my kaleidoscope world

These are words I’m thankful I’ll never ever hear Eric say!

So after just making it home to catch the last 15 minutes of the American Idol finale (and being ever so thankful that I stopped watching this season months ago), I couldn’t help but think how different David Cook looked from the last time I had watched the show.

What could it be? His hair was rocker-fresh and sculpted as usual. A little gruffness in the beard didn’t seem unusual. His eyes seem so defined…wait, is that…is that…oh wow! He’s wearing eyeliner!

And yes, after they made the announcement that he had won, I did throw out a girly word of caution and said to the TV, “David dear…no don’t wipe at ‘em…it’s going to smear!”

So, what’s with this look and trend? Is it doing anything for these guys? I mean, should all the Frankensteins and Count Draculas be the only ones having fun at Halloween?

Comment and tell me who in your opinion is rockin’ it the best?

(I couldn’t find a good pic of David Cook, so I’ll be easy on him since he’s so green on the scene.)

1. Pete Wentz

2. Jared Leto

3. David Bowie

4. Johnny Depp (He puts the ‘R r r r r r’ in Revlon Colorstay Eyeliner!)

This is actually my pick for the winning heavy-eye-makeup guy! Yep, my husband!

. . . There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home!

This “No Place Like Home” slideshow is brought to you by way of the beautiful Bluegrass State of Kentucky. Maybe it’s me having spring fever, maybe it’s the upcoming addition to our family, it’s without a doubt my longing to be with my parents (especially this weekend of my dad’s birthday and other things).

These pictures make me so proud of my parents, all they’ve accomplished, and all they continue to do to make life so, so sweet! I’ve got the best family a girl could ask for!

My hope is in the Lord!

and…

I can’t wait to smell my baby!

Just as you’ll never understand the mystery of life forming in a pregnant woman; so you’ll never understand the mystery at work in all that God does. Ecclesiastes 11:5

If something CAN go wrong, it WILL.

So yeah, we start this new life-altering (and awesome!) course of adoption and on Monday we think, “let’s get our soon-to-haul-baby-mover in the shop for a 60k mile tune-up and oil change.” This work will cost around $400. Four hours and a phone call later we hear, “you’ve got a cracked radiator that wasn’t repaired, or even noticed for that matter, from back in March ‘07 from the little accident you had . . . it’s leaking and needs a new one . . . parts are on order for a Wednesday install . . . cost is $620.“

Choke. Eye rolling. Heart pounds.

Us: Oh, really? Well, okay . . .

Honda: We can check to see if it’s under warranty. We’ll call back.

Some time passes…

Honda: Mr. Kent, you’re covered with your warranty and it includes a car rental. Just come by and pick up the rental and we’ll call you Wednesday when your Accord is ready.

Us: Whew! Thanks God!

And, we have to give a shout out to Dave Ramsey, who resides in our heads/hearts/thoughts for teaching us sensible saving and spending practices that still would have covered this had the warranty not been there!

Seriously? Mmmmmkay…

Skimpy Prom Dress Gets Teen Arrested. I’m glad there was some forethought for all that extra material for her dress train. In the LIKELY event of a wardrobe malfunction, she might at least have a chance of covering up.

A beautiful girl with some screwed up priorities…

(Well, I’ve tried typing this without happy tears getting in the way, but oh well, let’s just get it all out, ol’ girl!)

It’s amazing to us how God makes open the way for us as we walk in the path that is undeniably His will. He has given us such a peace and comfort in this time of surrendering to his plans. Even last night I was repeating over and over to myself, “lay the anxiety down, lay the worry down, lay the unknowns down, it’s His, it’s HIS!” And in exchange, he has given us joy — unspeakable and immeasurable joy!

We are grateful to the team at Christian Adoption Consultants & Hope for Adoption for the guidance they’ve already provided and for the hard work they’ve done to make this process so natural and less intimidating than we had imagined. So with that, here are the details…

We just wrapped up Home Study visit #1 in our home! It was painless! I’m glad we had already started to work on some of the mound of forms that we were sent home with. We ended up passing a lot of completed forms off to Stephanie for her to begin the initial process and it whittled away at the behemoth that was our adoption folder. We are really doing this!

So, we’ve been informed that if we stay on point, we should be able to say our Home Study is done in 6 weeks. We also are doing our own profile, so it’s up to us to be on top of that project and our goal is to have it done by the 6 wk mark, too. Once those two pieces are ready, then it’s totally up to the agencies we network with and the situations that arise that we might possibly present to or match up. We were told that most of their clients receive their baby, on average, around the 6 month mark. Wow!

Wuh? Huh? I’m sorry… Yeah, I almost passed out from that last statement. 6 months?! Fo sheezie, y’all!

So, I’m planning a get together with the girlfriends pretty soon to have them choose pics for our profile. We’re lugging the camera around with us wherever we go for those perfect “pick us to be your baby mama/daddy” pics. And soon, Tyler will have his field day with snapping away and using his creative genius to showcase the parents-to-be photographically.

Last thought, I’m hoping that Eric can do some creative video time lapse stuff of how long it will take us to complete our personal studies!

Thanks, thanks, thanks for your encouragement and thoughts!

(make sure you read, or skip if you’d like, to the end!)

. . . Much has happened in the past 30 days since my last update, but I won’t bother with the excuses, I’ll get to the good stuff!

Eric spent a week in Vegas for NAB conference a few weeks back getting a deeper understanding of video editing. Me, I just spent the whole week missing him! I couldn’t wait for him to come home; so much that I was at the Marta train station waiting for him to come up from the airport 1 1/2 hours early. (For those of you who know me, you’re cracking up at my being early for something, right! Whodathunk it could happen?)

In the course of the past 5 Sundays with my work, I’ve had back-to-back excitement. First, we were back from Spring Break and the Attic at Browns Bridge had been remodeled. The room is so chill now. The following Sundays leading up to this last week have consisted of: Involve & Student Impact Volunteer Appreciation, Small Group Leader retreat in Jasper, Family Birthday Celebration baptism services (it was wow/amazing!), and Drive Conference. And that’s just work — not the personal “life outside of work” details.

This past week was our nephew Levi’s first birthday and he’s walking! Time flies! This upcoming week, one of our very good friends, Jamie, is being baptized at North Point.

We came to know Jamie, his wife Sam, and their two daughters, Chloe and Ivy, when they moved here from California. They became easy to recognize from the first Sunday they attended NP. Jamie had the rocker spiked mohawk, thick-gauged earlobe studs, crazy inked up arms with all variations of tattoos and Sam was his cutesy, tattoo bearing, Hot Topic wearing, bubbly, and lovely wife. They were the ones that had the two most adorable girls in the room. And Jamie and Sam were the doting, extremely calculative, very engaged parents that encouraged the girls’ participation and good manners while in KidStuf. They had me at hello! After some seasons of them moving around Alpharetta and even to CA and back, they ended up being our neighbors! (For those of you that know us, yes, that’s when Eric got the ginormous tattoo that is on his right arm! Did I mention Jamie is a ridiculously talented tattooist and artist?) We’ve witnessed God continue to grow their faith and prosper them and it’s been an exciting journey. Jamie and Sam both have a passion and love to serve God and reach out to people in incredible ways. They are both gifted and so easy to love and hang out with. Seeing Jamie celebrate his identity in Christ through baptism on Sunday will be beyond what words can say!

Now, I’m about to blow your mind . . . are you ready?!

Eric and I are on our way to being parents!!!! No, we’re not pregnant, but we are expectant in our hearts, thoughts, and spirits. We are in fact starting our adoption process at 10AM tomorrow morning! How fitting for this weekend of celebrating Mamas, eh?

This time next year, I hope to be wearing motherhood (a.k.a. spit up, baby cereal, drool, and yeah, I probably will not have showered in several days…) like a badge of honor!

We are incredibly excited! Even though the pressures of the paperwork (more like our new, unpaid part-time job of filling out forms!) and the money that we’re putting towards this adoption can be draining, those moments will fade the very nanosecond that our baby is placed in our arms. Every feeling of discouragement and fatigue will be dimmed and put to rest when our dreams become reality and the spark of hope that we had clung to and prayed for, the child that grew within us in our hearts and desires, is there in our hands. My mind is so limited in trying to conjure up the imagery of this moment. And, I don’t want to spoil it by thinking too long on it. We simply surrender that moment, as well as those before and long, long after it, to a trustworthy and loving God.

We are so happy to announce this to our family and friends. So many have cried with us and held us close over the years of infertility struggles. You’ve assured us time and again of how God has a purpose and plan for our life and he will be faithful to mark even the most painful of journeys with his provision, care and love. And, he has.

We have a lot of work to do to get where we’re going. We would sure love your support and prayers along the way. There is much to keep in mind, but God knows all. We have some fun, creative ways that we’re thinking up for raising support to help financially accomplish this dream. We also have a profile to put together and we need the expertise and creativity of the brilliant minds that are around us to help market — yes, I said market — us.

So, with all of that, I’ll sign off and be sure to update after our meeting tomorrow at 10AM. That is, if after the contract signing and check writing my hand isn’t too cramped up to type! :o)

I just opened this video that my friend Bo sent me. I wasn’t expecting to hear what I heard. But, really, I could watch it a few more times and still be smiling ear to ear (for a number of reasons)!

Oh, and how does Steve Harvey have such perfect teeth? Lawd, those are some pearly whites!

I saw Randy Pausch back in October on Oprah and saved the episode because I never want to forget about his arresting and appropriate words. Do yourself a favor and tune into ABC this Wednesday, April 9 to hear an unforgettable message about authentically living life. Here’s a preview . . .

So last week my family from Kentucky came in for a visit and it was wonderful, but it happened all too fast! They came in late Saturday, literally followed the Domino’s guy to the front door, and after catching up for a bit, we were in bed resting up for the journey of showing them Browns Bridge Church (where Eric and I work) the next day. Church was terrific and I wondered if any of them knew that Andy wasn’t really there. Turns out, my dad and mom found out sometime throughout the service that it was indeed the hi-def image of him, but my brother, Mr. Techno Savvy himself, wasn’t entirely sure until the very end when Andy prayed and the set changed. A big applause for the brilliant SPD teams at the three campuses that make this incredible environment happen each week!

Afterwards, Eric took Jeremy, my brother, to the Hawks vs. Knicks game for some hoops action and I believe they had a great time just being guys. Meanwhile, I was a mad woman in the kitchen making our famed two-bite brownies and prepping for a Low Country Boil. Let the feeding frenzy begin!

Just an idea of the meals we ate: Low Country Boil, Momma’s Roast, Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup, Eric’s BBQ ribs, and what some may take for granted but certainly not us — homegrown canned green beans from mom and dad’s garden. We ate very good last week and had great conversations all the while, getting more use out of my dining room than in the last year!

Eric and I both had to do some work based off of deadlines while they were here, so that took from our time. The weather was dreadful up until the last 24 hours before they left. However, on the upside, I did get my mom in for some hairapy with Leslie the Great (my hair stylist) and she really liked the cut and style. That was nice just getting away for girl time.

Wednesday came quickly, and before we knew it, the visit had come to an end and it was back to work! My mom has it in her head that we’ll somehow not be seeing each other for another 3 to 6 months, but that’s just crazytalk! I’m sure we’ll need a refill on green beans long before then!

To all the Spring Break travelers out there — have fun, be safe, and make the most of all your moments together!