A "Legal" Adult

Well, it happened. I am now officially “legal.” Yesterday I celebrated my 18th birthday.

The fun began Sunday evening around seven thirty with homemade strawberry cake. Mmmm…. I came home from a meeting to find a freshly frosted, heart-shaped cake waiting for me. Following this delicious treat we headed into the living room for presents. Dad had to leave Monday morning, the day of my real birthday, so we decided to do all of this early. My favorite gift I received was the new Bible I’ve been wanting. It is just the right size, my favorite translation, and the perfect thing for years of use. A close second was a gift I received from my Dad. He gets us something special every year and this time it was money for… a GPS! I guess he finally got tired of me calling him continually needing help getting somewhere. ☺ As we were finishing the gift giving, Dad asked me what I had planned for my “big day.” I told him not much. I was still pretty worn out from traveling home, Alyssa, Mary Jo, and him were all going to be gone and I thought I’d just chill. “Nothing too special,” were my exact words.
Me being a goof
Monday morning began with a text from Ryan asking if he could take me to lunch. Only five days older than me, Ryan and I have grown up like brother and sister. Then, my family and I headed for breakfast at Mandy’s. As we were pulling up, Jackie called asking where we were. “My boys are at your door and no one’s answering,” she informed me. I apologized for not being there and told her to tell them how grateful I was that they tried. It was just as I was saying “Wow, I sure appreciate how much trouble everyone’s going to in order to make this day special for me,” that I looked out the window in Mandy’s parking lot and saw Uncle Dale pull up. He and Ryan had come to join us for breakfast!


When I arrived home, I found a lovely bouquet of hot pink roses waiting on the front porch. Justin and Devin had hoped to give them to me in person, but I was still super excited to get them. I spent my morning marking my new Bible with the Bible study guide stickers. Around noon, Mom took me shopping for a few needed items at the mall. We had a fun time together and found a few nice things. Just as we were leaving the mall, Sharon from Heart’s and Flowers in Keene called. “Are you going to be at home soon?” she asked. “We’ve got a delivery for you.” So mom and I were greeted by a gorgeous bouquet of 18 pink roses from, guess who… my bestest friend in Arkansas, Mary Jo! Mom tried to take pictures of me with them yesterday only to discover that there was no memory card in the camera (after we’d taken the pictures). They sure are fabulous!



Uncle Allen, Auntie Lose, Aaron, John, and Emily joined us for dinner at Antonio’s. It was delicious food and so much fun to spend time with family.

Just a few minutes after we got home, Darrell and Jackie stopped by to deliver a card and a beautiful poem written by Jackie. I would love to publish it on here but am not sure Jackie would want me exploiting her beautiful work.

All throughout my day I was showered with phone calls and emails from friends and family wishing me blessings. The gifts, phone calls, emails, cards and prayers all mean so much to me. God has blessed me far more abundantly than I deserve and I am so grateful for his wonderful mercies and love.

Thanks to everyone that helped make my day extra special. I love you all!

Oh Hail to Thee, Dear Granbury

“Oh, here it is!” I announced to Alyssa as we caught or first glance of Arbor House, our bed and breakfast of choice. As we pulled into the large driveway we shot each other a smile, our anticipation mounting by the minute. “I’m so glad it worked out for us to do this before you leave,” I said after locking the car and beginning our trek to the B&B’s front door.

“Alyssar? Oliviar? Well hello girls! How lovely to meet you girls! Come in, come in!” Judy gushed in her beautiful Australian accent while ushering us into the foyer. We signed in, were offered a Granny Smith, and then given a brief tour. Judy and John just moved to Texas from Australia a week and a half ago and were filled with excitement and a new-found love for the place. We were offered tea, coffee, soft drinks, juice, brownies, and told to ask if there was anything else we might need. It was then time to see our room: The Lakeview Room. Judy led the way and informed us of how much she loves this room. It was nicely decorated and very cozy. After unloading the car we began planning our afternoon.

So where were we? What were we doing there? Alyssa is leaving January 24 for Amazing Facts Center of Evangelism, AFCOE, and we won’t be seeing each other for six and a half months due to me leaving at the end of May. Because of this, we really wanted to spend some time doing something fun together. Time away from all the business of home. We thought about San Antonio, but it was too expensive. We thought about a camping trip, but didn’t think two single teenage girls should be camping alone. Then my mom thought of a bed and breakfast. After a little searching we decided on Granbury, picked a B&B and booked a room. We were amazed how cheaply we were able to do this.

On our way to Granbury

Lakeview Room

Other side of the room

In the "backyard"

The view of Arbor House from the backyard
Back to Sunday afternoon. Our first adventure took us to The Square, the middle of Granbury. Approximately a four-block walk from the B&B, The Square offered many quaint shops for exploring, several tasty restaurants to choose from, and a unique, small town feel.

Our view as we walked to town

Alyssa making life more interesting
After wandering through several antique shops we came across a gem. Upon completing the first story of this particular shop we debated on whether or not to venture upstairs. We were about to head for the door when Alyssa saw something of interest to her. “I don’t know why but I love quilts,” Alyssa had informed me only minutes before spotting a wall of quilts upstairs. She bounded up the stairs and I followed close behind. After a quick glance at the quilts we spotted the real treasure. Tucked into the back corner sat 20-30 old-fashioned hats just begging to be tried on. I kicked the fashion show off by placing a notably outrageous hat on my head. Before we knew what was happening, the hats were flying to and from the hat rack to our heads. Of course we had to take a variety of pictures so we wouldn’t forget the best ones! Here are several of our lovely adornments:












Finally deserting our glorious “hat room” we perused several more shops before deciding we had seen enough of other people’s old junk (I’ll admit some antiques are cool, just not the ones we were finding). Not yet ready for dinner, we decided to head back to the bed and breakfast to decide what else to do. However, the four-block walk back to the B&B combined with the precious little sleep with had both gotten the night before had worn us out and we ended up just chilling out in our room for a while.

Everything was fine and dandy until a loud noise and a painful feeling interrupted us. It was only four fifteen and we were both getting super hungry! After searching on the web for a place to eat we decided on Italian, but upon arriving at Pastafina we decided to head to Babe’s since Alyssa had never been there. How can a vegetarian eat at a chicken place you may ask? Biscuits, corn, and mashed potatoes are enough to satisfy most any girl!


The rest of our evening was fairly low-key. However, we did break our no-dessert-for-a-year for this special occasion and did devour a pint of ice cream each. Yes, I said a pint. And yes, I did go non-vegan for this occasion as well. I only ate half that night but was able to finish it the next morning. Alyssa’s disappeared somewhat mysteriously and quicker than she thought was possible.

Eager for our ice cream

Bluebell is the only way to go!

Alyssa's emptied ice cream carton
The next morning we talked and had a small worship together before heading downstairs for breakfast. It was pretty tasty and Judy was so excited for us to try “fried” tomatoes, an Australian delicacy. They were really more cooked than fried. We loaded up the car and began our search for Dinosaur Valley State Park where we planned to hike, talk, and study the Bible together. After two hours of searching for a non-existent road we pulled over and enjoyed a beautiful little peaceful spot by a trickling brook.

One of our dead ends

Poor carsick Alyssa

God led us to this beautiful little quiet spot

We finally decided to head back toward home. Our stomachs began to speak to us again not long after this and we shared a delicious meal at Joe’s Pizza and Pasta before heading to my house. A few more hours slipped by at my house before I took her home and ended our adventure.

Don't we look lovely

Through our conversations we discovered that this trip was such a learning experience for us. In many ways it made us feel so mature while in other ways it revealed our immaturity. I feel so blessed to have friends like Alyssa who are committed to sharing these amazing memories with me and who are eager to travel the twisting highways and byways of friendship.

Our trip was fabulous and I can’t wait to do it again. Thanks for going and growing with me, Lyss! I’m sure going to miss you! Love ya!

Joy to Our World!

Okay, I realize it’s been over two weeks since Christmas already. But I have a good excuse for taking so long to post these pictures. Kind of. I was determined to have a Christmas day post. I wanted it to be posted December 25 telling everyone Merry Christmas and everything. By the time I had the pictures loaded on my computer and got started it was getting late already. I had typed up my entry earlier and thought I’d saved it already. So I watermark and load all the pictures and go to look for my journaling and… I had deleted it! By the time I discovered this it was already midnight and I was too tired to start over. Why haven’t I posted them since? I guess you could say that the wind was knocked out of my sails. But I’ll post an abbreviated version now. Here’s a little taste of my Christmas…

Christmas eve Mom came up with the wonderful idea of Christmas caroling a few of our friends. Dave and I thought this sounded fun but we wanted to add a few voices to our “choir.” So, we called up the talented James family and were delighted when they agreed to join us in our endeavor. All our other friends were busy so it was just the Jamers (the name we came up with for our “singing group”). As they were leaving to join us M.J. realized she had a flat tire so her parents told her to go ahead and they’d fix her tire. Aren’t they great? Our second stop was my Uncle Allen’s house. John and Allen were home alone so we invited them to join us. Our group now contained 9 people! By this time Mary Jo’s parents had fixed her tire and joined us at our next stop, Dale’s house. Ryan wasn’t doing much so we convinced him to join us, too. Our group had now reached 12. By the end of the night we’d caroled 15-20 of our friends and family and had a blast. The only picture I have that someone took of us at the door is a hard copy and I haven’t scanned it yet, but here are a few pics from the start of our evening:

M.J., Amy, and I anticipating our fun evening
At our first stop
Christmas morning was nice and relaxing. Our family ate a special breakfast, read the Christmas story from Luke, and opened our presents. We kept things a little simpler this year, which was nice. However I did get one present I was totally jazzed about. The Shootsac I’d been wanting! I love, love, love it! I may have to post some pictures of me with it on here sometime. We’ll see if I get around to it. Here are a few Christmas morning picture:

Making Breakfast
The camera Dave got me for graduation has this awesome feature...
Dave hammin' it up

Feigning shock
Again
The awesome present I gave him
Aren't I intelligent?

Late that afternoon we headed to the Sexson’s house for Christmas dinner. The meal was so yummy! We had soup, bread, crackers, and dessert. I think I overdid it just a little… After the meal we opened our presents from each other and watched the girls do a concert for us. They are growing so fast! Our worship consisted of them singing for/with us and a closing prayer.

Shaylee and her Mimi
David and Brenna at dinner
I love that smile!
Shay needed a little help
The five of us

Christmas was absolutely fabulous in our corner of the world. Hope it was in yours, too! May God fill your new year with many blessings!