Life Lately, In Photos

I haven't had much of interest to say here lately, but here's a little glimpse of the past week.

Last Friday night was a perfect date night...our favorite sushi place & then Divergent!  I wasn't expecting much from the movie, & when you have a book to compare to they almost always disappoint.  I was pleasantly surprised though & we both thought it was really good!

Our little box of herbs we planted a month or so ago are really growing now & we're finally getting to use some!  Last night we had this orzo & added grape tomatoes & some of our dill...definitely a new favorite!  Tonight we're having my favorite tacos for dinner, topped with our own cilantro. 

 

While we're on the subject of food, I made these cinnamon rolls a week or so ago, but substituted Cookie Butter for Nutella (because unlike everyone else on earth, I can't stand Nutella) & they were delicious & really easy.

To continue my recent flower craze, I bought some sunflowers last week & spent probably an hour photographing them...

This past week was Seeley's 3rd birthday.  She didn't enjoy the celebration nearly as much as I wanted her to.  Imagine that.  A cat not wanting to wear a party hat...

I always have to have some kind of project going on...here's yesterday's.  I was pretty happy with how it turned out, & it was really cheap to make!

One of the best perks this week: a tube of my favorite lipstick.  I got the beso for Christmas & love it, but I needed a more everyday color, so I got the dolce & love it.  I'll probably never buy another kind of lipstick again.  This stuff stays on all day, isn't sticky, & it doesn't hurt that it smells like icing!

Last night we went to one of our favorite parks around here to take some pictures.  Every time we go, there's the most perfect sunset.

 And we saw baby geese!

That's about it...ready for Easter weekend!  A little odd this year because we have no plans for Easter other than church.  But we'll find a way to celebrate!

Show Them Jesus

 

I love the verses for this week's She Shares Truth.  We don't have to be eloquent speakers, because God is.  We don't have to know all the answers, because God does.  At church, we're always talking about "the genius of Jesus."  God's plan of our redemption is genius because it's so powerful, yet so simple.  It is so deep, yet still made for even children to understand.  

One time when my cousin Ada Klair was little, she'd gotten in trouble & was in time out.  The whole time she was there, she kept pouting, saying "somebody better say they're sorry!"  She understood that something bad had been done, & someone had to pay. Much to her dismay, she was the one who had been bad & she was the one who had to pay.  

We're human.  We sin.  Someone has to pay.  But in our case, Jesus stepped in.  The punishment that we deserved, He took.  He did much more than sit in time out for us.  He took the punishment for every sin that every one of His children had committed & would ever commit.  

Paul reminds the Corinthian church of this.  We don't have to be skilled orators to present the Gospel to others.  We have to just show them Jesus.

Flowers Galore

Lately I've been in love with everything springy & colorful.  I love this time of year because it seems like everything is waking up after winter.  Every year at this time I feel like I become glued to my camera just in case there's a pretty flower I need to photograph.

 

San Francisco Ferry Building

This past Saturday was the first Saturday that I've been off all day in months, & it was perfect!  I slept in for a bit, & then had big plans for the day.  We still hadn't been to the Farmers Market in San Francisco, so that was our first stop.

 

The farmers market is right on the water by the Bay Bridge...great food & beautiful view!

Once the farmers market closed, we explored the Ferry Building.  

I don't know how we hadn't been here before.  I loved that this part of the city wasn't as touristy as the areas near the Golden Gate, Pier 39, Chinatown, etc...though we've enjoyed those places, too.  I think it'll be a great place that we'll take visitors because you can get a taste of everything California...& you should always go there hungry!

beignets | olive oil

Grayson is a donut lover but had never had beignets, so I was excited to find those there.  And we tried almost every olive oil at Stonehouse California, & bought a bottle of the rosemary one. 

We've been wanting to go to Cowgirl Creamery for awhile, so we finally made it there, too!  If there's one food I would never want to live without, its cheese, so any place that sells that much cheese is a winner in my book.  We tried lots of kinds, & went home with four.  We may have just had cheese that night for dinner...

Cowgirl Creamery also has a restaurant right next door, Sidekick Cafe & Milk Bar, so we had lunch there.  Everything on the menu looked good (since it all included cheese...), but we both tried the grilled cheese.  I just don't feel like you can ever go wrong with grilled cheese, & I've had some really good ones lately.

After lunch, we went outside & walked down to the Pier 7 boardwalk.

 

{Last week I had a gift card I'd been trying to use for awhile, & finally settled on these Keds.  Apparently Keds are no longer the painfully boring white shoes I had as a kid.  I thought they were cute, but didn't really expect them to be as comfortable as they were.  I wore them around the city all day & they were perfect...already picking my next pair!}

Perfect Saturday in the City!

Strong + Courageous

This week for She Shares Truth, we're talking about Joshua 1:8-9.  Joshua is one of my favorite books of the Bible.  I love how we see God speak into Joshua's life throughout the book.  First God tells Joshua to be strong & courageous a few times, & then Joshua's men tell him the same thing.  There's no way that was a coincidence.  God was speaking to Joshua through his own men.  I love that we see how God encouraged him.

As Christians, especially Christians in the United States, I think one area where we are commonly found lacking is in really knowing Scripture.  Most other religions know whatever their "book of instruction" is backwards & forwards, & sometimes know the Bible better than we do as well.  We take for granted what a blessing it is to have God's holy, inspired Word available so readily.  From where I'm sitting in my living room I have five Bibles in sight.  I know there are at least four more in my bedroom, & others scattered throughout the house.  Anyone who has a smartphone can have multiple apps with multiple translations of the Bible with just the click of a button.  Anyone who owns a computer has the whole Bible at her fingertips.  It's there, & we don't utilize it like we should.  Christians in closed or impoverished countries don't have all of this so handy, yet we don't even realize the power of what we hold in our hands.

We find these verses in Joshua just three days before they were to enter the Promised Land.  Talk about a light at the end of the tunnel...this land that God had promised to their ancestors so long ago was so close, yet they still had to trust God in order to get them there.  They were about to cross a river on dry ground & see the walls of Jericho crumble.  God was making a way, but He still called them to meditate & pray.

I think meditation, prayer, & spending time in Scripture, is much less about what we're doing, & more about the fact that we're doing it.  Not that talking & listening to God, & reading the Bible isn't important because of course it is!  But it's about our drawing near to Him.  It's about us putting forth the effort in our relationships with Him.  God already knew how He was going to get His people into the Promised Land.  He knew the battles that lie ahead & the cities that were yet to conquer.  But He called His people to look to Him.  Trust Him.  Rely on Him.  Going into these last days before entering the Promised Land, He wanted them inundated with His Word.  When this is where they were spiritually as they entered the Promised Land, how could they not give all the glory to God?

I think this is kind of like in school when you had a test.  You should be studying a little bit every day so you don't have to cram all at once, but even if you do that, the night before the test you're probably going to spend several hours studying, right?  We should be in God's Word every day, but when we know we have something big coming up, our hearts should be soaked in Scripture.  The Israelites knew what they were about to face; God called them to recite Scripture to themselves, to write it on their hearts.  This was His way of preparing them spiritually, just as it's still applicable today.  We can't be prepared for the day or the week or month if we are not spending time in His Word.

Northern Cali Adventures

We love our weekend adventures & ever since we moved, it's been great living here as well as being tourists.  I think we've seen more of California than lots of people who have lived here their whole lives.  The last several months I've worked at least part of the day on Saturdays though so we haven't been able to go far.  This past weekend we went to the Saturday night service at church though so we had all day Sunday free.  We drove up to the Sonoma & Napa area & had a great time!

These were a few of our favorite places...

We're not drinkers, but love the wineries that are all over northern California.  They're beautiful & the landscaping is great & it's really cool to see them different times of the year & at different phases in the process.  This was our first stop.

Next we drove into Napa & had lunch at Oxbow Public Market where I had the greatest grilled cheese I've ever had.

 

The market has lots of little restaurants & shops to walk around.  I've never had a blood orange & have been wanting to try them lately, & finally found some!

 

Next we went to Bouchon Bakery in Yountville.  They're known for their macarons & we'd never had any, & they were great!  I always thought they were just for looks & woudln't really be good, but that was definitely wrong!  We tried passionfruit, espresso, & salted caramel, & all three were good.

Our last stop of the day was Castello di Amorosa in Calistoga.  A San Francisco man with an Italian heritage went over to Italy & fell in love with it.  He came back, opened his first winery, & then eventually built this huge castle just the way they would have been built in Italy.  Even the bricks were brought over from Italy.

We went on a tour of the castle...chapel, underground tunnels, & even a torture chamber.  Grayson was like a little boy, he was so excited!

The grounds are huge & colorful & have interesting animals just roaming around.

The castle was definitely our favorite, & a place we'll have to take people back to when we have visitors!

Grace Upon Grace

This week the She Shares Truth devotional is finishing up Jonah, chapters 3-4.  If you've missed these, you can catch up here.  I've loved these past few weeks of opportunities to share.  She Reads Truth is a beautiful community of believers & one I've loved being a part of.  {If you haven't heard, they're currently working on an app & you can help fund it here!}

Last week in the first two chapters of Jonah, we saw how he was afraid of what God was calling him to.  He tried to run, & that got him thrown overboard a ship & swallowed by a fish.  We can understand how he would be afraid.

But in chapter 3, when Jonah finally obeys God & takes His message to Ninevah, the people listened.  Once he delivered the message, they immediately began to fast.  I love this because, against all odds, contrary to everything Jonah had expected, the people responded in a positive way to the message God delivered through Jonah.  This wasn't just pure, dumb luck.  It wasn't the Jonah was an excellent orator, or was really convincing with the words he brought.  It was because God had prepared the way.  He knew when He sent Jonah what the response would be.

And then in chapter 4 after Ninevah begins fasting, Jonah is...upset.  God called, he ran, God called again, he went, he brought God's message, the people listened...& now Jonah is not happy about it.  I immediately want to jump all over him & shake him, asking "what are you thinking???"  But then I wonder how I would feel.  "Okay, God...I did it, they listened, now they're fasting...now remind me why I had to come do this?  Couldn't you have just told them yourself?  Or sent one of the believers who were already in Ninevah to tell them?"  I'm sure Jonah felt a mixture of emotions.  Relief that his message was accepted with ease, anger that he had come all this way & didn't even have to put up a fight, embarrassment that he hadn't just obeyed in the first place.

But what I wonder is this: how often do we misunderstand the purpose of God's commands?  I'm sure God did want His message delivered to the people of Ninevah.  But do you think maybe it was of equal importance to Him that Jonah be the one to deliver it?  I think so.  He could've asked anyone, but He chose Jonah.  It's just as likely that God's real purpose in asking Jonah to go to Ninevah was about teaching Jonah to obey.  It was about teaching him humility, trust that God knows what He's doing, & compassion for the Ninevites.

A book I read recently was comparing a person who had lived for Jesus all her life to someone who accepted Christ on her deathbed.  Obviously the first scenario is preferable, but the second girl is no less a child of God than the first.  All it takes is one breath on this earth taken in complete surrender to God to seal us forever as His.  But I can see where it would be frustrating to have done everything right, & then see someone who does the complete opposite until her last breath, then changes, but receives the same inheritance as you.  This is basically what was happening with Jonah.  He didn't believe the Ninevites were worthy of forgiveness or that they deserved a chance to repent.  They'd shown their wickedness over & over & he was ready to be through with them.  But God saw fit to look on them with mercy & relent from His plan of destruction.  This is the attitude we should have towards others.  It doesn't matter if we think they're deserving of God's love; in reality, no one is.  It doesn't matter how many times someone has screwed up, or how many times they'll still screw up in the future; God offers grace, & calls us to do the same.  I believe this lesson He was teaching Jonah was just as important to Him as saving an entire city of people.