10 things that make me happy today...

I am going to borrow this idea for a post from my good friend Alisa.  She has posted several wonderful things that bring her joy in her life from sunlight in her kitchen in the morning, to the amazing adventures of raising her baby boy.  I have known for a while that gratitude is so very important and it brings me joy and peace to be able to be so fully aware of the blessed things in my life. 

10.  Every time we come home and get greeted by our two dogs.  Even if I go outside to water the plants and come back inside a few minutes later, they are excited to see us every time we come home.  They wag their tails, freak out in little circles around us and bring warmth to our home. 

The next few posts will be about things that bring me joy specifically during out camping trip we just took over the weekend.      9.  I love driving through windy roads with blue sky all around us.

8.  Driving to a campsite with the intention of hanging out with good friends, canoeing and being outside. I love sitting around a campfire, catching up, and feeling the breeze around us as the smell of burning leaves surrounds us.  I am sure I have mentioned this before, but how fun is it to just be?  To have no agenda, no lists to get done, to just sit and relax.  It's great!

7.  I like where we live and how close we are to a lot of fun 'city' things but it's great to get away from all the city lights, have space, and remember how beautiful the reflection of the moon looks at night against water, to have the chance to see a dozen more stars than you can ever see in your own neighborhood.

6.  Singing in the car with the windows down and my hair blowing wildly in the wind.

5.  Hot dogs.  I do not like normal hot dogs and really only eat chicken and turkey.  But we recently discovered these amazing chicken sausages from Hy-Vee that have different ingredients like spinach and feta, roasted red pepper and asiago.  We grilled the hot dogs and toasted the buns over the open flame last night and it was DElicious.

4.  My good friend Megan (who we went camping with) is pregnant with her first baby and it was fun to talk about their plans for expanding their family, how she is feeling, the idea of actually have a kid, etc.  It made me think of my nephew, Kestan and all the sweet moments I have been so lucky to share with him.  To continue to get some of those moments with him, my friends' kids and eventually our own. I took this picture on the way home from a trip to Omaha a few weeks ago. Kestan loved seeing his reflection in my sunglasses. 

3.  Speaking of good friends, I love these girls Megan and Ashleigh (we camped with them and their husbands this weekend).  The six of us rented a condo in S. Padre Island three years ago and hope to rent a cabin in Colorado next Fall.  It's so great having such good people in our lives!

2.  Summertime.  We have had some very good times with the family cooking out and going to the pool this summer.  We spent my brother's birthday at the pool and Kestan and Uncle Matt had similar hats and they are both too cute.  I am looking forward to Fall but I know once it's here it will remind me of just how fast this summer has flown by. 

1.  This guy, my husband.  I am constantly reminded of how lucky I am to have him in my life and as my partner.  He continues to be so very kind, thoughtful, HILarious and amazing. He puts up with my quirkiness, he encourages me to sing and to do anything else creative I chose to do, he challenges me, entertains me, supports me and accepts all of me.  There is nothing like driving just about anywhere with him by my side. 

We are far more similar than different.

the above pictures i took on our last road trip. the good ol' midwest. i must have some country blood in me because i LOVE huge white clouds on top of acres of green land, or miles of corn and farmland. and by country blood i mean i love the space, the land, the fresh air, and the nature.

i met a guy today that i was introduced to beforehand as a christian. i had no expectations for meeting him. however once i met him i quickly realized his words did not seem very 'christian' to me. now, i never expect ANYone i ever meet to be perfect. but i also think some people want to claim to be 'christian' without actually acting like any sense of the word and what it was intended to be.  this adult man said rude things about some middle school kids he knew that were on a wrestling team, he called his co-worker "crazy sarah" and questioned her upcoming baptism. he mentioned growing up around bible study groups and attending various christian camps growing up... but what does that all add up to in the end?  true, he is working to try and help young people and i have to commend him on that.  BUT, could he not be more conscious of the words he says?  could he not behave more positively in order to match his words and actions to his 'christian' title?

i ask this to you; what do you think when you come across people that claim to be one thing or another? because i think we are conditioned to find a nitch, a group, attach to a label that may describe one part of us or all of us. a lot of these titles tend to separate us when at the end of the day i think most people believe in being a good person and living well regardless of what you do on sunday mornings. now this is where some of the judgments, guilt, and separateness that comes up and forces everyone to choose the group in which they want to follow, or even more difficult to understand (to some) they choose to be a part of the group that does not attend church. at all. can you believe it?  now, would you be up for believing that you who attends church twice a week might have similar beliefs as this other person who attends twice a year? yet your practices are different, but what if you believe similar things?

i get frustrated by closed minded people.  i do not like when someone claims to be something and their actions say the opposite of their 'title'.  i fear some people will look at those with the 'titles' and their lack of compassion, honesty, and goodness and expect everyone with some sort of faith to be the same. it just isn't so.  i get frustrated by people claiming to be christian, accepting and loving, yet they have a list of certain type of people they will not interact with, therefore proving the very opposite.

side note, i do know several christians that act very closely to their beliefs and bottom line, they are good people doing their very best and that is important to think about too.

this is something we could talk about for days, that is if you were up for discussing it. seriously though, can we just admit that we are much more alike than separate? and regardless how we got here, we are here. and we are here together... might as well work together, eh?

peace.

Omaha

This past weekend Matt and I spent Friday night at my good friend Ashleigh’s new house with her husband, her twin sister (my equally as good of friend) Megan and her husband. You know when you get busy with life and don’t make time to spend with the friends that you really love? And then once you get to it just feels great?! I love those people and pretty much always have a good time when we are together, however this was even more exciting because it has been a long time since we all since sat down together for dinner and then some great conversations during dessert.



There is some sense of peace I find driving through the countryside, the farms, the overall space. It feels real and natural and I find it to be extremely beautiful. We came across a few industrial plants where their pollutants clearly spewed into the sky and those fumes acted like another big white puffy cloud and it made us really think about where all of the things we consume come from. It made us realize that we were definitely more drawn to the space and realness of it all and wanted to continue this apparent never ending journey of trying to become more educated and then do something positive with that information.


The next afternoon we left for Omaha to spend the next 24 hours at my cousin’s wedding. This is a cousin from my dad’s side of the family and to give you a quick run down my dad is one of ten children and each of those kids has at least two kids. And then most of those kids has a kid or two too… basically a good estimate would be this; I have 18 aunts and uncles, about 50 cousins and 23 second cousins just on my dad’s side of the family.



As you can guess with this amount of people plus a bunch of other people we’ve never met that leaves little time to talk with anyone for more then a few minutes. You never have a chance to greet everyone, and the people you do talk to you get the amount of time it takes to ‘catch up’ since the last time you saw them. “Are you still working there?”… “Where are you living at now?”… “How’s married life?”… And occasionally you get a chance to ask something to find out new and interesting information… “Where have you traveled recently?”…”When are you due?” (addressed of course to the three cousin’s that happen to be pregnant at the same time). It is of course good to see everyone and happy that they are doing well, however it always feels so rushed and has little chance to get real that it is usually a whirlwind of greetings and hugging goodbye saying “Sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk more…”



It also makes for a good time for our immediate family to hang out. We drove up with my brother and his girlfriend. And then we drove home with my sister and her family. My nephew Kestan just started saying the L in Lindsay and has for the past 2 ½ years referred to me as ‘sinny’. Last Saturday when I babysat him we spent a few minutes working on the L in Lindsay and he became so dramatic with it, it just made me laugh and we moved on to something more fun. Yesterday at the hotel he all of a sudden said “Lindsay, look!” And he wanted me to watch as his mom helped him put his shoes on. We praised him for saying Lindsay and I high fived him as we both said “booya!” It was just a few minutes later that he started to refer to me as “Linds” and it just melted my heart. That kid is too cute. He is at the hilarious, crazy, awesome age of learning great things every single day but still being a toddler and overall just a joy to be around.



I do not sleep well at hotels. It usually takes me a while to fall asleep in general so double that issue by 2 when it comes to hotels. I am also a self proclaimed semi-germaphobe so you can imagine where my minds goes the second I step in to any hotel room, I refuse to step foot on the bathroom floor until there are towels spread about. However, I love not having a schedule, and as much as I love our dogs and our home, it is great to have a break and be in a place where I have nothing to clean, no dishes or laundry to do, and we can just be.
Lastly, this weekend with tons of family, sharing car rides, sharing a room with the duh’s! (yes we are trying to save some moola, and sharing a room turned out to be not so bad at all) it just reaffirmed how sweet and kind and totally hilarious my husband is. I am very lucky and blessed and at the end of the day I am thrilled to be home with our dogs relaxing for a few hours before another busy week rolls on. Peace.

Let's call her Sara...

Last week I had the worst family meeting I have ever had with a family. I reluctantly went back over to my client's (a thirteen year old girl) moms' house where she spends only a few court appointed hours with her a week. I went over in hopes that our second meeting would be better than our first, and I was wrong. I did everything I could to re-direct the mom when she went off again and started bringing up awful stories from the past, how awful her lawyers were, the judge lies, I was against them, everything she could do to blame everyone else for all of her problems and do absolutely nothing on her part to try and help the situation they were in. My biggest problem with all of this, despite the fact the mom didn't listen, despite the fact that her adult brother joined the yelling fit and spewed hateful things all around the room, even despite the fact that it was so uncomfortable I considered sneaking out the sliding glass door that was right behind me without saying a word to them.... my biggest problem with all of this was that the thirteen year old girl sat silently beside me during all of this. I kept trying to bring that to their attention; what you are saying is not appropriate to say when she is in the room!! But she didn't care. The mom was the most inappropriate, ignorant, irresponsible mom I have ever met with and clearly the irresponsible behavior runs in the family. The mom did not care that not only had this girl been through hell by some of the true stories she just yelled about, but now, this mom is keeping her in hell by her continued idiotic actions. By the end of the meeting I miraculously managed to wrap things up somewhat positively and the mom even said 'have a nice night' as I left, which was the total opposite of her 'I don't care what the judge thinks, and I don't care what you think!' rant a few minutes earlier.

Cut to yesterday I get to meet with my client again thankfully this time we have an individual meeting and her mom is a good few miles away from us. This meeting I tried to de-brief her about that last meeting and make sure she understood the original point of our meeting. She said she felt embarrassed by what her mom and uncle had said and she felt herself getting red sploches on her arms and chest because that's what happens when she gets uncomfortable. A while later I asked her what a healthy relationship is and she said it's one where you argue just a little bit but mostly get along. She then went on to say she thinks people should 'feel whole' before they get in to a relationship because what if that person leaves and then you are less whole? That didn't make sense to her. This girl is having to learn what a healthy relationship is but what she DOESN'T see. She has to imagine what a good relationship is and she has to guess how she thinks she should be treated. She also went on to say that she feels like her parents are racist and that makes her uncomfortable and she doesn't want to be racist. I explained to her that the cool thing about that was that she didn't have to be racist.. she didn't have to think everything her parents thought and that made her smile. This is the first time in her life where she is feeling more comfortable forming her own thoughts regardless of what people say around her and I think that's great. This is a case where I don't think I will ever help her parents, but I think she has stepped up and started to make better decisions for herself and in turn she is open to changing for the better. She is still hopeful and that makes me hopeful for her.


What a difference a week can make!

Day at the zoo

This past weekend we had our nephew on Matt's side over (Hayden) for a day and a sleep over at our house. We started the day with a very fun trip to the zoo. I packed us a lunch and the weather turned out to be beautiful. Almost all of the animals were out and enjoyed a nice tram ride to break up all the walking, which by the way I bought new sandals from Target and wore them for those four hours of walking. Not. Smart. Also turns out the sandals are really uncomfortable. Not. Cool. After the zoo we came home to rest for a few minutes then headed over to my mom's neighborhood pool and spent some time with the Duh family (my sister's family). After all that fun and excitement we went to our favorite pizza place for cool salads and delicious pizza (one with pesto sauce soooo good). We spent the rest of the night at home playing tony hawk skateboarding game on the x-box, doing star wars mad libs, and burping contests, you know all the things an 11 year old boy wants to do. :) It was very fun having Hayden and I know he enjoys some time apart from his siblings to have his own time with us. We plan to have his older brother, Matthew over before the summer is up too. We like taking advantage of the time we have available now to do get to build these special times with our families.

so much to say

open up my head aaaannd let me innnn, little baybaayy! -dave matthews, anyone? i seriously feel like i have brilliant things to say almost all of the time until i sit to write a new blog post. mainly because i don't have pictures. i mean, who wants to just read words, right? get a book! but really, we have just finished our first week without cable. NO cable. when i was on the phone with time warner the lady seemed shocked at the idea of canceling ALL cable, i mean what about this package, or this one... nope, we're good, thanks lady. to be honest i have not missed it. the only times i miss it are when i want to turn on something ridiculous to have as background noise while i work (i work from home) and what good does that do? it makes me feel bad for people that feel forced to watch the actual trash that is on during the day, the judge shows, the springer shows, just crap in my opinion. i have found myself being on the computer more and have not chosen to read any more than usual. i have been able to accomplish some things i have been putting off like cleaning and organizing my art room, getting rid of gross cleaning chemicals under the sink, i mean cool stuff like that. so far netflix has been awesome. new reccommendation: the movie 'god grew tired of us' a documentary about refugees from sudan that get the chance to come to america, very interesting. and of course old office and scrubs episodes. we did not get rid of cable to stop watching shows, but i do find myself watching things more intentionally like to educate myself on something or open my eyes to a new way of living, etc. rather than watching anything to pass the time.
matt and i have enjoyed way more dinners at our kitchen table then in front of the t.v. together. if you already do this this may sound simple to you, and it is, but if you have the tendancy to eat in front of the t.v. together, i would say try not to one night and you will probably enjoy it. it's a little like that seinfeld episode when kramer freaks out about the idea of getting married and thinks that all couples do is sit around saying 'how was your day'... 'well how was your day'.. 'what kind of day was it?'. but it's a great time to check in and the conversations might get awesome, you never know.
we are having matt's nephew (mine too of course, but usually my friends think of kestan when i say that) over tomorrow and we plan to go to the zoo, the pool, and out for pizza, what's better than that? it's very cute because he is excited to get to spend his own time away from his siblings with his favorite aunt and uncle (i made up the favorite part, but i do think he thinks we're pretty cool which is nice). right now kestan's favorite people are nana and bupbup (grandma and grandpa) and if they are around i don't exist which i can handle because it so sweet to see them interact with him and his face just lights up when they are around.
i sit now in a quiet house when all the dogs are asleep, even my brother's wildly energetic dog that we are dogsitting for the weekend.. and i revel in the space, the peace, and the freedom to do whatever the heck we want. i know that someday sonner than later we will have a not so quiet house and more things we need to do as our family begins to grow and i will revel in that time just as i do today.
hey here's a really cool picture of a mountain, and then a beach, and then a monkey, what?! alright seriously no pictures, just words. that's all i've got for now. next post and or book chapter will be about my new clients. i still am amazed that in my line of work people invite us into their homes and openly discuss everything they'd like to change about their lives. very very interesting.
hope you have a good weekend!

Update: our garden

So we started with this...


Next thing we know that space is covered in green! And the squash quickly started to grow up our porch, sprouting flowers and what I assume are squash (I've never grown them before).


We have three more tomatoes growing.. and I say more because we used to have three huge ones that a damn squirrel took! These next three are getting covered with cayenne pepper in hopes of keeping critters away.



A baby cucumber sprouting!


A string of cucumbers! I planted way too many radishes and carrots in too small of a space. So because they didn't have enough room to grow, I decided to pull all of them up and give the cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash some real room to grow and hopefully plant a little wiser next year. I was just so excited that some thing was growing, I didn't really plan out the space as well as I could have.


Carrots are supposed to be a little bigger than radishes, right? :)

At least our fresh basil is going crazy and we have one cute green pepper growing too.