i.love.the.beach.

 I love the beach.

The way the sand feels between my toes.

How the wind flies through my hair.

Listening to the sound of the ocean waves.

The scent of the salty air.

Watching kids play in the sand.

Smiles.

Laughs.

During the week of July 4th (cough, cough sorry this post is so late) we spent some time with family down at one of our favorite spots – Fort Walton/Okaloosa Island… the weather was perfect and we came home with tans.

Sometimes you just have to get away for a while and leave your worries behind. I read a book. Went snorkeling for the first time. Laughed with the nieces and nephews. Ate some great seafood. Even got to see my nephew in the Army. Hadn't seen him since Christmas.

Isn't he a cutie?

It was good. Good indeed.

I’m so thankful God has blessed me with a great family and family-in-law.

Thankful that we’re healthy enough to go on a vacation.

Thankful that we’re able to set aside some extra $ to take time off work and relax.

Thankful for my five senses so I can take it all in when we’re in a new place.

Sometimes I forget how blessed I am.

Maybe some of these pics capture a little of that. Here are some of my faves.

I'll spare ya the food pics. 

sometimes beach

other times pool

tickles

tackles 

silly

because we can

cousin snuggles & smiles

naps... all around 

even out on the deck Lol

my first time snorkeling

my first ride in the mini 

and (ahem) Caleb scares me a little

and of course I had to play photographer for a minute

Thanks for the memories.... and for makin it to the end of this post. 

xxoo

last week's happenings

I heard somebody say recently that sometimes we miss out on the good things in the present because we're always looking ahead, looking forward to something in the future. 

I totally get that.

And I've been guilty of it. 

The work week is sometimes a struggle. { can I get an Amen? } How many times have we all said HURRY UP FRIDAY or I CAN'T WAIT TIL THE WEEKEND

BUT... I'm glad that most of my days are filled with really great things. 

Friends.
Family.
Church.
Time with my hubby. Aka my soul mate. Aka my best friend. The dude that knows more about me than anyone else on the planet and loves me anyway. { read "puts up with me and doesn't kill me" } 

Lookin out my back door at this - -  not mad about it

God's creation is magnificent, isn't it? 

He's given me some awesome friends. 
Friends who are distantly related to me. 
Friends at church. 
Friends at work. 
A friend of a friend. 

Friends who are less tan than me. teehee

Friends who are more tan than me. teehee

Friends with more shoes, clothes and jewelry than me. ;-)

Seriously though - I enjoyed shopping with my girl Bridgett last week. Aka pale arm. lol She's kinda like my kid sister. And she puts up with endless texts. And pics of my cat. And pointless things. Many many pointless things. Lol 

Aaaannd celebrating Angela's birthday at The Cheesecake Factory Friday was one for the books. Working with these gals is always an adventure. It's cool to be FRIENDS with your co-workers. 

My goodness - 
    can't leave this one out!

Enjoyed some Jesus talk with this precious girl yesterday AND had my first Starbucks experience. So there's that.

All in all it was a pretty good week.

Live life and love every minute yall! 

hand lettering by yours truly

The other day I was reading another blog & the author was learning to do some hand lettering. 
here's the post from The Small Things Blog 
I've seen this kind of stuff around Pinterest. 

I've always kinda liked doodling, writing stuff out and making cool block letters and what not. I'll admit it's gotten me through a few boring meetings.
But I've never tried to make my doodle really cute, ya know?

After a couple of attempts with pencil, I decided to dive on in the water and make one for a friend's wedding and ink it. 

I like how it turned out, although it's a little different from my "first draft."

Here's the finished product  - - 

And this was my first sketch 

I definitely figured out during this process that I needed a good eraser. 

Or as I called it in my younger days, a re-raser. 

My first attempt at hand lettering was a copy from one I saw when I googled hand lettering. Only I switched one word in the phrase... instead of writing oh crap I wrote oh mercy. Cuz ya know. . . 

THEN I decided to sketch out my favorite Bible verse. Lots of people were posting "challenges" to share your favorite verse and I hadn't been challenged but it inspired me to doodle it any hoo.

Again - pencil... may ink this one sometime or another. 

And last but not least... this one is fairly simple. 

Again, a copy of one I saw from a Google search. Made it for my bestie.

So maybe I'll try to come up with something cool for this year's Christmas cards. If I do, you better know I'm gonna be finding a quality copy service to duplicate those bad boys cuz leaning over a paper can give you neck pain. Trust me on this.

camp chat

This year was my second trip to #LHCAMP at Ocoee Retreat Center (aka Horns Creek) with about 650 middle schoolers from our church. And once again, I HAD A BLAST!

Here’s what a typical day at our camp looks like - -

Rise and shine

Meet in the field (all campers and volunteers) for exercise, fun and skits

Breakfast

Quiet time (devotion) for campers / Counselor meeting for adult volunteers

Morning worship service

Back to the cabins for family group with campers (discuss the message from morning worship, quiet time topic, etc.)

Tidy cabin time (they have a contest every day for whoever has the cleanest & most creative cabin)

Lunch

Recreation time

Back to the cabin to clean up for dinner

Dinner

Family group time with campers to prepare for evening worship

Evening worship service

Campfire share time

Back to cabins for family group time (allow campers to share about worship service, etc.)

Lights out at 11:30 (yeah right)

If that sounds like a lot it’s because it is a lot. They like to keep the students busy because busy students are less likely to get in trouble. Also, keeping them on the go like this gets them good and tired. And when they’re good and tired they’re more likely to be open to the things of God.

This year my group was a lot larger. Last year two college gals and I had charge of 8 beautiful young ladies. But this year there were 22 in the group. My poor ole memory had its work cut out for it. Remembering names - not my strongest skill. Anyway. Most of our campers were rising 6^th graders. The rest were rising 7^th graders. They were pretty great.

And my co-counselors were a couple of lovely gals who had just graduated high school.

Don’t be fooled by their youth & beauty – they were awesome! As it turned out, our group got to be in one cabin together – just us – so it was like we were a family for the week. That was neat.

We did our morning share time on the deck of our cabin.

Right behind the deck there was a little stream. It was peaceful and especially beautiful in the morning.

We did our evening groups in the living room of our cabin. 

I learned a lesson early in the week – passing around a big bag of mini chocolate candy bars at 11pm isn’t the best method for getting 22 girls settled down for Jesus talk.

In all seriousness though, these girls eventually opened up and shared some things that were pretty heavy. Sometimes as adults we forget the baggage you carry around in the teen years. My heart ached as girls shared about financial difficulties, death, bullying and family problems. We cried and prayed together. God was definitely in our little cabin in the woods.

It’s always so awesome to literally sense God helping you say the right things in these types of situations. Things I had heard my dad preach over the years. Stuff I had learned through reading the Bible & my own personal study. It would just come rolling out. Being spiritually equipped feels so good. And to be blessed with two spiritually sound well-grounded co-leaders was icing on the cake.

At camp F I V E of our cabin mates asked Jesus into their hearts. And one girl recommitted her life to Christ.

That’s what camp is about – LIFE CHANGE ! ! !

I’m so glad I got to be a tiny little part of something God did in east Tennessee during a week we set aside for kingdom work. Sure, a lot of kids went to camp because they were enticed by hanging with friends sans parents, ziplining, playing paintball, swimming and rock wall climbing. . . and we did all that… it’s loads of fun of course…  but the most important thing is that hundreds of students turned to Jesus last week. And that has eternal consequences!

God is soooo good!

Here’s one of my favorite worship songs we did at camp. ENJOY!  

WORTHY WORTHY by Vertical Worship

If you’re more lookin for a more upbeat song, check this one out. And you might wanna put on your dancin shoes.
Brighter by Hillsong Young and Free

are we ever satisfied?

Ok, this is gonna be a kinda girly post. 

I was thinking the other day about my body shape. There are parts of my body I'm cool with. Other parts I fantasize about changing. Not that I would. But a girl can dream... 

Ok... If you're gonna make an apple pie, what's one of the most important ingredients? 
 
Apples!

Well you can't really make an apple pie with oranges, can ya? 

So why do we, as girls, get so upset when our apple-y body doesn't look right in the clothes that are made for a pear shaped body? 

One of the things I think we kinda miss the mark on is finding clothes to fit us. 

I see cute styles and pine for em, but then I stop and think hmm. . . that's probably not gonna work on me because (insert reason here). . . 

And while I'm on the topic, can we please stop measuring ourselves against Hollywood models and the like?

It's bad enough we compare ourselves to each other, but trying to look at your body next to someone who has a personal trainer, a chef that cooks most of their meals and doesn't live a real life... um cmon now! 
  
God made us all in His image. We aren't meant to all be a size 3. Some of us are tall, some are short. So what? 

Be happy with what ya got ladies! And play up your best features! 

Well, that's me on my soapbox for a minute. 

Carry on.

Hope Can Change Everything

Hope. 

Hope can be defined as expectation... desire... even trust. Hope is something we all have. 

Hope for good weather on vacation
Hope for a good test result at the doctor
Hope for many years on earth with family & friends

If we're a Christian and we have the love of Jesus living in us, we have a different kind of hope. 

In 1 Corinthians the Bible tells us that three things will last forever - faith, hope & love. 

I especially love Jeremiah 29:11 
          "For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord.       
       "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."

As a Christian my hope is in the Lord. 
Because He will never fail me. 
He'll never leave me. 
He'll never ever disappoint me. 

I listen to KLove (97.1 in the Nashville area) & they play Christian music. Really good tunes. Last week they played a song called "Hope Can Change Everything." The song is performed by several different artists & all the proceeds from sales on iTunes go to a really good cause. 

Here's an audio version of it I found. Hope Can Change Everything

Life can be tough. If we spent a little more time encouraging each other, offering hope, I wonder how much of a difference we could make. 

In Matthew 5 we're instructed to let our light shine before others so they can see our good works and glorify our Father in Heaven. We're called to shine His light.

See if there's somebody you can share a little HOPE with today. 

Like this song says - you could be the spark, you could be the word, you could tell them something they've never heard ... a word can give you strength to face another day... 

Offer HOPE 

auntie time and an extra little visitor

I'm the coolest aunt. 
On both sides of the family. 
Hands down. ;-) 

But for some reason Kerlandy hasn't ever spent a lot of time with me. 

The other day my brother asked if we could keep Kerlandy for the weekend because they were going out of town and she didn't wanna go. I said sure, no prob! 

So she came on Friday evening and stayed til Sunday evening. 

And we had a lot of fun.

We spent Friday night hanging with my other bro and his fam (previous post). Saturday we had pancakes for breakfast, hung out a little and then I took her to get her nails done. You know, girl stuff. 

It was cool because I haven't hung with a niece in a minute... since I only have the one niece and she's married with babies now.... so.... the last time I was a cool aunt to a niece we were still tucking our shirts in and tight rolling our jeans. Ah the 90s.

Anyway. We played Trouble and Monopoly, too. She apparently has powers over Anthony that I don't. Cuz Anthony will never play even when I beg. 

Hey. 
I get bored sometimes. 

Riley came over Saturday afternoon. Til then he had never met Kerlandy. 
They became fast friends.

And can I just say the $1 whoopie cushion I bought while we were out earlier that day was definitely a dollar well spent. I'd say we got way more than a dollar's worth of entertainment out of it.

Unfortunately the whoopie cushion met its fate when something happened upstairs and we heard a loud POP ... 
Guess I should've bought two.

On Sunday morning we surprised my parents and went to their church. 

photo cred to my pal Angela 

After that we bought Kerlandy the most nutritious meal ever at Sonic and headed home for more fun.

She and I rode bikes and jumped on the neighbor's trampoline and played some more inside. 

I was kinda sad when I had to take her home. It was fun having her around. 

Maybe she'll come back sometime. 
Cuz I didn't get bored one time all weekend. 
And that was pretty cool ;-) 

DICEcapades with the fam

The source of these smiles you ask? 

A game called DICEcapades... buy it on Amazon if ya want to

My brother and his fam are allll about some games. Me too! 

When we hung out with them recently we tried out their new game, DICEcapades. Loads of fun is what it oughta be called. 

We laughed and had a really good time playin it. 

Ok, so once in a while it was a little tough with a trivia question 

And then there was the card that made my beloved do two push ups. 

We almost had to call 911.

Ok, not really. 
But he was grunting and groaning like he had done 200 ... It was hilarious. 

Anyway, if you're in the market for a new game for friends or fam I give this one two thumbs up!