A Week In The Life Of This 40-Year-Old

Museum of Living Art rocks!

A new project.

Date Night

Seriously.  If I could swim in that sauce, I would.

Water Park

Fi-Yah!

Sunny Street Benedict.  Birthday Breakfast.

A Beautiful Post From A Sweet Friend

Please visit Ronne's blog and be blessed by her wisdom.

I'm Published!

I'm so excited!  Today was the release of Radical Love, authored by my friends Kimberly Parker and Donna Lowe.  I got to travel to Canada back in June to take their photo for the back of the book.

What an awesome experience!  I am so thankful to Kim and Donna for allowing me the honor of taking their photo. 


('Have a photo published' is #15 on the list.)

Living Out Loud (Random Thoughts of a 40-Year-Old)

Sometimes that (Living Out Loud) seems like false advertising.  In some things I have no problem 'living them'.  In others, I sit idly by and let things happen.  Why is that?   And while lots of interesting/exciting things happen, I don't always blog about them, even though I want to.  (see lame excuse below)

Whatever my issues are right now, I'm going to blame the heat.  Seriously.  I live in Texas.  It's August.  And I am D-O-N-E with it.  It sucks the life right out of me.

I'm sitting here surrounded by party stuff from last Saturday, still needing to be put away.  Boxes of decorations, supplies and memories.  That's where I got (mentally) stuck...the memories.  I have had a great life, complete with happy times and not-so-happy times.  And I wouldn't change a thing.  However, in my life before I had any real control (or took control), things happened that I still have to reconcile.  And these boxes of memories triggered feelings...for what could have been, or what should be.  What do I do with those feelings?  Pack them away again?  That doesn't seem to be working for me.

It's that time of year when school is about to start back up and I'm thinking about that 'to-do' list.  You know the one...of all the things I'll do once school starts.  (That actually made me laugh)  My kids are old enough  now that I can't legitimately use them as an excuse for not getting things done while they are home.   I guess I'll be busy looking for a different excuse.

I'm entering all kinds of new and exciting stages in my life:
1) I have a child that will start college. I AM THE MOTHER OF A COLLEGE STUDENT!
2) I'm 40. And it doesn't feel much different than 39. Except a little more 'distinguished'. (or some such)
3) My son will splay football this school year, for the first time EVER. Football is a contact sport. Lord help me. (Like how I turned that around to be about me?)
4)  I have my own photography business, and it has been coming along nicely.

The sadness of my brother being in prison is setting in.  (This is strongly related to the 'boxes of memories') It's tough to explain my feelings on this.  Although he broke the law and deserves to be in prison, it's still sad that he'll spend the rest of his life there.

I still haven't blogged about my "Christmas Around The World" dinner.  And it was definitely blog-worthy.  But I allowed my JOY about the event to be stolen.  sigh.  I'm mostly over that, so I promise to blog about it...eventually.

While I enjoy reading others' blogs, there's still a part of me that wonders, "Who the heck cares about what I have to say?"  Hence the sporadic blogging.


(Clicking 'Publish Post' will cause me great anxiety.  My PP brain (procrastination perfectionism) is on overload for this post.)

This is me.  Covered by GRACE.  Whew!

(Post blogpost thoughts:  This entry sounds kinda heavy.  That's not how I intended it.  I am in an absolutely fantastic place in my life right now.  Things could not be better!  Well, maybe they could...if I could eat chips and queso for every meal and NOT suffer the consequences.)

What Are You Looking At vs. What Do You See?

(First of all, not related to point of this post, I'd like to publicly whine about the sorry size of our recycle bins.  "We want you to recycle, just not very much.")

This scene made me drive back around for a second look (and a photo).  Let me explain:  Today is recycle day.  Once a week, the recycle truck picks up the recycling.  So how did they NOT see the can labeled "recycle" right next to the recycle bin?  Because someone was focused ONLY on seeing the recycle bins. 

How much do we miss 'seeing' while we are focused on the task at hand?  How much 'living' have we missed out on while 'making a living'?

What are you looking at?  What do you REALLY see?

I may have to surrender my "Awesome at Being a Mom" card

Yesterday, after basically 11 days stuck in the house after surgery, I had just about lost my freakin' mind and desperately needed to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!  So I decided to head to Central Market and invite (drag) the kids along.
Strike One: We took too long in the store. Strike Two: The bottom fell out of the sky and it poured rain.  Strike Three: We hit the freeway just a few minutes after 5:00pm.
We're out!  I made my daughter late for work.  Nice.


Today, The Captain and I took Sk8ter and some friends to a skate function at a local church.  They had the opportunity to use all the skate equipment AND meet Christian Hosoi, a professional skateboarder who just happens to be a Jesus freak also.  Awesome!
There were LOTS of kids doing all kinds of fancy skateboard tricks (there are names for these things, but I am just not that cool) and Sk8ter was a little timid.  I kept trying to encourage him to participate and he did, eventually, but it didn't go as he had hoped and he got discouraged.  Then he asked for a snow cone.  I told him I'd buy him one as soon as he tried one more time.  Bribery.  Is that wrong?  I really just wanted him to build his confidence by participating.  Lots of people were falling and not completing their tricks and we wanted him to take notice of that and see that they just kept trying, over and over and over.
So he tried again.  That's the good news.  The bad news?  He fell.  Hard!  He got some serious road rash on his knee, complete with blood.

I rawked my mom-skillz these past two days.

And these are the reasons I may have to surrender my "Awesome at Being a Mom" card.

Ladies and Gentlemen, You'll Be Experiencing Slight Turbulence.

So...I'm sitting in the Seattle airport.  I should have only been passing through, but due to 'maintenance' on the airplane headed to Kelowna, my flight was cancelled.  nice.  Truly, I'd rather it have been cancelled BEFORE we took flight than to discover a problem in-flight or be stuck on the plane.  It's possible I'll be sitting here for 10 more hours.  The good news:  Free wi-fi, I'm surrounded by seafood restaurants (I've already enjoyed mahi-mahi fish tacos from Anthony's) and LOTS of people to watch.  I'm sipping coffee in Starbucks with the laptop plugged in (free electricity).   The bad news:  I'll have lost a day visiting with Kim and Donna, and the cream and sugar for my coffee are WAAAY over there.  I don't want to get up.  It's not laziness...my bags are HeAvY!  It's a shame it's too much trouble to leave the airport or I could actually enjoy some of Seattle while stuck here.

'Turbulence' like this can bring out the really ugly side of people.  I had to stand in a really long line at customer service to be put on another flight.  There were only 2 more flights from Seattle to Kelowna today.  People were moaning and groaning about their situation.  What's the point of that?  Seriously...what can be done about it?  What's the point of griping at the ladies behind the customer service counter who had no control over the flight being cancelled?  They were doing the best they could to help everyone.  My suggestion was to bring out the people responsible for the cancellation and make them work the counter so they'd have to listen to the complaining.

I have some pictures for this post, but the cable to my camera is in my suitcase...which is 'I have no idea where' at this moment.  Hopefully it'll be on my flight to Kelowna tonight.