Success!

Shopping

Early this morning I got the urge to make something. I googled beginner DIY projects and found a few that I wanted to try. I went out today to get supplies. I think I'll try the button bracelet first. But it'll have to wait till late tonight or tomorrow because I have to leave for work in about 10 minutes... I should get ready.

Tuesday.

Tuesday was my one day off this week. I drove 3 1/2 hours for an interview instead of hanging out at the beach and lounging around like I usually do on my day off. I wasn't particularly excited about having to drive so far just for an interview on my one day off. Luckily the interview didn't dominate my day & instead it was mostly spent hanging out with friends. Having lunch, wandering around, a homemade meal, sitting around talking, and watching The Big Bang Theory made it much more enjoyable to have driven 3 1/2 hours for an interview.

A couple of highlights -

A sign outside of Southern Season (an all around fantastic store). I'm not going to lie, I chuckled at it as we walked in. But they were not lying & we were amazed. Everything was on sale. We came for a card and left with much more (mostly candy).

I think this is great - you can tell our coffee apart by the color. :)

A Day at the Beach

Two weeks ago I went to the beach for the day with my parents. I took a bunch of pictures with this blog in mind - pictures of a day at the beach.

(the house from Nights in Rodanthe)

Dressing up for Harry Potter

means learning how to tie a tie. Just trying out the costume before the big night :).

TSW Shenanigans

Saturday night at TSW right before we're about to close two 11 year oldish boys come in. One of them goes to one side of the store and starts laughing hysterically. "I can't believe someone took the time to DO this," I hear him say. I have no idea what he's talking about. The boys leave. Me and Alex look at each other puzzled. She walks over to where the boy was, "Oh."

I go where she is and take a look. We have these pink glitter keychains with letters A-Z and names and such. Someone, I'm thinking 13 year old boy, arranged the letters so that they spelled a couple of dirty words. Obnoxious? A little. So I fix it and put the keychains back to their proper places. You think after 5 years you would have seen everything customers can do, but no.

Tonight young high school kids a couple guys and girls come in. I see one of the guys go over to the keychains and say "Man, our words are gone!" I immediately know it was him who did it. So I keep an eye on him. Later, while a couple of his friends are getting shirts made I see him over at the keychains making noise. I just know he's doing it again. I debate for about half a second about whether I'm going to say something to him.

I walk over and stand right beside him and look at what he's doing. It looks like he's spelling out I love [dirty word]. He has about 15 of these letter keychains in his hands.

"Are you spelling dirty words?"

"What? Oh, uh, no, I don't know what I'm doing now."

"Uh-huh"

"Can I spell something if it's not dirty?"

"No, we'll have to move them back to their right places anyway."

"Oh, okay I'll put them back."

My heart is racing because that's generally not something I do, but I just had to, and it was so funny to catch him off guard. I half expect him to keep going and spell something but surprisingly when I checked after they all left he had put all the keychains back exactly where they belong.

Owl City

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom

What a weird 4th of July

I guess I’m a stickler for tradition. So when I’m in a place where that tradition generally happens & it doesn’t happen it makes me….sad. I really think that’s the best word to describe it, just sad.

Traditionally on July 4^th my family is at the beach with my dad’s side. We have a cook out and later every one comes back to our house at dark and we make homemade ice cream – vanilla & chocolate – and we all wander around downstairs and upstairs on the porch watching other peoples fireworks. Sometimes there are sparklers; sometimes we even have our own fireworks. It’s happy. It’s fun.

This year because July 4^th is on a Monday and because two of my cousins and their spouses have jobs that don’t allow much vacation time to be spent around the 4^th things got a little mixed up. These two cousins and their families had to leave on the 4^th bright and early to be home for work the next day. So sometime in the middle of the week leading up to the 4^th it was decided that the whole family would do the cookout Saturday night. Because it wasn’t decided till mid week, because hey they’re all on vacation and they’ve got flexible schedules so what’s the hurry anyway in making such a decision?, I was already scheduled to work Saturday night.

Okay. So we won’t have the cookout on the 4^th, but we’ll still have homemade ice cream at our place, there will still be quite a few of us wandering around and looking at fireworks – my brother even got my sister to get fireworks from South Carolina – so it’ll be okay.

Then at about 6pm it’s decided instead that we’ll just make our vanilla at our house and my grandma &aunt will make chocolate at their house and we’ll take ours over there. Okay. We’re getting a little bit at the too much breaking from tradition point now. And mom says she’s not going.

And this makes me sad, “you’re not??”

“Honey, I know ya’ll don’t think I’ve done anything today…” I look at her with the most empathetic look I can muster thinking, but mom I didn’t say that at all! I don’t think that! “…but I’ve done the laundry, and made all that chicken salad, and this ice cream, and I’m tired.” And in that moment I know she is and all I want to do is give her a hug, tell her I love her, that I appreciate her and every single thing she does even the things I forget about.

So we have ice cream at my grandma’s cottage and its okay as we stand around inside and I spend a little bit of time with a couple of my younger cousins on the deck. Then my sister leaves to return some movies and my brother is still at our house passed out asleep and my dad is heading back to our place. I go downstairs where my cousin with her husband and two daughters are doing sparklers. I stay for a bit and give a couple of sparklers a try. But it feels off. I almost feel like I’m invading. So I tell them I’m going to see when my brother’s going to do the fireworks.

I walk back to my house and my dad and sister are packing their cars getting ready for the beach trip they’re going on the next day. No ones paying attention. My brother seems to have absolutely no plans for setting off the fireworks. I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I grab my camera and walk upstairs out onto the porch because it is the 4^th of July and I’d like to try to see some fireworks even if everyone else could care less.

I sit and watch a few in the distance and I can’t help but tear up because tonight is supposed to be fun and happy and I’m just sad. I’m sitting on the porch, usually filled with people, by myself trying to hold on to some lingering piece of what I thought tonight would be.

I decide to just go back downstairs and as I open the door to the stairs there my dad is.

“I thought you might be up here!” my dad says and I mumble something and he knows that something’s wrong.

“Are you okay?”

It’s one of those times when you can’t get a word out without half choking on tears and he pulls me in for a hug. When he asks what’s wrong I mutter something about having might as well been at work because really it would have been better than this.

He says he’ll go out on the porch with me and let’s see what we can see. We stand for a few minutes in silence watching the fireworks in the distance.

The closest official show of fireworks is 5.5 miles away and it starts at 9:25pm.

“What time is it?” my dad asks

“9:20” I reply

“Do you want to ride down the beach road towards the fireworks? Come on lets see what we can see.”

And I say, “Okay,” thinking this will be a futile mission but it’s a futile mission with my dad and so it’s okay and I can’t help but feeling an overwhelming amount of love for him.

We jump in the car and head down towards them and it’s already 9:25. We see fireworks in the distance and try to guess which ones are the official ones, the real ones. There’s surprisingly not much traffic on the road but it makes more sense the closer we approach because everyone’s already parked to watch the show. I ask dad to turn down the radio and roll down the windows so we can hear the crack crack BOOM. We come with the stragglers slowing down as we get closer to watch the fireworks. We’re able to go right past and turn around and then find a spot on the side of the road that on any other night would be an illegal spot to park, but tonight it’s okay, we’re all doing it.

We’ve got front row seats to the show. I’m smiling because I like silly things like seeing fireworks on the 4^th of July. I look at my dad and see him looking down the street.

“You’re not even looking!”

“What? Yea, yea I am.”

I know in that moment that my dad would be perfectly content to be in bed. He didn’t care about seeing the fireworks. He’s had 35 more 4^th of July’s than me. I know he went for me.

As I watch the end of the show I can’t help but tear up and feel such overwhelming emotion about how much I love my mom and dad, that God has blessed me with such great parents.

I love my mom so much and all the things she does like laundry, and making chicken salad upon request, and making sure I have everything I need.

I love my dad so much and all the things he does like driving me 15 hours to move to Chicago and driving down the beach road at the last second to see fireworks because he really just wants to see me happy.

It may have been an incredibly emotional and different 4^th of July but that’s okay because I just had one of those moments of clarity about how much my parents love me and how much I love them even though we’ve got our flaws and our problems. It makes me incredibly thankful to God, because who else should I be thankful to? It’s only because of Him that I have the parents I do and that I’m able to have any moments of clarity to feel this love. And I think it's some weak, dim, reflection of the individual covenant love God has for me.

Happy 4^th of July