Thankful Thursday! (104)

Today, I am thankful for...

1.  My cousin, Ashley, and her willingness to share the highs and the lows of her story... she's inspiring and encouraging and resilient, and I love everything she said here!

2.  This one is two-fold: Celine's song Ashes is legitimately really great, a broken prayer ballad asking God to bring beauty from ashes and pain... but this music video is so funny - it was apparently featured in the soundtrack to Deadpool 2, so Deadpool is randomly dancing around her (in all her dramatic elegance) in stiletto boots - I dunno how she didn't laugh on some of it!  Thanks to Chet for introducing me to this! lol

3.  These lemon-up Girl Scout cookies (thanks to Sarah sharing her Sam's membership with me and me being an easy sell on these cookies) - they each have inspiring messages on them, and that top one made me laugh!

4.  The truth of this statement (they placed several quotes from female Supreme Court Justices and other strong women around the room during the swearing in ceremony for Judge Farris).  This was a good reminder... I keep feeling like God is blocking my path in certain pursuits, and maybe the timing just hasn't been right, but either way, I need to trust that He knows what is best for me and how my life can serve Him best in the end!

5.  Audiobooks!!  Nothing in particular is "wrong," but I'm feeling extra tenderhearted, anxious, and raw lately, which means I'm crying easily (for example, when I heard the first notes of It's Quiet Uptown - mess!)  In the midst of overthinking things and feeling this extra emotional intensity, I've been devouring audiobooks at a rapid rate, preferring them to TV several times and listening to these six during the month of February alone!  I won't write a full post about each one, but I'm thankful for the connection I feel with each of these authors and for what I have learned from each book!  (And I'm thankful for the Audible and Libby and Hoopla apps, two of which offer free audiobook rentals and one that pairs with Amazon for low-priced audiobook purchases.)

6.  This one is three-fold:  my new bike ($2100 less than a Peloton), the fact that I put it together myself yesterday, and that I can now do Peloton workouts with Cody Rigsby from the comfort of home! =)  I've been sick and lethargic and consuming too much sugar for a good part of this month - which I'm sure has contributed to the excess of feelings I mentioned above, so it's been really good to get back in the swing of Peloton classes this week, and super fun to be able to dance around with Cody to the '90s music (Britney, N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, etc.) of my youth!  Sometimes you just need to dance it out while riding to fun old school songs and hearing your coach say, "Let it go, Elsa!  It's not that deep, Boo!!" lol

7.  That in spite of the frustration, confusion, pressure, and uncertainty I feel right now in the midst of weighing my options in the adoption process, God is still good (and He cares about us individually even when that feels untrue), and one way or another, this too shall pass!

(*By far the worst character in The Patriot, but this eyeroll gif makes me laugh!)

JEM Tinfinity!!

I had a sudden, sad realization while looking at my calendar today... in the midst of being sick, I forgot to write a Friendiversary post on February 13th, exactly ten years after my 2010 Valentine's party (which Jeff has called the "Lonely Heart's Club dinner.") lol  We ate at Johnny Carino's then the group came over to my house for dessert, and JEM signed and dated my signature wall.  I think we officially met at the Caravan sometime before that, but I'm not sure of the date, so February 13th is the winner! =)

So without further ado, Happy (*Belated) Friendiversary to one of my favorite and most quotable friends, Jeffrey Edward, aka JEM, aka Pete Moss, aka Fun Pete! lol

I am truly thankful for your friendship and the many great memories we share, most of which are documented here on the blog!

Jeffrey, you are awesome because...

• You have a wonderfully kind and generous heart!
• You're an excellent host - you and Kelly share the gift of hospitality and love having friends and family over and creating fun memories!
• You make delicious sopapilla cheesecake, something I remember from the first time I came to your house! =)
• You sprayed for bugs back in the day just to make me feel more comfortable (after accidentally throwing one toward me, but we won't mention that). lol
• You always know how to keep the conversation going, asking the most random and entertaining questions!  (North Korean prisons come to mind.)

• You were the first to be there for me when my world felt shattered in 2013.  Your presence meant a lot, and your words pointed me to the light of Christ in a dark season!
• You and Chet Lee have been awesome, dependable friends to me ever since our VCGO Vegas trip ten years back.  Y'all are the closest thing I have to brothers, and that's how I've grown to think of you guys!

• You're one of my most faithful blog readers ever, and I love and appreciate that!
• You asked me to document a trip I didn't go on, and the randomness of that made me happy!
• You are one of the funniest guys I know, which has led to many great Quotables posts!

• Your love to say "Make it a great day" because you're emphasizing that we can choose to be happy and do good things with our time, and I love that!
• Your love for The Golden Girls is one of many things that will always make me laugh!
• You had a long chat with Justin Bieber before knowing who he was, and the story became legendary! =) 

• You love creating good memories and reminiscing as much as I do... knowing you'll always look through the scrapbooks makes it more fun to create them!
• You were willing to sit with me on the ground when my feet were hurting during the fireworks at Disney World! lol  Lots of memories that night.
• You're happy to drive the group and take group selfies when we go on fun, memorable road trips to Sam n' Ella's or Pops or The Mercantile!

• You have a wonderful family with Kelly Marie, Ellie Faye, and "Penny Wenny." lol
• You're a great leader for your family and you have a lot of Godly wisdom and joy and strength!

• You took the time to mentor Michael and commit to Scripture memory, and I know all of that made a great difference in his life!
• You have the cutest and happiest little daughter!

• You do a great job of keeping in touch and maintaining relationships with old friends from high school and from your Baylor days, and I think that's awesome and speaks well of your character!
• You were able to talk me into a hike on our second Vegas trip, which speaks well of your sales skills! lol  (It really was great pics and fun memories!)

• You're one of my most well-traveled friends, and I love your sense of adventure and hearing the stories from your trips!
• Some of your recent questions have been so spot on it made me laugh - I'm glad to have a friend who gets me enough to know how I'll react in certain relational situations! lol
• In closing, "Thank you for being a friend!  We've traveled down the road and back again.  Your heart is true. You're a pal and a confidant!!" ❤

I went with a classic One Republic song because we've been to three of their concerts together.

Here's a slideshow with some great memories from the past decade (and 11 days)!! =)

Educated

“It’s not necessarily a question of whether you love them; it’s a question of whether they belong in your life... You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them. You can miss someone every day and still be glad they are no longer in your life.” 

“I remember thinking: how can I believe I’m a good person when my mother doesn’t think I’m a good person? And the sense of shame that created in me, I just thought, if anyone finds out my mother thinks that, how could they ever trust me with anything? I mean, how could anyone think well of me when they know my own mother doesn’t think well? She’s supposed to love you no matter what. And I think I felt so alone and so frightened of people finding that out about me for so long... And it took me a long time to realize: maybe I can believe in myself even if she doesn’t.” ~Tara Westover 

(*These first two quotes are from interviews, not from the book itself.)

I spent a good portion of the last three days resting and recovering from a cold while listening intently to the audiobook Educated by Tara Westover.  It made a deeper impact on me and connection with me than I expected.  Her life story is truly fascinating, and her resilience in the face of repeated abuse and trauma is inspiring.  To make the most of yourself, to form your own worldview, and to rise above how others perceive you and the limits they may place on you!

Below are some of my favorite quotes, the moments I bookmarked while listening and the quote about gold that immediately made me cry for reasons I'm still trying to figure out...

“'It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you,' I had written in my journal. But Shawn had more power over me than I could possibly have imagined. He had defined me to myself, and there is no greater power than that.”

“This is a magical place,” I said, “Everything shines here.”

“You must stop yourself from thinking like that. You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. YOU are gold. And returning to BYU or even to that mountain you came from will not change who you are. It may change how others see you; it may even change how you see yourself.  Even gold appears dull in some lighting, but that is the illusion. And it always was.”

“Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved, and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations... “Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known.” Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say, whatever you are, you are woman.”

“It wasn’t the clothes that made this face, this woman, different. It was something behind her eyes, something in the set of her jaw, a hope or belief or conviction that a life is not a thing unalterable. I don’t have a word for what I saw, but I suppose it was something like faith.”

“I willed myself to believe there was no real difference between what I knew to be true and what I knew to be false. To convince myself that there was some dignity in what I planned to do - in surrendering my own perceptions of right and wrong, of reality, of sanity itself to earn the love of my parents.”

“Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind... If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument, I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay - I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.”

“I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money... Curiosity is a luxury for the financially secure.”

“The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is not obvious to you.  'I’m fine,' you think.  'So what if I watched TV for 24 straight hours yesterday?  I’m not falling apart; I’m just lazy.' Why it’s better to think yourself lazy than to think yourself in distress, I’m not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital.”

“How do you thank a brother who refused to let you go, who seized your hand and wrenched you upward just as you had decided to stop kicking and sink? There aren’t words for that.”

“I realized that all my siblings except Richard and Tyler were economically dependent on my parents. My family was splitting down the middle: the three who had left the mountain, and the four who had stayed. The three with doctorates, and the four without high school diplomas. A chasm had appeared and was growing.”

“Guilt is the fear of one's own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people. I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on its own terms, without endlessly prosecuting old grievances, without weighing his sins against mine, without thinking of my father at all. I learned to accept my decision for my own sake, because of me, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it. It was the only way I could love him.”

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.” ❤

“They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things.  Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.”

Friday Favs

Fun Video:  Any cheesy video with Penn Holderness will make me smile!  Even though I fully support couples having enough common sense and security to do certain things alone, this video made me laugh. =)


Purchase:  My Boo puppy calendar finally arrived, along with my red Aspyn Arrows t-shirt! Love them both!! ❤

Recent News:  Judge Farris, our newest judge in Creek County, was officially sworn in yesterday, so that was exciting!!  For several reasons, seeing five female judges alongside the five male judges in our courtroom made me happy!

Thing I've Heard This Week:  "But y'all, could you imagine writing a song about Uncle Joey from Full House!?  Ladies, gentlemen... let 'em go!! Do not let these mistakes get you in your feelings today!  You know why? Because there is a Ryan Reynolds right around the corner!  Alanis dated Joey from Full House AND. Ryan. Reynolds, okay!? Your Ryan Reynolds is around the corner - do not worry!"  ~the ever-entertaining Cody Rigsby (the XOXO Valentine's ride featuring breakup anthems, during You Oughta Know, which he called the ultimate breakup song. lol)

Gift from God Lately:  The myriad of birthday celebrations this week, including a wonderful convo and Ted's lunch with the Fosters today!  Thankful for great friends and fun times and free meals. lol ;-)

In Other News...

I'm still recovering from being sick, and this has been a nice, lazy day with lots of laundry and TV watching.  Half of the Parrish fam has come down with the flu, so I'm thankful mine is just a cold.

SO MANY birthdays this month - I love it!  Miss Ellie Faye's 1st birthday is tomorrow, and we celebrated with a party at the Moss home this weekend!! ❤ 

(JEM was outside when we took this one.)

Jeff and his brother, Andrew, randomly picked the same sweater that day.  Rach and I have definitely done the accidental matching before in our Inspi(red) shirts! lol

Ellie's smash cake was so pretty!  I love that she's looking up at Jeff here! =)

My card... (*Side note for anyone with kids who enjoy drawing and coloring - check out Art for Kids Hub videos on Youtube!!  Fun, free, step-by-step How-to-Draw videos, including smiley cupcakes! lol)

It was a bunny theme for this party, and everything was so cute!  These cupcakes were really tasty!  Ellie's first birthday drew a large crowd of friends and family... she is very well loved! =)

The most recent February birthday in my life is Miles Leif, my cousin, Ashley's baby, born on February 13th! ❤ 

The mini Miss K dressed as Rach for a little skit during the Mom's Chapel at CHA... she skipped out on stage with all the confidence and blew kisses to the audience!  (Mom videoed it for me, and I LOVED it!!)

Also, in case you needed an extra dose of cuteness today, Kyndal has a new "boyfriend" in her Kindergarten class - Jack (the son of one of my CHA classmates). =)

❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

Please pray with and for me as I decide how to move forward with adoption.  There are some very obvious pros and cons on both sides of going through DHS vs. working with a private agency, and I'm feeling unsettled and uncertain about which path to pursue, and somewhat anxious about the various unknowns that will remain out of my control in either setting (something I will have to consistently give to God by turning to prayer through the adoption process and ALL OF PARENTING. lol)

"We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints' inheritance in the light." ~Colossians 1:9-12

In closing, someone posted this in my #boocrew FB group (for fans of Cody Rigsby), and I saved it because it's true.  Let's be the best version of ourselves and strengthen the relationships that matter most in that endeavor. ❤

Hope the rest of your week is lovely!

Birthday Recap!

It's been a fantastic 3-day birthday weekend, in spite of having a bad cold and going on a less-than-stellar date on Saturday.  Fun fact: both last year and this year, I went on a first date with guys I met on Match during the two days between Valentine's Day and my birthday (the 16th last year, the 15th this year).  Not sure why my brain remembers and keeps track of random things like that, but there ya go.

And now for a birthday weekend recap...

Sunday, we went to Ted's for lunch after church... Babah and JoBug met us there, then J&K came home with us to hang out and play for a couple hours!

I took a lovely Sunday nap, then the Parrish fam and Charlene came over for dinner... lasagna, cheesy bread, and Nikkellette's ribbon cake!  I laughed pretty hard when Rach licked the whipped cream frosting off the leaf... no whipped cream left behind! lol

This is their signature cake, and it's usually a layer of chocolate, the layer of vanilla cream with bananas and strawberries, then a layer of white cake with the whipped icing.  You'll notice the chocolate layer is missing here (replaced by white).  The reactions when we cut into it were dramatic and somewhat entertaining since the fam knows I heart chocolate. lol  The cake was still delicious, but Charlene said we should tell Nikkellette's I almost cried when I saw there was no chocolate layer. lolol

This morning, I met Sarah for brunch at Savoy, then we took some leftovers to Steve, then went to get our nails done!  We had a nice chat over brunch and in Sarah's car later... a fun and fantastic birthday morning!  (Bottom right pic = me with my hands wrapped in paraffin wax, which got on my lovely Friends hoodie. lol)

BYOC - bring your own chips!  Chettles is being super committed to WW tracking, and he was cracking me up bringing these to Los Cabos tonight.

Me (joking): "We're all judging you right now."

Chet:  "Judge away!  You can judge my gorgeous summer body in July!" lol

They put us in a back room and we were the only big group there, which was perfection.  We could actually hear each other, which is kinda rare for Los Cabos parties!

Group pic by our waiter, Kyler -- super thankful for these friends!!

The wonderful Wilson fam!

The fantastic Fultons!

The youthful Youngs? lol

The magnificent Myers!

My awesome ENFP friends! #scavengerhunt2008

Love this pic of me and Sarah in our baby shark hats! lol

My Creek County Courthouse crew! =)  I'm all about the alliteration today.

Aunt Mockey and Tater-tot!

Lots of great cards this year! =)

Karli made the homemade chocolate cake with whipped peanut butter frosting + glittery cake topper + adorable baby shark hats from Tate's party!!  Laura brought me a Merritt's cookie and cupcake, Tiffany got me the BBW candles, and Sarah wrote me a wonderful heartfelt note along with an Amazon gift card! ❤

I feel very loved and celebrated, and very ready for some Peloton time with Cody Rigsby after all this sugar!  And I have 3 more celebrations to look forward to as the week continues (with the Moss fam, Kristin, and Elizabeth)!!  Birthday week is the very BEST.  ;-)