Women of Faith

I went to Women of Faith this weekend in Sacramento at the Power Balance Pavaillion (formly Arco Arena). There were 10,000 women who attended! I guess a lot of people are familiar with this conference but because I was not, I will breifly explain: It is a nationwide 2 day nondenominational christain conference for women only. They have lots of speakers and musical performers. This year the musical perfomers were Mandisa and Selah! Some of the notable speakers were Andy Andrews, Patsy Clairmont, Lisa Whelchel.......Some of the topics included friendships, "change can be good", stories of overcoming severe illnesses, not letting your emotions control your actions/words, strength in being yourself, raising polite children, motivational speaking, the power of prayer, .... It was a very freeing, validating and strength providing conference. I was laughing out loud many times and not just a cheesy dorky funny but really very halarious things were frequently said. I thought it might be a bit "heard that before" and dramatic fluffy stories attempting to pry deep emotion out of you, but it wasnt that at all. And all the ladies (and one guy) that spoke were odd, and I enjoyed that. They all had unique experiences that made them relatable and honest. One use to be homeless, one was agoraphobic, many severly obese, a couple well known for public rejection, a few widows, etc

This is Ravecca and I. The arena was packed! I grouped with a bunch of women from my church and other community churches in Reno. A bunch of us "tailgated" for dinner on friday night, which consisted of BBQing and fellowshipping in the parking lot :)

Some Good Take-Homes

-"I'm not weird, I'm a limited edition"
-"Feelings dont have brains. Dont let them dictate your actions" This was a light bulb moment for me! haha (Proverbs 29:11)
-"Fear is a feeling, and God has designed us with a will that is greater and stronger than our emotions."
-"People go from almost to almost all the time. People force answers and send their life into an almost all the time because of impatience with God"
-"Dont talk too long"
-"Seek wisdom. Choose what goes in your mind."
-"Fear is a misuse of your creative imagination" -"If you find yourself in a calling at church that you have no passion for, heres my reccommendation........move! Get out! Make room for somebody else God wants to use. And quit saying yes to everyone! Learn the power of No!"
-"Discipline is about what result you want, not what you dont want, but what life you want to create"
-"No one cares how you feel- they care how you act"
-"Every great thing thats happened to you didnt happen because you felt some way"
-"Forgiveness is a decision not an emotion. Breech each day with a forgiving spirit"

Books I bought: The Travelers Gift and The Final Summit by Andy Andrews. He was awesome! I am excited to read his books!

September

Ace as a Nun/Gangster

We walk on a near-by trail with lots of wild horses. Ace can sense their power and keeps his distance

My friend from work Mat, got married this weekend. The ceremony was beautiful and the weather was very sultrey. It was cloudy and windy but yet the sun was shining through the clouds. The spot overlooked the city.

This is Mat the groom and David another friend from work. The bride is very shy and I do not know her so there are few pictures with her :( They got married very quickly after meeting so a lot of us don't know Tauni- the bride, very well.

It was like a big Roseview ICU party! We find a way to party everywhere we go!

This is my friend Raveca. She has become very special to me latley, but is moving to Sacramento next month. We will be going to Women of Faith together- only 3 weeks away!

(No pictures with Adam, he had what we thought was food posioning. But now I'm sick 2 days after him with what I think is the flu)

Like I said, the bride is shy, but Mat is anything but, as you can tell by his amazing dance skills!

We went to the hot air-balloon races again. We have a friend from NY who just moved here a few months ago. He had never been so we all went.

It was 9/11 so they did a tribute and had jets fly over doing the "Missing Man" formation. If you look closely you can see the five of them in the sky. A few minutes after the jets flew over us, no exaggeration, a group of 5 birds in the exact same V formation flew over us and one of the birds flew out of formation. They flew like this until you could no longer see them in the sunrsie. Everyone around gasped. It was really was very eerie.

Blowing up the balloon. I have always wondered how they did this

They had a Darth Vader one that everyone loved! I guess you could take a ride in it for like $300/hr!

Nizar (NY friend), Adam, me, Chelsea, and Brandon. Chelsea and Brandon are our neighbor friends. Brandon has been staying with us for awhile. Nizar is also our neighbor and I work with him. He's Lebanese so we kept giving him a hard time about being at the 9/11 tribute. We called him "Nick" the whole time we were there(so we wouldn't blow his cover). We would lean over a couple times and whisper to him- "We're your friends right? You will tell us when to run won't you?". Or his phone would ring and he would be like "It's my cousin, I have to take this". We are weird sick people I know, but every friend needs a good teasing.

August

Pyramid Lake Triatholon with my friend Liz

Liz coming up from the swim

Me in my bike transition (notice no other bikes around. My swim went horribly- I panicked in the open water as I usually do!)

Coming across the finish!

FORT STEVENS

-camping with the smith fam-

My fires will never be small and pueny

Blake, Jaclyn, Tyson and Cade

Tyson and Matthew- Seaside, OR

Another beach trip- Why are digging ditches in the sand so fun? I remember doing this too!

Harrison looking like a little Axe body spray boy! A nice lady let ALL the little ones go for a ride

Blake, Tyson, Matthew, Harrison and Cade

My dad and I going for a bike ride

These boys were cracking eachother, and everyone else up. Like two old men...

Battery Pratt

All my little ones except Adalyn and Cohen

Baby Adalyn

Teeley's Wedding

Our college friend Adam (Teeley) got married this weekend in Truckee, CA. Its about 45minutes from us, outside Lake Tahoe. We spent the whole weekend with friends and doing airport runs. It was great.

Breakfast get-together

The whole crew. The groom is in the yellow.



The boys went golfing the day before the wedding. This is Blake, Adam, Alex and Josh(brides cousin)

Momma and Poppa Vaughn, Katie and Matt. Momma and Poppa Vaughn are Katie's parents. They come to all of our weddings! They flew in from Arizona, Katie from LA and Matt from Seattle.

Ahhhh, As I have said many times before...... I love weddings! Teeley actually met Natalie when he was down visitng us a few years ago. Who would have thought it would lead to this!

Mr and Mrs Teeley

It was on a beautiful golf course

Katie and I

Alex, Amy, Blake, Katie and I

Dancing of course!

It was great to hang out with the college buds! Other highlights include- Amy and I shopping in downtown Truckee, walking home from the wedding using the light of glowsticks, the stars at night were unreal!, catching up, taking walks, lounging in the sun....it was all fantastic!

July- Fun and water!

A few weeks back we took Ace to Lake Tahoe for the day to get him use to the water,

apparently it was an exhausting day for the little boy!


Ace and his girlfriend Bee

This was another attempt at swimming. Ace likes water, but is scared to swim. He can do it (we may or may not have pushed him in before) but just wont do it!

We found this fresh water stream 2miles from our house, never knew it was there!

The other weekend we did a hike up to Horsetail Falls in CA. Its a bit past South Lake Tahoe, beautiful!

There's the top! It was a warm beautiful day

Aside from the big falls, there were tons of little ponds for us to play in. The water was freezing, but refreshing and crystal clear!

Our exhausted zoo! It's been in the mid-high 90's and it really tires our animals out. Ace wont go for walks in the middle of the day because of the heat. So, at night we have to take him for runs, but we are too tired by the end of the day so we drive in the golf cart and have Ace run next to it. On the 4th of July, I worked, but Adam didn't, so he played in a golf tournament and placed second! After I got off though we drove the golf cart across the road and up a dirt hill to watch the fireworks, it was fun. The golf cart is the apartments but we like to drive it like its ours :)

Last weekend a friend of Adams invited us out to Tahoe for the weekend, with him, his wife and a few friends/family. I thought it would be awkward cause I had never met anybody there, they were about 15 years our senior and they are literally multi-millionaires. But it was acutally a lot of fun! I got along great with his wife and her sister and everyone was fun and laid back.

We spent all day saturday, 11 hours, out on the boats, wakeboarding and just lounging. They had two boats, one was a speed boat we would wakeboard off of and the other was a Bayliner. Adam had a blast driving the Bayliner. His buddy, Chris, had him drive it for a few hours while a few from the group headed back to the cabin in the other boat. Adam was in heaven. He would rather drive the boarders then be one. He's good at it too, probably thanks to his days working at Roche Harbor

This is Chris' step son wake surfing- looked super hard so I never tried! I wakeboarded instead, I hadn't done it in like 4years but got up the first time! We wont talk about Adams wakeboarding experience.

Adams such a good boat captain!

We had such a good time! The only time it got awkward was when I was telling a story and mentioned beer-pong, and they had no idea what that was and then when Chris' wife was dropping me off at our apartment (Adam had the car and was golfing with Chris), she says "oh these are nice, I had a friend that lived here while her house was being built". Internally I laughed, cause she meant nothing by it, but it was kind of funny as she drops me off at my apt I have lived in for 3 years in her Escalade- the crappiest car they own. But they are rags to riches self-made millionares so I never felt like they were snotty or stuffy

From Morning 'til dusk out on the water.........Amazing