A New Focus

Ok, so I know it has been a very looong while since I last posted anything. But I have lately been thinking a lot about my blog and the direction I wanted it to go. I really like what I had, but I felt a little too limited in what I posted. Plus I felt very obligated to have pictures with every post.
In many ways, I can be a bit of a perfectionist, so if I couldn't take the time to make a "perfect" post, I just put it off. But now since it's been nearly 2 months since the last post, I decided to change the focus. I will still post about the same type of things, as these are part of my journey, but I will also have a little bit more freedom to write about other things I encounter on this life journey.
The inspiration for the new title, look, and purpose came from a conversation my husband and I recently had. I was becoming a little bit discontent with the same-ness of this season of my life and was expressing to him the frustration that I felt like I was ready for a different season, a new chapter. I was wishing I were closer to the destination I had in mind, when he gently reminded me that our lives are not about reaching a destination, but about enjoying the journey. Of course I had heard that before, as you probably have, but for some reason this time it stuck with me and I have been pondering it for a while. I am making it a daily goal to be content with this part of my journey, however long it will be, while I'm on the way to the next season in my life. I will only live this day once, so today and forever I am just enjoying the journey.

Dancing the Night Away...

On Friday night David and I got a chance to hang out with our friends, Shawn & Christina at a dance club...now, I know what you're thinking...it's not that kind of club :) It was a Beach Music Shag Dancing Club. Christina and her partner, Ricky, have both been shag dancing since they were in middle school, and they were in a competition at this dance club tonight, so we decided to come out and watch and cheer them on. There were some pretty good dancers in the competition, but none as good as they were. They are actually this year's national champions in their division. I got their whole dance on video, so you can see for yourself - they were by far the best - just look at that fancy footwork! I was very impressed. Check out the video below - They're AWESOME!

April in Review

I just realized how behind I have gotten again in posting, and how much I had to catch up on, so the following is just going to be a series of posts to catch you up on what we've been doing in the month of April - it's been pretty busy, but a lot of fun too. I tried to write these in the order they happened so you can just scroll down from top to bottom instead of trying to read up this time. Enjoy catching up...

An Impactful Weekend

On the 1st weekend of April, we went out of town for a huge conference with some amazing guest speakers. We got a ton of information to help us grow our business, and got to hear from and get really close to some of the most sought after speakers in the world right now. Have you ever seen or heard of the movie, "The Pursuit of Happyness"? Well, that movie is about a guy named Chris Gardner (who is portrayed in the movie by Will Smith), and his struggle from being literally homeless to a millionaire or billionaire now. It's a very touching movie, but it makes it even more real when you can actually see and hear him in person. Here's the best picture I could get of him. On top of that amzing speaker, we also had one of the best leadership speakers and writers come and talk to as well - John Maxwell! He started out by saying that, "Yeah, the other day when I was speaking to the president of such and such country, and the top executives of IBM..." and I was thinking, "and now here he is talking to ME!" It was very cool to hear from him. I tried to get a good picture, but this is the best I got. You can google him if you want to find a better one.

Anyway, it was an awesome weekend and very impactful in many ways.

"Take Me Out To The Ball Game..."

While David's dad was visiting us for the weekend of David's birthday, we decided to spend Saturday evening at baseball field. We ate traditional, bad for you ball park food, and enjoyed the game even though our home team lost. But that was made up for with the fireworks at the end! They really were amazing - even better than the grand finale on the 4th of July. They just had a constant stream with no breaks for about 5 minutes! It was a fun evening.

Surprise!! - David's 30!!

April 13th, 30 years ago a little baby boy named David was born, and April 13th 2008 we all celebrated that day with a suprise birthday party for him! Now just so you know, David is a very perceptive person, and he was very suspicious of the surprise the closer his birthday came. I will tell you, however, that I did a really great job of not letting the cat out of the bag so to speak. But with the nature of our busy lives and our business, it wasn't too hard to suspect something. I had arranged for his dad to come up and spend the weekend with us, and I had Marty book the clubhouse theater at his place so that he and David could watch the Masters (golf tournament) on the big screen. I was wondering how we were going to pull this off without him knowing, so we came up with an alternate plan. Since he had an idea that when he got to the clubhouse, there would be a bunch of people there to "surprise" him, we all hid outside the clubhouse by the pool instead. So when he walked in, there was no one and no decorations or anything in the theater.

Then we had one of his friends get him outside the front door to give him something for a few minutes while we all came in the back door with balloons and decorations. We brought out all the food and put up all the decorations in 2 minutes, so when he walked back in we all yelled, "SURPRISE!!!" And he was actually surprised! He just kept saying, "I was just in here, and there was no one here, and now all this!?!" It was really a great way to surprise him.

Rockin' out to MAE

In the middle of the week last week, David and I decided to go see the last show of this tour of one of our favorite bands, MAE. They played at a small club downtown, so we spent the evening rockin' out to some other bands that opened for them. Then when MAE took the stage, they really stole the show - they were awesome! See for yourself...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Int6b00tp5g This opening was filmed at the show we were at, and the camera was literally right behind us, so what you see is exactly what we saw. We got some really cool tee shirts, and had a great time. I actually know the drummer in the band (we went to church together a long time ago and I hadn't seen him since - until I discovered he was the drummer in this band! - he's the one on the right in the picture above) So after the show, we went up to the stage to talk to him and see if he even remembered me. I was very surprised that he did! And he was super nice. Obviously we didn't have much time to catch up right then, but he did give us access to a special after show acoustic concert they were doing up on the roof. So we got to sit a couple of feet from them with only about 20 other people on top of the roof in the middle of the city with them taking requests and playing acoustic versions of their songs for about another hour. It was really cool.