takes for you to become mr. and mrs. (hello wedding countdown!)

gain: Getting to pick out everything you want on your registry so that you can make your home… your home.
loss: Your home is your home + a boy’s home. Will you register for ipods, games, silly toys and dumb boy stuff to keep the “registry day” happy and not full of fights? Yes. Will you go home and take it off on the website without your soon-to-be hubby knowing? Absolutely. (This might not be a good start to a healthy marriage… but it worked out OK for me!)

gain: NEW stuff. So much new stuff! It’s unbelievable how much you end up getting.
loss: No where to put that new stuff and having to store it in your parent’s attic through the first year while you live in an apartment with no storage.

gain: You get to live with your man and not have to leave at night to go to your own, seperate houses.
loss: Getting used to living with the boy you’ve been dating/engaged to but not living with for the past however many years… you will have thoughts like: “What? I can live with a boy? Yesterday I couldn’t live a boy and now I can today? This is so weird. Okay, it’s midnight… you can go home now….?”

gain: Way more closet space than in college life, when you shared a room with other girls.
loss: Your old college roommate’s clothes and advice on your own clothes while getting ready. (Your husband will always tell you that your outfit looks great on you… even if it doesn’t match and has a hole in the back where you couldn’t see and he could. Oh, I miss my girls at moments like that!)

gain: A BFF for life. (yes, I know that sounded like a middle-schooler.) But, seriously, someone to stick up for you and always have your back. Somebody that laughs at your dumb jokes and cries when you cry.
loss: oh, there’s no loss to that one.

gain: He knows everything about you and can read you like a book.
loss: He knows everything about you and can read you like a book.

gain: You live in the same house, eat at the same table, and sleep in the same bed.
loss: You may have this story-book life made up in your head where all of those things above happen every, single day and in reality you sometimes only see hubby once a day while you are brushing your teeth in the morning. (This can be hard to “realize”… it was for me!)

gain: Boy to take out the trash.
loss: Boy to forget to take out the trash.

gain: You get to cook and create fun recipes for your new hubby.
loss: You realize your mom never taught you to cook and you suck at it.

Oh I could do this all day… but, one thing I know for sure: the gains always outlive the losses and the good always trumphs the bad if you are BOTH eagerly pursuing the Lord and pursuing selflessness towards one another. Love each other deeply and don’t stop. No matter what.

Happy marriage to so many sweet friends!

assassination.

A lot of people from Midtown are playing a game of assassin that is very intense, as I found out last night. I don’t want to bore you with all the details (mostly because I don’t even understand half of it) but the main idea is you have someone to “kill” with different items (’poison’ which are stickers that you put on the bottom of cups before the person drinks it/fake knives that have to touch the person you are trying to “kill” when you two are alone…no one can see/and so on).

Picture this: I get home around 11 from a long game of ultimate and dinner with The Tippings’ and twin two year olds. I’m tired. I pull into my driveway and some creepy guy is walking right beside my house on the sidewalk (nothing new here). He keeps walking, so I just stay in my car and wait until I can’t see creepy dude anymore and then go inside. I change, take the dog in the backyard, come in, and Pacey starts barking at the door which means Brandon is home. I look out the peep hole to make sure it’s him (I’ve got my mind on creepy guy still) and there’s yelling and a guy chasing Brandon. First instinct: who cares that I’m wearing a sports bra and shorts? I’m going to save Brandon. I run out the door screaming and chasing after the dude that’s chasing my husband. Also chasing after him is our 9 pounder dog, acting like she’s a pitbull. Brandon yells at me saying, “It’s the game!” So after a few seconds, I realize that it’s Matt Aughtry chasing Brandon in the park beside our house, trying to “kill” him or whatever. (I’m still so mad about how much I hate this game.) Finally Brandon made it inside (in your face, Matt!) and didn’t get “killed”. I stayed in the yard and yelled at Matt to never come in our yard again (yes, I know it’s weird. I was frantic.) And then Brandon came in and I had to take a Tylenol pm to go to sleep last night.

PS: We have a lady living with us for a while and this morning she said, “Did something happen last night or was I having a bad dream? I could hear people yelling outside and the dog squealing…?” How do you explain the fact that some guy was hiding in our bushes to “fake kill” Brandon because they are playing as assassin game?

Thanks, assassin game. I hate you.

doing work.

Staff Day at WOCC… new high ropes course….we were the first ones on the ropes…I might have been a little scared I was going to fall to my death…I’d never done it before…it was awesome.

Abi and me gearing up.

And we’re off…

 

 

 

40-feet-up-in-the-air fun.

glory.

• Went to the beach. Seabrook. It was awesome. I can’t tell you enough how much Brandon and I needed rest. And we got a whole weekend of it!
• Right when I got back from the beach, I headed to White Oak for work for a few days to train one of my summer missions teams, Kids Connexion. Lots of tiring, long days… but it was fun! I really like getting to prepare them for a summer that will change their lives. How lucky am I to get to be a part of that?
• Meredith and Wellington got married on Saturday and we drove up to Greer for the wedding. Meredith seriously looked like she stepped out of the “Bridal Barbie” box. She was just beautiful. The ceremony was short and sweet & her dance with her daddy at the reception would make anyone cry.
• Today I found out that I’m probably going to Nova Scotia in July. So, I’ll be in Columbia for like 4 days in July and the rest will be spent traveling to the beach, Nova Scotia, and Mexico. Holy cow. I don’t know what to think about that. (But I am so excited!)
• I love, love, love ultimate…but I’m not the best in the world. I was hoping to get on the worst team of the summer so that I wouldn’t feel like a failure all summer long and always be in the mode of letting my team down when I suck it up. Well, I got on the team that won the championship last year. Awesome. They obviously missed the memo about my abilities. But that’s okay…maybe I’ll learn a lot…?
• Question of the day: Who is guiding you? Who is your shepherd? Sometime this week, go here and think on that question.

seabrook.

Leaving this afternoon for Seabrook Island. Won’t be back until Monday. You can find me on the beach with a book and a diet dr. pepper.

lucky.

I’m the luckiest.
This is my desk at work today…and you know how much I love birthdays! Thank you, Tipping family and Abi!
Thank you, friends, for coming to my box tournament birthday party.
Thank you Court for my new ultimate cleats.
Thank you, Bran, for our restaurant.com dinner deal and my flip
Thank you, Bethy, for our “we will get dinner on me” coupon.
I’m seriously like a kid on my birthday.

wednesday.

• Family meeting with church last night… I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I am a part of this family. 
• I’m having my (first) birthday party tonight. (I love my birthday.) We are having a box tournament at Finlay for anyone who wants to come! 6:00 and bring your own food to eat on the grass pre-game!
• Afterwards, I’m watching the season finale of LOST and hoping they tell us some answers…doubtful.
• Thinking about this verse today: “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Romans 8.25
• You need to read this and let Luis teach you like he’s teaching Brandon and me.
• Jennifer Chesson, Mallory’s roommate, is getting married on Saturday and I get to see all of Mallory’s family. I am so excited about this because I haven’t seen them in over a year!
• LOVING this site.

today is one of those days.

Do you ever have those days where you feel like everything you do is just messed up and you did it incorrectly and you can’t get anything right? And you just want to crawl in your bed, lock the door, and go to bed just so you can start another day. I hate those days… but I also need them. Need them to know that it isn’t about me and no matter how close to perfect I can get or how far away I am from perfection, God’s grace still covers me the same. So, cheers to this no-good-very-bad day.

“What makes humility so desirable is the marvelous thing it does to us; it creates in us a capacity for the closest possible intimacy with God.” -Monica Baldwin

made.

First, last night I couldn’t sleep worth anything because of some stinkin’ neck muscle that’s all messed up. It’s kind of like a crick in my neck. By the way, is crick the right words for the phrase? Weird. So, I’m looking forward to a night full of catching up on Lost and bed pronto! Things you should pray for: This is who I can’t get of my mind. This girl is leaving for Ecuador soon! And here are some touches of my crafty-ness lately… I wish I could be a stay-at-home non-mom and get to do stuff like this all day!

Mother’s Day gift of “Relaxation” (absolutely cheesy). Heatable rice bag and homemade sugar scrub.

 Onesies. Little bird and elephant if you can’t tell because of my poor artwork…