Our journey through life
This last week has been a reminder of all the wonderful girl friends I have in my life. There are many more wonderful ladies that aren’t shown in these pictures, but I wanted to highlight some of the fun times I’ve had in just one week!
Inspiration
Amy Larson’s Birthday-Good reason to celebrate. Wonderful friend.
Girls day out at the pumpkin patch!
An impromptu dance party!
Thanks for all the memories!
Fall is such a beautiful time of year in the Northwest. The colors, the smells, the crispness in the air. It is all so good for the soul. The word Richness came to mind, and I looked up the definition, which said; “Richness: affluence: abundant wealth, fullness: the property of a sensation that is rich and pleasing, fullness: the property of a sensation that is rich and pleasing .”, and it goes on and on. Perfect word to explain how I feel about this season.
It seems like the changing of the weather improves and enriches our people time. It’s hard to take a walk and not notice the beauty that is all around us. Eventually the weather get’s cooler and we stop searching for greener pastures and the thing to do is to grab a cup of coffee and catch up with a friend or even snuggle up with our loved ones on the couch and watch a movie. It’ s always easier to connect with people in the Fall and Winter time. For Jonathan and I, it seems like our nightly ritual is to have dinner, bundle up, take Briar dog for a walk and then come back and catch up on movies, Facebook, shows, etc that we have missed, but it’s always time together. We have also been blessed to have a great community of friends that we spend time with frequently on the weekends and sometimes during the week. It seems like even these groups are more connected during the colder months.
We are looking forward to this and the next season and all that it brings. We are fortunate to be able to spend Thanksgiving this year with Jonathan’s family in Baltimore. That will be a rich time for us. We are also looking forward to all the Fall/Winter activities with friends (pumpkin patch, small group activities, dinners, coffee, parties, etc.) if you have a free night, we’d love to hear from you and spend some time with YOU as well.
With all of this, I must say that I feel so Rich! Together time, time with friends and family, All of these things add to the beauty of our lives. We hope that you and your family have a Rich and abundant season this year!
On Sunday, September 13th, we celebrated being married for one year. We can’t believe how quickly the year has past. As a gift to each other, we went away to Lopez Island for the weekend for a much needed getaway and camping trip. The Islands, is also where Jonathan proposed, we had an island style wedding and we had our honeymoon on an island, so we kept with the theme. Lopez Island was beautiful. We packed our car, including the doggy, and headed out Friday night to catch a Ferry. We had a great site at Odlin County Park on the waterfront. We had two picnic dinners, two lunches and two breakfasts on our own private waterfront property. On Saturday, we hiked, explored, and roasted smores to our hearts content. Mostly, we just enjoyed one another’s company and time with our dog Briar. The only thing we would do differently next time around is get a bigger tent. It was a bit cramped in the 2 man (really 1 man size) tent with the Bri Dog included, but it’s a memory that makes us laugh already. We returned home Sunday, napped, showered and went to a wonderful free dinner on a gift certificate that had been given to us for Macaroni Grill. There’s always a piece of paper and crayon’s on the table and we wrote down all that we had done in our first year together. We also wrote a long list of things we want to do this next year…so hopefully we stay young and the adventures continue well into our next anniversary. We saved dessert, OF COURSE, to have some anniversary cake (Thanks Barb!) and some yummy blackberry dessert wine that we picked up at the Lopez Island Vineyard. A great way to polish off the weekend, the evening and leave us just tired enough to get plenty of sleep for the next day.
Thanks everybody for all of your Anniversary Wishes, and most of all for being a crucial part in our lives and our marriage. We love an appreciate each and every one of you. You have definitely helped to shape us and our marriage this year.
We spent one last day for the summer today with Jonathan’s parents.
They are very caring and always fun to be around. The five of us (with Jono’s nephew Seven included) had lunch together and then headed down to Seattle for the Ballard Locks where we checked out the salmon run and took some time to smell the fresh summer air and catch some good music in the Botanical Gardens. After, we took them to the Ferry Entrance at the Seattle Waterfront and leisurely walked around until we were able to wave to them as they took off. The summer has gone so fast and it feels like we didn’t get enough afternoons with them. It was good, however, to hang out with no agenda, just the family, just relaxing and enjoying eachother.
Mom and Dad, we will miss you and we look forward to seeing the family again on Thanksgiving in a few months!
For those of you who do not know, I’ve resigned my HR Generalist position at Bayview Retirement Community and I have accepted a new job here in Bothell. My new title is formally Business Development Coordinator. Whatever you call it, it’s pretty much managing an office for a financial advisor from the ground up. It will be a new exciting challenge and will give me a new set of skills from which I earned my degree, but it is also PART TIME! With the word part time, the heavens open up and the sound of freedom rings in my ears. I am sl…o…w….in…g down. Wonderful, isn’t it? Well I think so anyway. This past year has brought some changes within me and with the markers of a first year of marriage combined with turning 30 has really caused me to evaluate what is important to me in the future. As a result, I’m doing some re-aligning in my life. A few of my priorities are changing and I’m finding myself becoming a more nurturing person and realizing just how much every moment matters. Leaving Bayview has been a hard decision because I truly have enjoyed the people there, but when the rubber meets the road, I have a wonderful husband and a funloving and energetic puppy that mean the world to me and I am happy to have the opportunity to give my time and attention to them. Not to leave out also, that I could use a little bit of pausing in my life. I’ve been running and running for over 3 years and I feel God prompting me to take my running down a notch and listen more, and trust more, and make my choices, and purchases, and time spent more aligned with His will. I’ve been trying to make things happen for far too long.
Looking forward to each new day.
This is a testament of God’s grace and mercy in my life.
This morning in church we finished off a series from Habakkuk. The service and the songs that followed gave me a clear glimpse of how much I have been blessed by all that God has done for me. Throughout my life, there have been several unmistakable blessings of provision from God. He has shown me His ability to provide despite my resources, circumstances or even my obedience or behavior. He provided for me when I needed to go to college one more year, He provided for me when I needed to purchase my first car, buy my condo, and has given me favor in work, school and peronal situations. Although I will not list them in depth here, I do want to take the time to mention and acknowledge the beauty that He has brought to my life out of situations that seemed hopeless at the time. I have had family and even friendships taken away or changed. Most of them very painful and some I am still greiving. I have also had many blessings He has given me, like Jonathan and a new job with flexibility and quality of time that I have needed for so long. I could do nothing but stand there this morning and cry with joy in my heart at how he has brought full circle so many things in my life that seemed painful at the time, but have clearly brought blessing and the understanding to me that I have now. If you see me, please remind me from time to time to stand with heart open and fists open so that God may take away and give me whatever His purpose may be for the rest of my life.
One of my favorite Christian music artists, Sarah groves sings a song I want to share.
Lyrics to Add To The Beauty :
We come with beautiful secrets
We come with purposes written on our hearts, written on our souls
We come to every new morning
With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can hold
Redemption comes in strange place, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we are
And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That’s burning up inside
It comes in small inspirations
It brings redemption to life and work
To our lives and our work
It comes in loving community
It comes in helping a soul find it’s worth
Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we are
And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That’s burning up inside
This is grace, an invitation to be beautiful
This is grace, an invitation
Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces
Calling out our best
~Sara Groves
I want to add to the Beauty. God help me please to tell a better story, for your glory. Amen.
So, it’s been a while and I haven’t been so good at keeping up on our summer, but we’ve had quite an eventful one so far. So far,
but hopefully we will never really stop being young.
We are hoping for a few more adventures before the summer ends. I’ll try and keep updates more frequently for the rest of our short summer. Fall is quickly approaching with a whole new season of events and hopefully some new great seasons in our lives. September also brings a total of 1 year that Jonathan and I have been married. It’s been a wonderful 1 year and we are looking forward to what each year brings.
Mothers Day is bittersweet for me. It’s a mixture of sadness and missing my own mother and now..it’s a celebration for mothers who have extended thier hand to me, the mothers I look up to and a celebration of things to come. I try and think less of my self and more of all the mothers to be celebrated. I try and concentrate on the latter list, but grief always takes me a bit by surprise. Since my mom passed away, my brother and I have gone out to get a plant in her memory. It’s a tradition that is very meaningful, yet it always tends to jog my memory that she is not really here. It’s okay, but it always tends to bring out a fresh exposed emotion that lead me into the next day. ..
Momma,
I know you are up in heaven now and you are resting in God’s comfortable peace. I know it is the best place you can be, but I can’t help but be my human self and miss you here on earth. There are so many things you have missed here. My graduation, my first home purchase, my wedding. You’d love Jonathan. You’d love his family too . They are the sweetest people. As I move nearer to the chance of motherhood myself, it brings me to another raw emotion…the fact that you won’t be there to see my children. Your grandchildren. I won’t have the opportunity to call you for advice …or just to share that they took their first step or did something really cute. I hope I can love my kids one day as much as you loved me. Most of all I just miss your presence in my life. Near or far…you were just a phone call away. Of coarse there are regrets. Relationships are never perfect, but I know you were the best mama you knew how to be. You loved me with all of your heart. I always knew that. I think I have spent a lifetime searching for another human that would love me as unconditionally and has patiently as you did.
I want to honor you today although you are not now in bodily form. You have made such a mark on my life. You were a good picture to me of just what God’s grace is.
I love you momma. Happy Mother’s Day
We just found out that on Good Friday, our friends Nate and Emily from Portland gave birth to a precious baby girl named Adahlia Jewell King. She was born on April 10th at 9:21pm and she is 7lbs, 7 ozs. What a precious gift! Congratulations Nate & Emily! We are so happy for you and we can’t wait to see the baby next time we’re in town.
We want to take this post to thank God for His sacrifice and payment for our sin. We rejoice in the fact that He rose from the dead, but even more that He Chose to Bear the weight of our sin. At our church this morning, Pastor Dean taught about the Passover and the special meaning that it has for us and how it lead to God’s plan for His son’s ressurection. Check it out: http://www.pathwaysblog.com/2009/04/09/easter-sunday/ What a thing to celebrate! Aside from both of us being a bit under the weather lately, it’s been a great day of rememberance. We also got to spend time with the kelly, Clayton/Green, Westman and Heston family this afternoon….ending the day with a steak dinner with just the two of us at home. We are blessed by those we know, the church we go, and eachother and look forward to the year we have together ahead. It is the grace of God and His sacrifice on Calvary that paves the way for all that we do. Our prayer is that we not take this for grantid. What a humbling thing to live knowing we He has done just for us.
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