Family First Weekend

We just came off a family first weekend and man, I LOVE and LIVE for these weekends!

Family First weekend is a weekend dedicated to immediate family.... of course we are a church family and we all have extended family but, Family First is a time to just rest and enjoy immediate family. We have one weekend each month that we schedule in no events... we guard this weekend for families to enjoy! 

Family is so overlooked now days with such busy schedules- and lets be honest here, we can not expect people to have healthy family lives if we do not give them time to do just that! 

Our first ministry is FAMILY and sometimes that is the ministry we tend to overlook so, each month on my calendar there is a highlighted spot that I look forward to and guard with my life!

This weekend we decided we will take it a step further and not only learn to say "no" to non-emergency events but, we would take it even further than that and turn our phones off. 

thats right people, I said it.... we turned the phones off! After figuring out HOW to turn the phone off (that speaks volumes huh) we left it off for 2 days..... of course we checked in for emergencies but during our down time and while the phones were off some crazy things  happened;

The world continued to turn!!!

AND

we rested!!!

We had an amazing weekend. We slept in... ate a home cooked breakfast. Read. Napped. Went for a walk to get ice cream and then we went to the domain for dinner at California Pizza (we love that place) and visited the Mac store so we could dream... then we had coffee and thumbed through books at Borders on Saturday night.

I also took up a new hobby.... more on that later! 

Anyways, I hope that your weekend was restful and wonderful and that your priorities and Gods priority matched up by you putting Family First everyday!

We will actually be celebrating our 8th anniversary  next month and since we will be on a youth trip during that time we will be celebrating it with a trip for our next family first weekend (Aug)... Im excited!

Here is one of the songs I had on repeat this weekend:

Have a great day everyone!

-Melissa

Spongebob dreams of Italy?

So things are back to normal. Yay! - I think!

I am sleeping better at night and actually getting over 6 hours of sleep right now. That means the return of me remembering my dreams. Usually when I lack sleep I can not remember them but, I am remembering them right now... I have spongebob dreams.

What I mean by that is this: one day JoJo and I were watching Spongebob and I said, (after 30 minutes of it) "What is this about? What's the point"? And here is what JoJo said: "It doesn't have a point Tia - your just suppose to watch it, it's funny". He said it in a tone that had an underlying "duh, you old lady". 

You see, I love to remember my dreams. I have such funny and random dreams. They always include loved ones; current friends, friends from the past as well and my nieces and nephews (they are regulars in my dreams, usually those are dreams of swimming with dolphins and traveling to other planets). I dream of the trips we will take when we have kids and hey, Rocky has even appeared in a few of them! My dreams almost always involve travel, I love my dreams- they are very comical.

Most of them are like watching cartoons- however, just like Sponge Bob they are very random and make no sense what so ever -but definitely entertaining.

Well, last night I had the dream of all dreams....It involves my favorite place to go in my dreams..... ITALY!!!!

I visit Italy often in my dreams..... doesnt everyone?

I'm telling you, this dream had me believing we had actually moved there, in fact... I woke up and before I opened my eyes this morning I thought, I need to find out where the post office is here (italy) so I can get the change of address forms (so my mail can get forwarded from Round Rock to where I was in florence, Italy) ha ha! 

In my dream we moved into a small guest house perched up on a beautiful hilltop surrounded by a vineyard. In fact, I think it was the guest house of the house we stayed in when we went several years ago. I believe it was the same location except the real house we stayed in had no guest house! I like to call that the Spongebob effect, mixing of reality with fiction again, making no sense. 

Anyways, we had moved to Italy, we lived in a small guest house. I was so involved in this dream that I know all the particulars of the house, the floorplan, the color of the walls, the wood cabinets. More importantly, the view was amazing......... Scott and I were sitting on the porch reading a book with a cup of coffee when I woke up from the dream because of the alarm.

After the alarm went off and Scott said good morning to me I realized I do not need to get change of address forms. I was still in Round Rock! So, I said good morning to Scott and told him "I had the BEST dream ever"! 

This dream made my day! I woke up with hope and motivation.......... someday we will go back!I have always dreamed we would. Not to live (I would never make it away from the nieces and nephews) but, for a visit... a long visit.

Could it be all the travels shows I watch in fascination or the actual dream I have in my heart to return to Italy someday. Just Scott and I to stroll the streets, enjoy the laid-back pace of life while taking pictures and eating gelato till we pop!

Whatever it is that fueled it, I hope when I go to bed tonight I pick up where it left off.... in rocking chairs on the porch of some villa with my best friend, Scottie-my-hottie. Sipping coffee, reading, surrounded by God's beautiful creation and talking about God's goodness and faithfulness in our lives.

Sweet dreams everyone!

-missa