love it =)

Hollie sent me these lyrics a while back...they just make me smile....lol

"You keep messin up, and I'll keep prayin for you..."

;)

awesome awesome awesome advice...

and I'm not the only person that needs to read this!


~There's no doubt about it-breakups suck. But in the first few hours or days or weeks that follow, there's one important truth you need to recognize: Some things can't and shouldn't be fixed, especially that loser who dumped you or forced you to dump him. It's over for a reason, and deep down inside you probably know what that reason is.

My favorite reality check:
~So many of us find ourselves saying "But he/she was so great!" Yes, and the people who got on the Titanic thought they were going on vacation. Things changed and it's important to remember that they did.

~You can love your friends.. ..you can love your family ... you can even love every stray dog or stray drummer that crosses your path. HOWEVER, you have to learn how to love yourself, like yourself, and put yourself first before you will ever find the healthy, loving, and lasting realtionship that you've been looking for.



~At the end of the day, it's about weather YOU like yourself enough to face the reality that your romance wasn't working.. to recognize that it wasn't giving you what you needed and deserved.
 
~Anyone who assesses you or your realtionship as "disposable" is not worthy of your time or tears.



~A lot of the pain you are experiencing right now is auctually fear. Fear of things being different then how you liked them, fear of never finding love again, fear of being alone, fear of having to fill your time differently. We're afraid of the unknown.


~The person you loved took a good long look at the awesomeness that is you, evaluated your relationship together, and said, "No, thanks. I'll try my luck elsewhere." Or you said it to that person. Either way, that alone should make you realize that it wasn't a match made in heaven.

~Your ex is your ex for a reason...remember that-and move on to something better.



*Most of these were taken from a Greg Behrendt book that I love!

Friend of the Month: Samantha

Ok, so she's not just my friend, she's my baby sister! On April 15, Samantha turned 13 (I know right? Can you believe it?!?!?) so April is fitting to be "her" month. Samantha Dawn Powers was born April 15, 1997. I was nearly 15 years old when she was born, so there's quite an age gap between us. Even so, we still seem to remain close. I have always had a special bond with this kid. It's almost like she's my own. Like a second mother of some sort. Maybe this is why I still don't feel the need to have kids yet :) Samantha is the baby of the family, so because of this, her lifestyle has always been VERY different than mine. While we had very little when I came around, my parents were doing quite well by the time she came along. I've never really had a problem with this, I'm more happy about it than anything. I think she's a wonderful kid and deserves it! There were always plenty of pics-of course there were, she had mom taking them, and me too! We made sure to spoil her with TONS of clothes and adorable outfits. I have yet to meet another baby with more clothes than this kid had. I'm pretty sure for the first 9 years of her life she was completely outfitted in everything Gymboree, Carters, and Baby Gap had to offer. And being the weirdo that I am, I had to make sure all of these outfits were properly documented. There are pics everywhere of her in dresses, hats, shoes, sunglasses, with no where to go. I just wanted to dress her up, take pics, and then move on to the next outfit. I think a part of me doing this was because I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible, being so much older I was scared I'd miss out on her life once I had to leave for college.

Leaving for college was MUCH more difficult than I thought it would be. Samantha was only about 3 years old when I left, and Ill never forget her running through the hallways of my dorm. Everything was all good until everyone left, and then I lost it. I was so upset thinking about how I left her and my lil bro and how much I knew I would miss out on being so far away. Lucky for me, it wasnt that far, and once I learned how to get back home, I came back pretty often.

I've always been very protective of this kid (and her big bro too!). I remember when she broke her femur, and I wasnt told about it for a good 4 days, becuase my parents knew it was exam time at school, and they were worried I would have either failed them or bailed on them to go see her in the hospital. And they were right. But when I found out that she'd been hurt for that long without me knowing, I LOST IT. I was not a happy camper. Looking back I understand why they did, because I for sure would'nt have worried about school. It took quite a while for her to recover because the break was so bad, requiring surgery, pins, etc, and since she was so young. I was so glad to see her finally get better.

Samantha has had MANY nicknames given by me over the years, and they all have long ridiculous stories to go with them. I'm pretty sure each of my friends calls her something different, because they all know her by different names. I'll spare her the first embarrassing one...hehehe...but we also have Beanie baby, Bean, Massa, Passa Massa, Passa Massa Bean, and so on...It's ridiculous. Sam is my lil Mini Me, she was more so when she was little, with the princess stuff, but she's still like her big sis in the sense that she's a lil diva. Samantha is unlike me in a few ways too, she is very creative, and very artsy. She also likes musicals, and that is not something that I share with her. In face whenever Elisabeth starts talking about musicals, plays, etc, I always suggest to her to go with Samantha, because there's no way I'll be going hehe :) Samantha also has her own awesome style, I love it!

This kid is fabulous for so many reasons, and I love her SO MUCH. She's one of my favorite people in the universe. Love you Bean! xoxoxoxoxo

Mini Me :)

She loves her niece Coco

Nothing says it better than that sign...so us!

Someone insisted on being in the prom pix lol

Baby Bean! In my cheer jacket and poms

Love you Sam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! xoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoox

Word of the Month-Recover

So I've had a hard time figuring out my word of the month for this month. April has been a very blah month for me emotionally. While I've kept super busy, it seems I haven't taken much time to take care of myself or really do anything just for me. So tonight a word popped up into my mind, and so I figured I'd go with it. So April's WOTM is:

RECOVER:

~to bring back to normal position or condition

also:
~to get back: recoup, regain, repossess, retrieve
~to extricate from an undesirable state: reclaim, redeem, rescue, salvage
~to regain one's health

It just seems to fit what seems to be going on right now. I seem to be in a slow state of recovery, from a few things. While I seem to have recovered slowly over the past few months, I feel as if I still have a way to go. I'm not really sure what the next step is. I'm not sure why I feel like I'm stuck in this position, not moving foward. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do...so I'll rely on God. I know He has a plan for me, so I just need to be patient for now and continue to move forward as best as I know how.

I'm sure everyone's felt this way at some point. Something big happens in your life, alters you completely, changes your world and flips it upside down, so you go into defensive mode. But then what? What gets you out of this state? How long does it take? Maybe I'm just impatient. Ok, fine, I'm totally impatient, but that's no secret here. Any (positive) help would be much appreciated! :)

Birfdayyy time

Just wanted to share a few pics from our trip to Great Wolf Lodge for Samantha's 13th birthday...

STILL can't believe she's 13! xo

Silly girls

Sistaz

Fabulous makeup =)

Gorgeous

Happy Birthday Samantha!

It's almost here! If you haven't already donated, please do so! :) xo

AWESOME videographer

So while doing a little wedding research for both E and Mom, I came across this videographer. Someone had posted a video of theirs and raved about it, so I gave it a shot. I have to say, if I find a special someone one day, I totally want to use these people, they are worth every penny!!! AMAZING! We need something like this here in VA!


Click here to go to the Iris & Light Videographer Website, AMAZING! 

Here's my favorite...  =)

 
Amy & Dan Engagement Film from IRIS AND LIGHT on Vimeo.


Love, love, LOVE it! :)

my list...

An interesting question was asked of me tonight. What do you want in a man? Easy enough right? Well, for most people maybe, but since I've apparently dated a lot of crazies, I have to be more specific with my needs, so here we go:

~Christian
~must be employed
~over 6 ft tall would be fabulous
~mentally stable-aka if I've ever had a restraining order against you, then you have no shot
~loyal
~not overly jealous
~not abusive, into drugs, or an alcoholic, or any other variation of crazy or addictive
~gotta love my dog
~willing to go out and do things

*Let me add to this list...honest would be super as well.

I'm in no extreme hurry, but seriously, is this that difficult? Is this an unreasonable list? Maybe it is, but most of them, I'm not willing to budge on anymore.

I know God has a plan for me, and I'm excited to see how it pans out. While my past relationships have made the whole dating thing discouraging, I still look foward to the future.

And as for the dude who asked me the question, good question, and thank you for making me think!

Girl's night with E and March of Dimes Bake Sale/Auction

Our girl's night this week was a little different than usual. Instead of going out or just chatting all night, we did something productive! First we headed to Target and Michaels to get all the items we needed to make lots of treats for the bake sale. After quite a bit of playing around, ahem, I mean, serious shopping...we headed back to the apartment and baked our hearts out. Elisabeth made ADORABLE cupcakes, and I started on my butterfly cake, which I would finish the next day along with the Trash and chocolate covered pretzels, and even more cupcakes! I am so thankful to Elisabeth for donating her time, funds, and talent for this awesome cause. She is fabulous! We decided to document our night with pix...as you can see, we were all business at Target...hehehe :)

What? We gotta try it on to make sure we want to purchase it...ahem but don't worry, we didn't purchase hehe

Tribute to Mel with giant sunglasses xo

We don't discriminate, we'll try on hideous shoes too.

We're siiiinging in the rain, in Target!

Before

After! =)

Thanks again my E! Love you! Looking forward to lots of girls nights

with all of our new free time! :)xo

Easter Weekend

What a busy weekend!!! It started out after a great girl's night on Friday night-with a yummy dinner at O'Charley's. After dinner I packed up our stuff and Coco and I headed to King George to see mom. We got there late, so only Samantha was still awake. We crashed shortly after we arrived, and woke up to a busy day the next morning. First we headed to the tennis courts-where I figured I'd just get to sit and watch...haha no such luck :) I ended up playing, and I did pretty well! Surprise! Coco enjoyed how she could run around as much as she wanted, the court was fenced in.  After tennis we decided to head to George Washington's birthplace and look around for a bit, and then head to the little beach area there. It was chilly on the water though! This was Coco's first time on a beach, so I had to snap a couple of shots :) She seemed to enjoy it. We didn't stay long because of the wind, and then we headed home...but not before Lil Mike and I convinced them to get us crabs for lunch. They were SO delicious!!! We had a great time eating and hanging out, and I was so stuffed by the end I thought I may get sick. After a quick shower, mom, me, and Samantha headed out to get pedicures, and we were so tired by then, that we all practically fell asleep on the couches while waiting for our turn. The pedi was fabulous :) Samantha got neon orange on her toes, she's so funny, but it turned out pretty cute. Only that pretty girl could pull that off! After our pedis, we headed back to pick up the boys and then headed out to our last adventure of the day, bowling! I am usually pretty bad with that too, but I did pretty well! :) After bowling, I was so exhausted, it was all I could do to get Samantha back to Big David's before falling asleep. We all chatted for a bit once we arrived, but hit the sack early since we planned to go to the early service.

This morning-Easter Sunday!-we headed to church to the early service, and I really enjoyed it. I miss going to church with my family. It's too bad it's so far away! After church we headed home and Lil David washed my car-yay!  We spent some long overdue family time together, and Big David even helped me wax my car (as if my whole arms aren't sore enough from tennis and bowling!). We had a great day, and Elaine stopped by too. Coco and I headed home and we both passed out on the couch. We are both worn out and exhausted, but it was a beautiful and fun weekend! Here are some pics from our adventures this weekend, enjoy!

Samantha blowing bubbles while we rode in the truck bed to the tennis courts :)

George Washington's Birthplace

Coco's first time on a beach =)

Sam found some sharks teeth-where the heck are the sharks inthe Neck??? lol

Mmmmm Crabs...

pedicures and bowling

Happy Easter!!!

Big David laughing and spoiling Coco

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! xo