On Women and Community

God is really stirring up some things in my heart about women and how we should interact with one another.

I have been reading a lot of blog posts about a women's conference that happened last weekend in Texas called HopeSpoken. I love the fact that the women there were encouraged to share their stories and to be there for each other in authentic ways. We as women are not supposed to walk this earth alone. And many of us are in stages in life where we desperately need relationships with other women.

I went through a phase when Josh and I first got married where I only wanted to spend time with him. I loved my friends, but I felt like every spare moment we had (which were very few and far between in those days), had to be spent together. After a few months of this thinking, I finally realized how much I missed my girlfriends and girl time. It became something I craved and needed on a regular basis. And it's something I still need and crave on a regular basis.

I wish with all my heart that all of my most cherished friends lived around the corner from me, but none of them do. Some don't even live in the same state or country, let alone the same city. But even so, I am incredibly thankful for the ways in which we are able to communicate.

My oldest friend and I have been through so much together. We have seen and experienced a lot of good and bad in each other's lives. We have walked with each other through some very ugly and pretty times in each of our lives. And God has used every one of those moments to shape and grow our relationship...we are still friends 14+ years later and I think that is a huge testimony to how God has used us to help mold and shape each other over the years.

One of my other dear friends has been in my life for 11+ years. We have had some really hard times in our friendship but we have also had some incredibly beautiful ones. Each of us have dealt with a lot of heartache in the last couple of years and I am so thankful that we have been able to be there for each other. She challenges me in so many ways and I am so thankful for her.

One of my other most cherished friends has been in my life for about five and a half years now, but we have only really been friends for about four years. And I would say that our relationship has only blossomed and grown in such beautiful ways as the time has gone on. She has been one of my greatest cheerleaders in life and she always has the right words to say...even if I don't want to hear them. We have both walked through some really tough situations with our sisters and having the other person there through it all helped each of us so much. I honestly don't know if I would have gotten through the past year without her.

I have many other women in my life who mean so much to me and have been incredible friends...and I could honestly write about all of them for days. But the focus of this isn't to brag about how incredible my friends are (even though that's totally true). It's to emphasize how incredibly important it is that we as women have other women cheering us on, have girlfriends that we are in community with who are a part of our village (even if that village extends many miles), and have faithful friends who love us through every circumstance in life, even when we may not love ourselves very much.

The majority of the women I have in my life are not very much like me. We have things in common (some more than others) but life would be boring if every single one of my friends was just like me. I need women in my life that have differing views on things and that enjoy different music and activities...and who don't have an obsession with Starbucks (though I think many of them do). But most of all, I need women who can challenge me to think outside of the box sometimes, who will make me ask and answer tough questions and who will point out the things and attitudes in me that aren't so pretty. I value honesty and authenticity so much in my friendships. I hate masks and I hate feeling like I have to wear one, ever. I want to be me and to be real. And while I don't think I can be 100% me with every person in my life, I'm so thankful that I can be with some.

I truly believe that God calls us into community with one another and calls us to carry each other's burdens. If I needed to hop on a plane and be in Colorado tomorrow morning because my beautiful friend needed me, I would figure out a way to get there and go. If I need to rearrange a busy weekend or cancel all of my plans because a friend is going through a really hard time, I absolutely will. God calls us to love one another, as much as we love ourselves. That means that I have to be willing to do for my friends what I would do for myself, if I were in those situations. It means I sometimes have to put my agenda and my plans aside and focus on what is much more important. It means I have to be Jesus in someone else's life, because He's put me on this earth and in their life for that very reason.

So while I'm still learning all of the time what it means to be a good friend, I'm so thankful for the things God has been showing me about the ways women need each other.

A Plane Ride and a Full Heart

A few weeks ago, we got to take a really fun trip to spend time with some of our favorite people.

On the plane, so excited to see our friends!

Reunited with my CO bestie!

We went to the Ivywild School building, which houses Bristol Brewery and Pub and some other businesses in this former schoolhouse. It's such a cool concept of taking a building with that much history and turning it into a successful part of the community. On the left, a Bristol Brewing Beehive. On the right, an Old Fashioned. Both were delicious.

It had been almost two years since we'd been in Colorado, so it felt so amazing to be there again.

Oh how I love those mountains

At the park with the kiddos

John and Josh

We went to a few restaurants we hadn't been to before, spent a lot of time laughing, watched a couple of really good movies (including Catching Fire!!), ate a lot of Emily's fantastic cooking, had some really great conversations, got to play with their kiddos, went mini golfing, went to the movies (we saw Non-Stop), had a girls dancing night to celebrate Emily's birthday, went to their church and got to hear John lead worship again, got to experience a whole day of snow, drove through Garden of the Gods, and just reveled in our time together.

We went and bought Catching Fire the morning it came out on BluRay, because we are kinda obsessed.

 The hubby taking a selfie in the snow

The only picture I took in Cheddar's, which was delicious. It was snowing when we were there.

So glad I was able to celebrate this beautiful friend's birthday. I love her so much.

From our dancing adventures. We went to the Ritz first and had some really yummy martinis. We then headed to Blondie's. King's Chef Diner was our final stop. We had a really fun night.

We also met up with Josh's dad, who is working in the area now. He took us out to lunch and then to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings.

 Josh and his dad in front of the Cliff Dwellings.

Unfortunately, as always seems to be the case, our time went by way too fast and I'm already wanting to buy another plane ticket. It's so hard to have people that I love living so far away, but I'm so thankful for the time that we do spend together. And thank God for texting and social media and all the other ways that we are able to connect when we are apart!

Two of our favorite kiddos! We had so much fun with them. 

 Garden of the Gods

God always teaches me a lot when we take trips out there. I always come back very thoughtful and pondering a lot of different things. I think the biggest thing from this trip was how important it is to surround ourselves with good friends, people we can trust, and people we can have true community with. We spent a lot of time on our trip just hanging out and it was perfect. My heart was so full sitting on the couch, drinking a beer with one of my best friends, appreciating our friendship. We talked about some heavy things and some very lighthearted things, and I cherished every single moment. It was probably my favorite trip thus far.

Currently

Reading: I've been reading the Mortal Instrument series. I'm in the beginning of City of Glass right now, but I put it on hold as I've also been reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. A couple of my friends and I have started a little book club and that is the first book we picked! It's been really interesting so far. I love history and reading about true events, so it's been a really fun read for me.

Eating: After a few weeks of eating (and drinking) a lot of extra calories, I've been trying to get back into the swing of eating more healthy foods. I'm back to eating lots of Greek yogurt, cuties, edamame, avocados, broccoli, and fish. I'm still a huge green tea addict and drink it just about every day, if not more than once a day. Though I do have to have ice cream a couple of days a week. It's been a big weakness for me lately.

Loving: The fact that I've gotten to spend a lot of time with the people I love lately. 2014 has been a great year so far filled with friends and family. I'm missing some of my loved ones oh so much these days, but I'm trying to cherish the moments I do get to spend with them.

Watching: We binge watched Veronica Mars this past month to try and get through the whole series again before the movie came out. We ended up having to skip a couple of episodes and only watch a couple of partial episodes to get caught up before we went to see the movie with some friends. It was all worth it and I LOVED the movie! Now, we are trying to catch up on all of our regular shows since we didn't watch very many of them for a couple of weeks. We did, however, make sure to watch the Walking Dead each week. And let me tell you, that show makes me so tense!! I'm always so nervous about something bad happening to my favorite characters. I get way too attached to these peeps.

Looking Forward to: seeing Divergent this weekend! One of my sweet friends just finished reading the whole series a couple of weeks ago, and it was so fun for me to talk about it again with her. I love that series so much and I can't wait to see the film adaptation of it. Though, I am not really sure that I like the choices of actors to play my favorite characters...but we shall see when I see the movie.

Thinking About: How nice it is to listen to music again while I'm writing a blog post. I used to always listen to music when I blogged, but then I got into the habit of watching TV or having something on the TV so there was some background noise. I really prefer listening to music. I think it helps a lot more with my writing process.

Wishing: Oh man, for so many things! I am really wanting to be in a women's Bible study again. A friend and I have been talking about starting another one, but our schedules have just been so crazy these past couple of months. I really hope it will happen soon, though. I'm really craving that time with other women.
I'm also wishing I could bring all the people I love that are spread out across the country (and even in other countries) into one place. Maybe someday we will all have the means and the time to take an epic vacation together and spend some major quality time with one another. I would love that.
I'm also wishing I could be in Disneyland again in the near future. I'm so thankful that we were able to go so much last year, but now that they've finally re-opened Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, I'm having major withdrawals.

(The Currently blog post idea initially came from Danielle of Something Sweet though Ilene of Much Love, Illy is the one that always reminds me of it)

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

I mentioned in my last blog post that we took a fun little trip this month.

I have a feeling it's probably not hard to guess where we went, since our anniversary was yesterday. Only our most favorite happy place!

Disneyland!!

We bought annual passes last year when we went on our anniversary trip, thanks to many loved ones gifting us money for Christmas and our birthdays in order to do so. We knew we wanted to get the most out of our tickets, but we only had two trips planned originally: last year's anniversary trip and this year's. Obviously, we were able to squeeze a few more in and we had so much fun!

Tradition!

This trip, we wanted to make sure we finished doing everything we haven't ever done or haven't done in awhile, and we wanted to try and eat at as many new places as we possibly could.

Inside the Plaza Inn. It is so gorgeous! I really don't know why we never ate here in the past.

I can safely say we rode on everything in both parks (that we wanted to. There are a few rides I won't ride on, but Josh rode on them), minus any little kid rides we didn't care about (which was mostly just all the rides in A Bug's Land and Goofy's Fly School in California Adventure, and Casey Jr's train in Disneyland, because we did the Storybook Land Canal Boats that has almost the exact same experience). We also didn't do Grizzly River Run, because I never really wanted to get that wet. I think it ended up being about six rides in each park that we chose not to do.

Our first time in Pixie Hollow! This was also one of my goals this year and I'm so thankful Josh was ok with going in there with me.

We went to pretty much every show over the past year. We saw Aladdin, It's Tough to Be a Bug, World of Color, Fantasmic, the fireworks (three different shows), Mickey and the Magical Map, and both the Tangled and Beauty and the Beast plays in the Fantasy Faire Theatre. We also saw both parades in both parks and most of the little side performers they have in different areas.

This trip, we ate at a few more restaurants we hadn't tried before: Cafe Orleans, Carthay Circle Restaurant (that's where we had our anniversary dinner instead of the Blue Bayou), and the Plaza Inn. We enjoyed every single one of them. I think there are only a handful of places each in both parks and in downtown Disney that we haven't tried. And I don't think we've been to any of the restaurants in the hotels. We will have to shoot for those some other time.

We forgot to ask the waiter to take a picture of both of us, so this will have to do. One of the prettiest restaurants I've ever eaten in, with one of the nicest bathrooms I've ever stepped foot in!

Overall, I would say our experience with our annual passes was a very positive one. The lines on every trip were amazing, except for the trips around Christmas and New Year's. We got a discount on all of our food (minus snack-type carts) and merchandise with our passes, which definitely helped us out money wise. We also got a big discount on the tour we took in September last year, which made it a lot more affordable. I loved having our passes and I was honestly a little sad when the last day rolled around that we could use them. I am very thankful that we were able to do it for a year and that we definitely got our money's worth out of them.

Just to show how dead the park was in the morning. There was no one to be seen in this area of Frontierland for awhile

So, this trip was amazing. The park was open the perfect amount of hours for us to have a full day there, but also allowed us to get a lot of sleep. It was also nice to have one last trip with just the two of us. We have our favorite rides that we try to go on at least once a day (others like Pirates we try to do a lot more often) and then we try to throw in other rides that we'd like to go on at least once in the trip. We were able to do so much this trip and it was so nice.

Our sad faces that we were leaving the park for the last time

I am so thankful Josh and I both love Disneyland so much, and that it has such a big part in our story. We may not have been dating on our first trip there, but I'm pretty sure what happened on that trip inspired us getting back together two weeks later...and ultimately getting back together the last time. It's a place I really hope we are able to take our kids to someday. I love sharing my love for it with the people I love.

Life Lately

Since February is almost over, I figured it was about time to do some catching up on what's been going on in my life lately.

I started off the month at a crab feed. I was supposed to go with my sister-in-law last year, but my bestie was very close to going into labor, so I ended up selling my ticket. This was my first one and it was a lot of fun! I couldn't eat as much crab as I would have liked, because I was so full, but it was still fun. I met a lot of my hubby's colleagues and then we danced the night away after.

My sister-in-law, brother-in-law and I after dinner

The next day, we went to a Super Bowl party at my brother-in-law's house with all of our church friends. Even though it was probably the worst Super Game I've ever "watched", it was still a fun day of hanging out and worshipping with some of my favorite people.

Later in the month, I went to Disney on Ice! I loved it so much last year and was so excited to see it again. They did the stories of The Little Mermaid, Tangled, Brave, and Beauty and the Beast. It's so fun seeing the stories played out in skating form, and it was really fun to see how much my niece loved it, as this was her first time going.

 None of the pics on my phone came out the best. The lighting was so bright in there!

My happy niece and her daddy

That weekend, I went dancing with some of my friends, went to my brother-in-law's surprise party...and then we left for a really fun trip (which will get its own post)!

We spent Valentine's Day with some of Josh's family and the next day we went to a friend's 40th birthday party.

From our wine tasting trip last month

We had a fun game night with some good friends last weekend and I went to a wine party with some friends I'd gone wine tasting with in January. And of course, Sunday was our anniversary, so we had a fun day together. We went out to dinner at the restaurant where we had our first date and then to church.

Our anniversary dinner

It's been quite the busy month and March is looking even busier. But it's been a great month and I am so thankful for all of the wonderful people in my life.