I Do Believe She's Edible

Quack, Quack

The past couple of months that I was not blogging had me texting instead. My three best friends from college and I have become addicted to our i**Phones, Emoji*Icons and each other.

On a daily basis we text.

Not just about important things, but about random things. Unimportant things. Girly things. Naughty things. Funny things. Life changing things. Spiritual things. Shopping things. Sad things. Pictures of things. Life things.

I am addicted!!

We don't really go at it as much on the weekends but during the week we have found a rhythm that works for us. Most of the time. This past week we got a little wonky and had to say WHOA, then laugh at ourselves once we realized that one of us (not me, thank goodness!!!) was PMSing pretty badly and shouldn't have been talking to ANYone much less texting when inflection and tone can easily be misunderstood on a good day much less one where a girl's emotional state can turn faster than Texas mosquito can suck your blood.

We told her to chill. Nicely.

I have been blessed with great friendships. I've said that on here before and I certainly do not mean to brag or boast in myself about that.  Each place we've lived I've been able to make great friends. They are all dear to me.  I've done a talk for a mom's group a couple of years ago about my friendships.

I cherish them each.

All my friendships are from different churches where we have served or are from that time. I have always had at least one friend who did not attend the church where we were serving at the time. A minister's wife needs that kind of relationship outside the walls of the church where her husband is on staff.

My three college BFFs, well, they have known me since I was 18 years old. A few years before I met PandaPop. We have history. I love it. Now that we are growing older when have so much to share!!! We call our texting The Textcapades.

Yes.  It's a play on words. On purpose.

I told you, we leave nothing out.

The Emoji**Icons we use from the app we downloaded to our phones has given us a whole new language. Between the creative use of those icons and mistyped words or overlapping posts I know I have fallen over laughing, cried from laughing or had to go straight to the little girls' room......from hard laughing.

We have three different icons for that....at three levels. One is for rolling on the floor laughing, next is for laughing so hard you are crying, the ultimate is a pic of a stick person crawling on the floor which is reserved for laughing so hard that you are crawling to the bathroom because you've wet yourself.

I know. Girls.

We send pictures, too. That's fun.

I love seeing these girls in everyday living color. We are able to see the good, the bad, the ugly and the real life play out.  We are very open and honest and are not pretentious in any way, because we do know each other from before adult life really hit hard.

Wrinkles and sagging body parts are a little easier to handle when you share the plight with someone you think of as beautiful.  They make me feel beautiful, too.

We do not see eye-to-eye on everything, however. We have to agree to disagree on some things and move on. It would be boring if we all just laughed and agreed on everything. We need that diversity among us. We do all love the Lord, though so in that way we are united.

I feel so blessed to have had them be a part of my daily life in the past few months because I have seriously struggled with some deep issues. I've been in counseling since last May. I am not ashamed to say that. I fought going to counseling for so very long, that I am amazed that I've come this far in my life without falling completely apart.

I'm not at liberty yet to expound on exactly why I have been in counseling, but I will someday.  God has allowed my life story to come to the point it is today for a reason.  We all have a story to tell.  I would love to hear yours. How God has woven people and circumstances through your tapestry to make you who you are.

I am just now, really, really finding who I am.

What in the world do all these duck pictures have to do with texting and counseling?

Randomness.

My daily life has become so incredibly random, wonky, out of sorts, unorganized, crazy, whacked out that I am now about to start some medication for adult ADD. I have done three different surveys on seeing how ADD I might be. Let's say on the best one.....I was 22 out of 26 characteristics.  Now that can be misleading because some of my actions can be compensating for something else which I will delve into at another time.

Doc says to work on one thing at a time.  We are starting with ADD.

I am only sharing this in hopes of helping someone else that might think counseling, good friends or medication isn't for them.  I believe God is working through all of those venues to help me become the PandaMom He created me to be.

All 41 years of my life have been for the making of whom I am today. This very day. All the great moments and all the crap.  It all plays a part.  Just like it does in your life.

I so wish I could sit down with every single one of you and listen to your life story and how things have come in to factor who you are and why you do the things you do.

I would love it. Wouldn't you just love that???

We Are an American Family

When reading a Strawberry Shortcake book to PJ this afternoon I noticed that the friends of Strawberry look just like my little family. I absolutely couldn't resist taking a pic and making this my new FB Timeline cover pic. Too cute!!!

Clickety-Click

Has it really been since the 19th since I posted?!! Sorry for the delay, just in case you lay awake at night wondering when I'll post again.

I have booked THREE weddings to photograph this May, June & July with two waiting in the wings this fall. The funny thing about the two in the fall is that PandaPop will be officiating the ceremony while I'm doing the photos. Great team.

From a couple of the deposits I was able to upgrade and purchase my beloved Canon 7D!!! Yay!! I've done all my work so far on the little, bitty Canon Rebel XSi. Great camera, but the lowest on the low end of good cameras. I can't wait to see what comes out of the 7D! I got it for a smashing price from a friend who's daily camera and lens is in the range of about $10,000. Yes, you read that correctly.  $10,000. I thought I would just start clicking away on my new baby, but alas, I have to go through a crash course on DVD to help me learn it. It's a whole new ball game with this little baby! I also will be trying to learn the ropes of flash photography and the entirely different animal of wedding photography. OH!!!!! and I am so TICKED that Google decided to close Picnik photo editing. Heartbroken!!! I used it DAILY and now have to learn REAL hard-core editing software. Bleh.

I have a love/hate relationship with weddings and wedding photos. Those super close to me know the in's & out's of why, but since I'm private I can at least say that my wedding photos are one of the sorest spots in my life. Heartbreaking photos. Yucky, awful, no good, rotten wedding photos. That's what I have from our wedding. Well, besides a God-graced, fabulous marriage and best friend husband. ♥

So, it took many, many years for me to be able to sit through a wedding of someone else without crying and lamenting the loss I felt over my own.  Now, I feel this tearing between myself of longing to have my photos be something other than gross and blessing someone else with fab photography.  I know I can do it, but I just have to do it. Ya know? A wee bit nervous, but I have until May to practice and hone my skills. We'll see.

As you can see from the pic above that finding a home for my Rebel wasn't hard and didn't take long. PP has a great love for photography, too and can't wait to start clicking away at whatever tickles his fancy. So funny how Rookie looks as if he's posing for PP.  He wasn't a very good first model for PP, but I'm sure those two will work out a system over time.

Have you heard of Momastery yet? If not, you will. It's a blog from a woman named Glennon who writes beautifully, raw, real, loving, funny and poignant posts about her life as a recovering addict to alcohol, food, bad relationships, etc.  You will be moved by her writing. She has spread like wild-fire recently and is now in the works of having a book published of her writings.  She moves me.

I'm not ready yet to divulge more about me on this blog. I'm still raw myself. Healing takes time. Healing takes God-dependence.

Last week I sat with a dear friend who found another cluster of something weird in her breast. That's always scary to have to go see doctors and wait and wait and wait to find out if you need a biopsy and when to schedule and what is the result and more waiting and waiting and wondering and trying to not borrow trouble from tomorrow and waiting and trying to act as if nothing is wrong and trying to show faith in action and waiting.  Those are such grown-up things to do. Yucky. I love my friend and am praying for God's grace on her.

I also discovered something very seemingly frivolous this past week, but in it's core....it's glue to a relationship. My three college BFFs that I've talked about in the past year a few times and I have started this group texting thing on our iPhones.  I only say iPhones because if we didn't all four have iPhones this little party we've created wouldn't be the same. We all loaded an app that has cute little emotion icons to add in the text messages.  We have been having the time of our life by all texting at the same time for about 15 minutes at a shot going back & forth, back & forth, over-lapping each other's words, laughing hysterically over words that were mis-spelled or auto-corrected for us and basically gettin' all up in each other's business. What a ride!!! It's a rush and I love it. We all live apart from each other and this is a fun and fast way to keep connected. It's so private. So we think. It's just us 4 bonding even more than we already have. I adore them so. Since not all of us can always be on the phone at the same time or might be driving or something like that then we just talk for them which makes it even funnier. Soul sisters.

Another soul sister wrote with a desperate email to pray for her son.  She couldn't explain at the moment, but wanted prayer coverage because he was being attacked.  Knowing this family so well, I realize that attack means a spiritual one.  I prayed. I hurt for her.

We are already at the end of January 2012. Sounds so futuristic. Tomorrow is Jana Day. Did you know that? If you know me well then you know that 20 years ago when PP asked me to marry him on Jan. 23rd....he also created Jana Day a few days later. I guess he was so enamored by my stunning beauty and charisma...ahem....that he wanted to keep the celebration going. We've celebrated it every year on January 31st. Jana Day.  Thursday is PandaGirl's Gotcha Day.  Next week is PandaJOY's Gotcha Day. Whew!! Lot's of celebrating going on around here.  OH...and Super Bowl Sunday, too? Honestly, I have zero idea who's even playing in the bowl this year. Still fun to be a part of the hype, though.

Wow, so much to say, yet still don't feel right about writing it all out in print.  Hang around. I'll get there someday.

Have a blessed Monday, friends!

Me & Him

This journey is so much better with him by my side.

My Word for 2012: step

The mind of a man plans his way, 

but the LORD directs his steps. 

Proverbs 16:9

Two years ago the word I claimed for the year was JOY.  If you followed long enough on this journey you know the story behind it and why it was so significant and actually started in December of 2009 after I felt joy-less when walking through the pain of choosing to let Little Guy go.  All of 2010 was about JOY.  Living in a true joyous spirit that can only come from God and not through circumstances.

Then for 2011 I claimed the word ENTRUSTED.  I had a revelation of how much God had entrusted to us with our daughter and the one that we thought was soon to follow.  PandaPop and I have a huge responsibility with the children's ministry & those little hearts at our church. What were His plans? We have been entrusted with the Holy Spirit, too.  What were we to do with all the lavish gifts with which He'd entrusted us? Many times I failed miserably in the stewardship that was entrusted to me in all areas. Many times I was victorious.  If there is anything....anything good in me that people see from this past year.....it was all God and nothing else.  He carried me through 2011.

The word for 2012 came to me yesterday sitting in church listening to my beloved pastor speak Truth from the living Word.  He spoke on taking one step.  One step.  It spurred me to think of Bob Wiley in What About Bob? which is my all-time favorite dark comedy and how he was going to make baby-steps to reach his goal of losing all his phobias. We have journeyed far along this adoption road for PandaJOY.  I did not expect to be still stuck in the foster system this long.  But we are.  We have learned so much patience in the wait. Everything being out of our control forced us to be patient, but we mostly chose to be joyful and not lamenting through the whole thing. We have taken each small step as it's come.

This year in 2012 we are continuing our baby steps for getting financially balanced.  We made huge strides and might actually see some payoffs for keeping in our budget this year.  Last year's money spent on repairing things just about did me in!!

We started last week on teeny-tiny baby-steps to get our health and physical bodies in check.  I've got so much weight to lose and even more so the emotional addiction to food that the task is just overwhelming.  Baby steps to the goal.  Each and every step counts.  Even the ones that go backwards.  Hopefully, I can learn from the backward steps and then move on.  Keep moving forward. Yes.  Keep moving forward!! I as type those words I am reminded that keep moving forward was part of our healing back in 2009! It's from Meet the Robinson's and is very much a part of our lives! I am giddy just remembering it now! Oh how it fits in perfectly with my word for the year: step.

Keep every single one of my 

steps 

moving forward!!! 

Do you have a word for the year? Have you ever had a word for the year? If not, try it and just see how many times it creeps up in your daily life and how God will use to make you better. I'd love to know your word!!!