The "F" Word

Today is a good day. The sun is shining, the breeze is perfect and my son is napping. It's a good day!!!

There's so much on my mind today, so much going on in my head that I couldn't begin to scratch the surface before I start to bore you with my word count. We've had a crazy few weeks, helping to plan a wedding on the East Coast, traveling with a toddler to Baltimore, seeing my bro-in-law get married to his awesome bride, chilling out on the Atlantic coast after the wedding and finally traveling back home to the Northwest.

And here I sit, with this feeling in my chest. Maybe it's excitement, maybe it's nerves, maybe it's just a weighty feeling, knowing what's ahead this weekend.

My church is hosting a conference called Fearless. Yes, I know... fearless? And I'm apart of the worship team that's going to be playing for the weekend. Super excited... YES! A little bit nervous... YES! Not because of the music or all that fluff, but because of the theme.

Fear.

Fear. Less.

Fearless.

The little f word. Or in my case, it's been a BIG F word. It's been a struggle in my life, if I dare to be honest for a split second. ;-) Fear of being fully seen and rejected, fear of failure, fear of... fill in the blank! And because I take all of this weekend and what it's about so seriously, I've been looking at my own life and dissecting what I'm afraid and why. What are the roots? What motivates my fears? Needless to say, it's been a scary, vulnerable few weeks of facing my fears. Looking them in the eye, getting out of denial and being truthful about where I'm at.

And you know what? It's vulnerable, awesome and gives me hope. The best thing I've got from this time is that the only way to live is with my hands open, letting go of what I fear, letting go of what I want to hold onto so tightly. It's about fearing less. And less. And less. Until I've totally released the part I play in being fearful to the One who knows what to do with my fears.

I know you can't overcome a struggle in a day. It's a day-to-day thing, learning to live without fear. But I'm really excited about this weekend, being together with a whole bunch of awesome women to love God and want to live more alive, without fear.

So I will start today with Fear. Less. Until it is Fearless.

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There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life - fear of death, fear of judgement - is one not yet fully formed in love. 1 John 4:18

Getting My Butt Kicked

Well, after almost a year, I'm back to blogging on my own blog. I've been working over at Oh!Dinner (www.ohdinner.com) for the past year and I'm still doing that but I really missed having a place to verbally go crazy. This is my place!

I gotta say... a lot has happened in the last year. We sold our house, renovated another house, moved into it, started a website, hubby started a new company, and a bazillion other things. And my son is 2 years old and embracing it. This means I'm getting my BUTT KICKED out of the ball park. It's totally fun to watch him explore and see his personality become even bigger but it's also exhausting, wondering what the heck I'm supposed to do to help guide him through this phase with freedom, not control. I can only control myself. Thanks Danny Silk for that little piece of wisdom.

Son just went down for his rest time and I'm about ready to topple over on the couch and have a snooze myself. But, here I sit, blogging instead. All the things I used to do while he was awake, I now need to do while he's contained in a crib, sleeping away the afternoon. If I'm on the computer, he wants to be on it too. If I'm on the toilet, he wants to see what's going on in the pot. Seriously. So, there's not much time for all the other stuff, like getting everything done in the day that needs to be done. And in all honesty, a lot of things just don't get finished these days. It's a constant life of undone things. The thought that everyone who's ever had kids experienced this (unless they're popping some speed pills) lived with the undone-ness, gives me hope that I can do this too and make it out the other side with my sanity intact.

If I can enjoy toddler-hood, it means less laundry folded and more snuggles with my son on the couch. Less kitchen perfection, more story times with him. Less me being put together, more spending time showing my son how to experience the world around him. I think in the long run, I'll be glad I embraced this chaotic time instead of trying to have it all together. I only get to be a Mommy once and I want to spend these young years actually being a Mommy, not trying to have a perfect life.

Cheers to getting my butt kicked!

New blog

I haven't been around here much lately. But guess what! You can find me HERE!

www.ohdinner.com is my new venture with my friend Danielle that will be open for business as of this Friday (August 19th). We'll be blogging from there for awhile. I may be back here once we get the swing of things on the business end but for now.... let's just put a big "PAUSE" on abonnielife. I'll still be tweeting my brains out on Twitter - @abonnielife so if you're looking for some nonsense, check me out there!

Birthday Week!

My birthday is tomorrow. Since tomorrow is only hours away, it's almost, almost my birthday!! I love my birthday.

This year, I love my birthday a lot! This year, my husband informed me on Sunday night that I would be having my birthday all week long. At this point, I must remind you to read my post about HIS birthday... and how he always raises the bar for mine. He's done it again! He has been responsible for all the cooking, I have been sleeping in every morning while he gets up with our son, and he's taken care of bath/bedtime every evening too! It's been like a mini-vacation. Not once have I wished I could take a nap this week... that's one for the record books. On top of all this, here's what has happened so far this week...

Monday: We had Mahi Mahi fish tacos with a special sauce he made. Then he had a movie for us to watch and gave me a footrub! That's a GOOD man! ha!

Tuesday: He had pre-marinated short ribs and we had that along with mashed potatoes and veggies for dinner. After dinner, he announced that he was "at my service" until 9pm to do anything around the house that I wanted done. You'd be surprised at how fast I came up with a list! Pictures hung, a/c installed, towel hooks installed, garage tidied... it was the BEST!!!!

Wednesday: Dear husband tells me in the morning to have a diaper bag packed for the little by 4:30pm. So I wonder, what could we be doing today? He arrives home from work at 4pm and tells me that he's taking Hudson for a run and then to get pizza while Frythe (best massage therapist in the world!!) comes to our house and I get a massage. I swoon. Love my man. And then he times dinner perfectly that I'm literally just done my massage when he walks in the door with pizza from a really yummy place in town! And movie again, while we eat blizzards!

Thursday: I'm not so sure what will happen for this day as it's my birthday. I don't have any hints or clues. I do know he'll be working all day but then maybe we'll do something at night? Or maybe not. I have no clue. I love it but I don't. I like to figure it out so I've been obnoxious with questions. No hints.

I'll let you know when I find out!

A Bad History with Golf

Once upon a time, I was dating Luke, who is now my husband. One day, we were planning our next full day together since we lived in different countries... well, really only a 40 minute drive so it's not THAT big of a deal. But we didn't see each other every single day or even every other day being that we were both students and working as well. Anyways, we decided that we would go golfing on our big day together and then have a little bbq on the beach at Semiahmoo to watch the sunset. Sounds like a great day right!

I arrived at his house and we started out at Homestead Golf & Country Club to warm up at the driving range. "Warm up" is a relative term since I had only 1 other experience on a golf course in middle school which involved me throwing my golf ball more than I actually hit it. It's something I don't really want to talk about. So, we get out there and I line up my first ball, feeling hopeful. I swing. Miss. I swing again. Miss. What happens next? Yup, miss again. It was really frustrating. I kept missing while some show-off next to me was hitting balls over 300 yards every time. In fact, every person there was hitting their balls WAAAAAAAY into the distance, except for me. I got mad, attempted another swing, jammed my wrist, started crying and this became the WORST beginning to the day that Luke would propose to me. Of course, I had not a clue.

It's a mild understatement to say that Luke was worried. This day was supposed to be perfect. He had it all planned. After the driving range, our plan was to head to a small golf course in Everson that was $10/person and doesn't exist anymore. I hoped things would get better once we started to play. They had to. Well, they didn't. By the 4th hole I was pissed. Mad is too gentle for how I was feeling. By the 7th hole, I was crying with sunglasses on. Needless to say, Hole #7 was  my last for the day. I walked the rest of the course and Luke pretended to not be panicking that this day was spiraling downwards fast.

Little note: When I was younger, I took myself WAY too seriously, was very hard on myself and hated not doing everything perfect the 1st time. Sometimes I still fall into that rut but I've learned to laugh at myself and do it often. It's made life much easier!

Well, long story shorter, the day did get better. We bought food for the beach, had a great little bbq, he proposed, I said yes and we're coming up on 9 years married this August. So even if your proposal day is not working out well, your marriage still might be okay.

My only real regret about the day was what I was wearing (I dressed for playing golf, being on the beach after sunset, etc), zero make-up and bad hair after being outside and angry all afternoon. Our family and close friends all showed up to celebrate on the beach after Luke proposed. Everyone was dressed so nicely since they had some notice of our engagement party. I, on the other hand, looked not so nice. I cringe when I see the photos. I'm not making this up... my brothers laugh when they see the photos. But even though I say all that, I truly cherish the entire day and every single detail of it. The bad golfing, the tears, the great food, beautiful ring, bad outfit. All of it. And the amazing man that asked me to marry him. He's the best part of this whole story!

I will say though, he was pretty confident to invite everyone to the beach BEFORE he asked me. What if I'd said no?

Selling Cars

We are selling our car... again. It's not the first time it's been up for sale. This time, it's priced to sell.

Historically, we have a terrible record of buying and selling... emotional buys that we cannot afford, cars with problems, big losses on trade-ins, etc. Does anyone else have this problem? So our decision to sell the car gives me some butterflies and not the romantic kind. More like the nervous, maybe we should keep it kind. This car has been very good to us and gets awesome gas mileage. However, we do own it outright and if we sell both our vehicles, we can get a really great deal on the SUV we are hoping to buy and a little commuter car for my honey and bank a bunch of cash. 

And to be honest, although this is a nice looking, happy car it wasn't really a "love" car for me. We got this because we had an aging car that had all sorts of BIG issues (aka, $$$) and a trade got us out of that problem. While I say that I've never loved this car, it's grown on me big time. I like the way it looks, it's great to drive and it's been problem-free. The biggest reason to sell it is that Luke is selling his truck and we need something that can fit bigger things... so it's an SUV for me. We've got our eye on a few that still have great gas mileage. Soooooo.... that's all.

It's not a funny kind of day today, if you haven't noticed. Just a busy one so I'll finish this blog, get to work and maybe I'll have something funnier to say tomorrow. :-)   Oh! I will tell you about the golf mishaps that I mentioned the other day. It's kind of sad/funny/wowbonnie so hopefully you'll check it out. 

The Sweet Life

Well, it's Friday. A busy one for our house so this is a short and sweet little post. Pardon the crumbo picture quality... cell phone. (even though it's 8 mega-pixels, it never looks quite as good as my camera. But it's what I had.)

I just thought I'd share Hudson's first tastes of Strawberry Shortcake. With heaps of whipped cream. 

He stuffed his face full of it until the plate was clean, then attempted to lick the plate. It was a proud moment for both of his parents. It's funny how simple things like seeing your child enjoy something good can make life a little sweeter. 

Happy Friday!