Dreaming of being abroad...

In just two months and two weeks, I will be setting sail for a two month trip around the world. Ok not literally the entire world, but a good portion of it! I'm leaving out of the Bahamas with Semester at Sea and traveling to 8 countries on the Mediterranean. Its going to be incredible. I have literally spent the past week just sitting on my computer looking at all of the amazing things to do in the countries I am going to. I have found some incredible pictures that are making me even more excited to be there! Here are a few, enjoy!

Love

Love is wonderful. 

Love is real.

Love is hard. 

Love is easy.

Love is unconditional.

God is love. 

When I feel like life is tough and I'm all alone, I just have to calm down and remember that no matter what, God loves me. He is there for me all the time and I know that his love is unconditional. How encouraging!

Jessica Lauren

My sister is a senior in high school. She is a beautiful girl, inside and out, and I am so lucky to have a sister like her. Here are just a few quotes that I think sum up our relationship. 

"She is your mirror, shining back at you with a world of possibilities. She is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best, and loves you anyway. She is your partner in crime, your midnight companion, someone who knows when you are smiling, even in the dark. She is your teacher, your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink. Some days, she's the reason you wish you were an only child."

"To have a loving relationship with a sister is not simply to have a buddy or a confident -- it is to have a soulmate for life."

I had the priveledge to take her senior pictures for her, and they turned out amazing. I'll just post a few of my favorites. 

A Very Merry Christmas

So Christmas this year was different. Well actually, different is quite the understatement. This year was the first Christmas we have had since my parents divorced. It was also the first we have had without my Grandma, who passed away from breast cancer in November. It felt like we were just missing something all day. Not having my dad or Grandma around was strange. Weeks before Christmas I almost dreaded the holiday because I was afraid of what it would be like without them. But suprisingly, it was actually still a wonderful day. Being with family always makes things better. No one really mentioned Grandma because we all knew it would be too hard to talk about, but we all knew she was in heaven looking down on us, which, in my opinion, is a whole lot better then being with us! She got to spend her first Christmas with Jesus, and I think thats pretty incredible. Each year we will miss her, especially at Christmas time, but if we can just remember that she is looking down on us from heaven, I know my family will be okay. On a lighter note, I must say that Christmas Eve was very entertaining. My mom's boyfriend has three little boys and they are quite a handful. Two of them believe in Santa, so they each wrote letters to him telling him what they hoped to get the next morning. I must say, it was very cute how excited they were. Its amazing how magical Christmas feels when you are a young child. I put up my favorite pictures from the day, so enjoy!

My beautiful little sister.

Walker and Weston writing letters to Santa.

Family

Walker and his Grandma

I gave my Mom a frame with an adorable picture I found from when I was a  baby and she was about 25. 

I just love this picture! 

We took a walk around the lake in Bridgeport after we opened gifts on Christmas morning.
Got to love a California Christmas!

My cousins are so grown up now! 

Aunt Debbie and Grandpa, such a cute picture. 

The lovely table that my Aunt Magda set. 

Grandpa and his oldest girls.

Its so fun to act like a little kid around my cousins.

The three teenagers. I can't believe how grown up they suddenly look!

Absolutely adorable!

All the girls!

I love my sister so much!

Gone Country

A Simple Smile

Yesterday was an average day and I was exhausted driving home from work in the afternoon. All I could think about was the millions of things I had to do and how I was stressed and overwhelmed with everything. I pulled up to a stop light and I saw an older man in the truck next to me out of the corner of my eye motioning to me. I glanced toward him and first wondered what he was doing making funny faces at me, but I then realized he was using his finger to draw a smile face against his window at me and had a big grin on his face. He then pointed at me and then to his big smile, and I couldn't help but let a big grin spread over my own face. As I accelerated forward when the light turned green, I couldn't help but keep smiling as I drove the rest of the way home. 

It got me thinking about how something as simple as a stranger smiling at you can make your day. One single man I do not even know wanted me to smile, just because. What if we all acted like that toward each other? Think of everytime you are driving down the road and pull up next to people at stoplights and glance toward them and they are yelling at the kids in the back, staring solemnly ahead, or just sitting there looking exhaused. If we could all just smile at everyone we see and even make a little bit of a fool out of ourselves in trying to get everyone else to smile, I really think this world would be such a happier place. The rest of my day yesterday, the image of the sweet old man with that goofy grin on his face kept coming to my mind, and I couldn't help but smile everytime.

Faith

I couldn't decide on what to make my title of my blog, so I decided to use the three words that inspire me most every day. So let me tell you a little bit about faith and how I interpret that word and all that it means to me. 

First off, I have a tattoo that says walk by faith. So, naturally, that word must have some deeper meaning to me than to the average person. But really, faith to me is everything. Life without faith wouldn't be life at all. There are so many times throughout my day where I wonder where I could be without faith. What would life be like? 

I have faith in God, first and foremost. I have faith that he sent his son to this earth to save us and faith that Jesus is able to give everyone who has faith in him eternal life. Now my faith goes further than that basic belief. Just to name a few, I have faith that...

Anyone can be happy in life, it is simply a matter of trusting that the Lord will provide and living a life that is pleasing to him. 

Even when things seem hopeless, God is there and will never leave my side. 

Miracles happen. 

I could really go on and on about all that faith means to me, but that list would be infinite. So, to sum it up, my faith is everything to me, and it can never hurt anyone to have a little faith.