A night out

Allison treated us to a night out at Ya Ya's. The ambiance was amazing and the food even better.

This is probably where I got in trouble in the yeast department.

The rolls before hand..... mmmmmmm.

The sausage and cheese dip, even better.

My asparagus pizza.
Out of this world pork chops for Jess.
Sea bass for Allison.
Drooling before we dug in.
All dressed up. I found it ironic that I, being the least girly, was the one in the dress. I borrowed it from one of my sisters, and just so they know, I'm not giving it back. It has one of those twirly whirly skirts that I positively loved. I felt like Karis.

And the mirror isn't crooked, the camera is. :-)

Girl Time.

I don't think it is possible to have a girls trip, event, weekend, whatever, without some form of nail painting.

We splurged and got our toes done which was a double pleasure after a morning of shopping.

I love the chairs. It would be nice to get one of them, especially if they come with the super talented lady who managed to make my poor abused nails look half way decent.

You see, half the time when my nails need cut, and I hate to admit this, I just pick at it until I can tear it off. It's a habit, I guess. Not a good one, especially when it comes time to get a pedicure. But.... the lady persevered and you would never know that they had been in bad shape before. :-) Now you understand why I need to keep her around.
Sullivan thoroughly enjoyed his first pedicure. I think we may have hooked him on it for life, and he certainly charmed the ladies.
In honor of the fourth we decided to get our nails done in these festive colors. The sad thing is that the pale mannequin hand matches my own skin rather well. Seeing Allison's skin several shades darker brings out the envy in me.

And envy rots the bones. I was driving past one of those cool storage units that they have now incase you want to store heat sensitive items. On their sign out front they weren't saying what the cost was, or the size, or even their number.

Nope.

All it said was "Envy rots the bones."

I think the sheer shock of seeing that verse in front of a storage unit is what has made it stick with me.

Why it was on that sign I don't know. Seems to me it would rather hurt their business. Because usually it is envy that causes you to buy more stuff, which causes people to have to store other things.....

Who knows, maybe they are full up and need to turn people away.

But... regardless, it was a good message for me, and I don't want rotten bones. I already have enough problems, thank you very much! :-) So, whenever I'm tempted to envy someone else's life, I remember that storage unit.

But, this was not a post about envy, this was a post about pedicures and I have no idea how that led down this rabbit trail.

Aren't they cute? Jess already had a toe ring, so Allison and I jumped on the band wagon. It has been forever since I've worn one, but when I saw the solid silver band with daisies on it, well, I couldn't resist.

I had to ask Faith today if they were still in. I'm not up on the latest fashion trends.

She kindly told me that they could be in if I wanted them to be.

Hummmmm.... need to ponder that one for a bit. :-)

Thanks for praying:-)

A small miracle happened today.

I had ice cream.

Before you think your prayers failed, let me explain.

My mom made ice cream made of cream and stevia.

I get to have stevia.

In fact, the chiropractor has me taking 15 drops of dark stevia for part of my treatment.

So, when it is cream, and the cream is frozen and sweet with stevia with a raspberry on top, well....

Let me tell you, this girl is in dessert heaven!

I think my mom has just found something that will make my journey easier.

Thank you mom!

About my Chiropractor....

I made a whirlwind trip out to Chicago yesterday with my mom.

I wasn't sure what to expect.

No, that's a lie.

I've cheated quite a few times in the food department this month.

My body was telling me that it didn't like the extra bowls of ice cream I had ingested.

And the brownie.

And the M&M's.

And the extra bread that wasn't good for me.

Oh, but I loved each little morsel.

And they were little.

Since they were so little I figured I must be imagining the worsened symptoms.

I got on the table to be examined.

My mouth didn't open once to say what a bad girl I had been.

My body betrayed me.

This doctor is ANNOYING!

He doesn't just look at you.

He has ways of getting your body to squeal on you.

It's medical torture, I tell you!

And my body gave in. It caved. It told him everything he wanted to know.

It cried that it hadn't liked the abuse I had given it this past month.

It wanted the no sugar, no yeast, no nothing yummy, yummy, yummy back, and back now.

It was explained to me, again, that with my condition eating sugar or yeast isn't like a normal person eating them.

My body takes the millimeter I give it and runs a mile. The tumor eats it up and grows.

So, I'm here to tell you that while it can be downright frustrating to have a doctor like I currently have, I'm grateful he has put me back on that straight and narrow diet.

I'm still doing ok, just waking up to the reality that if I give into my cravings my consequences aren't just weight gain anymore.

The stakes are higher.

A lot higher.

It's getting better.

Or getting worse.

Makes me think twice before eating a bite of ice cream, muffin, or M&M.

Could I just ask one thing of you?

Pray for me.

It's hard, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I have a new man in my life....

Dustin isn't the least bit jealous. A tad worried, perhaps, about the proverbial "baby itch" that wants to raise it's head when I am around him, but not jealous.

Sullivan was the only man allowed to come along with us. Nursing babies only is the rule.

This is the little boy I wrote about earlier. He wouldn't take a bottle so had to go to the hospital for nurishment. :-) He has since learned, and I am happy to report that he has gained four pounds in the past month.

He is also a little charmer. His fussy moments were few and far between.
I leaned forward, but he was the one pulling in for the kisses!

Adorable!

In the waiting room waiting to give approval to the super cute clothes his mommy bought.
Thanks for sharing your little man with us Jess!

The drive...

I've been to Kansas City a few times, but never beyond.

In all honesty, I hadn't thought much about what I would see. I printed off my directions from mapquest because unlike my techy husband, I prefer printed directions. They seem more dependable to me.

They might be if you check them with a map.

I didn't.

I figured I had a cell phone and Allison if I got lost.

Which I didn't.

Not even one wrong turn.

Which sounds impressive until you consider that I was basically only on two highways the entire time.

All that to explain why I had no idea what to expect on the drive, other than I would hit a toll road at some point.

I drive toll roads all the time.

So often I have an I Pass sitting in my car.

The Kansas Toll road is different.

Very different.

For starters, there is very little traffic, at least when I was first driving it.

Along with the very little traffic there are NO houses to be seen.

I'm not exaggerating here, even a little bit.

As far as the eyes can see there are hills, beautiful hills.

At one point they made me cry a little, but I'll explain that later.

And then there are cows, cows, and more cows.

It made me wonder what I would do if I had to stop for help?

Do you jump on a cow and tell it to take you to the nearest ranch? Though I'm not convinced that there are any ranches on that stretch of road becuase like I told you before there were NO houses to be seen. And I'm really not sure that Verizons little "Can you hear me now?" man would work out here.

See? No houses. And it is a good thing I didn't need to get out and walk because Chad, Allison's husband, informed me that there are quite a few poisonious snakes in that harmless looking pasture.

Even though there were no houses, or no people, or not really any cars to be seen there was, of couse, one of these.

I am convinced after last weekend that McDonalds is literally everywhere. I would not be surprised to be lost in the middle of a desert and see one of these signs in the middle of nowhere.

And it wouldn't be a mirage, either.

Dont' you think it looks a little funny?

No town, no house, no nothing.

Just McDonalds and a gas station. It struck me as odd, so I thought I would share.

At some point along the way I began to wonder how the cows got from one side of the endless stretch of four lane highway to the other.

I, who don't really think about cows unless it is in the form of hamburger, steak, or milk, became quite concerned.

Hey, it's a long drive. Who knows what my mind would cook up to worry about if I was traveling by covered wagon.

I pictured ranchers stopping traffic to herd the cattle across. But there is a divider, and we were wipping along at about 75 mph, so I figured that wasn't the case.

I didn't figure they would take them all the way to the end of a few hundred miles just to get them across.

And somehow I knew they needed to cross. I don't know how, I just knew.

And it concerned me.

Then I saw it.

A bridge.

Not just any bridge.

The "Bazzar Bridge."

It was aptly named because need I remind you that there are no cars that need this bridge, apparently no people that I could see, and certainly no bikers or walkers, only my cows.

I was relieved that they had the Bazzar Bridge to cross on safely.

No long out of the way walks for those cows.

No braving the dangers of traffic.

Cunundrum solved.

I may not have lost sleep over it, but in that moment I really cared about how those cows got from one side to the other. :-)

Goes to show how surroundings can change what you care about.

Lovely, isn't it? They had several bridges just for the cows, but only one had the fabulous name. The other ones only got numbers.
This is what made me cry. It reminded me of Box T. And Box T closed down a couple summers ago due to the owners retiring in their 80's. It was such a special place for so many people.

And... you could walk in hills like these without fear of being bitten by a snake!

Girlfriends

There is a group of friends in my life who have decided to get together every two years.

We met each other at different times in various ways, but the tie that binds us closest is Box T - and the Lord, of course. :-)

I met Anna, first. She, unfortunately couldn't come because of this silly little excuse of being pregnant and almost due. I mean, come on, who doesn't want to chance having a baby in a strange city without your husband?:-) Anyway, we met inutero. Our parents were attending a conference while pregnant with us, then some 11years later they moved into the area and we met officially. We are probably as different as night and day, but we love each other very much.

Jess was the one I met next in the line up. We were about 14, and again, it was at a conference. I don't really remember much about that meeting except riding in backwards together in a stationwagon. We would meet again later on, but first I'll mention Allison.

Allison and I met at Box T. She was counseling, I was the cook. The only thing I really ever cooked in my life before that was bread and easy stuff. They say if you can make bread you can make anything, and maybe that is true if you love to bake, but I don't. Thankfully there was an older lady I was cooking with who kept me under a tight reign and the campers managed to fill their bellies. Al and I didn't really run into each other terribly much that camp, but when it was discovered that they needed two cooks for the next camp we were asked to cook together.

We accepted. Florence (The camp directors wife and in charge of making sure the household ran smoothly) had her hands full.

Allison and I bonded for life over that sink and stove. The kitchen is small. You either have to love each other or kill each other. Especially when you share a room, as well.

The counselors at this camp - it was a boys camp - knew us fairly well and were adept at pranks.

One morning Allison and I came down to make breakfast only to have them asking us questions about things we had talked about last night after we had hopped into bed.

Personal things.

Things that we wouldn't have said to anyone else.

But thankfully nothing we were ashamed of.

It turns out they had bugged our room - placing some device under our mattress - and listening to us on their radio downstairs.

Once again, a bonding moment and one I'll never forget. It reminds me every now and again that I need to be careful what I say because anyone could be listening.

Even at a horse camp out in the middle of North Dakota!

The next year we met again at Discipleship camp and then Jess entered my life again!

Allison and I had already arrived at camp and I heard that Jess was coming as a last minute decision. She and Al were already friends and I remember being disappointed that she was coming. I had been looking forward to spending time with just Allison, and now it would be Jess, who I didn't really know, as well.

I'm so glad God knows way better than we do. It was a bonding week for all of us. New and old friendships grew over ruined batches of puppy chow, yes, we managed to do that between the three of us, sprained ankles, (mine) and romantic sorrows and joys (not mine). :-)

Although Anna wasn't at that discipleship camp, she did counsel with us, cook with us, and grow up with Jess and Allison, so that is how she fits in at Box T.

And that, my friends, is the backround of why the four of us find that one of the highlights of our year is to get back together discussing memories and how God is working in each of our lives. I'm realizing as I write this that God has blessed me with wonderful friends. Not that I haven't realized this before, but the reminder is good for me. :-)

Here is one picture from my weekend of running away. Me, of course, Jess, and then Allison. I love these girls, and am so blessed to have them as friends for the last 14 years. More pictures will come tomorrow.

Or the next day.

Or maybe the day after that.

You never can be too sure these days. :-)