yes more and no less!

Once upon a time I declared January 20th, or so, as national ditch your New Years resolution day.  There is something about working really hard at something for 20 days and feeling like that was the best you could do, so you get over it and move onto the next thing.  Lucky for me, in the world of Heather, I'm always coming up with something else I would like to get done during the year.  Maybe that's not SUCH a bad problem to have.

So this past weekend I came up with a NEW new years resolution: say yes more and no less!  I recently talked about fun lacking in my life, so how I plan on solving that is through saying yes to fun opportunities more than saying no to them.  You know where this new little phrase got me this past weekend? KANSAS CITY, MO.  That's right people, I said yes to driving 21 hours (1200 miles) in 3 days and boy was it so worth it.

Myself and 3 of the most entertaining girls drove FOREVER to visit our sweet friend Haley in KCMO! Cold weather, Thrift Shop, Christ centered conversations, Thrift Shop, dancing, Thrift Shop, Vampire Diaries, Thrift Shop, food, Thrift Shop, Silver Linings Playbook, Thrift Shop, lots of laughs, Thrift Shop, Patriots game and even more Thrift Shop filled 2 complete days of awesome.

Don't cheat yourself out of living a fun life.  Say yes more and no less!
 
I had so much more I wanted to say, but for some reason my creative juices start running at late hours and I also just wrote a 3 and half page paper and I'm afraid if I go on much longer I'll end up going on a tangent about feminism and gender equality and nobody wants to hear that, so…

I took all of 15 pictures this weekend and I am kicking myself for it, but here is one of me and my darling Caroline!  I love this girls heart.  

Cheers to adventure and love and life and beauty and music and friends and everything else that is making this heart of mine beat a million miles an hour this evening :) 

Cliches.

I hate cliches, because once something becomes a cliche the beauty that the phrase or action holds looses all its special points.  It becomes another face in a crowd of people and that's just a tragedy. 

Tonight has been somewhat of a somber evening; lots of not moving, staring at the celling, thinking and MAYBE a few tears.  Not so sure where they came from but somewhere between admiring Anne Hathaway's elegance and yelling at the TV when Zooey D didn't win her award I got a little mopey.  I truly don't understand how my mind works, like at all, it makes ZERO sense, then when emotions get involved there's a whole lot of pep talking myself out of my funk, trying to figure out why I'm even in a funk, then I pick myself up and decide that I'm probably one of the more pathetic people I know.  Girls you can relate, right?  I mean if I really am alone on this then I guess that's fine too…

One of the few things I pondered while staring at my celling was the way I've been living a not so joyful life recently.  I'm not so sure I like the way things are right now; I don't have as much fun as I think I should, I worry way too much, I over analyze, dwell on things that are just not important at all and who's got time for all this ugly to take up room in an unbelievably beautiful life?  I did; I made time and space for the ugly and that's a bigger tragedy than perfectly perfect words getting lost in a sea of other perfectly perfect words.  So while I played catch-the-propeller-on-my-fan-with-my-eyes I got really mad at myself for allowing so much negativity into my fairly positive mind, and in that moment I heard the Lord whisper a cliche in my ear: 

"Do the things you love and surround yourself with the people who TRULY treasure you."  

My New Years resolution was to set aside time to specifically pray for what the Lord wants me to do with my life.  I will be graduating in a year and a half and all I know is that I want to live in the mountains of Colorado.  I've been stressed and annoyed with myself because my dream is Colorado, it isn't to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or a veterinarian!  However I need to have a career and I do dream of being successful but living in the mountains isn't going to make me money, so then we're back at square one; pleading with the Lord, telling Him that He needs to give me SOMETHING to work with.  

"Do the things you love and surround yourself with the people who TRULY treasure you."

We've all been told to do these things, but tonight these perfectly perfect words found a cozy place in my soul and I'm gonna let them stay a while.  I will not let this phrase lose it's special points!  

So what does this even REALLY mean?  That was the next trail my mind decided to wonder down. 

I'm ridiculously passionate about a lot of different things: people, writing, the Lord, art (in all it's forms), theories, photography, dogs and… and… and… 

I also have a list of people who love me so much and care deeply about me.  These are people who have such a deep respect for me and genuinely care about my heart.  

Whoop there it is, that's what I'm going to do until the Lord whispers another cliche in my ear: I'm going to do the things I love and I'm going to surround myself with the people who TRULY treasure me.  

Oh and I also just spent the most amazing month at home with my family and those are 4 people that I know treasure me and love me unconditionally, these are 2 of them.  Only the most precious brother and sister a girl could have.