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1919's rwandan christmas tree

awwww...

mp giving us our christmas gifts

(who doesn't need a candy cane yard ornament?)

getting table ready for christmas dinner

midnight snack (pioneer woman cinnamon rolls. yes please.)

**all photos lovingly taken with the morelomo app during this lovely month of december**

ready-made holiday playlist

guess where i'm going tonight? dave barnes christmas concert. where? else?

here's hoping all my faithful readers have already downloaded this gem:

it's so very baylor university circa 2003. trust me... you'll love it. and if you happen to be looking for another christmas ditty, allow me to introduce you to the song i have yet to take off repeat the last week:

i know, i know- we all have a love/hate relationship with coldplay, but doesn't this song immediately transport you to the south street seaport christmas tree? oh. just me? ok. that's fine.

last but certainly not least, you of course remember my christmas post last year regarding my favorite christmas song. i am happy to report that as a special wink to me, it has been re-done and is better than ever... available on itunes in its entirely, but this will wet your whistle for the time being...

merry, merry christmas to me.

first of many blogs on this subject, but let's start with this.

Street Children Project from Africa New Life Ministries on Vimeo.

hurry boy, it's waiting there for you

toto and i have tons in common. he blessed the rains down in africa and i'm flying out to see those rains first hand in nine days. he... um... well... i guess we just have the one thing in common at the moment, but you get my point.

everyone keeps asking me if i'm excited about this trip and i'm sure that's what i would be asking anyone i knew who was about to go to africa for the first time in their lives and realize a dream they didn't really expect would ever come to fruition... so, yes, to answer your question, i'm excited. but i don't have a whole lot of other things to say about it yet.

i'm not really nervous about getting sick or hurt or scared. i know it will be overwhelming to see the poverty, but i think it will be just as overwhelming to see how tightly the believers there cling to Jesus (especially as compared to myself). petikei will be in full force, so i'm definitely not worried about a shortage of laughter or things to talk about. people have come out of the woodworks to help support this endeavor, so i know our team will be covered in prayer and lifted up daily, which is such a comfort, i can't even tell you.

sounds like i'm in pretty good shape, right? i'd like to think so. i'd like to think that this will be 11 days out of my life i will look back on and be so grateful for, knowing i was able to see and do things i never thought i would in a land completely out of my comfort zone, and then return home and go on about my life, tucking those memories away and pulling them out on rainy days when i need perspective on this/that.

but then i remember the way i felt the first time (and every time since) i watched this:

#35 and #36 of 100 from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.

about a month ago matt carter preached on the importance of "going." it was a short sermon that focussed on the great commission and Jesus calling us his witnesses, responsible for going out into the world and making disciples. he painted a picture of Jesus conquering death and appearing to the disciples and the thought process those men must have gone through. they had been by His side constantly for three whole years... seeing all the crazy things they saw... listening to Him talk about death and life and heaven and hell and the Father and the Holy Spirit and i'm sure more than once they thought to themselves: "that's coconuts!" but the second He appeared to them, after they had all watched Him die the way that He did... it. all. clicked. everything He had said was true. it all made complete sense. and the last thing Jesus told them was to go... and so they went. what other response could they possibly give? matt said it all boils down to two questions: is He who He says He is? and if so, is He worthy of my everything? then he played the #35 and #36 video.

[that was a quick paraphrase of matt's sermon... you should really, really podcast it... austin stone audio sermon from october 3, 2010.]

as much as i'd like to think i'll go to rwanda and come back and be the same cankle i was before, i fully realize that will hardly be the case. this is much more than a mission trip. it's time for me to go. and i can't wait.

oh no i di'int

much like the elusive white rhino of south africa, i have had an un-gettable get in my life for the past several years. and by that i mean a local celebrity sighting that has yet to be seen. oh sure... we've all been exercising at town lake and passed jake gyllenhaal a time or two... or bumped into matt mcconaughey downtown and wondered how in the world they make him look so tall in the movies. my friend babs hangs with some friday night lights cast member every other night it seems like. and these have made for great stories, water cooler talk, blahblahblah, but in all my comings and goings and stalkings, i have STILL never seen the one shining star of a lady that has mentored and guided me through my post-college adult life like no other.

i'm very clearly talking about kristin "kiki" armstrong. (keeks for short.)

if you aren't familiar, i encourage you to click on the right side of this page where it says "mile markers" and you can write me a thank you note later. i religiously read her runner's world blog before i could even huff around the block. it focuses on running, yes, but it's also about so much more. i promise you her words have gotten me through dozens of days at dead end jobs... hurt feelings... sheer dread at the thought of putting on running shoes... as well as any kind of thought that has entered my head of life having to be a certain way for it to be fulfilling and full of joy. wow. didn't really think i was going to get this deep with this, but it. is. so. true.

go read her blog. go get her books, devos, anything you can get your hands on. here is an article she wrote for glamour, um, four years ago... weird that i still remember some of it verbatim? let's go with no. and you better believe she was on oprah almost immediately after this article was published. the girl knows what she's talking about. not to mention she has a pretty amazing faith and that was on display this weekend when i...

turned a quick corner and almost flattened her in the starbucks parking lot.

it all happened so fast. petikei and i were in a hurry to get to church (but of course there's always time for venti iced black teas) and the parking lot is so cramped and i was turning wide to get into a tight spot and ERRRRRRRRRK. i slammed on my brakes and waved "ohiamsosorry" at this tiny, toned, precious looking lady, carrying a drink carrier full of beverages to her car as she gave me a somewhat stern look (she probably should've given me the finger, but she didn't and well, that's just the type of person she is!) and walked/glided in front of us and got into her car and handed out the drinks to her kiddies- all dressed in their sunday best.

a literal hush fell upon my car as we just watched her and finally said... um... that was kiki. i almost just ran over kiki. should we go talk to her and say sorry in person? should we go tell her how much she means to us? where do you think they are going to church? can you see the twins? she is so pretty! what does that bumper sticker mean on her car? do you think she knows how sorry i am for not paying more attention? can she see us staring?

we waited for them to pull off and then immediately made plans to get to starbucks 5 minutes earlier next week because can you IMAGINE if we would've just been FIVE MINUTES earlier?! but this is good... now we can be prepared. hope she's a hugger.

so as you can see i have finally spotted my unicorn, but i sure do wish it would have been under different circumstances. i like to think she felt the connection between us but had to get to the kids, otherwise we would probably still be at that starbucks, discussing life and love and SB (santa barbara... the bumper sticker).

It's the catch-22 of being a grownup, simultaneously wanting certain things but being scared to death of them at the same time. We have to own whatever is our thing in "orange shorts" and realize that until we are brave enough to acknowledge the desire (for love, for friendship, for a promotion, for a chance at adventure, for a shot at pursuing our dream) we will never, ever have the opportunity to see it blossom in our life. - from the "orange shorts" blog post... one of my faves.

current song on repeat

i can't stop listening to this robbie seay band song right now. isn't it just so true?

baby, it is a new day......

i'm really good at raising & saving $

in june i decided to sign up for something i have wanted to be apart of for a very long time... i signed the dotted line to go to rwanda for an 11-day mission trip in november. don't even get me started about the details and what all we'll be doing and seeing and experiencing. anytime i talk about it for more than a couple minutes it becomes increasingly harder to resist driving to the airport and leaving right this very second, so let's just leave it as i signed up, which gave me five months (uh oh, hello, five months! five months... not much) to raise some funds and all of a sudden i had penny pinching on the brain.

so naturally when i heard a radio commercial asking for paid volunteers to get their wisdom teeth out in exchange for a willingness to have experimental drugs tested on them following the procedure, i could not think of one reason not to call and make an appointment to go in and see if i was a match and possibly earn some extra cash for my trip.

very long and painful story short: i was a match. had the surgery at 7am on a friday morning. it took an hour. was supposed to take 20 minutes. the doctor had shortness of breath and beads of sweat dripping down the sides of his face while trying to push my two left-sided wisdom teeth out. an actual hammer was used on my stubborn upper tooth too many times to count. (this is when my crying started and the nurse caressed my legs, whispering it would be over soon.) got out of surgery and was given the placebo. cried some more. had to wait two hours to receive any sort of pain relief. got a vicodin at long last. went to my recliner and slept pain-free, but had to be there 4 more hours so they could measure my pain once an hour, every hour.

4:15pm finally came and my mom and sister's smiles and waves from the waiting room quickly turned into panic as they saw me, expressionless, limping towards them like a wounded soldier returning from the trenches. THANK YOU LORD FOR MY MOM AND SISTER. they rescued me and took me to the couch and nursed me back to a semblance of health in my darkest hour.

this is me two days after the surgery:

someone told me it didn't look like there was anything wrong with my face in this picture and i would like to slap that person. do they always think i resemble a chubby bunny?! maybe it's hard to tell, but i could not move any part of my lower face at this point. even though i only had the 2 lefties extracted, my right side was swollen as well from being pushed open so wide. i mean, i guess i'm not going to beg for pity here, but i feel like it should be given regardless.

it has now been four weeks and the pain has finally subsided and my swelling is no longer an issue. still hurts when i chew gum. and i just started flossing "back there" again. clearly the battle scars are still fresh. but you better believe i got that $225 check and deposited it directly into my africa fund like nobody's business. (ps i originally thought it was double that amount but didn't read the fine print. shoot.)

bet you thought that was the extent of my fund-raising projects, huh? nope.

the second brilliant idea came to me as i was budgeting on mint.com and realized i spend an embarrassingly large amount on my head of hair. embarrassing. i'm not sure when i decided i was really rich and it didn't matter how much i paid to get my hair trimmed and colored multiple times a year, but i saw the numbers for myself and wanted to throw up a little bit. so clearly this means i need to start coloring it myself! (and by that i mean my sister needs to start coloring it for me.) you do know there are aisles and aisles of $10 boxes of hair color in every grocery store, drugstore, big box store you frequent, right? genius.

of course, before all is said and done, yaya gets in on it, does the homework and finds out all the tricks of the trade, has all the girls over, makes a scrumptious dinner, and ends up pulling my ratty hair through a color cap for a couple hours on a thursday night. here is me towards the end of the "drying process" when i realize my hair is 10 shades lighter than i thought it would be:

it ended up totally working and i was really happy with it. big thanks to yaya for making it happen... as well as to my mother, sister, both abbys, maddie and blake for the moral support. i needed it. jury's out as to what we're going to do when the fall months are upon us and beach blonde barbie needs a root touch-up... but let's just burn that bridge when we get there.

cheers to me for stepping out and trying new things! except for i will never cheers myself for getting those #$%& wisdom teeth out execution-style. mistake. but you live you learn.