So… you may not know this about me but I do not like to be surprised… so…. I planned my own 30th birthday party. I know, crazy right?!?!

I knew that if I didnt plan something myself my friends would try and plan something without me, and again, I do not like to be surprised. In fact, I have never liked to be surprised…. When I was 13 years old, I told my older brother about his surprise 16th birthday party because I thought since I didnt like to be surprised that he wouldnt either. He still will not let me forget that one.

SO… I had planned for my best friends and our husbands to have a low key dinner in Norman. Little did I know, my friends had planned something else… while playing along that they were going to attend the dinner that I had planned for myself. Are you still with me? They let me plan my own birthday so I would not think they were planning anything. (sigh)

My husband woke me up super early by ringing the doorbell. We had been at our sons little league baseball tournament in Kingfisher the entire weekend and did not get home until late. When I answered the front door he told me to look outside. I thought he was “surprising” me with the gift I had requested, a picnic table (because lets be honest, I picked/requested that too) but there were my 6 best friends sitting around a beautiful table in my front yard.
I was surprised, yet again.
So I went back inside and threw some clothes on… you will see I was in my baseball t-shirt, no makeup and pajama pants. I then came outside to have an early breakfast in my front yard with the people I dearly love. My kiddos were still asleep inside ;)

Most of the friends in this group I have done discipleship group with over the past few years and they know my good side, and my bad side. They love me honestly, beautifully and in the most encouraging way. We live life together sharing our ups and downs and love each other through it all. They are the most real way of friendship I have ever known.

They brought all of the chairs and tables, had each made a yummy breakfast dish, hand stamped each of our names on burlap place cards, made a happy day banner and Sarah photographed the heck out of it before I even woke up! Because, of course, she knew I would want pics of it. ;) I also had two friends that were on vacation and were unable to come but still purchased the beautiful sunflowers and table cloth from Anthropologie. SO cute!

So I now love surprises, not really, but I am learning that when you really do not want to be surprised your friends will try extra hard to surprise you again and again and again. ;)

These women bless my life more than words can describe. I love them so much.

My husband, Jace, makes me laugh in these photos because he LOVES that he helped in surprising me with it all. Look how happy he is…

My best friends surprised me back in 2009 for my birthday and I was truly 100% caught off guard. Im still not sure how they did it. It has never happened before, and they worked really hard to make sure I didnt find out about it. It ended up being one of the best nights of my life. We had a church meeting in my friends living room for over an hour and then we went to the backyard and all my friends were there yelling surprise. We had ice cream sundaes by the pool in the backyard of my best friends house. Then they each took turns telling stories about me and how much I have meant to them or how I have blessed their life in some way. To hear your very dearest friends tell you how much they love you and why they love you is an experience every one should have. I cried and laughed and cried some more. It was actually really hard to sit there and let people you love just LOVE on YOU. Nevertheless, it was incredible. I truly felt the love of Jesus thru my best friends and cannot thank them enough to this day. In fact, I am going to write them all another thank you card this week and tell them thank you for my birthday of 2009. That is how awesome it was.

Merry Christmas! We hope this finds you enjoying the holidays with your friends and families! My family decided to go skiing instead of buy gifts this year and we had so much fun making memories together! I managed to have a bad fall and get 51 stitches in my head and sprained my hand but other than that it was really awesome :)

If you didnt get a Christmas card from us this year its not because you didnt make the list…. its because we didnt send them. Instead we donated the money we normally spend on postage and printing to Compassion International. We bought 16 chickens to give to a village living in poverty. I didnt quite feel right about spending the money on them this year so you can see our sweet family below ;)

Big thanks to Taylor for photographing my hard to photograph family every single year ;)

Sarah Sunday!!

Merry Christmas!! Dedicating this week to a little much deserved brag time :). I pretty much can’t get over our newest little nephew, Samuel. I had a chance to capture just a few quick little shots of him the other day, and I have to say he looks like quite the little man at only 5 months old. Had to share a little bit of where part of Robby and I’s hearts are at these days :)…

We are currently out of town. We will get back to you at the beginning of next week. See you then!

Taylor Tuesday featuring a slideshow of our trip to Thailand.

Hello blog followers! I am so excited to be home and back, but it really is bittersweet, because we had such an incredible time. Our team was absolutely amazing and filled with some of my favorite people. From the time we stepped foot in Thailand, we were going somewhere and doing something. We flew close to 36 hours on four different flights. We rode in a sungtao (a pickup with two benches in the back, covered with a tent-like canvas) for about 37 hours through Northern mountains and around close to 4,000 curves. We packed up our belongings and moved eight times. We worked with 13 different ministries or organizations and ministered to over 400 children. We lovingly called ourselves, “Team Intense”.
It truly was amazing and changed my life forever. Instead of summarizing everything, I will just briefly describe one of the ministries that made the most impact on my life: the Burmese children in the refugee camps. We were so fortunate to work with a long-term missionary in the area. She was so passionate about loving the people and children in this region.

We spent two days working with a group of about 120 children ranging in age from 4-20. We were located at a refugee village that also had a Bible College, which consisted of a church building and two dormitories. The college consisted of about 40 burmese students that were there for four years. Many of the students have plans to finish school and head back to Burma to tell everyone about Jesus. The other 80 children we met were orphans from a closed refugee camp about four miles away. No one is allowed in or out of this camp. (Most of these children have no living parents or have no idea where their parents are.) These children want so badly to hear about Jesus and play freely that they sneak out of the their camp and hike through the jungle for almost two hours to get to this village! I mean WOW! They are literally hiding from their enemies. This is such an unreal thought to me, living in America. But it is every bit real to them. What a treat it was for us to spend time with these kids. It was such an eye-opening two days for all of us. To realize the joy that these kids had in the midst of such a broken life. These kids have so little in this world, but they have everything they need – Jesus.
So if you want to see a 13 minute slideshow to recap our two week trip you can view it here.
Thanks to everyone who prayed for us while we were gone, we definitely walked in the favor of the Lord.