One Two Change the World.

This one.
The Big Sister.

She's 12 today. 12 years old and all kinds of awesome.

Crazy in love with Jesus. Go. Follow Jesus.
Dreams as big as the sky and a heart to match. Go. Chase the dreams.
Brilliant. You are a light. Go. Be the light in the darkness.
Super smart. Go. Ask your questions. Get answers.
Adventure-seeker. Go. Climb mountains, both literal and figurative.
So strong and weak. Go. Go in your weakness and His strength.
Bold. Go. Be bold. Love boldly. Speak boldly. Live boldly.

Change the world.
Changing the world is hard work and you were made for it.
Change the world.

Fearfully and wonderfully made... Psalm 139:14

And this is my prayer: that your love may about more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you will be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless... Philippians 1:9

May the Lord bless you and keep you... Numbers 6:24

Let the king be enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for He is Lord. Psalm 45:1

I love you more than flip-flops.

Five Minute Friday: Remember.

It's time for another Five Minute Friday! 

It's a Gypsy-Mama thing, and it's a good one. 

Here are the rules.

If you have a blog--you should so do it. If you don't have a blog, you should do it anyway. Just sayin'.

It's Five Minutes of pure blog adrenaline.

Five minutes of writing on one word. Period. No editing. No nothing. No pressure. No stress.

This week's prompt is Remember.

Ready? Set.

Go.

_______________________________________________

Things I need to Remember:
...maybe you do, too...

Don't leave the house without an emergency snack. 

(Hungry ---> Angry = Hangry)

God is gracious to give me who I need, when I need them. 

Spouse is into me. Even when I'm not.

The Big C Church is full of beautiful, broken people. I love us.

Drink water.

Stress less.

Be intentional.

Close the garage door. 

(We recently went to Florida to come home to find the garage door open and the 

door to the house unlocked. For 8 days.)

God takes care of the stupid people. 

(See above.)

My treasure is not in my garage.

Encourage a mom.

Eat less.

Move more.

Summer's coming!

Busy does not equal important.

This world is not my home.

God is for me.

People need prayers, not happy thoughts.

Praying is doing something.

Results don't come for free.

I am just what my girls need.

Leave space in the calendar for Holy Spirit moments.

Finish your taxes.

Write Delsi. 

(Our sponsored Compassion child.)

What do you need to remember today?

Building the Circle.

It's been nearly a month, but we had our first REPEAT visitor from home.
Dig that.
Not just any visitor. Jarrett. If you know us and/or Jarrett, you know that with Jarrett comes...shenanigans...

Exhibit A. The sparking scooter.

Entertaining themselves in a gym FULL of chanting volleyball players.

Smitten.

Spouse & Jarrett built us two corn hole sets because they are NOT BUMS! 

Look at that concentration.

This.

Yes, they built the corn hole because they are not bums, but also because I wanted to have this crew of lovelies over to play.

Is this just so happy? These sweet ones are starting to understand that Mel's Diner is where it's at.

The Lord is gracious. He is building my little circle.
It is a beautiful, Jesus-loving, world-changing, big-dreaming, circle.

There was some Jesus-talk going on at that table.

Family pic.

Sunset in the burbs.

Meghan, Holly, Caroline, Sage, Keri, Sara, Me, Maddy

After the food, after the encouragement in Jesus's name, it was Game On.

Lovely form.

Do not let the smile & spontaneous dancing fool you. Sister schooled some boys in corn hole.

Pretty sure there was smack-talk going on here. 

The lovely Sara. Sometimes, she tell stories.

Holly. I wish they all could be like this California Girl. No. Really.

Keri's very first S'more, People. Her first S'more!? 

Sara's first tandem ride.
(Thank you, Kirkpatricks, for this bike. This has been the most fun.)

I'm extraordinarily happy in this picture. Good grief.
I must have been overjoyed to share the moment with her. 

So, after the Cornhole University lesson from the Californian Buckeye, Holly, the girls gave Spouse & Jarrett a ping-pong lesson.

Look at that form. 

Bless em. They look so cute.

Since my Circle Girls (I just made that up this very second)  love us so much and wanted to show Jarrett a little Bayou City flavor, we went out for crawfish lunch after an exhausting sermon on Sunday. (And I do mean exhausting. This may be another post, but you can listen to "Building Babel" on iTunes Podcasts from Bayou City Fellowship.)

The Sisters want to adopt Sage. She's grown. We're doing it anyway.

Holly, Sage, Micah & the crawfish.
I can smell the Old Bay.

Holly giving a crawfish lesson. (Are you seeing a theme here?)

Homegirl went to town on some crawfish. I was so proud.

People keep asking us, "How are y'all settling in out there in Houston?" 

This. This is how we are settling in. 

With a full house and a beautiful circle. With room for more. 

                        ________________________________________________________

I leave you with this parting shot.

Spouses: Here's the Story....

On the occasion, someone will ask me why I call my Spouse “Spouse”.  Today is a perfect day to share!

It all started seventeen short years ago, on March 16, 1996 in a little country church in Florida and two very young & blissfully ignorant individuals. You can read a little more about that in last year’s anniversary post here. 

(I just read it. It's way better than this one, & it wasn't written on I-10. Yes. It's a glamorous life.)

So, we had this wedding. It was small and very cheesy by today’s Pinterest standards. I loved my dress. Our cake was the coolest: individual, stand-alone tiers topped with dolphins in lieu of those little dolls or chubby little Precious Moments people. We were all about simple. Less is more. I had two of my (still) very best friends on the earth stand up with me and that was that.

The wedding was fun, the honeymoon was grand and then it was over.

Then.

Then came all that name-change paperwork: Social Security, Driver’s License, utilities, bank, HR at work, etc.

A bunch of hassle. There wasn’t all this online “Edit Your Profile” jazz. This was “Complete this section in blue or black ink” kind of jazz.

“Your name. Spouse’s name”.

“Your name. Spouse’s name”.

“Your name. Spouse’s name”.

Over and over.

Somewhere along the way, the joke was, “Look. You are just the ‘second line’. The spouse.” It was in good fun and not at all disrespectful. So, it just stuck. We referred to one another as “Spouse”.

Lest we keep a term of endearment to ourselves, our friends started calling Mark “Spouse”, too! Too fun.

Well, why stop there?

Our people called us “The Spouses”.

A few years ago, I found myself offering quite the bit of unsolicited marriage advice. :) (All in the name of love and fun.) Spouse would share his two rules for woman-care: “Never let ‘em get tired or hungry.” (All in the name of love and man.)

These little nuggets would become known as “Spouseisms”, which you are reading!

So, there it is.

And, I'd do it again.
The cheesy wedding. The cake. The dress.
The Spouse.

Do y’all have any cutesy names?