Happy Anniversary!

Four years ago today I married the man of my dreams.

Seriously.

James was the first boy I ever had a crush on. He still is.

I love you so much honey. Can't wait for the next 100 years!

Happy Anniversary!

A picture from our first anniversary (we bought each other the same card. How cute are we?)

Easter 2009

Quoteable Quotes

I read this quote today from one of the comments on the Living Proof blog. I LOVE it.

It said:

Prayer is asking for rain.
Faith is bringing the umbrella.

LOVE that!

I have about a kazillion quotes in a pretty notebook my mom gave me in HIGH SCHOOL. I have added to it all this time. It's got pressed roses, scribbles, notes, slips of paper sticking out everywhere...it's one of my favorite things and something I can't wait to give to Abigail. Or at least inspire her to do as well. The quote above will be added shortly. And while I have too many to name that are already listed there, one of my favorites is:

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. "

And just because I can't be that serious all the time, a close second is:

"Put your big girl panties on and deal with it!"

Makes me smile every single time.

AbbyDangerous

I cannot cannot cannot believe how quickly time flies. I remember as a kid thinking that it was FOREVER until Christmas came and the months of summer vacation seemed endless. Even the idea of an entire school year seemed insurmountable. Yet here we are at the close of another year, MY SIXTH YEAR (holy cow), and it feels like it just began. I guess time has always gone by quickly. I mean, High School seemed like a blur and we are now in the throes of planning our ten year reunion (yikes.) But I think once you have a baby time goes by in like, warp speed.

My sweet baby girl has hit a growth spurt. She has nine teeth (and is working on a few more judging from the fist-eating going on) and is suddenly Miss Independent. Her favorite word is "No!" and has recently learned "Mine!" much to the chagrin of anyone who would dare try and remove something from her super-human death grip. I have prayed for her to be bold and strong but never imagined I'd have a full-fledged daredevil on my hands! She is so not afraid of ANYTHING! We took her to the park beside Mema Sue and Papa Buster's house last week and she went down the little baby slide BY HERSELF. So Daddy decided maybe she'd like to try the BIG slide. I was very nervous but here comes my sweet baby girl barreling down that tube grinning to beat the band. She did it two or three times alone, once with Daddy, once with Mommy laughing the whole time. Tuesday night when Mommy felt the WORST...fever and all...Daddy and MeMa took her back to the big girl slide. When asked if she wanted to try it herself, Abby's Daddy let her climb up those big steps and get to the top just knowing she'd sit down on that cute little hiney and barrel down. Not AbbyDangerous. No sirree. She threw her hands down and came down that slide HEAD FIRST!!! Those big eyes got a little bigger I think but she did it!

We spent some time this weekend at my Mom and Dad's and the P-O-O-L (which was fffffrrrrreeezzzing). Abby was a little timid on Saturday content to sit on the first step and splash away. By yesterday afternoon she was swimming all around and her favorite game was to be held by her fingers and "dropped" in the pool to about chest level and quickly raised back up again. Laughing the whole time.

Yeah, time totally goes by too fast. Where is my precious sleeping baby girl? Where are those newborn cries? Oh how I miss holding that bundled baby with the peach fuzz hair against my face. But I wouldn't trade one second of my AbbyDangerous seeing her grow and learn new things every day. Being fearless and brave. And hearing her say "Whe Mama?" with those chubby hands raised? Or hearing "Bye Bye Mama. I dooo." Oh, how I love you too, baby girl. My sweet Abby. Dangerous or no.

The Battle

On January 1st I joined a group on Beth Moore's blog called the "Siesta Scripture Memory Team" (or something close to that anyway). It's a group of women (and maybe a couple husbands thrown in there) who committed to learn one scripture every 2 weeks, on the 1st and the 15th of every month, for the entire year. One verse in 2 weeks??? Piece-a-cake!! Ummm...not so much. It is HARD. And I have a crazy good memory for stuff like this. I can barely remember people's names but song lyrics and movie lines and things like that just come naturally to me. So I thought this little challenge would be quite easy.

Well it's not. And it's because of The Battle. The battle that seems to rage in me ALL of the time. The battle between what I WANT to do and what I KNOW I SHOULD do. It sometimes is a no brainer: read or give Abby a bath? Sometimes it's a hard choice: dessert or no dessert? Sometimes it's begrudging a choice already made for me: go to work or stay in bed ( REALLY hate that one). But with this memory challenge it's more like "Memorize scripture or do the other trillion things on my plate today?" And since I'm a world-class-procrastinator I am ALWAYS waiting until say the 29th and then the 13th to START memorizing my verse. I usually can do it, amazingly enough, but it totally defeats the purpose. The idea of this challenge was to have the word "living and active" in me. And it is. But I don't want it halfway. I want to know my verse by day 3 and then be able to walk it and live it and have it in my heart NOT just in my head by the time to choose a new one. I didn't memorize my verse from the 1st of this month AND I PURPOSELY PICKED AN EASY ONE!!!!! So today I chose a new one and am resigning to learn both of them in two weeks.

I know I'm not alone in my battle. I know every woman on the planet suffers with learning the balancing act of being wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, WOMAN. Add in there "Servant of the Most High God" and you've got yourself some insane responsibilities. But they're ones that I love and shoulder with gratitude and hopefully grace. (I also have an UNBELIEVABLE accountability partner who offers me support and grace and whom I know this does not come easy for either. Love you so much, Meliss!)

Yes, I am fighting this battle, but I already know that I am "more than a conqueror" through Christ Jesus. And his word IS living and active in me. Even if it's working its way down from my head to my heart.

My TWO verses to learn this time are:
1. (May 1) :
Romans 8:32 NLT
Since he did not spare even his own son but gave him up for us all, won't he also give us everything else?

2. May 15:
Psalm 73:25-26 NIV
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Bummer

The next two months are absolutely insane for us. Between birthdays (Happy Birthday to Crystal today!!!), Mother's Day, anniversaries (four years baby!), school ending and all that that entails, I had found a small little nook of time on Wednesday June 3 to fulfill a childhood dream. Accompanying me were to be 7 other girls who, with me, would scream their heads off and sing along to the songs of our youth and be reminded that first loves never die. That's right. I was going to the New Kids On The Block concert. The NKOTB. In other words, my one-time-true-love Jordan Knight and his friends. But alas, yesterday I received disheartening news by the cold, unrelenting radio when they announced the concert in Raleigh was CANCELLED!!!! Oh the humanity! They only cancelled 3 or 4 shows of their summer tour and OF COURSE ours was one of them. Such a bummer. I'm still holding on to hope that they will reschedule and come back to see us. That my neon and stone-washed denim days can be relived and I can be reminded that I do, in fact, have "The Right Stuff." Until then, I'll be "Hangin' Tough".... And I'm so corny I can barely stand myself right now. HA!

Come on girls, you know you loved them too. What was your favorite song? Did anybody have the comforter set? Do any of you STILL have your doll? 'Fess up!!!!

Mother's Day

I never need a day to celebrate my Mom. We have always been super close. I'm both a "daddy's girl" AND a "Momma's Girl." Thank the Lord I've never had to choose one way over the other. My mom was 20 when I was born. She laughs and tells people we grew up together. Which we totally did...which means my childhood was wonderful. She started cosmetology school the same day I started Kindergarten. She would take me to school with her and let me color in my Barbie coloring books at a manicure station while she worked. She once used me as a "model" for a test. She spiral-permed my hair that was down TO MY WAIST. It took like, 4 hours but I was a trooper. Loved getting the beauty treatment but more so, I loved the attention! Mom was so girly and loved that I was too. There wasn't a sequin, sparkle or ribbon that was wasted on me. I started doing pageants when I was 3 and loved more than anything when she would do my makeup and tell me I was "doing better than the big girls." They all sputtered and blinked when she'd do their mascara. But not me. I loved every second of it. Even shining my white patent-leather shoes with 409 and a paper towel! Ha! I so loved seeing her beaming in the audience pushing the corners of her mouth up with her fingers reminding me to smile or seeing her mouth every word to my song during talent. A girl's biggest cheerleader for sure.

If she wasn't helping me with some beauty treatment (yellow and pink sponge rollers come to mind...) she was talking about the Lord (to me at 2 years old: "Erica, do you want the Holy Spirit? Do you want Jesus in your heart?") or reading me a Bible story. My favorite was Daniel. She always says that before she could ever get to the end I would interrupt her, grinning from ear to ear, so excited to say "But the Lions did not HURT Daniel!!!" Even then I was in awe of God's grace and provision. A trait I'm most proud of and one that I undoubtedly owe to her.

There are a million stories I could tell about her. Sweet ones, funny ones. Like the time I sprained my ankle and she took me home before we went to the hospital so she could change clothes because she said "you get treated better at the hospital if you look nice." So she came to the car in a **BEDAZZLED** sweater with a gi-normous beaded butterfly on the front and her best Estee Lauder make up on. So hilarious. There are way too many to tell. So although I don't need "Mother's Day" to know how blessed I am it does make me appreciate her in a completely different way now. Because in 20 years or so when I am being celebrated on Mother's Day, I pray that Abigail Mackenzie thinks half of me what I think of my gorgeous, Godly, determined, tender-hearted, loyal, totally wonderful mother. I wanna be like you when I grow up!

I love you Mom. You really are my best friend. Hey gir-fren...Wanna go shoppin'?

My Peeps!

I don't know WHY I didn't stick with my other blog. I seriously did ONE post and walked away. As I confessed in my initial post here I don't even know which blog site I set up that account on. How sad. Anway, I said all that because I just LOVE it here and am enjoying this little experience more than I can say. I think it's sort of a release to just get out what I'm thinking or feeling. That's the ice cream. But the sprinkles on top are the COMMENTS! I clicked on here yesterday to post and got carried away with reading the comments my friends had left for me and ran out of time. To think that you would read these words, that they would somehow resonate with you is just so cool. I'm WAAAY behind on the blog train but let me just say, it's a trip I'm THOROUGHLY enjoying! So thanks for coming with me.




===== And now I'm fuming mad because I can't figure out how to import and embed a stupid picture of SPRINKLES. Stay tuned to see if I figure it out. Ughhhhh.





House update: Meeting with owners tonight. Pray for favor and for Wisdom. We may have finally found it!

Relief

I hate fear. I hate being a scaredy cat. I've always been one. I am terrified of snakes, spiders, anything with more legs than me. ..Anything that slithers or crawls or goes bump in the night. I'm still scared of the dark. I am scared of change. Mostly, though, I am terrified of something happening to someone in my family. I don't think about it a lot because it can be too much and the fear of what could happen gets to be suffocating. I will literally lose my breath and feel a weight on my chest and in my heart. I've woken myself up in the middle of the night sobbing because I was dreaming of a family member's funeral. I've had sweaty palms at the thought of the possibility of a horrible diagnosis for someone I love. So last night when my mom called and said she was taking my dad to the hospital, needless to say I was afraid. Afraid of what they might find. I knew he wasn't dying. He had chest pains with dizziness and nausea and a long history of high blood pressure and heart problems in his family. Being proactive is never a wrong decision so I was glad she was making him go. But as I told the church this morning, fear was the first thing to come over me and all I could think was how much I love him and how much a girl needs her Daddy. I have a wonderful husband. Better than most, in fact. And he is the man in my life in every way. But a girl still needs her Daddy. And I think James understands that now that he has sweet Abigail. One day she'll be married and have her very lucky husband...but her Daddy will want her to still need him as well. And she will.

Because Daddy's blood pressure was so high they decided to keep him overnight and run several tests today. All tests are normal, praise God and they put him on blood pressure medication (which he actually should have been on for about 6 months now if you ask me). The thing is I knew in the back of my mind he would be okay. No, I knew it in my heart. But I still let fear take its vise-like grip. Even if it was only for a few moments. And that makes me so mad. Because I know the Great Physician. I know that by His stripes we ARE healed and that Daddy has far too much work to do for the Lord to need Him now. So I am discouraged by my lack of faith. But by this test and I'm sure the ones to come, the Lord is strengthening me and stretching me and reminding me over and over that He is in control. Even when we're scared our Heavenly Father is cradling us, shielding us from the world's harms. And THAT is where we can find rest. And relief. And thank you Lord that I, like my Dad, will rest easy tonight knowing that. I love you both with all of my heart. (And you too honey.)

Babies babies everywhere

Okay so Patrice and Miles had their baby yesterday and I found out today that my friend Kimberlee had her baby boy Cohen on April 20. I repeat, I found out TODAY!!! We are going this afternoon with my sister-in-law Crystal for a 3-D ultrasound of their baby boy Kanen (due on July 18). So with all this baby love going around I got to missing MY baby so much. So here's a couple recent pictures of her, mostly to keep me company but I'm sure you'll enjoy them as well. :)

At the Easter Egg Hunt with Mema Lillian. Check. Out. Those. Pigtails.

Easter Sunday at Mema Sue and Papa Buster's in her EBAY Strasburg dress. I love technology. Almost as much as Abby loves finding those eggs.

Smelling a flower with Daddy at MeMa Nancy's house

Precious in an outfit Papa Wesley brought back from California

Apparently easter eggs are like Catnip for toddlers. She's um, REALLY excited. Again, those pigtails.

Already??

It's MAY? Already? It's May. I never remember a year going by so quickly. Life is literally ZOOMING by. I've heard people say so many times that the older you get the faster time goes. I don't consider myself old but can definitely tell I'm getting oldER since I can barely get a grasp on today before it's already over and time to prepare for tomorrow. Does that make sense?

Tomorrow makes One Week that we've been living with Sue and Buster. So far so good. They are so wonderful to open their home to us. And while I do feel comfortable there it's not MY home...What's so great is that they get that. They know we'd RATHER be in our own house and that this one is still very much theirs, but while we're there they want us to know it IS ours. They are so precious. We're making it work!

So one week down and who knows how many to go? We're going tomorrow to look at about 10 houses. I found a few in Haymount (downtown, historic, pretty part of Fayetteville) and a few more in the Eastover Area that we're going to check out. I pray that we either find something we love OR we'll have a better idea of how hard we need to fight for another house we've had sort of "on hold." Either way I so want to walk wisely and for God's will to be done. I know he "knows the plans he has for us" (says Jer. 29:11 thankyouverymuch, Leigh) and he already has our house picked out. I'm just hoping, as I said on Facebook a week or so ago, that his signs tomorrow are as big as a billboard in Times Square.

I'm excited to know where we'll be and put down roots and keep building and growing our family. Whether it's just with we happy Three or if we'll add number four I can't wait to pull in the driveway and be HOME.

Quick P.S. : So thrilled for my lady Patrice and her cute hubby Miles as they welcomed a GORGEOUS daughter to the world yesterday. Aslyn Brea Autry. Can't wait to hear that baby sing....