On Our Way To Crazy

Aug 1 – Had a giant relay day for the youth and upcoming 6th graders. It was hilarious.
Aug 2 – Post-youth dinner at Peter’s Sushi. This is a routine I could get used to.
Aug 3 – Weird day. Weird weird day. But then our friends had a super cute baby, and that was awesome.
Aug 4 – Fun text conversation with a friend.
Aug 5 – Came in to work to find a Justin Bieber poster on my door.
Aug 6 – Holiday World! Best day of the summer.
Aug 7 – Spent some fun time with a new youth group family.
Aug 8 – Thai food and frozen yogurt (with Lucky Charms in it!) with Susan and Brandy.
Aug 9 – First youth group with the new 6th graders, great parent meeting, and a surprise birthday cake from the kids. Oh – and then they covered my car in streamers and Post-It notes.
Aug 10 – Best birthday party in the history of birthday parties. Ever. EVER.
Aug 11 – Movies and frozen yogurt with a bunch of kids on their last day of summer.
Aug 12 – So You Think You Can Dance finale party! And Mike and Kari are having a boy!
Aug 13 – Renewed my tags two weeks early and my license three days late. I call that success.
Aug 14 – Took the kids to help teachers get free school supplies for their students.
Aug 15 – Played what was possibly the most hilarious game of Telephone Pictionary of all time.
Aug 16 – Loved listening to Aaron lead high schoolers in a discussion on story.
Aug 17 – One of my favorite senior girls gave me a really sweet note. Totally unexpected and amazing.
Aug 18 – Had some meetings that were really good and productive, if a little intense.
Aug 19 – Good conversations all across the board today.
Aug 20 – Loaded up on new music and podcasts for our drive to Texas.
Aug 21 – Read Hunger Games.
Aug 22 – Some of our kids helped serve communion. It is so great getting them involved in big church.
Aug 23 – Drove a thousand hours in the middle of the night to get to Texas.
Aug 24 – Wedding dress shopping with my sister! And we found one! And it’s awesome! (Also. Read Catching Fire.)
Aug 25 – Massive Rock Band concert in the living room with my family. I have a newfound respect for Ringo.
Aug 26 – Drove to Austin. Ate delicious food. Read Mockingjay.
Aug 27 – Spent all day at the pool, then walked to a record store and ended up at a Hot Hot Heat show.
Aug 28 – Texas high school football, long nap, delicious mexican food and an amazing 80s cover band show at one of the coolest venues ever.
Aug 29 – Breakfast quesadillas, meeting our new future sister-in-law, quick IKEA trip, Whataburger with my parents, and… oh yeah, FIFTEEN HOURS ON THE ROAD.
Aug 30 – Fun meeting with the kids who have dubbed themselves ‘Team Awkward’.
Aug 31 – I went to the grocery store for the first time in about a thousand years.

You guys. YOU GUYS.

I’ve been thinking for two days about how to start this post. And the only thing I keep thinking is “YOU GUYS”. Because, seriously? You guys? My 30th birthday was one of the greatest days of my life.

First let me give you the highlights of the morning and afternoon: candy for breakfast, birthday cake in staff meeting, delicious avocado BLT and prosecco sangria at lunch with Becka, shoe shopping, magazine reading, mani-pedi. Already a pretty amazing day, right?

The plans for the evening had been a closely guarded secret for the past several weeks. I knew there was a party, and I knew I needed to dress up a bit, but that was it. I didn’t know where it was, or what was happening, or who would be there. Nothing.

So I’m getting dressed, stressing out about what shoes to wear and will I regret the heels and does this dress need a necklace and why am I 30 but I don’t know how to do my hair, when Becka comes over to pick me up. We are heading out the door when she gets a text, stops, and says, “Hey! What’s that big box on the counter?” Clearly whatever we were on our way to do was not ready for us to do it, so she was stalling. We then spent a very fun half hour opening my birthday box from my mom.

(Sidenote: have I ever fully explained the birthday box to y’all? Oh, man. You are so gonna wish my mom was your mom. Every year on my birthday I get a big box wrapped in brown paper. The paper comes off to reveal a big cardboard box covered in magazine clippings… pictures, quotes, drawings, all kinds of things. This year mine had about a thousand “30″s on it, along with pictures of New Kids On the Block. So great. You open the box to find a ton of birthday presents – some big, some small, several funny – all individually wrapped in coordinating wrapping paper. My mom rules at gift giving. Next time I see you I’ll show you my freaking awesome hot pink watch and my budding collection of Penguin Classics.)

So! We finally get in the car and head downtown. We park in a lot near a bunch of buildings I have never been to. I am totally confused. We come around a corner and walk past a random storefront, and I look in the window and see, you know, EVERYONE I KNOW. So fun. We walk in to this amazing building, someone puts a hot pink boa around my neck and a glass of wine in my hand and I start hugging and squealing and laughing and all the things you do when all your favorite people are in one place.

And then. THEN. I walk into the next room, expecting the people in there to be more of my people, and stop dead in my tracks. Because Don and Lori Chaffer are there. WATERDEEP IS AT MY PARTY. I, of course, start crying immediately and further embarrass myself in front of them. They hug me and we talk for a minute and then I think I should just go right ahead and die.

But I don’t, and it’s a good thing. Because after everyone got their food (Baja Burrito!) and sat down, they got on stage. And played an acoustic set. Of all my favorite songs. For me and my friends.

WHAT.

Let me make sure I am setting this scene correctly for you. I am sitting at a table in an amazing old building in downtown Nashville. On that table I have wine and pineapple salsa. I am surrounded my my favorite people in the world. And ten feet in front of me, my favorite band of all time is playing a private show with a set list comprised of only my favorite songs of theirs. Are you with me?

One of the greatest moments of my entire life. Ever. EVER.

(The set list, for those of you who care about this kind of thing, and if you don’t, well, I don’t know if we should be friends anymore: Heart Attack Time Machine, Oh, Close the Door, Good Good End, Both of Us Will Feel the Blast (this is where I started crying, you know, AGAIN), Sweet River Roll, Everybody’s Guilty, Sink or Swim, He Will Come, Everyone’s Beautiful. Oh, and Happy Birthday.)

The rest of the party was pretty freaking great, too. The birthday cake was adorable and delicious and apparently made by “a stout old lady named Joyce who will be making all our cakes from now on”. The music playing overhead was a playlist of songs I love, which I knew in my head but still said “I LOVE THIS SONG” every time a new one started playing. We laughed and danced and talked and ate and it was so so good.

And then there was a photo booth.

My awesome friend Becka put together a collection of props and everyone took pictures with a little polaroid camera and attached them to notes for me. I am working on getting those scanned in, but in the meantime, here are some of my favorites from my digital camera. I think I should carry around a foam handlebar mustache all the time.

It was an incredible, incredible night. Aaron went way above and way beyond anything I could have imagined or deserved. I have pictures to prove it and I still don’t fully believe that it even happened. I married good.

July 1 – The flamingos are over! Oh, happy day.
July 2 – Got a lot of work done for the new youth service.
July 3 – Art crawl and Sweet Cece’s with Aaron and Becka. Excellent night.
July 4 – Swimming, grilling, good friends and a spot on a backyard deck that let us see fireworks in all directions.
July 5 – Tons of new kids came to our ultimate frisbee night.
July 6 – Aaron made a really hard decision today. Right, and good for us, but really hard.
July 7 – Surprise lunch with a friend.
July 8 – We went to a birthday party for one of my favorite people. It included a Waterdeep concert. Seriously.
July 9 – Watched one of my awesome kids totally smoke the competition at a swim meet.
July 10 – Last minute camp planning scramble.
July 11 – Our last Sunday morning youth group. Sad but fun. Exciting things on the horizon.
July 12 – Camp day! Whataburger! Stressful check in time! Exhaustion!
July 13 – Stayed up way too late talking about major stuff with a few of my middle school girls.
July 14 – It poured down rain on us when we tried to go to the waterpark. Water slides in the rain are fun.
July 15 – I watched some of my most shy kids have long conversations with intimidating homeless people.
July 16 – Great, emotional senior time on the last night of camp.
July 17 – We made it home safely! On one hour of sleep!
July 18 – Lunch with my college girls, some I hadn’t seen in ages.
July 19 – First Monday Night youth service! So good! So fun! So much pressure!
July 20 – Oh my gosh, I was so sick. I fell asleep in a meeting. But then I got to go home and sleep in my bed, which was much better.
July 21 – We sold a ton of stuff on craigslist. Thank you, internet.
July 22 – Day at the lake with the youth group girls!
July 23 – Went to the Bluebird Cafe for the very first time. It’s a pretty amazing place.
July 24 – Lazy, lazy Saturday.
July 25 – I got to hang out with our fourth and fifth graders at church. They are awesome.
July 26 – Eight years! We celebrated with brownies and champagne.
July 27 – Our friend had a huge showcase and she rocked it. So fun.
July 28 – I found a long lost groupon and we had amazing margherita pizza.
July 29 – Spent all day on the parents of our upcoming 6th graders. So excited.
July 30 – Really great night with old old friends.
July 31 – Fun last minute late night dinner with friends.

It’s the last week of my 20′s. I am almost officially old. OLD. A real grown up. This does not seem right.

I’m feeling pretty good about it, really. I’ve been having a lot of those wine- and music-fueled evenings where you talk, not about life, but about LIFE and where you are and where you want to be and where you thought you would be and is this the right path and should I maybe go somewhere else and what happens from here. It’s hard to know, though, if those would be happening anyway, given the way the past few months have shaken out in the Manes house. But that’s a post for another day.

I have a feeling 30 is going to be good to me. But first I need to squeeze as much as I can out of 29. So far that includes a Josh Ritter show, a trip to Holiday World, a Waterdeep show in the park and knocking out as much of my list as is humanly possible in seven days. Sounds pretty good.

I am always trying to find new music. Always always always. Pandora radio is pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me, except for the part where it keeps making me want to spend money on singles. Lots and lots of money.

Maggie has a feature on her blog every Friday called Friday Mixtape. I love it – there’s always a couple of songs I already know and a ton of stuff I’ve never heard of. So I thought I would offer the same service to you. I can share what I’m listening to and keep track of what I find. AND you can tell me what you’re listening to as well. Let’s make my ‘songs to buy’ way longer.

This week’s theme, apparently, is male/female faithy duets. That was an accident. But these songs are amazing.

“All the Poor and Powerless” by Sons & Daughters
Sons & Daughters is David Leonard and Leslie Jordan. David is a friend of ours… he was the lead singer of Jackson Waters, a band Aaron worked with for a few years a while back. He is amazingly, amazingly talented, and this is his new project. It is so beautiful it hurts me, y’all. So good. You can download this song for free here, and I suggest you do that immediately.

“Mercy” by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors
Did you guys watch Parenthood this year? We totally got sucked into it. Anyway, they had really great music on that show, and we spent a lot of time googling to find out what the songs were. That’s how I found Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. Turns out he’s a Nashville guy and they play around town all the time. We haven’t made it to a show yet, but I did buy his “A Million Miles Away” record, which is how I found this song. They also have an ep available for free on Noisetrade.

“Falling” by The Civil Wars
I know this one is old news to most of you. But it is one of my favorites AND it fits the theme. So we’re rolling with it.

From the very first moment I saw you, that’s when I knew
All the dreams I held in my heart had suddenly come true
Knock me over stone cold sober not a thing I could say or do
‘Cause baby when I’m walking with you now my eyes are so wide
Like you reached right into my head and turned on the light inside
Turning on the light inside my mind

Come on baby it’s all right, Sunday, Monday, day or night
Written blue on white it’s plain to see
Be mine be mine
That rain or shine, night or day, what’s the difference anyway
Baby till your heart belongs to me

If I had some influence with the powers that be
I’d have them fire that arrow at you like they fired it right at me
And maybe when your heart and soul are burning you might see
That every time I’m talking with you it’s always over too soon
That everyday feels so incomplete till you walk into the room
Say the word now, babe, I’ll jump that moon

30 Before 30 update! In case I haven’t mentioned it in the last five seconds, I have been really busy lately. But I have managed to get some of these things checked off the list. Fun, fun things.

ROCK AND ROLL TRIVIA
Rock and Roll Trivia was HARD, y’all. So, so hard. We failed, and we did it spectacularly. The saddest part is that we thought we’d do well. Aaron and I know some stuff. We grew up in music-y houses. We have good taste. But this was not an event for us. This was an event for that guy who knows the exact release dates of every Devo record and who produced them. The guy who can name every band that opened for The Clash. The guy who has Billboard charts memorized from the past thirty years. We cannot compete with that guy. We came in dead last by hundreds of points. But! We did win best team name. Rock on, Wyld Stallions.

ADVENTURE SCIENCE CENTER LASER CONCERT
OK. I did not technically attend a laser concert at the Science Center. I did, however, attend the Way Late Play Date, which was way more awesome. They kept the place open after hours for adults only, your ticket got you two drinks and some snacks, and we had a total blast. They also offered a little preview of everything they do in the planetarium, including the laser concerts. I went to that and almost died of motion sickness. I will not be attending a laser concert. It hurt me. I saw a preview and I say that counts. It’s my list and I can do what I want.

BLUEBIRD CAFÉ
How have I lived in Nashville and never been to the Bluebird? I completely loved it. Four songwriters in the round for two hours. I had beer and sweet potato fries and listened to some really beautiful songs. Two of the guys were more seasoned and had written songs I totally knew growing up – “Two Sparrows In a Hurricane”, “A Little Too Late”, “Help Me Hold On”. The kind of main guy told a story about his girlfriend, played a song he wrote for her, then hopped up and PROPOSED TO HER. Proposed! Right there in front of us! It was awesome. The fourth guy was a guy named Michael Logen and I really loved his songs. I would buy a record of his in a heartbeat. It was so, so fun.

TEN THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HOW WE DO CAMP

1. We make our kids eat lunch at Whataburger on the way down, whether they want to or not. WHATABURGER. Three of us loved it. Everyone else hated it. But I’m in charge, so I win.

2. Our group completely rules at the theme nights. Country fair? No problem. Also, our youth staff is amazing. AMAZING.

3. We make up fun games like “1-2-3 Emotion!” that make for awesome pictures. (Aim your camera at a group of kids and count to three. But between two and three, name an emotion. They have to express it for the picture.) Confused!

4. We go to water parks, buy tickets and get the entire group through the gates just in time for a TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR. But because there’s no thunder or lightning, the park stays open. So we ride waterslides in the rain. And that is super fun.

5. We do group calisthenics before group time every night to get everyone awake and alert. They are led by Aaron and include lunges, arm circles and lots of hopping around.

6. The adults crepe paper all the girls’ dorm rooms but the room of the girls who have been trying to pull pranks all week. All the girls blame them for the streamers. The adults do not correct them, but instead let everyone think it was them until they post an incriminating picture on facebook when we are back home.

7. When the whole camp is walking nicely back to their dorms after the closing celebration on the last night, we zig zag through the quad and jump through all the sprinklers, inciting a camp-wide game of sprinkler tag.

8. We deftly rebuff the advances of the guy with two bellybuttons all week, then take very literal pictures to illustrate him. (Literally, he would walk up to girls and say, “Did you hear about the guy at camp with two bellybuttons? It’s me.”)

9. We make the whole group sit and wait at the gas station while one of our leaders runs to the Whataburger around the corner for breakfast taquitos. That we don’t share. With anyone.

10. In between Beastie Boys dance parties and comparing Owl City to the Postal Service, we sing amazing renditions of “Defying Gravity” into our Snapple bottles on the ride home.

Seriously, you guys, camp was amazing. We have such a great group of kids. I truly cannot believe that it is my job to do stuff like this. I watched them serve the city of Birmingham in ways I never thought possible. Kids who barely speak when spoken to were striking up conversations with homeless guys over lunch and praying with kids who are waiting for heart transplants. They cleaned and painted and visited and gardened and played and sang and acted and sorted and packed and were so, so awesome. We made up songs and wrote plays about cowboys and had 3am crying sessions and ate and laughed and bonded and talked a lot about kissing boys. It was wonderful.

LOVE.

As I may have mentioned, there is a lot going on in my life right now. A lot. Like fourteen other life-changing kinds of things on top of the work stuff I posted about the other day.

Which means I spend a lot of time procrastinating on facebook.

Yesterday, sitting among registration forms and food money and postcard proofs and a stack of 40 straw cowboy hats and receipts and pink flamingos, I happened to click on the ‘photos’ link on my facebook sidebar. The first album that came up had ‘Richard Smith’ tagged underneath it. Richard Smith is better known as Pawpaw, my dad’s dad. While Pawpaw is technically on facebook, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t spend a lot of time uploading and tagging pictures. So I clicked it to see what it was.

And what it was? Was an album full of old pictures of my family. My grandparents when they were first married, my dad and his siblings as children. Pictures I have never seen before. Pictures that were uploaded by a woman I have never heard of. (Mom? Call me? Who is this woman who has a bunch of pictures of our family?)

I immediately started saving them to my computer. Because they are awesome. Want to see them? I know you do.

This is my Nanny and Pawpaw. How great is this picture? I can’t even imagine them looking like this. Also, I want that chair.

This is my dad (far right) and his siblings, minus one of my aunts, who… wasn’t born yet? I’m not sure how much younger she is. They are so cute, you’d never expect them to turn into the crazy adults they are.

Nanny and Pawpaw again. I love the expression on his face. Hard to believe this is the same guy who calls me from the golf course in the middle of a windstorm and yells into the phone asking about the Nashville weather.

My dad, holding cupcakes that I’m sure were meant for everyone but he probably ate himself.

Nanny and her sweet glasses.

I don’t know who the lady is that uploaded these pictures, but I’m so glad she did. I was pulled right out of the chaos of my adult life in Tennessee and dropped into the 1960s in Mesquite, TX. Completely unexpectedly. (We won’t talk about the part where I cried a little.) It is so easy to get caught up in where you are and forget to look back and where you came from.

My life right now is so focused on the future and planning for what is to come. And that is mostly okay. But these people are MY people, and I am thankful for that reminder.

June 1 – Got to spend some alone time reading and wandering around Target. Not at the same time.
June 2 – Fun meeting with a brand new youth volunteer. She is awesome.
June 3 – Four meetings in a row at Starbucks, split up by periods of being hit on by the elderly.
June 4 – Really good lunch and talk with a new youth leader and good friend.
June 5 – Sushi and Exit Through the Gift Shop with Aaron. Great date night.
June 6 – Took a long walk and had a great discussion with one of my girls.
June 7 – Dinner and LOTS of margaritas to celebrate a good friend’s birthday.
June 8 – Peter’s Thai with friends… pad siew and a weirdly flirty waitress.
June 9 – One of our youth families had us over for dinner. Grilled shrimp and scallops and peapods and rice. It was amazing.
June 10 – Really fun lunch with some new youth group parents. So encouraging. Also, Travis choreographed Mark. LOVE.
June 11 – My dad’s birthday!
June 12 – Great service project with the kids. They are such hard workers.
June 13 – Took a great nap. I love naps.
June 14 – Rock and Roll Trivia! It was really, excessively hard. But! We won best team name! Go Wyld Stallions!
June 15 – Good lunch with some staff folks.
June 16 – Great youth staff meeting. They are so awesome.
June 17 – Watched So You Think You Can Dance, basketball and lots of music on TV with friends.
June 18 – Evening swim with friends, AND we bought tickets to see the Avett Brothers at the Ryman two nights in a row.
June 19 – Friends gave us a copy of their pool key and I spent the whole afternoon reading and swimming and listening to Josh Ritter.
June 20 – Third pool day in a row, followed by a cookout. I love summer.
June 21 – My first Monday in the office on my new schedule. It’s amazing how much work you can get done when no one’s around.
June 22 – Frozen yogurt with Cinnamon Toast Crunch mixed in with one of my college girls.
June 23 – Spent the evening alone, watching So You Think You Can Dance and eating Trader Joe’s veggie enchiladas. Heaven.
June 24 – Girl’s night at adults-only night at the science center. Planetarium + wine = awesome.
June 25 – Stopped in at the outlet malls on my way to visit my sister and found some great deals.
June 26 – Spent the morning with my sister before a whole afternoon of solo Atlanta shopping. Crate and Barrel, H&M, IKEA.
June 27 – Went out for drinks with some new friends after our church small group.
June 28 – Great turnout at our ultimate frisbee night. Also, not many bugs.
June 29 – Had a really good, really honest meeting with my boss.
June 30 – We had a super fun artsy-craftsy girls camp planning night.