Jesus Needs New PR

I'm hesitant to write this post. When somebody else writes this kind of post, my hypocrite radar goes off when I read it. So let me be clear. This is something I struggle with too. It may manifest itself in more subtle ways, but it's in me too. This post is first and foremost a reminder to me.

As I was driving home yesterday, I noticed that the car in front of me had a cross pendant hanging from the rear view mirror. Suddenly, another car in the adjacent lane merged over in front of the cross car. In my opinion, it wasn't a super dangerous maneuver, but I could see where the lady in the cross car could have felt that she was cut off.

In response to being cut off, the lady in the cross car honked her horn profusely and flipped off the driver of the merging car. She then proceeded to change lanes so she could get right up next to the merging car, roll her window down, yell at the other driver and flip him off again. Nice.

I would roll my eyes at this behavior under any circumstance, but the fact that the lady is openly professing to be a Christian and still chooses to conduct herself in this manner really bothers me. Now I admit that I am making several assumptions here. First, this may not be her car and even if it is, she may not have been the one to hang the cross on the mirror. But, for the sake of conversation, let's just assume that it's her car and she hung the cross.

I realize that this is a relatively insignificant example, but it's no wonder why people have trouble rationalizing Christians with Christ. We preach love and grace and mercy, but are we living it out?

Am I living it out? Can strangers tell that I love Jesus? Can my co-workers? Can my family?

St. Francis of Assisi is credited with saying something along the lines of "Preach the Gospel always. Use words only as a last resort." Easier said than done, but I for one am going to try harder in this area.

Seriously?

When I tuck my daughter into bed at night, she has one blanket, a pillow, a baby doll, and a glow stick or two in bed with her.

When I go into her room in the morning to get her up, this is what I find in her bed. Ridiculous.

The First Cut Is The Deepest

I finally caved. Harper has been asking to get her hair cut for a while now. Until Friday, I couldn't bring myself to do it. 

I'll admit, it was starting to get a little uneven in the back. But look at those ringlets! I definitely did not want to lose those.

I took her to the place that I get my hair cut. I couldn't bear to take her to an ordinary Great Clips (which I do realize sounds ridiculous). I really like Alana and I knew she would do a great job.

This is the before shot sitting in the big girl chair. Not surprisingly, this salon was not really equipped to cut kids hair, but Alana made it work.

The first cut

Harper sat completely still the whole time.

Sometimes beauty is rough.

Putting on the finishing touches

All done! 

And yes, Alana does look exactly like Lauren Alaina from American Idol...

What was the verdict? Well, the ringlets may be gone. I took this picture yesterday.

But, she's still pretty cute in my opinion.

The Inherent Consequences of Blueberry Donuts

I pretty much ate my way through my hometown last week. It was glorious! For whatever reason (namely a large and vibrant Italian community -seriously the greater Y-town area has literally 189 Italian festivals per year), Youngstown has some of the best food in the world. I feasted on pasta and Italian greens and wings and hot chips and Handles ice cream... But my favorite indulgence is always blueberry donuts from White House Fruit Farms. 

These things are a gift from God himself. I literally ate half a dozen over the course of a couple days. Consequently, despite the fact that I made myself go on two pretty decent runs while I was away, my pants were a little snug by the end of the trip (totally worth it, by the way). 

What are some of your favorite hometown foods?

Friends 2.0

This is my friend Katie. We grew up together, were college room mates (that's a picture of us at Miami circa 2000), were in each other's weddings, etc. Katie lives in Baltimore now and I haven't seen her since before Harper was born. That's just not right.

I got to see Katie when I went back to Boardman last week. We were both in town visiting family. And what was even better than seeing Katie, was meeting her daughter, Anna! Harper and Anna were fast friends.

Katie and I also got to see our friend, Mandy. Her little girl, Lydia, is about a month older than Harper. They were two peas in a pod! Lydia graciously let Harper and Anna play on her awesome swing set.

Anna was not too sure about all of the picture taking. But as you can see, Lydia and Harper have done this sort of thing before.

Can I just tell you how surreal it was to watch our girls play with each other while we sat in the shade laughing about middle school and high school memories? (Thanks to the dads, Ralph and Seth, for playing with the girls while us moms sat in the shade!)

The moral of this story is that reconnecting with old friends is wonderful. I have a feeling that I'm going to be doing more of this kind of thing soon.

90 and 3

You would think that taking a picture of my grandma and my daughter would be a relatively easy task. Not so much.

 Come on, guys!

Seriously, I'm as tired of this as you are. 

I guess this is as good as it's going to get. 

Actually, I kind of like this one.

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