family

grateful, so grateful, for family!!!!!  we get to see both of our families so often, mike and i frequently comment that we must be the richest of people.  tomorrow night, we are hanging out with my parents.......cooking with muv, enjoying the lushness of her garden and soaking up her kitchen-knowledge!

and THEN in "6 sleepies and a wake-up" (to use decarlo jargon!), we're leaving to go to the beach with the decarlo's!  gahhh!!!! it's huge self-control not to be already packing to leave!

i'm so glad that so much of our living is closely tied to our families.  :-D

.love.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ...So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

1 Corinthians 13:1-2,13

why is love given so much power?  why is it promoted?  i would have chalked up removing a mountain as being pretty fabulous.  

this chapter, 1 corinthians 13, is one of my favorite in the Bible.  not just because it is beautiful, or because love is a pleasant thought.....but because of the unexpected message.  why is a greater emphasis put on love than anything else?  than even great power and authority?  why love rather than great service, or huge sacrifice, or some fabulous deed?  these are nothing without love.

as this chapter defines love, i am rarely loving, towards anyone.  i don't even value love the way these verses do - i value action and achievement.  so i keep coming back to this chapter, and rereading it, and hoping and praying a little bit will stick.  

trouble, trouble, trouble!

one of the guys in our CG tweeted this story yesterday, and i just have to pass it on......trouble, arlington style!  ;-)  we love this city....

They're huge!!!

While I seem to not be a good pet owner (moment of silence for all my goldfish), I do seem to have a green thumb!! Look at how huge my babies are!!!!

Beach trip, anyone??

full weekend - seems to be the only kind we know!  mike and i were joking yesterday about needing more holiday weekends......ones that we didn't know about ahead of time, so that we couldn't fill them!  ;-)  

started off the weekend going to suzanna for a hair-cut, as mike mentioned in a previous post!  i LOOOOVE it.....especially since mike loves it so much!!!  i love being beautiful to him. 

we had our annual beach trip with my siblings (which includes jaime) to OC!  we dove into devouring crabs, and practiced our miniature golf scores.....loved it!  the only downside was that we went on sunday this year, due to scheduling conflicts, so it felt like we'd barely gotten down there before we had to come back again.  one of the sweetest parts of the trip was having eli there - he's out of town almost all of july, so we're savoring all the time we get with him!

pics:

Short hair, sexy hair

Kati got a hair cut from the same beloved Suzanna Henry (Citrine Salon in Bethesda) who did her hair for our wedding! She got it cut short, which I have warmed up to over the past month, and it looks amazing! I am such the most blessed man to have such a beautiful wife who I adore and who adores me just as much! Kati is gorgeous with her short, sexy hair cut and I'm so proud to be seen with and married to such a beautiful woman!

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

i wanted to share a passage i read during worship last sunday.  i got to have dinner with some old roommates yesterday, and really enjoyed talking with them - it was one of those conversations where the gospel flowed in and out without effort or specific thought......i was encouraged by how each woman was living in light of the gospel.

and reminded again of this passage.....i've posted the entire thing, even though it's long.  how very sweet and kind of our God to include these words in the Bible, reminding His foolish daughter that it is alright to enjoy the joy of finished toil, without guilt.  His ways are not mine, and i can trust what is coming from His hand - trust the blessings do not come with strings attached, just as i have previously trusted that tears and pain have purpose and will not destroy.

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

What gain has the worker from his toil?  I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.  He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man.

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.  That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away."

~Ecclesiastes 3:1-14

thunderstorm and baby tomatoes!

while rescuing our plants from the thunderstorm last night (see them below, safely stowed away in our kitchen),

mike found some little tomatoes on our tomato plant!!!  very exciting:

snooze buttons.....

......are full of lies.  they tell you that if you hit them once more, those extra 9 minutes will make you content and happy to start your day.  instead, those 9 minutes leave you to once more jolt awake, and propel across to the room to once more silence that wretched sound.  "eh eh eh eh EH EH EH EH"  and to once more, fantasize about the contentment and happiness that surely await you on the other side of one....more.....snooze.....

happy monday, munchkins!  here's to coffee, and my wonderful husband, who is sweet and kind to me on these "snooze heavy" mornings.  and here's to sweet times of worship yesterday, fresh remembrance of what this life, my life, is truly about.

Balcony!!

Our little plants are doing so well in spite of getting hammered in the rain yesterday!! And we got this cute patio set super cheap off of CL - thank you, stranger!!!

Blissful

Jackie came over tonight to chill with us......lend us her car, eat sushi, watch "Bones", relax........blissful Friday night!!

Chris and Reka

They're our favorites.

because it's hard to come back to work after a holiday.....

......and because my chill sister jackie endorsed sharing these moments:

i realized i may have an inner "michael scott" today while i was heating up my canned soup.  first, i noticed that the can proclaimed my soup would be "Zesty!" in spite of being light.  and then when i hopefully poured it into my bowl, i noticed the different layers oozing into my bowl since the soup had separated while waiting to be opened.....the oily looking part at the top, with the sludgy meat and rice at the bottom.  and i suddenly had a strong inclination to rush back here and deep and poetic thoughts, based on my soup!!

such life lessons included the realization that we are all different layers, and just need the microwave of life to mix us together into goodtimes.  (note here, my soup is NOT goodtimes, but it sounds smoother than saying "mediocre times".)  also, for the philosopher, these separated layers show how the wise and substantial people can reject the shallow ones, but that they shouldn't because the shallow people may provide the most flavor!

i know.  awful thoughts.  how do you deal with returning to reality after a long, gorgeous, restful weekend??

Brunch with the Blacks!! And Jaime ;-)

As Mike mentioned in his previous post, we spent the night at Muv and Dad's on Friday and had brunch with the fam Saturday, before puttering off to see Mom and Pop, and then to Ada's party!
Some shots, including Eli and Mike putting up the flag for Muv and Jaime's delic appetizer (no pics of Muv's brunch - was too busy eating it!!):

Fourth of July Weekend Fun!

A nice long weekend to celebrate the fourth!

We hit things off seeing Transforms: Dark of the Moon friday night with the Blacks and Co! Then, Saturday morning errands and brunch with Mug, Dad, Eli, Jackie, Jaime, and Peter before heading off to see Mom and Pop DeCarlo!! A quick stop to see our friends at Ada's bbq hangout was also long overdue!

Sunday was amazing as well! And thus the pictures...all for Sunday! We went to see Mama Mia at Wolftrap!! We took a picnic in our picnic basket - fruit, cheese, salami, wine, crackers, olives, carrots, and celery! It was more like a feast!! It was a blast!! Then we came home and "grilled" a couple of juicy steaks...we would have actually grilled them on a grill but a thunder storm rolled in just as we were getting ready to light the coals! Spent the evening in, grilling the steaks on the stove top and watching a movie!!

This morning we got up early early and revisited one of our all time favorite sights in DC, the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial. This is where I had proposed to Kati and we went back for a sunrise breakfast to reminisce!!

More to come this evening!!!

MD

branching out!

Rosemary eggs and sausages! Mike sweetly took me to revisit Theodore Roosevelt Island where he proposed. Now we're putting our fresh herbs to use!!

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Singing duck!!

She's singing to me!! Hello holiday weekend!!

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