PICTURES Gallore!! Whoo hoo!

Tim and I have been doing a LOT of traveling lately. But wait, before you think for one second that we are fancy let me assure you we are not! As an update, Tim and I, while we have yet to fully embrace and become huge fans of Los Angeles living, we have embraced how stinking BEAUTIFUL this place is that we live and are doing our best to make the most of it! We have also a ceaseless aching for friends and family who are far away so we are doing our best to get out and see peops! So our travels started the last weekend in April when Tim's work sent him to Nashville for a few days! I mean, I couldn't let him go to Nashville without me so I tagged along. As per usual I took almost zero pictures. But here is what I do have ...

 That is right, we were caught for TWO hours in stopped traffic on our way to pick up our bibs to run the Nashville Half Marathon. This guy behind us was frustrated too.

 Just us and a few of our friends waiting for the race to start!

That is Hannah on the far right, and then Ellen in the yellow and Tim... Mile 9.

Ellen and I at dinner the last night. We were feeling pretty tired by then! Let me tell you... we lived it up Nashville style. What is not pictured was the beautiful farm we stay at where Ellen was house sitting (yes I said farm - this included horses, sheep, a donkey, three dogs, a bunny, and a lot of cats ... we had to feed them and keep them alive which was hilarious!), the Main Street Festival in Downtown Franklin that was so fun, seeing my LONGEST friend Kristen and her family, time with MOEN and her sweet hubs, Tons of BBQ, and live Bluegrass music! It could not have been more fun and I have now seeing Ellen twice in a matter of months! hooray!

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Ok so then two weeks later Tim and I took a stunning one night trip to the central coast because we had never been to Hearst Castle and it is a must see on our newly created Bucket List! Of course I didn't take one picture but I found so google images of exactly what we saw ... I swear to you this trip was good deep in my heart! did I mention we camped ... hehe So "fun"!

Ok while we were in the central coast we did get to see our sweet friends the Thomson's and meet Michaela Rose for the first time. She was about 10 days old. We became Besties! Don't be jealous... ok be a little jealous that I got to hold that little squooshy thing!

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THEN (yes no joke I mean we were road warriors) two weeks later Tim and I took to the roads again for a visit in Sacramento with some of our most favorite people in the world ... THE PETERSONS! and nope I took very few pics ... see below. 

 Me in Karen's onion glasses ... I think they kind of worked.

A trip wouldn't be complete without pics of our sweet Kylie and her sweet pooches. She owns Geoffrey but also dog-sits sweet perfect yellow lab puppies in training to be Seeing Eye Dogs. She is so gifted with those animals!

HAHA He is going to KILL me for posting this picture! We took Kylie to Old Town Sac for Jazz Festival and Tim went shopping for his fedora ... he even agreed to try this one on!

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Ok the next weekend Tim took off with his buddy, Jaime, to climb Half Dome at Yosemite (I swear to you we really aren't as cool as all of this makes us sound... we have just been adventurous lately) and Selah and I went to visit our sweet friends the Hylkemas. I only got one pic :( Selah is such a foodie ... sophisticated palate you ask ... Nope! String cheese works for her! I am pretty sure Elliana didn't even know Selah was there for the first 10 minutes.

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Finally, one night Tim and I got away for a sweet date night out and I actually DID take pictures this time! 

 Yep, me being paparazzi because I swear to you that girl over the shoulder of the girl in the front was my sister's clone! I texted this picture to Melissa and she was very confused!! haha I love being paparazzi! She even had the same manerisms! Weird!

 My most favorite dessert in the WHOLE WORLD ... Molten Chocolate Lava Cake!

I just literally love my hubby so much! And Food! hehe (I was trying to get right in next to Tim in the picture but ended up looking like I am hiding! oops!)

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Another paparazzi moment ... well... i might get sued if i post it so feel free to ask me about it and i will text you the picture. It involves a bandaid in a strange location and a rockin' pair of overalls! 

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Ok, it is my Friday off and it is time I go recover from all this craziness and enjoy this ...

and cuddle with this ...

Yep, you are seeing that correctly ... it is a sicko DOUBLE BUBBLE! Praise the Lord for paper towels!

Have a great week friends! The Brattons love you all!

 

Ken got MARRIED!

Last weekend Tim and I flew out to St. Louis, Missouri to celebrate the nuptials of his brother Ken. Ken married his sweetheart Karen and we couldn't be happier for them! Unfortunately, I was too busy to take many pictures, but part of what made the weekend so special (in addition to the wedding of course) was Tim and I getting to snuggle and play with our sweet nephew, Daniel, who just turned ONE! We loved every second of it. Here are a few random highlights from when I did pull out my camera! Enjoy all the cuteness!

 For all you Moms out there, I feel for ya. All we wanted was one shot of Daniel with the hat on and both him and Tim looking at the camera smiling! In the end you just give up I guess!

 Cute little family! I love this picture!

 I mean I had to document the temperature... It was so brutal. This doesn't also mention the 100% humidity going on! Holy BANANAS!

 It was a beautiful walk to the ceremony sight! That is Tim and Ken on the bridge.

 Jay checking out the turtle pond ... hundreds of cute little happy (and cool) turtles! Lucky them! I was wishing I was a turtle so I could be in the water! :)

 The Pagoda where the ceremony was held! So beautiful.

 A hilariously awkward shot of the hubs and I, but it was our only one so I included it! :)

 Three cute brothers (all the groomsmen wore hats).

The boys just hanging at the reception... I even accidentally caught Ken in the background so it worked out perfectly!

Rescuing Hope - Part 2

I thought this was a great follow up article to my last post on Hope. A quick 2 minute read from Break Point - Chuck Colson's ministry's daily article on Christian Worldview issues. I read it every day and LOVE it! Enjoy!

Rescuing Hope
Re-redefining a Virtue

June 21, 2012

In his essay called “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell shared a crucial insight about the decline of language: “A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” Or, as my friend Mike Bauman often says, “Sloppy language makes sloppy thought possible.” In Orwell’s “1984,” the masses are fed redefining slogans like “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” and “Ignorance Is Strength.”
The battle over cultures is often in the defining and redefining of words. Language has often been used to lower horizons and keep people from really thinking.
Today, as we discuss hope, we must confront bad definitions. It’s part of our ongoing series of the seven virtues. And don’t forget to watch the "Two-Minute Warning" discussion on hope I had with Dr. Timothy George at ColsonCenter.org.
We hear a lot about hope these days, from “the audacity of hope” to “hoping against hope.” Unfortunately, the word has been redefined — and, I must say, shrunken — by bad definitions.
Hope has been reduced to a kind of naïve optimism that things will get better. We hope for a changed situation, a new job, a better love, hitting the lottery, or LeBron James winning his first championship.
But real hope — biblical hope — isn’t hope for; it’s hope in: Hope in Christ—what He did for us on the Cross; and what He will do for us when He comes again and sets up His kingdom. A hope for is never better than wishful thinking. Hope in Christ is an expectation based on the certainty of who Jesus is and what He accomplished.
When hope is defined down to a limp, pallid, and ultimately useless imitation of the real thing, people and cultures are unable to live above naïve optimism or heartless despair.
But real hope is neither optimistic or despairing, and one of Chuck Colson’s closest colleagues, the late Richard John Neuhaus, described why: “Optimism,” Neuhaus said, “is not a Christian virtue. Optimism is simply a matter of optics, of seeing what you want to see and opting not to see what you don’t want to see.”
Hope is different than optimism. But we also can’t despair. As Neuhaus added, “We have not the right to despair, for despair is a sin. And we have not the reason to despair, quite simply because Christ has risen.” And that’s where biblical hope squarely rests.
This is no “pie in the sky when you die” kind of hope, but a hope that empowers us for effective service in this world right now.
For Neuhaus, hope involved calling the church to embrace the truth and power of the Gospel even in a culture he called “American Babylon.” For Chuck, it meant proclaiming the sanctity of human life, marriage, and religious liberty.
And for us, true, biblical hope — hope in Christ rather than a hope for an improved situation — empowers us to keep on keeping on in the myriad battles to which the Lord calls us.
Next week we’ll wrap up our "BreakPoint" and "Two-Minute Warning" series on the seven virtues. We’ve received such great feedback we’ve placed Chuck’s final "Two-Minute Warnings" on a convenient flash drive for you, along with a study guide and many other resources.
As Chuck said, freedom will not flourish unless virtue does. Find out more about the Renewing the Virtues flash drive by going to BreakPoint.org and clicking on this commentary.