Things I Liked in February

Archer Farms Organic Blue Corn with Flax Seed Tortilla Chips
These are so delicious, I can eat them all by themselves. I don't like bland food, I like things to have lots of flavor, but these don't even need salsa. They're very crunchy and salty and the flaxseeds give them an almost nutty, very satisfying flavor. With guacamole, these were almost too much for my tastebuds to handle. So good.

Bolthouse Farms Berry Blends Juice
I bought this one afternoon, on my lunch break, when I was fasting and needed some juice to help me make it through. I got it at Whole Foods and I thought it was one of the prettiest colors I've ever seen. I'm a little unsure about "purple carrots", but nevertheless, it was tasty and felt so healthy.

Unicycles and Double Decker Bikes
On the same lunch outing where I purchased the above juice I also saw a man on a unicycle and a man on a double decker bike. They make fun of this in that show Portlandia and I just thought, way to go Portland, prove them right. I mean, who has time to ride a unicycle down NE Sandy in the middle of a weekday? An un(or under)employed hipster. That's who.

Candy
It was February and February means one very important thing - Valentine Candy! I have a cool new coworker who supplied me this month with Valentine Nerds and SweetTarts. I also have the most amazing dad in the world who never fails to send me a box of See's chocolates. Candy = love.

My new wallet

I have been wanting a new wallet for a while now. My love for purses and bags also extends into a love for wallets. Every time I go to Target I torture myself by looking at all the wallets and trying to justify purchasing one. I've also been searching my favorite thrift store hoping they would suddenly have a cute, affordable wallet. Finally, one weekend this month, I was at Target and I decided (for no apparent reason) that it was time to buy myself a new wallet. And it was worth the wait! I love this wallet - the color just makes me happy - and it was only $10.

Dried Cherries
I really like dried fruit. It's chewy and I love chewy stuff. Dried fruit is like nature's gummi candy. I especially love dried cherries - by themselves, in cookies, in trail mix, in oatmeal! They're seriously as good as candy...actually, better!








One Thousand Gifts

I heard about this book from several different sources and pretty much knew I had to read it. True to what I'd heard, this was a profoundly good book. Truly life changing if you put into practice the things the author shares and I believe it is the way God wants us to view life. I underlined, circled, starred and got so excited about so many lines in this book. Interestingly, a lot of the stuff I read were exact lessons that the Lord has been teaching me this past year; it was neat to hear those lessons from someone else's perspective.

Made to Crave
When I bought One Thousand Gifts I also got this book, totally on a whim, totally a God-thing. It's pretty much about how to have a healthy relationship with food. Major. I could say so many things about this book and how the Lord is using it in my life, but I feel like it's almost too powerful for me right now to put into words. I would recommend that everyone read this book. As Christ followers, we should not be in bondage (or addicted) to anything.

Giant Gummi Bear
This should probably go under "Candy" and I'm sorry if you think I'm ridiculous, but looking at this gigantic gummi bear just makes me happy. I want one. I think I need to read more of Made to Crave. Lol.

90's (and a few 80's) Toys!

This summer one of the projects my mom and I embarked on was cleaning out my parents' attic. Which was FULL of toys and memorabilia from my childhood. Lots of this stuff I probably hadn't seen in more than a decade, but boy did it bring back memories! I had a great childhood and here are some of the souvenirs... Do they spark any memories for you?

Popples! I got this Popple for my 4th birthday and I LOVED it! I still remember the Popples theme song (p-p-p-p-p-popples, yeah-yeah-yeah...).

Scuttle from The Little Mermaid. I'm pretty sure this was a McDonald's toy and I had all the characters; they were my favorite bath time toys.

BARBIES! For sure my favorite childhood toy, but for some reason I had a thing for chopping all their hair off...

My anatomically-correct-in-the-chest-area Dolly Parton Barbie from Dollywood in Tennessee. Is it weird for a child to have this?

Henry enjoys snacking on Barbies.

Rescue Rangers! This was my favorite cartoon in 1st grade. I loved the "Disney Afternoon" on Channel 39 in Houston.

Ninja Turtles! This Leonardo was my brother's, but I enjoyed playing NT with him and watched the movies and cartoons with him.

Darkwing Duck (missing his hat) - definitely one of my brother's favorites.

Trolls! This one's hair is all matted and its sign cracks me up. Remember the ones with jewels in their bellies and you were supposed to make a wish on them?

My Little Pony! I got this one when I was 4, at my mother's baby shower for my brother, and it use to have wings. I named her Rosebud. So appropriate.

My FIRST purse! For those of you who know me well, this is a profound moment. I got this purse when I was a toddler and I'm pretty sure I've loved purses ever since. I would rather have a new purse than any kind of clothing. Seriously.

My SHOE PURSE! I'm not sure if this was a trend or just a weird idea in a shop near my house, but I loved my shoe purse and all the cool girls in my 1st grade class had one.

I was a proud Girl Scout kindergarten through 3rd grade. I quit in 4th grade, before it got lame, but those were some good times in Troop 1283.

New Kids on the Block! From nightgowns to posters to lunch boxes, I was a sucker for NKOTB merchandising and they were my first concert in 2nd grade.

The New Kids Ken-dolls. That's Donnie, Joe, and Jon for those who don't know. Sorry they're in the buff, I honestly don't know what happened to their clothes... I do know what happened to Donnie's head - my childhood dog, Jack, did a little brain surgery.

The Berenstain Bears and Care Bears! I loved reading.

Reading Goosebumps and watching Are You Afraid of the Dark? was so cool when I was in about 4th grade.

Apparently I have always loved to bake, even when the cake was made of plastic.

Cabbage Patch Kids! I got this one for my 2nd birthday...which means that she is almost 26 years old....sheesh! She does look a little rough...

Magic Nursery Babies - these were only out for a short time I think - it was where you didn't know if it was a boy or girl until you unwrapped it, took its hat off, and put its diaper in a bowl of warm water - then the diaper would disintegrate and you were left with a little card that said, "it's a boy/girl!". You also got to see if your baby had an innie or an outie belly button and what color their eyes were. Mine was a blonde haired, blue-eyed girl that I named Allison. I wonder if my parents rigged that...

My Child Dolls - I got this for my 5th birthday and I wanted it BAD. I think they were supposed to have realistic feeling, soft skin. Kind of creepy.

Henry had a fantastic time with all these stuffed animals! It was probably like going to an amusement park or Christmas Day and his birthday all rolled into one.

He finally selected a gray stuffed cat that I received as a birthday present once. Her name was "Peaches" and Henry has been ferociously shaking her around the house for weeks. He has a thing for cats. Pure joy.

Last but not least, my mom and I went through boxes of my brother's and my school work that my mom had been holding on to all these years. We threw 99.9% of it away (that is, we recycled it), but not before my little man got to enjoy it. If there's one thing Henry likes better than stuffed animals, it's paper products! Nothing satisfies him like ripping up as many paper products as he can! Surrounded by mounds and mounds of old, musty paper, he was a happy man.

Don't miss the 2 glowing eyes in the window in this last picture - that would be Olivia, the crazy, feral cat. Oh, life.

Out of State License Plates

Ever since I moved back to the Houston area I believe I have been seeing more out of state license plates driving around than ever before! I honestly see at least one (and usually many more) every single day. Maybe I'm just noticing them more, but I don't think so. I'm regularly seeing license plates from Oklahoma, Mississippi, New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona, California, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ontario (Canada?!), New Jersey (weird), and even a couple from Washington state (I take those personally). It's not like Texas is a state that you just pass through (except maybe in the panhandle). If you drive through Texas, it pretty much has to be intentional because once you're inTexas the quickest way out is probably the way you came in. Texas is a BIG state. Why are there so many out-of-staters here?!

Take today for instance, it's only lunch time and I have already seen license plates from Oklahoma, Florida, Utah, South Carolina, and Georgia. The last two were really crazy. I was pulling into Sonic for a large unsweetened iced tea (my current obsession) and I was actually thinking about how I've been seeing all these license plates when I looked to my right and there was the South Carolina license plate. SC plates always remind me of my best friend AJ

because that is where she's from. So then I IMMEDIATELY looked to my left and saw a car with the Georgia license plate - which is where AJ now lives. Both these license plates in a Houston suburb, in the same Sonic parking lot?! Weirdness.

But the one that takes the cake is Florida license plates. For months now I have been seeing at least one Florida license plate per day. I saw a lot of them when I lived in Oregon (opposite corners of the country anyone?). I saw them in Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado as I was driving from Oregon to Houston. And since being back in Texas I have seen Florida license plates in Houston, Fort Worth, and Lubbock. What is going on? Are the people of Florida just really mobile? Is there a mass exodus from Florida going on? Is Florida that bad? I recently went to the bank to ask a question about my account and the teller told me she had just moved to Houston from FLORIDA! I wanted to shake her and say, "why are you all here?!?!". But I thought that would be weird.

Want to hear something else weird? When I was leaving Portland I stopped to get gas in a tiny, middle-of-nowhere town in Southeastern Oregon. In Oregon the gas stations have employees who pump your gas for you, you don't have a choice. So this really young teenager was pumping my gas, he saw my Texas license plate and told me that he had recently lived in the Houston area. Actually in the Clear Lake area. Off of Nasa Parkway. In those apartments across from the Arlan supermarket with the sno-cone hut in the parking lot. Which is literally about 5 minutes from my parents' home! What's the likelihood that a kid in a small town in Southeastern Oregon, working at a gas station, would have lived a few minutes from the exact location where I was headed on that long journey? Oregon is a l.o.n.g. way from Houston. Long. Weird.

The last weird thing, and this is only slightly weird, is that a couple of weeks after I moved back to Houston I went to a family reunion near Austin. While there I ended up talking to one of my dad's cousins who had lived in Eugene, Oregon for 12 years. She now lives back in Texas, but she could really relate to my love for Oregon and how much I'm missing it right now. She said, "yes, you really leave a part of your heart in Oregon". I couldn't agree more.

And this, this is my most favorite license plate. I wish I saw it as much as those dumb Florida license plates.

The Other Disciple Ran FASTER

OK, so I think this passage in the Bible is really funny (besides the fact that it's telling the story of the empty tomb). One time, at Ecclesia, Chris Seay brought this to our attention and now every time I come across it, it really amuses me.

This is from the book of John, written by the disciple John, he refers to himself as "Jesus' favorite disciple" and notice the things he says about his fellow disciple, Peter:

On Sunday morning while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She ran to Simon Peter and to Jesus' favorite disciple and said, "They have taken the Lord from the tomb! We don't know where they have put him."

Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. They ran side by side, until the other disciple ran faster than Peter and got there first. He bent over and saw the strips of linen cloth lying inside the tomb, but he did not go in.

When Simon Peter finally got there, he went into the tomb and saw the strips of cloth. He also saw the piece of cloth that had been used to cover Jesus' face. It was rolled up and in a place by itself. The disciple who got there first then went into the tomb, and when he saw it, he believed. At that time Peter and the other disciple did not know that the Scriptures said Jesus would rise to life. So the two of them went back to the other disciples. (John 20: 1-10)

I just think it's funny that John wants to keep pointing out that he ran faster than Peter - it seems like such a guy thing to do. And people were always giving Peter a hard time. It's little things like that that I really enjoy in the Bible - it's not all pious and reverent, sometimes there are guys just giving each other a hard time.