Cherish the Moments

I've recently had some great reminders to cherish the little moments in life and the importance of keeping life in perspective.

Today we attended a 100th birthday celebration at our church. We enjoyed lunch with the extended family and had a lesson in perspective when we looked over the scrapbooks and artifacts from the last century.

Just look at Erma's spirit and joy celebrating with family -- quite inspiring!

We were also reminded of a simpler time when a birth certificate was filed a week after the birth (which likely took place at home) and a person born on November 11 was not born on a holiday.

For those who are curious, November 11, 1918, is the date the Armistice ending World War I was signed; Wilson declared it Armistice Day in 1919 and it became a legal holiday in 1938. Eisenhower signed into law a bill in 1954 declaring the Veteran's Day holiday to celebrate all veterans' sacrifices.

We had so much fun recently when my family came to visit and a lot of the fun of course centered around my sweet niece Allison who is at a truly hilarious age. The best parts always seemed to come in the sweet, quiet moments of the day.

Riding in the car provided many great moments just listening to Allison. She likes to sing and chatter--and she really likes to imitate her mom and dad talking on the phone. She has even learned to pause for the "other person" to talk, and just keeps saying "yeah. yeah." Precious.

This was such a sweet moment to catch. Allison is highy entertained by her Mimi Jackie's iPod. They had finished a log play time while Kristin was doing a photo shoot and decided to wait for us at the car.

This is the sight we found.

Last but not least is this great shot with Uncle John as they were both just waking up.

So, don't forget to cherish the little moments as they happen, and to keep some perspective on life--things will probably look a little different a few decades down the road.

Bible Boot Camp!

This past weekend, John and I were in charge of the first annual Mountain View Bible Boot Camp. What an amazing, exhausting, fun, challenging, and fulfiling experience!

Sgt. Perkins ran camp for 24 hours with about 25 kids aged six through twelve. We managed to pack six Bible study lessons, six crafts, six activities and the grand finale obstacle course into that 24 hour period. I still can't hardly believe we got through it all!

Most of all, this experience made me incredibly proud of my husband. We had a lot of help from our wonderful church family, and certainly couldn't have done this by ourselves. But John was just an amazing leader who set the pace for the whole weekend. He not only kept up with the kids, he led them in everything--from the water balloon war, to the marshmallow gun war, from lesson to lesson and meals to snacks...and through the very short night.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a few pictures of the experience and there are more on my Facebook page for those who are interested.

God is in my calendar?

I had an interesting experience over the last few days. Last week was a pretty tough week work-wise, and it unfortunately culminated in a very long, very difficult Thursday for me. About 17 hours into my work day, I said some things that were a bit unprofessional--and in a not so professional manner.

On Monday, my lack of professional behavior was pointed out to me in a blunt, but ultimately helpful way. Naturally, me being me, I wound up dwelling on my actions and allowing my disappointment in myself to cloud up the day.

Here's the fun part. I have a "Psalm a Day" calendar on my desk that has a short Psalm and little prayer for every day. On Monday I caught up on the Psalms from last week, and here was Thursday's:

"The Lord gave the word." Psalms 68:11 "Today may I choose my words wisely."

Hmmm.

Today, I realized I had not yet read the one for Monday, which turned out to be:

"For I am poor and needy." Psalms 86:1 "And may I not forget to be a bit more forgiving of myself."

Nice.

Now John wants me to look into the future and see if he's getting the Corvette he wants for his birthday in October.

Commencing

Once a year I am lucky to have my mom come visit when she attends the University of Phoenix Online Campus graduation. Mom teaches undergraduate and graduate courses online in business and marketing classes, which means she gets to wear this cool regalia.

I don't know any of the graduating students each year, but that doesn't matter--it's still always so touching to watch the students who have worked so hard and the families that have supported them.

Naturally, it also brought back memories of my own graduations. I've been through three of them now: Albuquerque Academy High School (1995); George Washington University (1999); and SMU Dedman School of Law (2002).

In some ways they were pretty similar -- someone always points out that "Commencement" is both an end and a beginning...there are always speakers that any other day most students would be interested in hearing from but this day you just hope will be quick...you're both proud and happy to have survived, and terrified that you're now starting a new chapter of life...

Of course in other ways, each ceremony had its own flavor.

At the Academy graduation, I had the unique experience (well, for non-twins) of graduating with my brother Frank, who is 11 months older than I. What a wonderful way to finish school, to walk across the stage after my big brother and share the moment before we went our separate ways.

GW was pretty amazing since we our ceremony was on the Ellipse, which is between the White House and the Washington Monument. Naturally the outdoor ceremony made for some odd moments--the beach balls someone brought (deflated until partway through the ceremony) that came out during the keynote speech...the champagne bottles and flasks that followed...the overwhelming feeling that this was a major moment given the surroundings.

And my most recent ceremony at SMU, also most likely my last as a student, where I achieved a dream I nurtured since I was a small child by getting my law degree. Also, I didn't trip despite the most steps of any ceremony!

It's a good thing, every so often, to make sure you spend some time remembering these moments in your life.

This also seemed an appropriate moment in time to commence--conclude my semi-sabbatical from blog posting, and start a new chapter of posts. So here's step one.