Things I Love Right Now

When I was going through my Google Reader listing this morning, I came across this post by Jessica Turner at The Mom Creative and was inspired. She posted a list of things that she's loving right now, and I am feeling a bit inspired to do the same.

Things I Love Right Now

Our Church's Renovation: Talk about dreaming a God-sized dream and having it come to reality! A couple of years ago our church started to rethink the mill space that we rent. There were meetings to determine what the needs of the ministries were and then meetings with Plain Joe Studios to design a concept and then when it came time to see if it was indeed in God's will (donations were requested)... we found out the answer. Estimated budget is/was $186,000... and pledges came in WAY above expectations to the tune of almost $180,000! It's been exciting since the construction started to see the progress every week since the first wall came down - I'm pumped to see the finished product. (Progress can be found on the blog for the project: Renovation 2010.)

Friendships: There have been a few people that I've met over the last few years that I've had the chance to get closer to over the last year or so. It's been awesome to form these new friendships and get to know some really cool people in the process. These are people I get to see fairly regularly so we get to see each other in all different stages of life and have grown pretty comfortable around each other. At the same time, I've had opportunity to reflect on those friendships I've had for a lot longer and appreciate the ability in those friendships to pick up like we've never separated when we see each other.

Me & my friend Nina at the "Life is Good" Festival

 

My Mug Warmer: Man oh man. I do love my mug warmer. I'm one of those people who drinks coffee for the flavor and not for the caffeine necessity, so the mug warmer is my best cubicle friend. I actually wrote a blog post about it once, I love it that much. No, I'm not joking. It's a hot plate for a mug that keeps your beverage warm. It's the coolest thing ever.

Being Married: There's something amazing and wonderful about waking up in the morning and knowing that the person next to you is going to be your partner in crime for the rest of your life. There's also something amazing in knowing that person will roll over and even though you were having the worst "nitch" evening of your life the night before - he will have the grace to not care, take one look at you, and give you a big hug and a kiss anyways. I love that I get to learn and grow and spend the rest of my life with my best friend. Being married rocks.

Steve & I on our wedding day after our 1st Mr. & Mrs. dance. (June 9, 2007)

Youth Group: Two years ago God decide to throw a 90-degree turn in our path and we ended up taking over the reigns of the youth group at our church. Neither of us even went to youth group as kids and our experience extended to a couple of meetings and helping to chaperone a ski trip. After a lot of learning, a lot of freaking out, a lot of laughs, a lot of growing, and a lot of prayer/trusting God to use us... we finally feel as we've started year 3 like the group is taking off. We've got an amazing (full) team, a great system, and an awesome group of students. This whole experience has been a reminder of "God does not always call the equipped, but He DOES equip the called".

Anticipation: I have a LOT coming up in the next month or so. One of my high school best friends is getting married this weekend. The "Living Proof" conference with Beth Moore is next weekend and I'm going with a great group of women. I turn 30 in exactly 2 weeks and my mom is coming to spend the weekend with us. My cousin Jess is getting married in 2 weeks and 1 day (the other reason my mom is coming to visit). We have a beach vacation coming up 3 weeks from tomorrow. I love the anticipation of everything that's coming up.

The View From Our Porch: It occurred to me as the air started to get a chill that we can see a lot of trees from our porch. This means that in a matter of days that view is going to explode with color (I'm really hoping that most of those trees aren't pine-type trees). That is going to be an absolutely beautiful sight when it happens (again... if most of those trees aren't pines.)

View from our front porch - Summer 2010 (Thunderstorm!)

So what are you loving right now? Leave a note in the comments!