Stressful

This has been stressing me out lately:

One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."
Matt 22:35-40


I've been thinking about this for the last several weeks, and it only gets more stressful. I (and many of you) have grown up hearing these two commands.

Love God: Sure, check, of course I do.
Love your neighbors: Well, kind of. I love a lot of people. Basically a check, right?

What's truly bothersome is this, though:
"This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it"

And honestly, I've always "known" that, too. But I would really not like to demonstrate my love of God by how well I am treating the people around me. I happen to be failing this test.

Unpleasant.

Hotel: Check!

Last week I officially booked our hotel at our anniversary trip destination. It felt really, really good. Once that was complete it finally sunk in that it was actually coming. So exciting!

We'll scoot outa town Thursday night after work, and it cannot come fast enough.

I hadn't been trying to keep the destination a secret, but when someone desperately wanted to know the details I thought it would be more fun to keep it a secret. I can't resist being difficult. ;)

She said that if she guessed the location correctly that I should have to bring her back a prize of some sort. When I asked what would happen if she was incorrect she said "you can do anything you want to me...within reason."

Hehe.

So, I will be posting picture clues on my blog during/after the trip and the first person to guess correctly will get a souvenir from our destination. I can't promise it will be fantastic, but I can promise it will be... a thing. :)

I will hide the comments so that no cheating can take place (and so that the people who I've already told about the trip can't give it away).

Since I believe I have one international reader I have to add a disclaimer:
I'm not going to ship a prize overseas (e.g. Peru). So if Eden wins, she can give her prize to someone else.

Hehe... you'd almost think I was taking this prize seriously. But you shouldn't. I like to keep standards really, really, really... really low. :)

Bad Movie Night Revisited

I started a post about this movie I watched recently during another of our bad movie nights. I wrote about how it was arguably the most ridiculous excuse of a movie I have ever seen. I wrote about all the different things that didn't make sense or were just outright stupid. However, I decided instead to leave you with a short clip that basically says it all for me.

Feel free to laugh or scratch your face off. I'm not sure which is more appropriate.

(Sorry about the video quality. I was tired of searching through stupid youtube videos)

Sad Day

On Friday Jono and I decided to take some excellent advice and find out if the nursery (to which we had the very generous gift card) would do a free evaluation of our little garden plot.

Upon driving up to the nursery, however, we discovered that it had suffered the fate of an economy in recession and gone out of business.

So much for our gift card.

And as we were not anticipating needing much more money than was on the gift card, we did not add a budget line for making our garden less ugly.

Boo.

I enjoy...

working for what I have.

It's a good feeling, you know.

In Over My Head

For a wedding gift we received a very generous gift card to a local nursery. I've been looking forward to planting lovely flowers all year, but now that the time has come I realize how little I know about...anything.

I know that I think daffodils and tulips are the cutest flowers. But I have a fairly large plot in front of my house that might look a little funny if it was composed entirely of those flowers.

All that aside, clearing that plot out will be work enough. The people who owned our house were trying to get something in there to grow fast to help sell the house, I'm sure, the ground cover is taking over everything.

But we have no choice. We have to plant something, because our gift card expires on May 3rd.

Ideas for a mostly sunny area are welcome!

Dear Amber,

Thanks so much for coming to my house this week.

It was really fun to see you.

Also, thanks so much for taking pictures of yourself after I left for work so that I could post them on my blog.








Love ya lots,
Rachel

Thoughts. They are a-whirling.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the amazing women I know. And I know many, many of them. These people have shaped me and impacted me, moved and delighted me, and made me giggle til I almost wet myself.

And these women (while perfectly capable of living happy lives regardless of marital status) are single.

I should back up.

Most "normal" people in the world would say that 22 years old is a very young age at which to get married. But in homeschooled, middle America this is not the case. From 18 on there were comments and questions and oh-so-many "helpful" people looking to set me up. I'm not really complaining about that, though, because it was never a big enough thing to let myself be bothered over. However, I did constantly wonder why everyone in the world assumed that marriage was the only path to happiness. I swore to never be one of those people.

But I'm afraid that being married to the perfect man has changed my views. I know that I was a very happy single person. I thoroughly enjoyed the (perhaps) few years of my single, adult life. But now I am much happier than I ever was or imagined I would be. Therefore, I am an advocate of marriage (should your mate be perfect, that is).

Now, just because these wonderful ladies I know are not married does NOT mean I pester them constantly or even try to talk them into having relationships. I wouldn't dream of it. But I DO happen to know that these particular people want to be married (someday).

So, it makes me wonder. I wonder where all the wonderful guys are to make good on this opportunity? How can these beautiful, intelligent women and their singlehood go unnoticed? It seems slightly absurd. I hope all the respectable men of the world have not suddenly been abducted.


Dear men,
You are missing the best of the best. You're freakin' morons.
Sincerely,
Rachel

Out of the loop

I recently watched Slumdog Millionaire with a bunch of friends. I guess I'm out of the loop because except for my friend (who arranged the movie-watching event), I had heard nothing about this movie. And until the evening I watched it I had no idea how many awards it had won.

I guess when you don't have cable, get the newspaper, listen to the radio, or read anything online other than your email and friends' blogs, you don't learn about these things.

Hmm.

I'm having a vision of my future as an old, hysterical, out-of-touch woman who makes handbags out of recycled cat sweaters.

Honestly, I'm good with that. :)

AP!

This last weekend we went to KC for the Andrew Peterson concert. We had seen this same tour last year around Easter time and it's just an amazing time. He has been one of my favorite artists for a long time, but every time I see him live I am just so encouraged and blessed.

First things first, though, we headed out as the sleet started coming down on Saturday morning. It never got cold enough for the ice to stick on the roads, so it was no biggie. We spent some time with my cousin and made lunch, dessert and headed to World Market. I do love that place.

After that we went to see Jono's family who lives near there. We got to go with them to their church potluck before braving the blizzard that had developed outside. Seriously, I have never seen snowflakes that big in my life. It was probably a bit foolish to be driving around in all of that, but we couldn't miss the AP concert, dangit.

With all the visiting and driving from place to place plus the slow rate at which we had to travel, we probably spent a good 6-7 hours driving just for a weekend in KC. Kinda nuts, and tiring, but well worth it.

Plus, I now have a picture with one of my favorite people. Not a bad deal.