countdown on:

-5 days until I take my board exam!

-6 days until we say "goodbye" to Kansas!

I can't believe it, but we are nearing an end to a huge chapter of our lives. And subsequently starting a very exciting new one.

If you notice that I haven't had frequent postings like my usual self, you can get a sense of the evolving chaos that is present in our lives right now. I don't want to just walk off the face of the blogging world, because someday I want to look back and remember this life-changing experience. But there is just one thing I want more of: time.

As the house becomes more of bare walls, empty rooms, and mobs of boxes, it has all become more real. We are leaving the only place that we've ever called home. Kansas is such a wonderful place, even though I give it a hard time sometimes. But we are looking forward to what the future will bring, and more specifically what kind of memories Georgia will bring.

And the next order of business...studying for this grueling exam! It's been said to be a "right of passage" and just something you have to go through to get the sacred "R.N." behind your name. I call it a dark looming cloud that keeps beckoning me, no matter how much I tell it to hush. Oh, well. Nothing like taking it the day before you make a life-changing journey to uproot your family and move over 1000 miles away. No pressure.  By the way, any thoughts and prayers are welcome :)

Also, this made my day- my favorite blogger, Kelle Hampton, added a picture and caption about our move that I posted on her forum. Check it out here.

Happy Weekend! (Our last one in Kansas!)

balance.

I don't claim to be a good multi-tasker. You know most women, we seem to think we are. We can fix dinner, console our friend on the phone, change batteries in a favorite toy, change an empty toilet paper role, all with a baby on our hip and the family continually asking "when's dinner?" We may think we're the great mystics of time but at what cost? Our minds. That's what.

Lately, along with the valuable lesson on Patience I've been having to learn (ask the Georgia Board of Nursing how I'm doing on that one), I have also been learning about the grand illusive one: Balance.

Balance is much more mysterious that Patience. Patience is out there, you've been learning its tricks since you were 5 and your Mom wanted you to sit quietly at church. But Balance is the new kid on the block. He outruns you, has a better bike and you wish he would go find someone else to taunt.

Balance makes me wonder how I can get 40 hours of work done in 12, without feeling like I haven't touched any of it.

Balance looks great on the outside, you feel great just saying it. "I am very balanced." Seems like everything is great, but really my life doesn't look how I feel.

Here's what my balance is starting to look like:

packing up boxes...

Summer fun in the sun...
(notice this outweighs the others for now)

this is our little girl...we've renamed her "mud magnet"

pulling out the books to study...

I'm not claiming that I've got this Balance thing pegged down yet. But we are starting to get to know each other.  Maybe someday all of this will make sense. For now, with a little patience, I'll just keep trying. 

Cajunfest, Papa John's style

Pretty isn't it?? (especially at 21 stories high-thanks dad!)

That was our storm last night. You know the "big one" that always gets those meteorologists worked up, talking, this is what they look forward to every year kind of storm? Yeah, this has wall-cloud, funnel-cloud, possible tornado-system painted all over it. But, you know what else it has? A I'm-going-to-ruin-Cajunfest-at-Riverfest hiding in it's hot-meets-cold front. It was awful. And now I'm mad at it.  Because this is our last year here at Riverfest.

But when you can't get that good home cookin'- red beans and rice, jambalaya, and bread pudding, what's the next best thing? A Papa John's that is right down the street, and even better...underground.

Yeah, so maybe our evening didn't go as expected. Speaking in our best N'awlins' accents, tapping our feet to the jazz band playing "As the Saint's Go Marchin' In", or listening to my Dad retelling the glory days when he lived in the Louisiana heat.

It may not have been what we expected, but it was everything to take a moment, stop, and have an impromptu evening in a pizza parlor with  family and friends who we love. Part of the moments that I will remember, and hold close when I look back and think of our time here in Kansas.

I'm sure the meteorologists will remember it for the hook echo and close call. And the wheat farmers will remember it for the inches and chance to wet their drying crop.

But I know how I'll remember it.

I'll remember it as the night when time stood still. When that little pizza parlor on Douglas Avenue heard us laugh til we cried, tell stories of times past, long and gone, and of when we found out how you can cheat playing a game of rock-paper-scissors. It just goes to show, there's more to life than what we have planned.

wayward wind

Thank you everyone for the well-wishes, I had a wonderful June 7th this year! I feel so blessed to have great family and friends who make me feel special not just one day every year, but especially that one day every year.

His face when I told him how old I was. I know son, I'm getting up there.

*~*~*~*

Lately, I have been thinking about seasons. But mostly a lot about the wind. It may be the Kansas heat, or for that matter, it's vicious hot winds that remind me of how something you can't see can still have an effect on everything.

Like the trees.

Take for instance, the leaves that have no choice but to sway in whatever direction the wind is blowing...

But also think about the base of that tree. The same tree several feet up that has no choice but to follow the wind, imprisoned, tossing it back and forth...that base holds it steady.

If we're lucky, we have a base. Something or someone strong holding us when we get the wind that whirls us around and shakes us, sometimes to our core.

Some call it luck, others call it fate. I call it the roots that keep me centered on the ground, when everything else is moving at a relentless, unforgiving pace.

Either way you look at it, I enjoy the times when we can get out of the wind, get away from the life that pulls us this way and that.

It gives us time to focus on our loves.

and their loves...

At the end of the day, it's good to stop and look around, to see how important each moment is. Even when the wind is blowing us, and we don't know where we are going to end up next. We should instead focus on the opportunity we have to just be.

Be where we are.