Bicycle Race & One-eyed Brian

Brian used to have this pair of sunglasses from Target where the lens would pop out of one of the eyes.  Now, since my husband (bf at the time) is super serious and all, he would wear them with one eye popped out. Only on occasion, and only when it could catch you off guard.  Well, we were driving down the street one day with friends and Brian looks over to me with his one-eyed spectacle (pun intended) and began shouting the lyrics to "I want to ride my bicycle".  You see, I was not a huge Queen connoisseur growing up and had never heard the song.  He sang it with this rhythm where "ride" was sort of slurred (?) kind of like he was trying to sing it in Spanish, or something. Bahaha - I will never forget that moment. 

(My favorite part of the song is at the ~ 1:50 minute mark with the bicycle bells. so happy!!!)

In honor of all things bicycles and keeping things light for the day (considering it is NINETY degrees outside - hallelujah, thank you Jesus)...

Images courtesy of Pink Wallpaper, Dress Design Decor

3 day weekend, beautiful weather forecasted, wedding, friendship time, roadtrip, work from home next week, love.  Need I say more? 

Life.

It's been over 10 weeks on the road thus far.  I must say  - it's tough.  I give a lot of credit to families that have to be separated due to to jobs that require travel.  Or military families where a spouse is deployed.  I must admit, that would probably be worse.  Am I thankful that I have a great job that challenges me and my growth as a business-woman?  Of course.  Do I wish I could do exactly what I do here at home?  Of course.  I don't ever want this to become normal.  I have vowed to never call the hotel my home - it's difficult sometimes and I slip up, but it is not home.  Home is where my heart is - it's Jesus, and it's my husband, family and friends.  Oh and it's Charlie too :-) Next week, I am working remote (aka from my home office) and I am more than thrilled.  A whole week and a half with my babes - yay!!! But for now, I work...

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Sorry for my absence friends.. I've totally slacked on updating this part of my world and I apologize.  sort of.  I don't want to obsess over blogging so it's probably a good thing to have a break at times.  Anyways, here's a small glimpse of what I've been up to lately: Weddings, and friends. 

We took a few pictures of our friend's family this past weekend. Below are two of my favorites (unedited still).  Also, a public mention - I have the utmost respect for photographers.  It is incredibly difficult, and I'm sure it gets easier with time and practice but whoa so much to think about and do, and getting everyone to look at the camera and the lighting and everything to be perfect is near impossible. 

Might I say challenging? Challenge accepted. 

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"My dear friends, don't let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, Christ-originated faith. If a man enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags comes in right after him, and you say to the man in the suit, "Sit here, sir; this is the best seat in the house!" and either ignore the street person or say, "Better sit here in the back row," haven't you segregated God's children and proved that you are judges who can't be trusted? "

James 2: 1-4

Oh how this has been on my heart lately. "Be in the world, but not of the world".  Rinse and repeat. 

Good & Great

Last week, Charlie had a playdate with Maggie, our friends new adopted pup.  I think they might be dating.  I mean who wouldn't love that sweet face??

 But for real, is this how dogs play? We weren't completely sure...

Remember how I posted about peonies?  Well Brian was super awesome and called up Whole Foods to put 2 bunches on hold for us.  We stopped by yesterday to pick them up. 

Then we had a couple splurges... We thought we'd get some cake to celebrate our anniversary.  Cannoli cake anyone? No, seriously, we have a ton left over.

We also stopped by lululemon to return a pair of pants that had ripped a tiny hole in them.  The customer service was incredible.  I had the pants for way over the 90 day return period and they just let me look around the store to pick out another pair to replace them. 

I couldn't help but pick up a yoga mat while I was there.  I'm thinking about taking a class while I'm in Pittsburgh. 

While we're on the topic of great customer service, we stopped by Orvis to return Charlie's dog bed that he had shredded to pieces. Literally.  Similar to the lulu pants, the item was also way over the 90 day return period, but since it was advertised as chew-proof, they let us replace it!

Have a fantastic weekend everyone!!!

Lovely

Wedding Week: 2 years

My friends, I am so sorry for abandoning wedding week.  I have so many special details that I had wanted to share with you all, but only have time to share some of them. I am also struggling with drawing a line so that I am not sharing to many of the "things" that could overshadow the most important part of all of this which is the sacred union between Brian and I. 

Today marks two years of marriage for us.  So crazy how quickly it flew by. We were two young lovebirds when we got married.  We're still young, but with each year we get (hopefully) a little bit wiser and kinder.  Our first year was marked with a lot of unknowns and surprises, good and bad.  It was a tough year for me.  I'm quite independent and like things my own way.  But once married, things can't always be my own way, and marriage when aligned biblically does not mirror my independent attitude.  Our second year was much better. We learned more about each other, we respected more, we loved more (the action not the feeling) and most importantly I sincerely believe we glorified God more through all of it. What's crazy is that we (God-willing) will have the opportunity to continue on this path for many years to come.  My prayer is that we would continually seek Him first, each other second, and the rest to follow.  I am thrilled for what is to come as God peels away layer by layer his plan for us. 

Now a few reasons Brian swept me away and continues to do so: he has the kindest heart of anyone I've ever met, he's bold and courageous, gentle and caring, he's the sexiest stud I've ever laid eyes on, he puts Jesus first and me second, he's extremely goofy (I mean really goofy, like you wouldn't believe), he loves to work on projects with me, he provides for our family, he is a rock, he has pretty blue eyes, he likes random things like ultimate frisbee and the real-deal camping, he makes the best breakfast - ever. I could go on and on.

So in tribute to my babe and in wrap-up to our wedding week, I thought I would share some pictures from our wedding two lovely years ago:

Thanks for sticking around during all the wedding "festivities"! :-)

P.S.  If you are at all interested in hearing more about our wedding, let me know because I'd be more than happy to share.  I just don't want to inundate you with wedding-related things if you're not all that interested.  Ok, all for now - have a great night lovelies :-)

P.P.S.  I really need to work on sizing all the pictures to be uniform.. I'm working on it....

Lets Play Catch up

Ahh, life took over and these last couple of days have completely passed me by.  I have so much I've been wanting and meaning to blog about..  feels good to be back :-)

I came home from my travels early last week (Wednesday) and it was such an incredibly refreshing break.  I took a bit of time off Friday, we had a wedding Saturday (it was so beautiful at the Arcade downtown), and Sunday we had a great church service and spent the day outside landscaping and enjoying the incredible weather.  Lord thank you for such beautiful weather, for the relaxation, and the time off.   

So what did we miss?

Happy Cinco De Mayo!!

We replaced these sad dead bushes in the front of our house. I have more pictures but since I'm not home I don't have them.. :(  We planted these Spirea bushes that look like this now

But will eventually look like this in a few weeks! just not so big quite yet..

Saving the best for last - Mothers Day!! I am so blessed to have the mother I have.  She's beautiful, smart, and kind.  She raised me well, taught me to work for what I have, taught me diligence, and persistence, respect and honor.  Thank you mom for all you are and all you've done. 

Lets see what else... on my drive in this morning I listened to two Mark Driscoll sermons.  He sure can preach the word.  Straight forward, sort of blunt, Spirit led, goodness.  I think I have a new little tradition for my drives out here.  More to likely come on this topic soon :-)

Wedding Week: Rehearsal Dinner

Our rehearsal night was really fun.  To be honest, I felt like I didn't have to worry about a thing and someone magically had it all under control.  There were probably a whole lot of people that were handling lots of little things to make that work out just right.  If you are one of them, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. 

We had our rehearsal at the Renaissance Hotel; Ahh, I was so excited/anxious/nervous/anticipatory this night.. I can remember thinking to myself that I was going to be visibly shaky the next day since I had so much anticipation built up.  What came of all those emotions though was a very giggly, laughter-filled rehearsal that led our pastor to proclaim that it was going to be a very fun weekend.

Can you tell I was excited?

For dinner we went to Trattoria in Cleveland's Little Italy district. A few people stood up and blessed us with well wishes, and we were able to share gifts with the wedding party. 

Let me start with a few photos Rit (our cousin and photographer) took earlier in the day.  I'm so grateful she was there and blessed us by capturing some of these moments. 

This is Chris, Brian's brother. He's single, ladies!

I wish I would have gotten better pictures of the gifts we bought/made for the wedding party.  Brian bought his men a classic razor, and I bought the ladies a little assortment of things (Red jcrew bangle bracelets, Evian water mist spray, Cliffs bars, Lip Gloss [can't remember which kind, maybe mac?], and a few other things) that were all packaged cutely into these little suitcases (to the right in the picture below).



One of my favorite set of photos from our wedding are in the series below.  Before anyone left, our photographer made everyone stand in front of this brick wall and basically just express themselves however they saw fit.  She called it their "mug shot".  You'll see that some people took 'mug' seriously - mainly those that never make a mug face, but that's what makes it all the more entertaining. 

[Now, I do apologize because for some reason I am not finding these photos electronically, but I have them in our wedding book and snapped them with my iPhone.. sorry!]



FUN - Right?!  Wishing you all a very happy Thursday :-)

Wedding Week

May 9th will mark Brian and I's 2 year wedding anniversary.  As it is a little under a week away, I'm starting to get excited.  I'm not sure if we're still in our honeymoon phase - does anyone know when that saying actually goes away?  All I know is that I still love him like I did when we first got married.  In fact, I would even venture to say that I love him more, but in a different way.. a deeper way.  We've been through a lot these last couple years, and he has been a rock through all of it.  Anyways, I think I will share some of my favorite memories with you over the next week if you don't mind.  We had such a fun time planning and executing our wedding and I would love to reminisce..

Photos by the incredible Kristen Cordova

Can you spy

what I am dreaming of today?  With summer lingering in my thoughts, I'm wishing that I had a hammock to snuggle up in... once it gets warm.  It has to get warm and less rainy someday, right?  Or maybe I could just get an indoor hammock?  I'm quite ok with either right now.

All images via pinterest