When Will the "Good Fruit" Get Set?

"You my brothers were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge in the sinful nature, rather serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command, "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or your will be destroyed by each other.

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies and the like. I warn you as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other." Galatians 5: 13-26

new blogs of note

Oh yeah, this morning...we had to say goodbye to Ben. He is leaving! MOVING OUT. What? Huh? He is sailing on cross-Atlantic voyage to Spain on a once in a lifetime opportunity and he is leaving. He started a blog at www.blogofthejohnson.blogspot.com and you can read along with him.

We will do an homage post to Ben at a later time, GET READY. But we love what he wrote about us there. It was really sweet and honestly, I don't know what our lives are going to look like without him being there when we get home. woah. Enough. Can't go there yet.

Onto other nonsense,
my husband started a blog too. Yep. I know. What is this world coming to? He is www.mightybignoggin.blogspot.com (seriously. That's the name.)

My Schizo Week of May

Sorry for the lack of posts this week.

I am going to review, not for sympathy but for posterity so that when my children look back and wonder why I have lost my mind; they can point to things like this week and say "Of course! It all makes sense now."

So last Monday night we had the Joe Nichols fundraising concert. And yes he sang, "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off" but we did get to raise some money for Young Life and awareness in the area and it was great fun.

This was after we had removed our kitchen all weekend long. We had to take a few days off you remember to work, the kids went to Jeannies etc. Well on Wednesday, I get the brilliant idea to drive to IKEA, buy the cabinets that I need and then drive to Greenville and pick up the kids. Drive back to Asheville, then Weaverville for a wedding shower. 6 hours in the car on Wednesday. Plus a full day in IKEA. I was wiped out. But I did get to help with some of the renovation stuff that night! See PROOF:

Ben's has more fun than me though.


Thursday, the kids were in school and I had meetings all day, but we had a YL ladies night that night. So I got a much needed pedicure and dinner out with friends while Matt and the other dads had the kids.

Then on Friday morning, I had a meeting at 7:30am for work, came home packed all morning. Loaded up the kids and waiting for Spooner to get off work and then we drove to my parents house in south Georgia to take them my dog, Slappy; for the month. Spooner was a GREAT road trip partner and put up with me, my kids, my dog, my parents and my hilarious family. Highlights from the weekend include her tweeting the minutes on the way home, not trusting the GPS and then LEARNING TO TRUST THE GPS, all the crazy talk about gator attacks and then being told that I worried too much about them, then the two hours of conversation centered around Dr. Bukks teef and the ensuing fambly photo shoot.



One of the things I love about my parents house is there is no shortage of things to photograph. My kids, doodads around the house, the incredible scenery there. I love this picture of Lucy. It makes me remember feeling like trees were enormous. By the way, that is actually an ENORMOUS oak tree. And yes, it was a damp and muggy as the pictures look.










We got there Friday night. Played Saturday. Took off Sunday. Matt worked the whole weekend getting the kitchen totally demolished and cleaned up.


Monday was a holiday but we spent the whole day getting ready to leave for Colorado. Because that is what we were doing on Wednesday. Leaving for Colorado for the month. But we also had a Weaverville Supper Club on Monday night, plus Amy Noll staying with us Monday and Tuesday and on Tuesday I had a HUGE meeting for work. So my stomach was feeling pretty rough and sleep was getting harder and harder to come by.

But we had a wonderful time at the Supper Club since all of our kids love each other like brothers and sisters and everyone played American Idol. Especially Lucy. I just want to squeeze her these days.

On Tuesday it was our 8 year wedding anniversary! Yay! Looks like we made it through the seven-year itch. Shoowee! That was tough.
We went to dinner kind of early because we had so much to do to get ready for Colorado on Wednesday. How early? At the table next to us was a couple celebrating their 67th wedding anniversary and the table behind us their 20th wedding anniversary. Can you say SENIOR DISCOUNT?

But we left dinner and went on a really nice walk and got all caught up and were so excited to leave today to come to Colorado.
We left our house at 6am and got to Crooked Creek at 3pm Colorado time. Long day. But our kids rocked it out. They were amazing.

It is however, 30 degrees here right now and I am having serious misgivings about EVERYTHING that I packed. See that snow on those mountains? That ain't so far away from us. Cute skirts and rainbow flip flops are not going to help me make it through the month. Fleece hats and jeans is more like it.

Get ready to see some pictures of cold high school kids at a pool party next week!

You Go Girl Review

I got me a "Go Girl".

Thanks to Paula Pound at Windy Gap. She read about the product here on the blog, ordered a set of three and gifted me one. Wasn't that a sweet sercie?

Last Saturday; my last training fun before the 15k, I went for a five mile run in Biltmore Forest in the morning and of course I had to pee. Usually you can find port-a-potties in the "forest" because wealthy people live there and are always getting their houses worked on.
But no port-a-potties on Saturday and I really "had to go" if you know what I mean.

I whipped out the "Go Girl" ducked into some bushes. Peed like a dude, gave it two shakes and was on my way.

Can I just tell you all that this is SERIOUSLY an awesome product? Go the GO GIRL website right now and buy it now.

I'm trying to convince the people at Diamond Brand that they need to carry it instead of "Shewee" that they are considering. No way. Go Girl all the way.

God Bless Jeannie

My sweet sister-in-law Jeannie read my blog yesterday, called her husband and my mother-in-law and organized a hijacking of my kids for a few days so that we could get more of our kitchen out of the way, organized for the summer and clear work out of the way.

I could kiss her on the lips for what she has given to me.
Already today, I have mostly packed the kids for Colorado...been to Target and Old Navy (by myself-which is SUCH A LUXURY) and visited a tile showroom; got intimidated and left.

Quite an accomplished day by 1pm.
Left to do today?
Some contact work for YL, demolish the rest of the kitchen, some work for the ad agency and a date with the hubba hubba good time (which will include more tile showrooms).

Jeannie, I love you but since you have three kids...I probably can never repay you. That intimidates the crap out of me.
But I can take LOTS of pictures for you.

More 15k pics

The Biltmore House so kindly supplied photographers along the race course and so we got these shots of the race as well...

This guy was in front of us at the beginning of the race and this picture made me laugh.

Just take a look at the intensity...

Behind Amy Noll. She is 19. I am 31 and the mother of two kids. Just reminding everyone.

Kitchen Renovation Diary 1

The classic before picture:



Tons of stuff on the counters just because we really weren't planning on ripping out a kitchen this past weekend. But, we had a dumpster delivered on Friday morning and now it is Monday morning and 80% full. We hope to have the rest of the kitchen ripped out by the end of this week.

Ben and Matt started attacking the kitchen at 3:45pm...




This is what the kitchen looked like at 5:45pm.


Warning, don't let these men into your house unless you want it beasted.


They spent all day yesterday taking apart a heating and air conditioning vent that stands in the way of our new cabinets and rerouting it. They actually put a new vent in where there wasn't one before!
Both men were beaming like they had just birthed a child all night long.




It was impressive. I am VERY impressed. Mostly because I don't have to pay an air conditioning guy to come and do the same thing.



We have lots of actual work to do this week and so we have to take a few days off the kitchen renovation. But later in the week, we hope to rip out the rest of the kitchen, solve some plumbing questions, take up the flooring, take out the rest of the framing and install the new electric. And if we are really good, new drywall! Not too ambitious is it?

Total tools bought this weekend:
Cordless Sawzall
18volt cordless screwdriver
jigsaw
work spotlights

Wanna know what I say to that? Happy Father's Day!

God, give me hills to climb, and strength for climbing

This morning at 7:20am, I lined up with Amy Noll and Taryn McLean to run the Biltmore 15k on the grounds of the Biltmore Estate, America's largest privately owned residence.

It is AMAZING. Seriously. If you ever come to Asheville, I will point you in the direction of house; cause we can't afford to go visit it. But I would love for YOU to go see it!

We were all a tad nervous since 9.3 miles is a bit outside of the range of easy for most people and although we were all trained up...if something goes wrong; you are a long way from your car.

Amy and I had discussed that we would be happy if we finished in under 1:30 because we had gotten scared about the discussion boards about the race speaking of the hills prior to the house.

Let me break it down for you; 1.5 miles fairly downhill, .5 mile flat, 3.1 uphill. At the five mile mark, you make it to the house.

The road was originally designed to be ridden in a carriage and at the time of carriages it took 45 minutes. The ride was designed to feel like you are in the forest and then poof: you are in front of the house. Well, running didn't EXACTLY feel like that, but it did surprise me when we were in front of the house.

We paused to take a picture. It wasn't exactly a pause because thanks to the age of the Kiwanis member that greeted us at the house, he couldn't operate a digital camera. He had to get his wife. Out of the car. Ugh.
I guess they didn't know we were running a RACE or anything. We took full advantage of the break, said cheese and were on our way downhill.

You run through the gardens and bass pond and whole bunch of other stuff. I don't know. We were running VERY fast downhill, like 7:00-7:30 miles fast.

Once we hit mile 7, our legs felt like bricks and we didn't really want to go much further. Thankfully, we only had two more miles to go.

We picked it up a bit once we hit mile 8 and of course there was an increase in elevation AGAIN. A bit of bile hit the throat as we crossed the finish line at 1:18!

Truthfully, I wanted to finish under 1:20 and so I was pleased as I could be that we accomplished that goal. It would have been faster if not the picture snafu at the house.
Amy was #1 in her age group and I finished #33 overall female, #9 in my age group. I was really happy with today!

Now we have decided to sign up for the Asheville 1/2 Marathon in September. Anyone else in? You have lots of time to train!

Still Shouting Out to Ikea

Well the damage is minimal, thanks to the fact that you buy each individual item from IKEA when you buy a cabinet.

If this had happened with Home Depot, we would be buying new custom made whole cabinets with hardware, shelves and everything. As it is with IKEA, we only have to buy the frame of five cabinets. So the damage is minimized.

Whew.

But we did realize that we have a MAJOR problem on our hands with the water in the basement as it turns out the water came in from the walls and not through another entrance. Fun! More renovations that cost an ARM AND A LEG. Anyone have spare ones laying around? We are using ours on a kitchen.

But we have surveyed the damage and decided that since the cabinets are all out of boxes and mixed up and in order to get organized outside of the basement since it is supposed to rain the next two days...we are going to GO AHEAD AND START RENOVATIONS NOW. mmhmm.

Not later like we planned. This ought to be interesting. We are playing the hand we are dealt. With smiles and calm demeanors. Seriously.

Here we go!

Not a Happy Camper

We had an unbelievable rain storm around here last night.

How unbelievable?

It brought over 1/2 an inch of rain into my basement and onto my beautful IKEA kitchen.

THAT'S RIGHT.
I think that the damage is minimized and hopefully, all we have to do is buy a few cabinets, not the most expensive part; which is cabinet doors.

But if you thought putting together IKEA furniture was liking a jigsaw puzzle before, try it after you take everything OUT of the boxes and mix it all together.

Anybody wanna come help? Didn't think so.

Notice to everyone: Wind has officially been taken out of the sails.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

When picking up the kids from their school today, the director of the school pulled me aside and said, "I have to tell you what Lucy said to me today."

"Uh-oh." Is all that ran through my head.
That AND a few other words of fear related to a few other words.

She said, "I was talking to her teacher and Lucy kept saying, 'Miss Tina, Miss Tina, Miss Tina' over and over again. I waited until I was done talking and then asked Lucy what she wanted to tell me."

Lucy said, "I really like your pajamas."

Yep. I am pretty sure that Miss Tina will be using this story as her confessional tape on The Biggest Loser or What Not To Wear or some other show in the near future.

So that was awesome.
My gracious daughter.

If your self-esteem ever needs a punch in the face, come on over. We have lots of good times around here to go around.

Matt on the Radio

Matt is going to be on the local radio station this morning talking about the concert on Monday night and Young Life!

He said he is going to meet someone famous today too-oohlahlah. I can't wait to hear. I am hoping for someone like Keith Urban, just because he at least isn't too cheesy.

Anyway, he is going to be on 99.9 Kiss Country between 9:15 and 9:45, if you are out of the area, you can listen to it STREAMING radio from your desktop just click here Click on the "itunes" item.

If you don't know what I said, don't worry about it, he did great.

Spring Cleaning

Everyone I know is packing up their winter clothes and putting them away for the summer. I would love to do this too. Lord knows the winter has been long enough around here. But wanna guess what I just saw?




Yep. That's where we are going in a few weeks to live for a month. So that's awesome.
That is HATS. FLEECE. JEANS.

Not so much shorts! Flip Flops! or Bathing Suits!
Like I want it to be.

ATTENTION PLEASE

The Fiddlin’ Pig Bluegrass and Barbecue Restaurant is hosting a concert by country artist Joe Nichols on Monday, May 18th…AND ALL OF THE PROCEEDS GO TOWARD YOUNG LIFE IN BUNCOMBE COUNTY!!!

(You might be thinking “Who is Joe Nichols” or “I don’t like country music that much”. I’d say, “Who cares!?! It’ll be such a fun night with great food and great friends. AND WE RAISE NECESSARY MONEY TO KEEP YOUNG LIFE GOING IN OUR COUNTY!!)

Tickets are on sale NOW! They are $20 a piece and Young Life in Asheville is splitting the door, so this could be a great fundraiser for us!

Please buy the tickets up quickly! Bring your friends, cousins, granny, whoever!!! It’s going to be a great night of food, dancing, and singing. Let’s pack it out!

For tickets, call the Fiddlin’ Pig at 828-251-1979, or visit their webpage at www.thefiddlinpig.com. There’s a YL promo on there too!

Last Mother's Day Post

This one is from theCake Wrecks Blog




I mean, a UTERUS CAKE. Really? Who thought that was a good idea?

Our Family Motto

I wish Mr. T would teach my kids all of our family values.

Happy Mother's Day Mom

Not my secret, but yes my butt looks just like my moms. Thanks Mom! Happy Mother's Day!
From the Postsecret Blog

Yep, I'm a Twitterer

Have you noticed my new little button on the right side of my blog?

These are my twitter updates!
I have been a twitter skeptic for quite some time now, but only because of friends that have abused their tweets syncing with facebook and have confused job tweets with funny tweets and then dominate my world with them.

If none of that make sense to you...stop reading now.
You can just follow along on the right side of my blog if you don't want to join Twitter!

Any updates I make during the day will be synced here. This is seeming super annoying and self-serving. I know it. But it is really fun, especially to read my other friends tweets and to read oh say...the Pioneer Woman, Lance Armstrong, Perez Hilton, NPR, Robin Plemmons and Spooner (both of whom never fail to disappoint) as well as Dooce.

It is a good time. In my oh-so-fake fantasy blog world that I am loving.

What is happening to my life?
Also, it is fun to find out when sales and others things are going on with retailers and other businesses.
You have heard about it other places. You are now hearing an endorsement from me. It's great fun.
Twitter.

Sanfu #1 of 85670

Matt and I got to have an IKEA date on Wednesday and ended up BUYING our IKEA kitchen. It was a nerve wracking experience to say the least...
to make double sure of all the measurements, the cabinet choices, the countertops etc. It was entirely too overwhelming to take too much advantage of the sale, because we weren't totally prepared for the purchase. Like we didn't know what drawer organizers we wanted or what faucet exactly would be right. But the big stuff? We got ALL the big stuff out of the way.

We ordered 20 cabinets, countertops, hood and sink. We sort of freaked about getting it all back home but thankfully they offer home delivery since they are in state for only $99 and so we took them up on it.
It was about 9:30 when we finished up and set up the home delivery. The customer service rep was extremely vague on what we had to do next but he kept saying we had to "check it all out" which to us meant that we had to make sure that all the items were there before they got loaded.

We were not excited to have to wait around IKEA until 10:30pm to check and make sure all 16 boxes of drawer slides were there.

After 30 minutes of waiting, the warehouse people told us that they triple check everything and we could just go on home. "No need to worry!" they said. We wiped our brows from the effort of waiting and went home.




Today we accepted the delivery of our new IKEA kitchen. Yes, this is it.

MINUS 40 ITEMS.

Things that would be easy to overlook too:
Like nine foot long sections of countertops.
And a double sink.

My favorite part of the day was the delivery man showing me the invoice where everything was checked off. He told me "It must be in a box or something."

Like you put a sink together. Out of a flat box of MDF.
I mean, IKEA is good. But not that good.

Also, he didn't want to go back over the list and make sure that everything was there. All I noticed that was missing was the sink.
I asked him if we could go over the inventory and he said,
"Ma'am, there are 145 items here. We checked it all in our warehouse. I have to be on the other side of town in 30 minutes. If we can through it in 15 minutes, then I can help you out."

Ummm. What?
I don't really care where you have to be.
I HAVE A KITCHEN IN 145 BOXES. Let's go ahead and check it out, kay?

I know that picture is overwhelming.
Imagine what it is going to look like when 40 more things get delivered.
Truthfully, I thought it was going to be worse.

Please ignore all the crap in the background.
Thanks.

Guido Beach

Hear Me HEAR ME HEAR ME...
This is NOT CLEAN. NOT CLEAN language. It is NOT CLEAN.

I did not make this video.

But it is hilarious. Especially at the end.
Especially for more reasons that I can talk about on the blog but I can give you a few reasons:

1. This is everyone I went to high school with.
2. These people live all around my sister.
3. This is EVERYONE I WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL WITH.


Don't judge me. Just try to understand how it is possible that there is always ALWAYS a Jersey/Staten Islander on a reality show.

Yes we are insane

One of the reasons why our life has been pure chaos for the past week has been because we have had to make a lot of decisions about whether or not to engage in a kitchen renovation this summer.

You see, a Home Depot cabinet sale ended on Sunday. So we needed to make a decision on our kitchen and either order the frickin' cabinets or move on. So lots of debates and whathaveyou had us paying a babysitter so we could go and sit with a designer again and have her rework our design on Friday night. We got really excited until she came back with it costing another $1,000 more than the previous design. Yikes.

So we came home. And opened the IKEA kitchen catalog.
And came up with a design based on the one we just had done at Home Depot.
For 1/2 the cost. But for about 150 times the headache.
Guess who's buying a headache for the summer?

Here's how the debate goes:
What do you have more of, time or money?
Sometimes you have more money.
Sometimes you have more time.

Apparently we have more time. For now.
I was really sad that we made this decision on Saturday though because a HUGE IKEA Kitchen sale ended on Sunday. One that has been going on since March. Ugh. But guess what I just got in my inbox? The IKEA kitchen sale has been extended until Sunday, May 10th!
So I guess we are heading to Charlotte sometime in the next four days to BUY A FREAKING KITCHEN IN BOXES. Seriously. Or some would call it a divorce in a box. I am choosing to not think about it in those terms and I am keeping my eyes on the prize.

THIS.

Which is what I hope my kitchen will look like sometime in the next five years.

Yep, that is Lucy in the picture and yes, those are the cabinets we are buying. But we ordered stainless appliances and we will not have a bar. Do your best to imagine away!

Playlist of the Week

Sorry for the lack of posting as of late.
You wouldn't believe the chaos if I told you, but just hear this...sometimes life can be crazier when your husband comes BACK from out of town than when he is OUT of town. Can you read in between the lines?

I am in the middle of my prep for the 15k on the 17th at the Biltmore Estate and so I have a new playlist that I feel compelled to share with you. Don't mind me if this is not as fun for you as it is for me. My goal in life is to create a playlist where I don't want to touch the ipod one time during my run AND I don't want to stop running the entire time. So here it is:

Jump-Van Halen
Here It Goes Again-Ok Go (treadmill dance video, it's amazing. If you haven't seen it, YouTube it right now)
How Far We've Come-Matchbox20
My Prerogitive-Bobby Brown
Viva La Vida-Coldplay
Are You Gonna Go My Way-Lenny Kravitz
Cradle of Love-Billy Idol
Come On Eileen-Dexy's Midnight Runners
Shoop-Salt-N-Pepa
The Weight of the World-The Samples
Vacation-Go Go's

Best Cool Down Song of the Year-Walking in Memphis: Marc Cohn