Excitement!

Okay so today I did something I should have done a long time ago: GOT A LIBRARY CARD.



Okay if you didn't know me in junior high and high school this might seem ironic to you, but I pretty much lived at the library growing up. I did all the summer reading programs. I maxed out the fines on my cards, and I think I read every historical fiction in the young adult section along with a bunch of other stuff. So today I decided I needed to go to the library :). I was in an exploratory mood, and I didn't want to pay to get something from borders. So here you go, my new interests:

Salsa cookbooks - for all those peppers I have growing in our yard that I have NO idea what to do with

German history and travel - for that family history trip I'm going to take some day to Germany and Alsace Lorraine to see all the people that look just like me

Race riots in Tulsa - I'm wanting to learn more about what cultural issues are central to the history of Tulsa, not sure where this is going to lead, but I want to know better what has shaped the city I live in so hopefully I'll know where I can help to heal hurt, this is nebulous I know but I just searched through Tulsa history in the library and this book looked the least dry read

Apparently the library is also a place to pick up guys. Spencer was over reading about woodworking and this guy game up to me while I was looking for salsa recipe books and asked me what I was looking for. I told him and he said oh wow, man I want to try some of the salsa. A little odd but I just laughed and he went to the next row. Then he came back and asked what I did with the salsa, did I ever throw any parties? And could he come? I laughed it off again and gave no eye contact. He went away again and then the clencher, he came back and asked if I wanted to go get a drink or something. Wow. I have been hit on that badly umm ever I don't think. At that point I said, no can do. He said okay well I'll be over here if you change your mind, really?! Doesn't he know not to talk in the library?!?

Me Being Patient HA

Okay so this is a story of my little rose bush and how I am really not good at being patient, good thing God is good at being patient and good thing he is the one who really makes the flowers grow.

Okay so you might remember I bought this really pretty small rose bush from a garden show in Tulsa earlier in the spring. I dug a big hole and put in the different kinds of dirt the rose guru from the show recommended and mulched it and then watched the pretty roses that were on it when I bought it die. Which okay I knew this was going to happen but it was still really depressing.

Lovely rose bush when I bought it:

So then I thought I sucked at gardening and I was whining all about how it was ugly and not going to grow and blah blah blah you get the idea :). Well Spencer kept watering it and occasionally I would water it too :). And I gave it root setting food for a few weeks like the guru had said. And eventually it got some new buds on it! And of course it bloomed while we were on vacation so again I whined haha seeing the pattern?

The rose after it got its first few blooms:

And then we kept watering it during the rest of June and July and I went out every once in awhile and cut off the dead blooms so it would have more energy to grow. And now look at it!!!

It has a bunch of pretty white blooms all over it and they smell awesome!! And pretty much all I did was add a little water, cut some dead blooms, and live in Oklahoma where it's sunny every day and 105 degrees out. Apparently roses love that :).

Family Time

So this weekend my parents are coming! We finally have a spare bedroom that is mostly set up (notice I did not say decorated haha), so visitors don't have to sleep on a twin bed or on the floor :). So whenever you want to come visit just give me a ring and you can come eat our cherry tomatoes and peppers and sleep on a comfy bed. And if you are lucky Spencer might even make you one of his delicious margaritas :).

On another note, I've been reading this book called Culture Making. I'd recommend it to anyone out of college who feels confused about what the heck you're supposed to be doing with life. Disclaimer: it does not tell you what to do with your life, but hey was I really expecting that? (Okay I was wishing it would tell me but I should have known better haha). It does go through a lot of really good points though. I need to think about it more, but one thing that really stood out to me were his comments on Mother Teresa. Throughout the book he contrasts Princess Di with Mother Teresa, talking about the different effect they had on the world. He basically asks the question why are trying so hard to be Princess Di when it's virtually impossible for us to be her and why are we not trying to be Mother Teresa when we can all go and serve people around us who are powerless and need the gospel. Anyway you get this rosy picture of Mother Teresa and start feeling bad you aren't more like her and then at the very end he shows excerpts from her writings that show she struggled with feeling like God was with her personally for large portions of her life. So even Mother Teresa had calling issues. She saw the great poverty of the world and sometimes wondered if God was real and if she was doing the right thing with her time. I needed that reminder. Calling is a grace. It takes discipline, it takes prayer, it takes asking good friends questions about your gifts and talents, but in the end your calling is a gift from God. And I need to be patient and wait to see what it is God wants us to do be doing with our lives. Alright enough literary thoughts for the day :).

War Wounds

Okay so this week was a rough one on the home front, okay not that bad but I feel like telling my sad stories :).

Sad story number one:
I finally got poison ivy. Yep I am not immune. Apparently I just get it very slowly because about a week after being in the yard I got a few bumps, but they didn't itch. Then a few days later they started itching (and no I did not scratch them!) and then they spread all over and finally I broke down and went to urgent care when I got bumps in between my fingers!! And of course right before I was going to see the doc to get my prescription for steriods, a guy came in with heat exhaustion who'd passed out seven times already so needless to say I sat in the back room a LONG time.

Story number two:
So I decided I wanted an old crate for a night stand instead of your typical bedside table. So all day saturday (all we did was take a break to see Despicable Me which by the way was hilarious!) we looked for a crate. We found ones that were too small, we found a bunch that were not for sale because they were storing things in antique stores, and we even found one that was for sale but was 70 dollars!! I'm sorry but I'm not paying that for an old crate I'm probably going to paint! So finally Sunday after church we just decided to get some old pallates from a hardware store and Spencer is building me a crate! Here's where the war wound part comes in :). A piece of wood went flying off the table saw, cut Spencer's hand, and punctured a hole in our wall!! And yes he was working inside because it is 105 degrees out and we have wasps and bees in our front yard! So anyway he now has a nice sore on his hand and I need to fill a hole in the dry wall, but at least we will have a sweet crate that is only costing us the price of the screws to hold it together.

Yeah for random weekend adventures :).

Long Awaited Day Has Arrived!

Ha sounds like I'm getting married or having a kid or something, okay nothing quite that dramatic but yesterday I finally got two things I'd been waiting for, for awhile umm sort of patiently :).

First: our bed and dresser finally came and I love them!

I'm waiting to put pics of the dresser till I decide what to put on the wall behind it. Right now I have a big blue wall with absolutely nothing on it, any ideas?

Second:

I got an iphone 4!!! And mine came before my boss's for some reason so he was all jealous and huffy puffy about it saying I know way more about that than you do, which is totally true. I just know that it's pretty and I can listen to music on it in the car, so I'm happy :).

Man if yesterday was so exciting just because of finally getting cool stuff that'll break eventually (probably sooner rather than later knowing my record for clumsiness), I can't quite imagine what my excitement is going to be like when this life is over and I get to be heaven with friends and family in a city that is never going to detorate and is so much more beautiful than an iphone! It's going to be awesome!

It's the weekend again?!

Man I love four day weeks :).

We are going mattress shopping tonight, because we are getting our bed on Tuesday! I'm so excited to finally get to decorate our bedroom after being in our house for almost five months! It's about time :).

Also, I'm finally getting an iphone! I officially retired my blackberry when I dropped it in a puddle outside our house while trying to get keys out of purse in the rain. Yes I know so sad ;). So right now I am waiting with a million other people with it to ship so I can waste all day on facebook and blogger haha. Oh and also call people since that is what phones are for right?

Step One to Having a Japanese Gardening: Clelaning!

Okay so we have this goal to have some kind of japanese garden in our backyard, or at least something calming but we have this small problem, okay not smalll problem because we worked on it for over six hours yesterday and it is still not cleaned up! There is all this overgrowth from the guy who lived here before us (and also from us not cleaning it up at all since we bought the house) that we now have to clear off before we can have our japanese paradise. So here you go, our giant rubbage pile before we started:

Any kind of annoying vine or poison ivy or small tree or ant or roach etc. etc. that you can imagine probably lives in this patch of our backyard! I literally filled eight or nine wheelbarrows full of green crap that was growing back here! At least we now have a large composting pile now :).

Underneath it all is a brick patio that we had starting trying to uncover early and then given up because it was so full of weeds!

So after six hours of work here is our progress!!!!!

No we aren't quite done yet (I whimped out and decided I didn't want to spend my whole vacation day pulling weeds haha) but I think with more saturday morning or weekday afternoon we should be able to finish up and spray round up all over the patio! We're one step closer to our paradise garden!

Oh yeah and while I was shoveling I almost shoveled up this giant toad that was just sitting on the pile of dirt :). He just sat there on my shovel and stared at me like "who are you to move my dirt man?" haha.

Also this weekend we got our first produce from our garden! Our very own homegrown cherry tomatos :). We had them on salad and they were delicious!!

Staying Home!

Alright so this weekend we are not going anywhere! Okay maybe to the farmer's market and some places around town, but we are staying here. I like running all over the place seeing people, but we have a ton of house and yard work to catch up on from all the traveling, so we are staying put. Goal for the weekend: turn our yard into a japenese garden paradise. haha that is so not going to happen in a weekend, but maybe i'll get the back patio cleared off!

Also, Germany plays tomorrow morning, so we had to be free for that :). I think we're going to hit up fifteenth street, get some coffee, get some veggies for the week and then head back and make a yummy breakfast to eat while we watch the game!

So this was a pretty good week. We got to have dinner with Dave and Mallory and Libby and Gregg and catch up on graduate school life and on moving and all that good stuff. Oh and to talk about how we are all definitely NOT ready for babies yet. I knew I liked these people :).

Played some soccer, road some bikes after eating qdoba (which for the record I am NEVER doing again, it seriously felt like I had gained 50 pounds), sat at fifteenth street and soaked up the sun while thinking and praying about life and about the people I care about. I think I should do more of these leisurely think times. It takes awhile for me to just slow down enough to process what is happening around me. Not sure if that makes any sense.