day 1

Okay, so, we flew out on Tuesday, May 5th at 5:10pm. My sweet friend Jocelyn and her preshy little Levi drove us to the airport (thanks again, Jocelyn!!!), and we made it through security in like 7.5 minutes and sat at the gate (or maybe at McDonald’s in the airport…) for almost two full hours until time to leave. Our doctor had prescribed some sleeping pills for us, so after a not-so-tasty airplane food dinner, we each took one and planned to sleep our way to France . No such luck. I think we each slept for maybe an hour or so total… out of a 9.5 hour flight. It was a bummer. Anyway, we landed in Paris at 9:30 in the morning (on Wednesday, May 6th), and our friend’s mom (Edie) picked us up at the airport and took us back to their adorable Parisian apartment – with a view of the Eiffel Tower! – and we showered, ate, and changed clothes… and then headed out for the day. Edie showed us how to use the metro and helped us buy our 5-day metro passes, and then she dropped us off at the Arc de Triomphe.

Lance and I headed up to the top for some cool views of Paris (and some chilly wind gusts!).

Here are the stairs we climbed to get to the top…

Then we walked back down all those stairs (a dizzying feat, I assure you) and headed down the Champs Elysses. Obviously there were all kinds of high-end retailers…

And we stopped and bought world-famous macaroons at the intimidatingly fancy Laduree.

They were amazingly delicious... especially that vanilla one. I believe my exact words were, "I'm going to marry this cookie."

By this time, we had had a VERY long day (since we’d only catnapped on the plane) and we both started getting cranky, so we headed back to the apartment… and went to bed. At 7:30. Yes, it was still quite light outside. Ha. Anyway, we slept a solid 12 hours, so that was great. We were much less cranky on Day Two.

home!!!

Although my passport does not necessarily show it, I am officially a world traveler! On Thursday, Lance and I returned from a nine-day trip of Paris , France and Rome , Italy . It was really fantastic… and definitely an interesting experience! Oh – and about the passport comment: Since Italy and France are both a part of the European Union, we only got stamped once instead of twice. I was really disappointed by that. I wanted two stamps!

We did and saw SO much on our trip! I’m sure it will take me several days of blogging to go through the entire trip, but I wanted to at least give it a go…

But then Blogger decided to take FOREVER to upload pics... So stay tuned later I guess.

i'm in a glass case of emotion....

We officially had our first day at Pleasant Ridge on Sunday, and it seemed to be a great success. Lance got such wonderful feedback (as did I) about the entire day, and I am so thankful for that. It seems like we’ve been saying “goodbye” forever; it was prime time to get to the “hello” part.

It was a long day – we left our house at 7:10am and returned home at 9:30pm. We went to first service, Bible class, second service, lunch… then Lance played basketball with some kids from the church from 2 to 4, and then there we had a youth thing at 5:00, church at 6:00, and a reception for us at 7:00. The reception was wedding-style: Lance and I stood, and everyone lined up to shake our hands. I would venture to guess that we met probably 200+ people yesterday. I think I remember 3 names. That’s 1.5%. Oops. Anyway, it was just a very long day. I told Lance that by the end of the day, I wasn’t sure whether I was smiling or just baring my teeth at people.

It definitely made me want to move closer though. We packed multiple changes of clothes as appropriate for each of the day’s activities since we knew we couldn’t make it all the way back to NRH between things. Literally – it was like we packed for a weekend trip. We had changes of clothes and the dog and all of his stuff (he played at Patty’s house) and Lance had all of his toiletries so he could shower… it was a LOT of trouble. I mean, obviously, we will make it work until we can move down there, but it was a strong affirmation that, yes, we do need to move.

I just feel like I’ve got so many different emotions jumbling around inside of me. I’m so happy and thankful that Sunday went so well. (I think we would have been terrified and distraught if Sunday had gone poorly, wondering what on earth the Lord had called us to.) I’m still exhausted from spending a whole day on my feet, shaking hands, smiling, introducing myself, etc. I kind of felt like I was campaigning for something. I should have kissed some babies or something. Anyway, I’m still sad to be leaving some really precious friends (and not LEAVING leaving – I know we’ll still see each other… just not as often as I’d like). I got a phone call and a text from some of our Legacy friends on Sunday, and at the same that it was such a blessing, it got me all choked up. I’m scared that we won’t make new friends, and I’m nervous about having to fit into a new group. I’m confused about a lot of things because our churches operate very differently, so I can’t figure out some things. I’m incredibly excited that our vacation is getting close (although I am not saying how close because I don’t want to announce when we’ll be leaving an empty house behind…). Honestly, knowing that I’m going to have a break and be able to spend so much time with Lance without all the stress of packing, house-hunting, starting a new church, starting a new job, working in our house, etc. is what’s keeping me going at this point. I can’t wait. He’s my bestie.

I am incredibly blessed. Thank you, Lord!

catching up in pictures

I'm trying to learn how to use our new camera before our trip, so I thought I'd do sort of a picture update of some things that I've been up to lately while practicing my crazy mad photography skillz. (HA.) (Also - as I'm posting these pictures, I'm realizing that they are mostly of things I've been BUYING, not things I've been doing. Or maybe all I've been doing is buying....)

First of all, this past Friday, my friend Emily and I went down to the Main Street Arts Festival in downtown Fort Worth (and ate Reata tenderloin tamales for lunch! YUMMO!), and I bought these adorable earrings. The lady makes them out of antique tins, and she cuts them out by hand. I just love the bright colors and whimsical patterns. I almost bought a necklace of it, but the pendant on the necklace was about as big around as a coaster, so I thought that might be a bit OTT.

I think they are just presh. Can't wait to wear them.

I also bought these little black books. They are called City Notebooks, and they are made by the Moleskine Company. (There is one for Paris and one for Roma, in case you can't read the bindings.) They each have subway maps, city maps, places for information about the place you're going, a little pocket to hold ticket stubs, and more. They are really neat, and I thought it would look LESS touristy to have a little black book with a map than a giant fold-out one. Plus they give you places to journal, etc. so that we can keep notes on where we go and what we see.I also purchased our four-day museum passes for Paris. They are such cool little passes. Okay, so it's the size of a credit card but thicker like a tiny book...Then it magically unfolds...And there's a giant fold-out booklet inside the tickets that tells all the museums the pass works at and the dates and times each museum is open.
Please excuse my beginner photography skills. I just needed the practice. :)

spilling my guts

I haven’t kept up on here very well lately… mostly because I couldn’t write about the main thing I wanted to write about. Lance was offered (and he accepted) the position as the youth minister at Pleasant Ridge Church of Christ in Arlington (the church where Lance grew up). This job comes as a tremendous blessing from the Lord in that it is everything we’ve been praying for. Lance will get to be the youth minister for an entire program instead of just having kids for a couple of years, which is what he’s wanted and prayed for. Their offer was also a very generous one, and it will hopefully allow me to fulfill my dreams of being a stay-at-home mom when we have kids. There were lots of other benefits, such as retirement matching, that we don’t get currently but will have at PR, so we are incredibly thankful for the offer. (I feel the need to say, though, that we have no issues at all with Legacy and could/would very easily have stayed for a very long time. There is no bitterness or ickiness in this move… there’s nothing but rainbows and lollipops.) We are staying at Legacy through April 18th (so we will do LTC, Easter, Resurrection Renewal, youth retreat, Acapella concert, etc.). We’ll start at PR on April 25th. We are going to try to get our house on the market fairly quickly, and we want to move down to Arlington to be close to the church… but we really aren’t sure what our timetable on all of that will be.

I have to say, though, that this transition time has been really painful so far. All of our friends have been SO supportive, which has been such a blessing – and far beyond what we could have hoped for. But then we told the kids and the church Sunday morning, and that really broke my heart. I had one girl bawling her eyes out hugging me… saying, “I just feel like I’m losing everyone I love.” My, there were lots of tears. I mean, really… lots of tears. It hurt a lot.

So basically, here’s how I feel right now:

I am beyond thankful that the Lord has provided this opportunity. I am in disbelief that the offer was as generous as it was. I am nervous about Lance being even busier than he is already. I am terrified of trying to sell our house. I am dreading the thought of moving. I am (probably) way too optimistic in where I think we can live in Arlington . I am kind of a fan of looking at houses online. I am overwhelmed by the number of details there are to think of between now and then. I am exhausted from all the crying. I am saddened at the thought of leaving our first house and our church home and our young marrieds friends. I am trusting (or trying to trust) that if God has led us this far, he’s not going to back out now. I am grateful for family and friends that let me talk to them about all of this. I am anxious about starting a new church and having to make new friends there. I am stressed about the number of things that will happen between now and June 1st. I am distracted by all the many thoughts that I cannot seem to quiet in my head. I am wondering how many meals I can make out of the extra 2 pounds of taco meat I made for small group Sunday night (I am STILL a bad estimator). I am completely lacking in coping skills at the moment (one of the items for an outfit I wanted to wear today wasn’t clean, and I stood in my closet so long that Lance finally came in and said, “Honey, what are you doing?”). I am amazed by my husband, who somehow taught class, told the kids he was leaving, gave countless hugs, walked to big church, led singing, made the announcement there, and led a closing song and STILL held it together better than I did. I am thankful that he puts up with the crazy emotions I’m experiencing right now from all of this stress and exhaustion. I am overwhelmed by the number of things I need to remember but terrified to make a to-do list because I do NOT want to see it all in writing. I am fearful of change… and yet, I am at peace because I am fully confident that the Lord has guided (and is guiding) our steps.

And, if I’m really honest, that’s like the Cliff’s Notes version of how I am truly feeling… but I’d end up writing something roughly the length of Tolstoy’s War & Peace if I tried to delve into ALL of it.

I know this is already long, but one more thing.

I am crazy in love with Lance, and I feel SO honored to be his wife. He is incredible at his “job” (if indeed you can call it a job… it’s more of a calling, I think). So incredible that not only the teens will miss him – we had young families and middle marrieds and primetimers telling us what a blessing he has been to Legacy and how much they will miss him. So incredible that about 10 different kids had facebook statuses (statii??) about how wonderful he is and how much they will miss him when we finally checked facebook on Sunday night. So incredible that he’s gotten constant emails and texts and phone calls about how special he is and how much he will be missed and about specific things he’s meant to different people. So incredible, in fact, that apparently PR burst into applause during their second service when they announced they’d hired him. So incredible that he was scared to even make the announcement on Sunday because Sunday was the birthday of a boy in the Legacy youth group that he cares deeply about. So incredible that he checked on individual kids that he was afraid would take it especially hard. So incredible that HE checked on ME repeatedly on Sunday. He’s amazing. If you don’t know him, you’re missing out. I’m just sayin’.

And to close – the verse the Lord keeps bringing to me over and over again – “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” – Exodus 14:14

not my best day....

I don’t always have it all together, but most of the time, to the casual observer, I at least LOOK like I do.

Today?

I wore two different earrings to work.

And didn’t notice until 2:45.

Yikes.

Behind, as always.

I’ve been a terrible blogger lately. I mean, wow. Honestly, it’s because I have felt really overwhelmed by everything that’s been going on in our lives. I feel like I’m constantly going and doing and making lists… but that I’m never really done with much of anything. After awhile, that just starts to really overwhelm me and bog me down. Sometimes, it is a tremendous blessing to be so detail-oriented… and sometimes I feel like I’m missing the forest for the trees.

One of the things that had really been keeping me down was just feeling like I couldn’t ever get our house clean or keep up with the laundry. I’ve been trying really hard to cook dinner a lot (like usually about 4 nights a week), and sometimes that puts me in the kitchen from the minute I set foot in the door from work until we eat (which sometimes isn’t until 7:30 or so)… and then dishes… and then a little time to unwind/veg/watch TV/check the ol’ facebook… and viola – it’s time for bed. I collapse into bed pretty exhausted… and then get up and do it again the next day. Anyway, last week, my sweet husband just said, “I want you to know – I feel guilty that I don’t do more housework when I get home from work. I know I could help more, and sometimes I just don’t.” He proceeded to tell me that he doesn’t always know what needs to be done, so I’ve been sending him a list of things that need to be done each day, and he has them done before I get home from work. It’s just wonderful! It feels like magic (more to me than him, I’m sure)! I’m hoping that his contributions will help me feel like I can get a grip on what needs to be done and make some progress.

We actually got a LOT done this weekend. Our house is cleaner than it’s been in a good long while, and I’m hoping to get a bit more caught up and feel slightly less overwhelmed. I’m also hoping it warms up and gets sunny… I think it will help me to be able to exercise outside again. That releases a lot of stress for me.

I did make some super cute bulletin boards to go in our office. Maybe I will post pictures soon… I don’t think I’ve even posted any since we got our new camera. I’ll have to tackle that very soon. Maybe. We shall see.