Then September Flew By

One minute I was returning home from Thailand and the next it is October. There is is a lot that went on in September and a lot I had to be grateful for.

I picked up a second job! Some people have been confused by this so let me explain a little bit. Technically, I work part-time at the church. There are a lot of weeks when it is a full time job, but I am officially only part-time. I got a call from some friends who explained to me that their mom was looking to hire somebody at her shop for only a couple afternoons a week. It seemed like a great fit because she needed somebody who didn't need a lot of work and it allowed for me to do something like I felt like God has been calling me to do - which is get out in my community more. So, on some afternoons, you can find me downtown here.

Let me just do a little promo, there is a fabulous sale going on right now through the 12th- 20% off of everything store wide. Boom. You are welcome.


Then, Kris and I celebrated three years of marriage!

Okay, so I just have to talk about this for a minute. I threw this picture up on Facebook because we take a picture every year on our anniversary. (A family friend made us this really cool scrapbook for our wedding that has a space for an anniversary picture every year for 25 years.) This picture got over 100 likes. That blew me away. It was strange and cool to see that over 100 people care about us in some way. I told Kris, I don't even know if I could name 100 people off the top of my head. So thank you, dear friends, for liking my picture. It really blessed me.

Three years. Wow. What a ride. What a journey. What an adventure. What a... I'll stop. I didn't do an anniversary post, but I will say this. Dearest Kris, you are truly the love of my life and I will admire you and honor you until the day I die. And then maybe I'll come back and haunt you every now and then.

We celebrated by taking off to Sacramento for the night.

We stayed in an awesome hotel with what Kris referred to as "character." There are two types of character people in this world. People who say character and mean dumpy and people who say character and mean absolutely charming. Thank goodness Kris falls into the second category and booked us a rockin hotel with character and charm. We fondued at the Melting Pot and watched cable TV. It is really the little things in life. And no, we don't have cable at home. We probably never will again and our children will hate us.

After Sacramento we came home, you know, to go to church and then headed out for Lake Tahoe. Every year, in September, we head to Lake Tahoe for a Pastor/Spouse retreat with all the other pastors in our conference. It was a fabulous time and I truly had so much fun getting to talk with and hang out with all the other pastors and spouses. There is a kindred spirit among us and it is such a blessing to get to serve alongside of these people. Plus, we got to go on a boat ride. Wooo!

Lastly, I am sure many of you are wondering how our dear cats are. Let me just tell you, they are doing fine. No? You didn't really care? Oh. I just wanted to show off another picture of them. :D

I hope you all are having an awesome week! I'll leave you with this funny FB post my friend sent me after Marriage Monday. It made me lol.

Passport: Part 2 - Jokes

So...Monday. I had a pretty bad start to my day. I was feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with trying to keep everything straight with the mission trip. I came home from work in the afternoon and began to spend time in prayer. The last thing I prayed about was my passport. It had been a couple of weeks since I sent all my information in and I received no phone call and received no news one way or the other. At the end of my prayer I felt like I should just step out in faith and go check the mailbox and believe that God was going to send me my passport that afternoon. I should say, I never check the mail (my hubs does it every night) and I don't even know what time our mail comes.

But, out the mailbox I went, thinking about how awesome it would be if my passport came. Trot, trot, trot, scrunch, scrunch scrunch (that is the gravel under my feet as I traveled across my driveway).
Popped open the mailbox and it was loaded with mail. I shuffled through it quickly and lo and behold... a large letter from the State Department! I was SOOO excited! I could feel the passport inside and the whole way back to the house I kept thinking about how cool God is. He knew my need even before I prayed, he prompted me to go and look in the box. I was dreaming about how I would blog about this moment and then...

I ripped open the letter, dumped out the contents, snatched up the passport and gasped when I realized it was just my old one sent back to me. I quickly scoured the date on it and sure enough, this was not what I needed. I grabbed the envelope and looked inside again, hoping and praying that somehow I had missed the new one. Nada. My heart began to sink and that's when I saw the slip of paper sitting on the counter that fell out of my State Department envelope. I picked it up, about to cry knowing that this letter was going to confirm my worst fear: I was denied.

It read:

"Your passport application has been

... APPROVED!" 

WHOOP WHOOP! Praise God! The rest of the letter informed me that it would be shipped separately. Talk about making your heart stop! Holla! I tore through the rest of the mail and praise God! it was there! I could only imagine God watching me and just laughing at the roller coaster of emotions I had experienced in a matter of minutes. God's got jokes, that's what's up.

I can now officially say that I am going on the trip and have a legal passport! Please, join me in my happy dance! 

Passport: Part 1 - Woes

This summer, I am taking a group of 15  people (10 teenagers and 5 adults) to Thailand on a mission trip. Let me hear you say, "Whoop Whoop!" It is going to be a blast. Thailand is an awesome country and it is one that I have wanted to go to for a long time. However, that is not the point of this story.

Today, I am talking passports. Besides raising the money to go, passports were the number one requirement for anybody interested. Not only were they required, but they were required by April 15th so we could book tickets and ensure a better group rate price. Everybody was informed of this in December.

At the beginning of February, I finally made my appointment to get my passport done. My old one had expired and since then I had changed my name. I filled all the forms out, included a copy of my marriage license, took my picture three times and happily mailed it all off.

About three weeks later is when I first got wind that there was a problem. A letter appeared in my mail box from the State Department informing me that they could no longer process my passport because I had included a copy of my marriage license and not my actual license. I about died. They told me to send back the real form along with their letter and they would continue to process my request.

At this point, I realized there was another potential problem. My name change. My husband and I discussed at length what my/our last name would be when we got married. I was pretty adamant about wanting to keep my maiden name and perhaps hyphenate. This did not interest my husband. Finally, on the day of our wedding, I decided that because it was something I could do to show honor for him (and after all, I was vowing to love him more than myself) I would change my name. We signed our marriage license as part of the ceremony and so I wrote my name. First, middle and new last. To actually make my name official, I had to go to the Social Security Office and  legally change it. This took place a few weeks after we tied the knot. Somehow during that time my dear husband told me that if I wanted to keep my maiden name as part of my name he really didn't have a problem with it.

Okay, here's were the story gets dicey and why it matters today. When I stepped up to the man's cubical and presented him with my marriage license he said, "Do you want to keep your maiden name at all? You could make it a second middle name." Out of nowhere. He had no idea about any of the conversations my husband and I had. So, I took it as a sign from God. I said, "Can I do that? Even though I didn't write it on my marriage license?" He affirmed that this was possible so I said great. My new name. First, middle, maiden, last. My Social Security Card proves that this is officially true.

Fast forward a year, we move to California. I had to get a new driver's license. Well, there weren't enough boxes for my new lengthy name so I omitted my maiden name while filling out that form. My driver's license officially reads. First name, middle, new last name. (No maiden name)

Let's do a quick recap.
Marriage license: first, middle, new last
Social Security Card: first, middle, maiden, new last
Driver's License: first, middle, new last

annnd Passport Application: first, middle, maiden, new last.

Do you see the problem? My official documents don't match. All of a sudden I realized that I may not get approved for a passport because my application doesn't match my marriage license and my marriage license doesn't match my social security card. Uh... Yikes!

I called the State Department in a tizzy and the nice man helping me suggested I write a note asking them to strike my maiden name from my passport application and include it with my actual marriage license I was sending back to them. He said I should put my phone number on it too, in case they had any questions.

So I sent this all in and waited...

To Be Continued