Waiting for Patience

As I prepare for Thanksgiving, tonight a comment my cousin made to me last month kept coming to mine mind. I was together with tons of my family for my godmother's 50th Wedding Anniversary. Some of the siblings hadn't seen each other since their brother died. Others in the family it'd been more than a decade, maybe since my grandmother's passing in 1999. Although not everyone was present at the party, we did have a great time catching up. My cousin was taking photos as everyone came into the party and had us put our names on them. After about 10 of the shots were done, she realized that there was a setting on the camera to make them lighter. It was an old Polaroid, so no adjusting after the shot is taken. I was one of the people who had to take their picture twice. When I teased about having to take a second photo, she said "come on, you never take a bad photo - ever since we were little, you've always been photogenic." Hmm, I don't particularly lo...

--- 1 --- Well, I promised I'd share some photos from my trip to Texas, so here we go! This is the view from my Aunt's porch. As soon as we got to the house on Tuesday, I had to sit outside and take in the view. I remember it being amazing, but it was even more incredible than I recalled! We spent a lot of time out here on the porch!  The fire and the View!   --- 2 --- One day we went into San Antonio to the Aquarium (not amazing), the oldest cathedral in Texas (beautiful), the riverwalk (lovely), and dinner at the Tower of Americas (delicious)! cute little sea horsies Just amazing - they have confession every day all day long! How cool! The view at dinner - from 63 stories up! Celebrating my birthday with Aunt Char & Uncle Joe --- 3 --- Another day we took a drive to see the wildflowers. It was like they bloomed just for me! They said it's been a few years since they've been so beautiful - and this year did not d...

Have you ever had people in your life who have expectations of what your life is like, as a single person? Do friends or family ever make assumptions about your life simply because you're unmarried? Did you ever have expectations about being single which turned out to be different than the reality? How do you manage the expectations of others with the reality of your day-to-day? Boy I have a LOT of thoughts on this ... hopefully they will be written coherently and not all over the place! There are two questions here: Do I have expectations of what the single life is? AND Do others place expectations on me because I'm single? Although I think the prompt is really getting at the latter, the former is more of a big deal for me right now and has been on the last fifteen years of my life. So I will get the easy one out of the way and then deal with the more difficult. Do other people have expectations of me? Yes, of course - I have them of others. Do they interfere ...

SUPER excited about this logo ... since it was my entry that won!!! YEAH!   Thanks for visiting over here if you're just checking out the girl with the cool graphic design (that about as awesome as I get)!  Hope you stay awhile! --- 1 --- It's been a rough couple of weeks, so I abandoned the blogging effort in loo of other exciting activities like sleeping, temperature reducing, nose blowing, medicine taking, funeral attending, and then the glorious time of family visiting sandwiched in between lots and lots of driving and Christmas & New Year's Celebrating!  So now that I'm healthy, it's 2015, and Friday, I'm back to link up with Kelly over at This Ain't the Lyceum  for 7 Quick Takes.  I make no resolutions to be back on a regular basis, but I have a feeling that practicing my writing skills and showcasing my amazing photography are going to be habits I work on for 2015.  Maybe! --- 2 --- I was able to spend 10 days home in Saint Marys...

Thanks to Beth Anne for creating and hosting an Advent Blog Hop!  I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with over the next couple of weeks.  I love the books Annery at Home showcased, the prayers shared by Melody's Harmonies are so beautiful (and I love the beeswax advent wreath candles), This Domestic Church talked about incorporating Advent traditions slowly (super great advice), the St. Nick's Bag from over at 2 by 2 is an amazing idea (and her twins are so beautiful), Joe Sales Says talked about waiting - basically my theme song, the dialogue of Saint Nicholas on Tactical Catholic is fantastic,  and all that to say that you stopped by this gal's blog for some Advent inspiration is quite humbling! I was going to tell you about how I always wait until the Immaculate Conception to decorate my house for Christmas.  I had great plans, then they all went south when I saw this picture from my friend Stephanie on FB Saturday morning when I got home from (...

--- 1 --- The last time I linked up I was heading to Pennsylvania for my grandmother's 90th Birthday party.  Check out this super cute family picture from the event! and one of gram, the siblings, and me! Grandma, the Siblings, and Me --- 2 --- When we were home, we celebrated Amy's Birthday!  Of course, a cake was in order! Amy's Birthday (9/20) Nate's Birthday (8/31) This couple seems to have a similar "lighted candle, cake, birthday" face!  I'm glad I was able to spend time with both of them on their birthdays - seems like this is pretty unlikely to ever happen again. --- 3 --- I also had a chance to see Matt Maher at the fundraising dinner for the  Pregnancy Resource Center here in Charlotte. He gave a great concert! a beautiful girl's night! --- 4 --- When I was in New York, Nate, Amy, and I tried a roasted beet salad which was delicious (I thought I disliked beets, but I was proven wrong wi...