January Reads

The cold weather has been the perfect excuse to curl up with a good read, and I've logged some serious hours on the Kindle this month. My first read was our January book club selection, The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan.

This was a good book...I wouldn't say great, but good. It was very long (around 600 pages), and it spans around 50 years in early 20th century China, telling the story of an American madam of a courtesan house and her relationship with her half Chinese daughter. Everyone at our book club meeting agreed that it had some good parts and kept you engaged, but that they probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Right after that I jumped into our February selection, Me Before You by Jojo Moyers. This only took me four or five days to finish because I couldn't put it down. I loved the characters, the story and the writing, and I can't wait to discuss it at our February meeting.

Now I'm skimming through Hands Free Mama. This is a short, easy read about living a less distracted life and being more present and intentional with those you love. Nothing revolutionary,  but a good gut check and shot in the arm.

John and I still read every night before bed, and we've been rereading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. He is way past these, but we still laugh out loud every time we read them.

We are traveling quite a bit this month so I need to download some new titles. Can't wait to get engrossed in a new plot!

Winter Weekend

I will never be warm again.  At least it has felt that way for the last few weeks.  We are on round 3 of the "Polar Vortex", and all I want to do is curl up with my heating pad until spring!  Lawrence spent the weekend in Vail with Mike, and they had a ball skiing.  I think it was actually warmer there than here.

While he was gone, the kids and I woke up on Saturday to a snowy morning, which meant cancelled ball games and field hockey practices.

That's okay though...we watched movies, napped, watched lots of Big Bang Theory episodes and were just all around lazy. The kids did get a little bit of sledding in, so all in all it was a good weekend.  

But I'm definitely ready to say adios to the Polar Vortex!  

Fun in Cincinnati

Lawrence and I had a great 24 hour getaway in Cincinnati this past weekend. My mom and dad stayed with the kids, and Lawrence and I headed north late Saturday morning with no real plan in mind. We had a reservation to stay at the 21c Hotel (thanks to our friend, Brad Wilcox), and we planned to go to the Pottery Barn outlet and IKEA, but other than that our plans were wide open.

First stop was the PB Outlet to hopefully score a leather recliner.

No recliner to be found (at least not the one we wanted), but we enjoyed wandering around the outlet and a few other stores before heading to 21c.  The hotel was very similar to the one in Louisville...lots of modern art with a very hip and funky feel.  Our room even had one of the signature penguins you see at the one in Louisville (it sort of freaked me out when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw its shadow).

On the way up to Cincy, Lawrence remarked that he should have checked to see if any good shows were showing while we were there.  He had been wanting to see the Book of Mormon, and we couldn't believe when we spotted a billboard that advertised it was actually showing there right now (it comes to Louisville this summer).  Then, when we pulled up in front of the hotel we saw that the theatre was directly across the street.  

Even though the show was sold out he decided to walk across the street to the box office to see if any tickets were available.  He came back with two box seats with "limited viewing" for a few scenes of the show (I barely noticed!).  This was such a fun, unexpected part of our trip. When I told John we sat in a box at the theatre, he asked, "Like where President Lincoln was shot?"  That made me laugh.  No drama at our show, just laughs.

Directly across from our hotel room was the spa, so on Sunday morning we had an 80 minute couples  massage - heaven!  

Our last stop before heading home was the IKEA store. 

We had never been and wanted to see this super structure of home goods and furnishings.  WOW.  At first I couldn't get over the size and selection of everything they carried...then about 15 minutes in I was experiencing sensory overload...too many choices, too many people, too MUCH!  We finally reached an exit, and Lawrence said, "We left our massages at IKEA!"  Oh well, now we can say we've been.

What a fun 24 hours we had...we weren't gone long but it felt like we did a lot - a perfect mini-vacation in the middle of these cold, grey winter days!

Birchbox

My sister gave me the greatest gift for Christmas this year...a subscription to Birchbox, which is a monthly delivery of cosmetic, lifestyle and fitness samples. I've seen it online for years but never splurged on it myself. I love make up and fragrance so this is the perfect gift for me. I went online to customize my interests and this tells Birchbox what type of samples I'm most likely to try and buy full size versions of. My January box arrived this week and I felt like a little kid because I was so excited to open my box and see all my miniature samples. They hit the nail on the head and sent me all things I can't wait to try: dry shampoo, yummy smelling body butter, lip and cheek stain and an Under Armour headband. Can't wait to see what comes next month!

One Little Word Revisited

The other night when I gave everyone in the family their One Little Word swag, Lawrence said to me, "Great minds think alike." I didn't understand what he meant at the time, but unbeknownst to me he had ordered T-shirts from Cafe Press with our OLWs on them (he had done this before he knew I had ordered our bracelets and keychains). Of course I loved this! Anything to keep us pointing toward our goals!

Brad Paisley Concert

On Saturday we headed downtown to the Yum! Center for a fun night of country music.  Despite how many times he's come through our area, we had never seen Brad Paisley in concert, so we made sure to get tickets this time around.  All the Youngs are big fans, and we had a great time with the kids, Mary Taylor, Sydney, Tanner and Lori.  

First we had dinner at Bearno's (thanks, MT, for snagging us tables!).  Such good pizza, and I hadn't been there in almost 20 years (fun fact, this is where Lawrence and I met for the first time, when it was Anthony's by the Bridge).  

Cousins!

The two opening acts were great...Danielle Bradbury (season 4 winner of The Voice), and Chris Young (I didn't realize how many of his songs I knew).  Brad himself was fantastic, and we all knew every single song.  John got his first taste of a country concert, with this cowboy seated in front of us.  This guy danced the entire show, and he had John put his hat on for a quick pic at the end of the night.  The funny part is that the guy was actually a really good dancer!

There's one in every crowd

Tanner had surprised his mom with this "date", and she had a ball.

Thanks Brad, for a super fun night!

My favorite concert date

One Little Word

For the past several years I've followed a blog by Ali Edwards, a scrapbooking "professional" who designs supplies related to memory keeping.  Each January she talks about a project she embarks on called "One Little Word" (known as OLW in her blogging community).  The idea is to pick oneword for the year that will be your underlying "theme."  Sort of a resolution, but more just a direction you want to follow in achieving the goals you set out for yourself.  I've never really thought much about it, but for some reason this year it caught my attention, and I decided to bring the whole family along on my OLW trip.  In late December I explained the concept to them (this was met with snickers and eye rolling from the kids), and I told them that one night before New Year's we were going to sit down and share our one little words.  I pondered and pondered what mine would be, and Lawrence said he was thinking too, but we weren't going to share any of our ideas until New Year's.  

After dinner on December 30th I had each of us write down and share our OLW.  Again, some snickering and eye rolling, but I would not be deterred!  We are going to set and achieve some intentional goals this year or die trying!  I gave everyone a Project Life card to write their word on with a brief sound byte about what it meant to them.  

Our Little Words

Here are the words we chose:

Jill:  My OLW for 2014 is CHOOSE.  I thought and thought about what I wanted my word to be, but what I really want at the end of each day is to have chosen well.  Many things in life are out of my control, but I make many choices each day that impact my life both here and for eternity, and I want to be more intentional this year about what those choices are. 

Lawrence:  His OLW for 2014 is PEACE.  He had a somewhat stressful year last year, and he wasn't always happy about how he managed it.  This year he is striving for peace among the chaos of a busy life.

Sarah:  Her OLW for this year is POSITIVITY.  We are on Sarah a lot about complaining and being negative.  We all need to sound off sometimes, and of course you need a safe place to let your guard down and vent, but negativity can become a lifelong habit that's hard to break.  She wants to work this year on seeing and responding to things in a different light (or maybe she just knew I would like this word??).

John:  His word made us all laugh.  He chose THINK.  He says he thinks a lot of his day to day problems are caused by not thinking before he acts and speaks (that's actually a problem for the entire human race!).  He wants to think this year before he acts.  

The next day I went onto Etsy and ordered some trinkets to help us each remember our OLW.  I ordered bracelets for John, Sarah and I, and a keychain for Lawrence (I knew he wouldn't wear a bracelet, but I wanted it to be something he might still see every day).  They arrived this week, and I put them on everyone's plate before dinner.  

OLW Swag

 Will the OLW project make a difference in our lives this year?  Only time will tell.  If anything, the exercise of picking our OLWs caused us each to reflect on where we would like to have some personal growth, which is always a good thing.  Only God knows what is in store for us this year, and we all know that life is something that happens while we're making other plans, but I hope we value our days and spend them well.  Happy New Year!

Nueva Vida

This past fall Sarah joined the Spanish National Honor Society, and one of her membership requirements is that she complete ten hours of service within the local Hispanic community per semester.  Because she has volunteered in our church's children's ministry for several years we thought it would be a good fit to find a Hispanic church community where she could help out with childcare needs during their services.  I did a Google search, and the first church that came up was Nueva Vida, which is affiliated with New Life Christian Church on Goosecreek Road.  I emailed the pastor and he immediately got back in touch with me and invited us to come to one of their services so that he could meet Sarah and introduce her to the kids in their community.  This has been such a perfect fit!  The first Sunday of every month the children meet for "children's church" during the adult lesson, so the past two months we have gone, and she has helped out with the kiddos while I've gotten to enjoy some great sermons (thank God for the headphones they give me so I can hear the translator!).  The worship service at Nueva Vida is much different from what I'm used to at Southeast...much more intimate and expressive, with a full hour of singing, prayer and communion, followed by another hour of teaching and prayer.  And while I don't understand the words during the worship hour, I find myself just using that time to pray and meditate on my own, which has been lovely.  The kids are such cuties, and Sarah has enjoyed meeting them all, and finds it interesting that most of them speak English as their first language.  I've loved seeing a glimpse of another culture and have been blessed by how warm and welcoming they all are.  So glad we've been put a bit out of our comfort zone and are getting to make new friends in the process.

At the end of the service Pastor Ramirez and his wife Shani 
prayed for anyone who came forward with requests.
I love how open and authentic the entire community is.

Hello 2014!

Happy New Year!  Last year I took quite a long break from the blog and enjoyed archiving our family memories in a Project Life album, but this year I'm back to the world of digital memory keeping and hope to use our family blog as a way to preserve and share the good, bad and ugly of our crazy, beautiful lives.  We just wrapped up a fun 24 hours of ringing in the new year with our good friends, the Buntings and the Psimers.  We've celebrated New Year's Eve with them several times, and after taking last year off it was so good to back at the Buntings for a relaxed evening of fun and friends, complete with a sleepover.  Our kids only see each other about once a year, but they always pick right back up where they left off, and the same goes for us grown ups.  The Buntings' neighbors, the Theinemens, also joined us, and it was the perfect way to welcome 2014.

The kids played games the ENTIRE night...every time you turned around they were playing poker (for Twizzlers!), chess, ping pong, Apples to Apples or whatever else they could come up with.  This year we had three sixth graders, a seventh grader and two eighth graders.  Much to the middle schoolers' chagrin, Sarah no longer considered herself part of the "kids" group, and was happy to hang with the grown ups. 

Card sharks 

Sarah chats up the dads after dinner

Late night (or should I say early morning) Rummikube -
our group's favorite game!

Uh oh...John got pranked in the middle of
the night by Jackson 

Lazy football afternoon 

More games!

The time absolutely flies when we're with this crew.  I loved welcoming the new year with both my family of four and some of our oldest and dearest friends.  Looking forward to a new year of memories!