Birthday Pics

Josh and Kevin starting a fire at our campsite (Leo Carrillo, north of Malibu.)
Me reading my new book (one of my birthday presents) State of Fear... awesome!
Dinner Friday night at the Melting Pot... good experience but way expensive.
Josh and I posing with another one of my birthday gifts, boogie boards.
Kevin and Josh catching a wave together.

Birthday!

Its my birthday tomorrow! I will be 24 years old. That sounds so old to me... Maybe because when I was young I always dreamed of being in my twenties and now that I'm here... It doesn't always seem real. 24, married, in Los Angeles, working for an educational architecture firm. This was so NOT the way I dreamed. I thought I'd be 24, in Chicago, working with inner city renovation projects and urban families, definitely single, punk rockish at heart... haha. Sex in the City last night talked about how it is so easy to see others clearly, but you always feel like you can never really see yourself. How can our opinions of ourselves be so ambiguous and unclear... When we can easily define and understand those around us? I have no idea. Its like me thinking I was fat in high school and then now when I look at pictures, I realize I was not. So much wasted time worrying about fat. I wonder now how much time I worry about things that only appear to be real, but in fact, aren't. Perception can be such a tricky thing. Funny thing is, I still struggle with that fat thing occasionally.

Anyways, to celebrate my 24 years and the life I never dreamed of (but am thankful that I have) we (Kevin, Josh and I) are going camping one night near the beach just north of Malibu. I took off work tomorrow so we can sleep in and then go boogie boarding during the day. (That was one of my birthday presents... Two boogie boards, b/c I can't swim or do anything in that huge, murky, cold ocean by myself so I made Kevin get one too.) Probably the best gift of all though, I must say, is getting to hang out with my brother and my husband. No material thing could ever equal the gift of their presence in my life today.

I'll write more on Monday!

Accident Prone?

Car Accident Duce. #2. This time it was more of a fender bender though so nothing was completely destroyed. I hit a truck in front in me at a stop sign. Boring story- lets just say the sun was blinding and there is never any approaching traffic at this stop, so why would somebody sit at it for awhile? Anyways, the point is that it happened again. My second accident in less than a year. Never had a ticket in my life either. I must be very unlucky, or I’m a horrible driver and don’t know it, or its just part of LA and having a long commute. I always seem to hit the nicest people in this city too because this guy, like the last, said “Don’t worry; this is LA; hope you can still have a good day”. And I’m the one that hit him. Or maybe it’s our Kansas tags… they evoke instant pity.

Regardless, I’m sick and tired of this and never want to drive or buy a dumb car again.

Ps. I’m perfectly fine and Kevin was not even a little bit mad at me. Our only concern is, how the heck are we going to pay for a new hood and maybe bumper and Kevin’s tuition for this fall?

Continuously Aware... on accident.

One of my co-workers that sits very near to me (less than 10 feet) loves to say the name of Jesus. She also loves to say God. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, she probably proclaims His name, with quite force and in utter frustration, over 15 times a day… more than I care to count. Today I finally found myself annoyed… can she just stop saying that? I wondered to myself if it would be too “Christianize” or “religious” to ask her to stop. I hate being labeled a “religious person” and that is one act that would definitely put me in that category forever. Its just one of those things I learned growing up in a churched family, not to do. And now its here, right next to me… over and over and over and over again. Really though, I think anything said that many times in a day could get a little annoying.

Then I remembered Erwin McManus talking about being continually aware of His Presence last Sunday… and suddenly I thought, maybe it’s not so bad to be constantly reminded of Him. See God knows I tend to forget about Him, especially if I am sitting in front of a computer for an extended period of time… and so has given me an angel to help me remember… He’s right here too.

That’s my profound thought for today. ;)

4th of July

Sometimes it really is like a dream (living in LA). For the 4th of July, Mosaic hosted an all day picnic... so Kevin, Josh and I went and played soccer the entire time. They had 5 v 5 games set up every 10 minutes so you'd do 10 minutes on the field, 10 minutes off. We played for FOUR hours. It was the perfect 4th of July; I couldn't have wished for anything better.

The reasons this is so cool: 1- soccer is a world sport and is just cool 2-Kevin played. his first time ever. he worked hard and blew me away with how well he picked up the game. he is finally not too cool to play soccer. 3-we meet a ton of new people, although all guys b/c for most of the day I was the only woman that played... I showed up to the picnic in work out clothes while most of the other girls were, of course, all fashioned up. This is LA afterall. For the first five minutes I was even a little embarrassed until I forgot about it. 4-Josh played soccer the whole time too and was great... he came close to scoring a few times (as did Kevin). 5- I took two left shots that shocked all the men there. 6- Erwin McManus played as well and I made sure I let him know hes just another guy on the field (just kidding).

After that we were too exhausted to do much else except sluggishly move around the apartment. We ended up finding a fireworks show down the street from where we live (at CBS studios) so we walked less than a mile, watched some fireworks, and walked home. For the first time in LA, we had absolutely no need for a car to do something fun.

Now Josh is in San Diego with Mosaic's high school youth group for a few days. I hope he has fun- they are going to ride go-carts, surf, watch the new Pirates of the Caribbean on opening night, and maybe rent a boat to go tubing. I am going to see some musical play called Tick Tick Boom tonight with an ex-co-worker and then tomorrow night I get to see an old friend from Colorado! We are busy these days, as always. Its been fun to have Josh in town, although I find I worry about him way too much- what will he eat, what can we do, etc. Kevin's been amazing... spending almost every moment with my brother. I hope they don't get too tired of each other before the five weeks is over!

First Josh weekend

The first weekend with my brother in town... been busy but good. I've been stressed trying too hard to make sure he's enjoying his time here, and have accidentally made the time a little less enjoyable by my stress. I'm sure this will phase out as we get used to our new family addition.

The first thing we did was see the new Superman movie.... it was SO long. When did movies get so long? When I go to stand up at the end of a movie, my knees hurt from being bent in one position and my back hurts from straining to get comfortable. Am I just getting old... or are movies just too dang long sometimes??

Today we went surfing. My friend from work, Pierre, gave Josh and Kevin some pointers. The waves were rough so Josh has a few bruises on his arms and stomack from where the board hit him when he went thru some big waves. I didn't even try after watching KV and Josh... I'm fine chillin on the side. See pictures above.