seven things

Seven Things To Do Before I Die:
1. go back to Spain
2. go to San Fransico
3. design my dream kitchen
4. walk hand in hand in a park with scott when we're old
5. go on a mission trip with scott and our family
6. have my own Christmas traditions
7. learn to surf? maybe?

Seven Things I Cannot Do:
1. cut straight
2. draw a straight line (even with a ruler)
3. spell
4. drink coffee
5. resist a good sale (i'm working on that one though)
6. drink beer
7. ice skate (well technically i can but i perfer not to after a semi-tragic skating event when i was 5 years old)

Seven Things that Attract Me to My Spouse (not necessarily in this order!):
1. His sense of humor
2. His good looks
3. The way he follows rules and directions.
4. The way he takes care of me.
5. That he wants to be a great dad!
6. The way he values people, community, and mission
7. His creativity

Seven Things I Say (or write!) Most Often:
1. "hey friend"
2. "want to go to Target?"
3. "i love you"
4. "we don't exsit for ourselves"
5. "do you want to come over for dinner?"
6. "not a day goes by"
7. "hey baby"

Seven Books (or series) I Love:
1. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
2. The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling
3. Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
4. Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller
5. MudHouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner
6. The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
7. More Than Equals by Chris Rice & Spencer Perkins

Seven Movies I Would Watch Over and Over Again:
1. Miss Congeniality
2. Crash
3. Two Weeks Notice
4. The Christmas Story
5. When Harry Met Sally
6. any episode of Friends (not really a movie, but i could watch them over and over)
7. Remember the Titans

Four People I Want to Join in:
1. Scott
2. Mike (because i don't think he did one yet)
3. Mom (who doesn’t have a blog, but who could email me her answers and I would post them for her- just like kari's mom)
4. Allison (because she started blogging again for like a minute and then quit again)

the difference is

we've had a wonderful winter full of clementines. people walk in the door and grab one out of the fruit bowl on the table. so easy to peel, so tasty, the perfect snack. but it never fails, inbetween juicy segments of clementine, someone is sure to ask; "what's the difference between a clementine and a tangerine?". well my friends, i did a little research and here it is.

Clementine: "Similar to the tangerine/satsuma/mandarin, but worse basically." (i disagree with this statement). "A watered down version, one could say it is slightly 'off' when put up against the tangerine. Perhaps the best-known Mandarin by name, Clementines have been popular for years, especially in the eastern U.S. Their arrival in the markets in winter is cause for celebration. Clementines are all small to medium-size, very juicy, very sweet fruits. Typical ripening in coastal California (north and south) is January to mid-April; in inland California and Texas, it's November to January; and in low-elevation deserts it's November and December. In the early 1990s, growers in Spain, which holds almost a 90 percent share of the world's clementine export market, broadened their scope. By 1999 they had increased by 10 times the amount of fruit sent to the United States. Morocco is another great source for clementines. Clementines can be almost seedless or contain as many as 20 seeds, they will produce seeds if a pollinizer in nearby."

Tangerine: "Blissfully easy to peel compared to its cousin - the orange, this sweet fruit also tastes like one, but with a slightly less tangy flavor. There is barely any difference between the tangerine and satsuma. Both however are superior to the clementine. "Tangerine," it turns out, was a marketing term that has no bearing on actual varieties but is applied to many Mandarins and Mandarin hybrids. The tangerine is named after Tangier, the port from which the fruit was exported for many years. Tangerines generally have seeds; their skin is redder than that of a clementine".

for my researcher friends, feel free to add more information on the difference if you find anything else.

freshly grown

i love the farmer's market. and that is saying a lot since the wilmington farmer's market is one block and mostly plants. but i really do love it. i have gone a few times this summer and got some squash and tomatoes. last time i got a basil plant and today i got an eggplant. i usually buy from the same older couple. i think they seem nice and their prices are nice as well. this couple has probably had a farm their whole life and together they are trying to fight the consumerism that runs rampant in our country. ok, maybe they're just selling vegetables, but the message is louder than that. buying at the farmer's market makes me feel like my money is actually going to people instead of corporations. there is a certain amount of pride that comes when i buy from the people that actually grew the vegetables and worked the fields. everything isn't harris teeter perfect looking but they sure are tasty and the farmer's market only sells what is in season, not what can be grown in a greenhouse somewhere. i like knowing that i am supporting something real and something that is part of a family's story.

i wish our famer's market was larger but maybe the small size is part of the charm too.

blueberry? hmm

tonight after the leadership retreat part one, we went to coldstone ice cream. usually it's not my favorite place. i think it is really expensive. and with all those flavors scott still gets mint chocolate chip. crazy huh? tonight we went with two coupons (one 50% off and one free, so it was quite the bargin!) well thanks to my good friend kari's blog recommendation i tried blueberry. i was excited about it. i like summer flavors. so i got blueberry with cake and blueberries. well....

it doesn't really taste like blueberry. sorry kari.


and what were they thinking get rid of cake batter? are you kidding me?

4:03 and no one's here

it was 4:03, the meeting was supposed to start at 4:00 and not one person was there. not one...out of 28. is this a bad omen for my coming year? please say no!

yes, today was the leadership retreat for my students. and it was supposed to start at 4:00, and it was in wilmington. and the first group of people showed up at 4:07.

this was the first gathering of my new leadership team. i don't want to be pessimistic but that can't be a great sign.

but after a delayed very typical wilmington start we began. and actually, it was a fine meeting. people were pretty interested in the topics, they were talking, and actually seemed pretty excited about the fall events.

so who knows what this fall will be like. i think i am looking towards the fall. i mean, i've done this a lot but there is also an energy about this time of the year which is nice.

so 4:07 and the fun began...and the fun keeps going.

femininity

today at the book/psuedo bible study we talked about femininity. my homework from last week was to define femininity. so i did. i realized that one of the main things that bothers me about this whole study is that i feel like it limits me. i feel like we are creating some definition of who i am supposed to be and i feel like the definition is way too small.

well, here is my definition. a fair warning though, i started rambling a bit. all of a sudden, i realized i was writing a blog entry.

Femininity is who a woman is. Femininity is about women reflecting and representing God's own character. If God, himself created both masculine and feminine qualities than femininity is a gift, a blessing. It includes compassion, warmth, love, charity, parts of God's own self. Authentic femininity is any woman living out of the truth of who she is meant to be, who she was created to be, a daughter of a loving God. As she lives more out of her gifts, her passions, her God breathed self, she creates femininity. We limit the fullness of femininity, when it is reduced to dresses, cooking, or even motherhood; it's a continuum. Femininity is lived out and developed in relationship with God, others, herself, and creation around her. It is in the restoration, the making of things right again, that femininity becomes synonymous with holiness and righteousness. Some may some femininity can be defined, I say femininity must be lived.

Femininity is the odd assortment that makes me love tea parties and have a nose ring or the love of cooking and the interest in poker, the enjoyment I get out of marriage and the pleasure I get from being alone. None of these paradoxes that describe me make me more or less feminine. They make me more of myself. And I like myself; I like the complexities of my inner self that make me more interesting. The thing is, I believe all these intricacies are tiny fragments making me more of who Jesus wants me to be. I like the fact that I care deeply about poverty and social issues and yet still am slightly addicted to target and port city java. I like how I can crave the spiritual disciplines and I can crave a cosmo. I like that I have been known to smoke a cigar and I pray that my friends to more deeply know Jesus. I like that I love to read Harry Potter and Eugene Peterson. I'm not afraid to ask tough questions and yet I love to hear the hearts of people. I like that it is Christ in me working all things to completion. I like that this too is part of the sanctification.


we were talking about modesty as well and my friend liz summed it up nicely,
"it's about adorning beauty not adorning body"

weddings & engagement

this weekend my friend anna got married. it was a nice wedding, simple, southern, and classic just like anna. her groom, mike was very cute and very nervous. during the vows, he jumped the gun and said "i will" before the pastor was done. better eager than delayed! it was sweet. the wedding was at the chapel on furman's campus. it was really beautiful.

last night we went out to celebrate our friends chris and leah getting engaged. they were very excited and of course had to keep repeating the story of how chris proposed.

i like weddings and engagements. when you are engaged everyone is so happy for you, everyone knows you're in love, and wants to be helpful and encouraging. then you get married and the fuss around you fizzles fast. scott and i were talking about our marriage and how wonderful it is. engagement is the fun part but marriage is the life part. not that marriage isn't fun but there is something fantastically wonderful about being married. i love when scott comes home from work and we cook dinner together. i like that tonight we have a laundry date. i love that every morning i wake up next to him. i love being married. i love that i know that scott and i will be together. it really is fantastic. i am so glad to share my life with him. i quess what i am saying is that i really enjoy the normalcy of marriage. it feels so right.

another day, another storm

here i am again...using my laptop unplugged. good thing i got one of these now that we have a storm every day. ahh, summer at the beach. more crashing thunder, more pelting rain, more cracking lightening. (does lightening crack?)

i'm sitting on my bed blogging. quite frankly i am bored out of my skull.

gilmore news: i watched 2 more episodes of gilmore girls. that makes 8 since monday by the way.

good news: i got some money donated for a lcd projector to use on campus. excellent. welcome to the technological age.

travel news: i am leaving friday morning for anna's wedding. i had a nightmare that i forgot my bridesmaid dress so i already have it hanging in the hall.

movie news: we watched oceans 12 last night. i think it's really funny. also rented the notebook and national treasure. (why didn't i watch the notebook today? it's not like scott is all that interested in it. hmm).

blog news: scott began blogging. well sort of. as soon as he puts the link on my blog you too can visit it. he is the computer techie in the family. we all have our gifts.

spell check news: is a word really misspelled if it isn't correctly capitalized? isn't that more of a grammer error? and is it really an error at all if it's intentional?

weather news: tomorrow chance of scattered showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon.