How Lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard!

So this weekend My Dad's side of the family are all headed to Lake Charles, Lousinana for a family reunion. I can't help but wonder what my grandpa is feeling right now, and then in the same thought I can't help but think how lucky I am to be almost 30 and  have a Grandpa still around to experience life with.

My grandpa's brother is not going to make it much longer (if past this year), and so a reunion has been planned between the two to pretty much say goodbye!.......pause for the weight of that statement! So since traveling is hard in your old age and they havent seen much of each other the last few years.....means really we all (the extended families I mean) havent seen much of each other as well. So here we are June 8, 2012 coming together to share a weekend of life together.

So being the reflector that I am I cannot help but think what great significance this weekend will hold. I mean not only for my grandparents, and those matriarchs and patriarchs.....but for the rest of us there to have forever with us. It is funny how all of the sudden in the midst of living.....life happens. I mean so much passes us by, but there are moments of true significance that forever shape who you are. I am ovewhelmed at the thought of all of our lives coming to a end.....to be able to look back and say....well I dont know what you would say. I mean just to be able to look back on 80 something years worth of life happening. Then to say goodbye to someone who has been in nearly all of those years. I dont know how you could not be moved by that.

You and I will meet again
when we're least expecting it
One day in some far off place
I will recongizne your face
I wont say goodbye my friend
for you and I will meet again.
-Tom Petty

APPROACHING MY NEXT 30 YEARS

So my girlfriends and I have been reminiscing all week about our early twenties,and also planning a Vegas blowout in honor of us entering into our thirties. Don't get me wrong THESE WILL BE THE BEST YEARS OF MY LIFE!!! However, I would like to mourn the loss of one amazing decade and pay tribute to a time that can never be fabricated again in any of our lives.So, I recently have been talking with my girlfriends about our up and coming 30th birthday parties. I mean honestly so many song title run through my head when I think about approaching this age.

" I still remember when 30 was old"

"My next 30 years Im gonna settle all the scores, cry a little less....laugh a little more"

" We were wanna be rebels who didnt have a clue, with out rock n roll t-shirts and our typically bad attitudes"

"Only the Good die young...that's what they say"

"Gonna get right with the lord, or there will be hell to pay.....but I aint in no hurry today"

"My 18th summer I was a cocky up-and- comer.....cranking up born to run, turned left out the drive with the pistons open wide"

There are so many songs that remind us of what used to be. I think I would be lying if I said 30 didn't bring a sobering revelation that my youth is rapidly fleeting. I mean don't get me wrong, as much as I wouldn't change a thing I have been through.....I also wouldn't want to relive a lot of those what I like to call UNSTABLE years. However, I will tell you what I miss the most, and honestly from talking to different people.....what I think everyone misses to some degree. I like to call it my Free falling spirit. I mean think about it.....did a schedule ever even enter into our brains. I mean aside for the college classes we had to stick with.....but that never even seemed real to me the way life does now. I mean I was free falling, born to run, living on a pray, school's out for summer, footloose and fancy free! The furthest thing from my mind was that freedom would ever end. It is a beautiful thing that period of your life....you make your best friends, and your biggest mistakes. One of my favorite quotes....probably cause I am the type of person that  constantly has my foot in my mouth is " I make really big mistakes, but I also make really big comebacks". I think it took me the longest out of all of my friends, besides maybe a few right there with me ...... to grow up. Really I don't that as bad anymore.....I just took the longest to get my head out of the clouds and stop living on song lyrics;) Oh who am I kidding I still live on song lyrics.....the melody just changed:) So, as I approach my thirties.....I truly feel worn, tired, jaded, and skeptical......more so then I ever imagined 10 years ago when I entered into my 20's. However, I have become resilient, capable, strong, proud, and warm, and much more forgiving. My boss told me the other day as I just approached a new job.....I know you want to be at a level of your best already, but there is no way around the learning process you have to go through it. Well aint that the truth....they don't have quote upon quote about life being the Journey if it wasn't. I am looking forward to what lies ahead with tears in my eyes and so much appreciation of all I am leaving. One day my life will behold a husband, children, etc. .........I just want to give credit where credit is due. So with all of my girls we will say goodbye with a ever so respectful bash of a party......and honor the years that we will never have back, that shaped us into the beautiful disasters we are today. I will forever miss my twenties!!! There will not once be a time I reflect on you and my heart doesn't pound, or will I not be able to taste the adventure and freedom like it was yesterday!!  I made some of my best friends, learned what it was to laugh till you cry, how important your friends were when every boy broke your heart, I floated the river till Texas was in my soul, I was over zealous, poor as anyone could be, but completely and deliriously free. There will never be another time of such invincibility,but to me and my girls....my life savers, partners in crime, my refuge!!! Oh will we remember!

I think these two pictures describe the two decades perfectly.

The love of a dog!

I dont like to talk much when I am stressed, but let me tell you. This little one she makes me happy.

When Things Come Full Circle

So yesterday my dad and brother drove to Houston, and karlee and I used alan’s seats and took them to the Texans game….which was a really good game and they won with 3 of their starters out and a 3^rd string quarter back first NFL game ever. However, it warmed my heart to be able to give to my dad in such a profound way, a gift that has become so ordinary to anyone else. A man who’s life has been  football, and was recruited way back when by the seattle seahawks himself. He married my mother and had to live off campus so was no longer on the meal ticket at school. They couldn’t afford to feed  dad what he needed to stay at that weight the recruiter said he must still weigh by next year when he came back for him…..so when the seahawks came back for him the following year, he didn’t weigh enough. He told me this story over thanksgiving……we had always believed my father had walked away from it, when in fact it was the other way around. He had never brought it up in my life, and never lived a day out of resentment of it either. So I am sharing this because sometimes life moves you to humility and beyond a gratitude  that you can even fully understand in this world. I am sure you guys know how much I adore my father and all the sacrifices he has made not only for my mother, but our family.

Yesterday was his first NFL game ever! Alan’s seats are club level which are really nice and the bathrooms have tenants and all that smelly good stuff, they had a jazz band performing during warm ups you could sit from couches and listen to……and with all that luxury (that I have grown immune to) and my 8^th nfl game experience in my 4^th location in this country. My dad had spent the whole day with a smile on his face at everything he saw….even the coffee bar. As we sat down and right before they sang the opening song……….my dad leaned over and told me “tell alan thanks for making a old man feel like a kid again” ……..and after the star spangled banner he took his hat off and waved it around his head like a true redneck from Alabama, and there was no other place is in this world I would have rather been. It was truly a day I will never forget, watching 50 something year old man go back in time as if it was him on that field……..and my heart will forever be changed by the memory. I just wanted to share.

I mean with Christmas coming and life flying by with each passing year, that’s what it is about

Also here is my iphone dump of photos....

Beginers Luck!

So this is my first post ever. Actually, this is my first vist into the world of blogging as well and I am excited because it is kind of like keeping a journal. A friend at work encouraged me to start one, and although I dont have kids to kind of metaphorically scrap book about, I think life can get pretty interesting for us single girls too:)

I am going to have to get better about taking pictures though, and I think this will give me a reason.

So, this past weekend I went to San Antonio to vist a very dear friend......you know the kind you can just lay around and watch movies all day and never leave your p.j.'s. I love visiting her, but sometimes it is just too hard to leave. Since moving back to Texas from the East Coast, and us being closer......I thought for sure we would visit all the time. The thing is life catches up with you, and making time seems much harder then you had orginally thought. I wonder why that is, have I really reached a age where my energy fails me. I remember when I was younger actually having conversations with my Mom about why she lost touch with people. My Mom would tell me, well life just gets in the way sometimes.......oh how naive you can be when you are a kid to think....that will NEVER happen to me. I would like to think I can remember those conversations, not because I will be perfect about it later, but because I will be aware that sometimes investing and maintaining in people take work......but it's like weight watchers says "it works if you work it, so work it your worth it" :)

Speaking of investing in things and people worth investing in.......I am ashamed to say reading a book does not come first nature to me. I wish it would, but well just another thing I have to work at. The whole reason I even want to, is My mom's voice in the back of my mind.......reading increases your knowledge. Well if my business professor was correct, "knowledge is power"......then reading is worth it. Well, mostly it is just fun to be in a book club. So me and two of my very best friends are going to be reading "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett.

I first heard of this book, when my grandmother was telling me about it. She has personal experience with this time in history. She was telling me, how when her father came over to Texas from louisana.....he brought with him the "help" if you will, that he had grown up with. My grandmother says she can remember that they lived in the garage, and said she was a little girl......and never really thought about what that meant for those people until this book. She said her father eventually had to take "the Help" back to lousiana because the neighbors caught wind of this and were not happy. Crazy to me and wonderful how times have changed, yet such a undeniable part of our countries history.

Anyway I heard the book was great! So here goes nothing:) Bye for now.