Belong Believe Become Conference

This weekend I had the great privilege of hearing one of my all time favorite bloggers and authors, Jen Hatmaker, speak at an intimate conference for 660 women.  Jen's book, For the Love, about giving yourself, and by extension others, grace in a world of impossible standards, was a game changer for me.  My Book Club even discussed it and appreciated how real and lovely Jen is, like a best friend you never met.  And hearing her speak was exactly the same!  She cracked us up with stories about mothering her five kids.  And she rocked our safe, comfortable, Christian worlds with the challenge to "stop being weird" and giving Christians a bad name, and just get out there and love people.  I have pages and pages of notes with excellent quotes like, "If someone doesn't like you because of Jesus, that's on them.  But, if someone doesn't like Jesus because of you, that's on you." or "You can't think your way into a new way of living, you must live your way into a new way of thinking." or "We need to be representatives of the Gospel, not defenders and protectors of it."  My drive home was 3 straight hours of processing what all these new challenges are going to look like in my life.  

Hearing Jen Hatmaker was amazing all by itself, but what made this weekend extra special was the opportunity to share it with my dear friend Teri.  The conference was hosted by her church and located at her school, so she took me in for the weekend and blessed me with meals and good conversation in our down time.  

Also fun was seeing so many familiar faces from home!  Though the conference was down south a bit, dozens of my favorite ladies from our church and friends from school made the trip too and it was cool to connect.

The whole weekend gave this tired, dry, mama and teacher a much needed gulp of fresh water.  I am humming the powerful and God-glorifying songs we sang in worship.  I am still smiling over Jen's hilarious stories.  And my heart is stirred with her reminder of HOW LOVED we are by God and her bold demand that we represent Christ and that love better and without judgment, hypocrisy, or inflexibility.

Blossom Time

It's mid-February!  Time to turn off the heat and break out the short sleeved shirts! ;)  

Enjoy a taste of Spring via this year's crop of almond blossom photos...

 

Long Weekend Adventures

Our school has always given us a four day weekend for Presidents' Day.  And we love them for it!  In the past, we've used this time for mini vacations to places like Monterey or Mendocino.  This year, however, we used that mini-vacation time and money in January with our friends in the snow.   So, we found some other clever ways to make this long weekend feel special with lots family time and even a few day trips.

I made a list for the girls that included awesome options of places to go for the day, like the Sacramento Train Museum, the beach, and Yosemite.  Their choice?  The Jelly Belly Factory!  I guess we shouldn't be surprised. We were happy to discover that the free factory tour we've taken a dozen times has been changed to a self-guided tour.  So, instead of being bunched up in a huge group, feeling like we could recite the lines with the videos, we could go through at our own pace and spend long periods of time watching the things we found interesting-- like the workers laying out all the different flavors of jelly beans on the conveyor belt making mix bags, or the chefs mixing up the very pungent lemon and sour apple sauces that coat the beans in the vats.  No pictures during the tour, so here are a few in the art gallery and gift shop.  Delia was delighted to discover some new jelly bean artwork featuring a giant panda and a huge Star Wars display.

Since the girls got their candy tour, we did a little compromising and spent the afternoon in Napa.  We've never tried to do a winery tour or tasting with the girls along, but thought we'd go for it on this trip.  We chose Sterling Vineyards, which was actually very family friendly.  To start, the winery is perched on top of huge hill, so to get to it, a ride in their gondola is required!

The girls were also given gift boxes with snacks, activities and juice.  These gondola boxes have been played with non-stop for the past 4 days, hauling stuffed animals up the shoe-string laced gondola tracks the girls have built around their bedroom!

Sterling also offers a self-guided tour, with their 4 tastings along the way.  No part of it was too boring for the kids.  And the views at the top and end of the tour are unsurpassed.  We even scored a bonus 5th taste while strolling around their Ansel Adams gallery.  A worker said, "You need some wine while enjoying the art!"

Just being in Napa during Spring was a treat!  The whole place was bursting with the colors of wild flowers in bloom.

On Saturday, we continued the family-fun with another little outing to Knight's Ferry.  The girls love, love, love climbing all the rocks here, so our hiking adventures are exciting and tackled without complaint! :)  Ella even brought her sketch pad and sat for a while drawing the covered bridge.

Here is was nice to see the water level looking somewhat normal and the wild poppies starting to dot the green hills with pops of orange.

At last year's Guatemala Mission Trip dinner, we won a gift basket to this fantastic ice cream shop in Knight's Ferry.  We finally used it on Saturday to reward our long, happy hike with the splurge of giant scoops in the fancy cones.

Besides these two outings, this weekend we also...
-played lots of board games
-rode bikes
-watched movies
-read an entire book in one late night! (This was me and it is my crazy favorite thing to do-- stay up way too late finishing a good book, knowing an early morning will not kick my butt the next day.)
-sat with and got to know an interesting new couple at a church dinner
-went to a birthday party for a 90 year old friend
-completed a big landscaping project in the yard, which included a fun stroll around the nursery to pick out new plants

It was a GREAT weekend.
If only they could all be 4 days long. Sigh...