The Saturday Six

One.

Listen to the podcast here!

Last week on the Saturday Six, I told you about Courtney Westlake's book, A Different Beautiful, which I'd just read and learned so much from! This week I had a chance to learn even more from talking to Courtney! If you missed last week's post, Courtney's daughter Brenna was born with a rare skin condition that has changed so much about Courtney's perception of beauty and the things that matter in interacting with others. If you have a half hour, take a listen and learn some important life truths!

Two.

It is with great sadness that I remind you tomorrow is the beginning of evil DST. If you've been around this blog very long, you know that I absolutely abhor time changes with all my being. Make us central, make us eastern...I don't care. JUST PICK ONE AND LEAVE IT THERE!!!! So tomorrow is the day you lose an hour of sleep, get up an hour earlier, however you want to look at it. My annual PSA is now complete.

Three.

Ran across this post this week. Really great perspective on marriage and how our choices so deeply impact those around us. Important stuff, right here. Though I don't struggle with addictions like the gentleman who wrote the article, I'm reminded that I always need to work hard at loving Ryan even better than I do. Always room for growth. Always room for improvement.

Four.

 Hey cruise lovers! Did you see this article? A four month cruise hitting 32 countries and six continents? Ryan is SO READY to sign up. But you have to be able to take 119 days of vacation (which he does  not even remotely have), so we're out. My favorite part of the article was where it recommended this cruise for those who were retired or taking a "traditional gap year." Ummmmm the gap year is a traditional thing? HOW DID I MISS THIS?????? I AM BEHIND ON TRADITION!

Five.

 I know not all of you work from home, but I always like to find posts written by people who do, so I can get fresh ideas for how things might work. (When I quit my full time job, I actually scoured Pinterest and Google looking for articles about how to craft productive work-from-home days and found nothing aside from posts by homeschooling moms.) Emily Freeman and I don't do things exactly the same way, but her post offers great tips, so I'm passing it on to you! (And I am thrilled that I have finally found a good rhythm that works for me, too!)

Six.

Source

Back when I worked at the station, I received a copy of LuAnn Gerig Fulton's book Image Seeker. Fun bonus info: I'm friends with LuAnn's daughter, Erica! She's the one who taught me all about essential oils, and she had I have often had good, long conversations together over email.

It seemed I was always rushing to catch up in devo books that I needed to read for studies I was part of, so I hadn't read LuAnn's book until this year, when Ryan and I read it together for our morning devos! I wanted to tell you about it, because if you like the writing style here on the old blogaroo, I think you'd really enjoy hers too! She and I have similar approaches to devotional writing.

LuAnn is an ordained minister (a fact that if I knew...I hadn't remembered!), so she brings that level of knowledge into her writing, but she doesn't hold that over your head and get so theological in her delivery that you have no hope of understanding what she's saying. On the contrary, her writing is quite conversational. She tells you stories about her family, her life, and her struggles. It feels very much like you're just sitting down at a coffee shop with her, hearing about the things you can relate to so easily, but at the end, she offers a spiritual lesson she's learned from that part of her life.

The book contains 31 devotions, so you'll have enough for one month, and each one is designed to help you find ways to bear the image of Christ. (Hence the name of the book!) She studies the fruit of the Spirit, but she covers other passages as well, and each is unique and gives you something to think about as you go throughout the day. Each devo is paired up with a verse or two and concludes with a prayer. Most of the readings are 2-3 pages long, so you read enough to dive in, but it won't take hours of your day to read through.

I love it when a writer offers thoughts gently, so you don't feel condemned, but honestly, so you don't miss the challenge within the words. LuAnn hits the balance very well.
 
We really enjoyed reading these together as a couple, but the study would work well for an individual, too. I don't know if she ever intends to write a second devotional, but if she does, I would absolutely read it! I enjoyed studying alongside her!  

The Saturday Six

One.

Source

I realize that going on ONE cruise does not make me an expert, but I happened upon this article the other day and thought it had a lot of great advice! I was glad Ryan was a well-seasoned cruiser, because he knew all this stuff and made sure we did it on our trip, and it's true: things really did go smoothly because we followed these tips! So if you're thinking of cruising in the future, and you've never gone before, read this!

Two.

Source

This post is really a review of a journaling Bible {and a well-done review, at that}, but I'm sharing it because I adore her concept of creating a spiritual heritage Bible. If your kids are too young to journal on their own {or if their journals, like mine were at a young age, mostly contain the details of their latest crush's dreamy eyes}, this is a great way to help them keep a record of what they learned about the Lord, how their faith grew and was tested, and conversations you had together. Love this idea! 

Three.

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Every now and then I am invited to be part of a writing group along with other women, and that is always a joy for me. I'm pretty disciplined in my own writing, but there's something good for the soul about the accountability of writing for an audience outside my own and alongside a team of writers that push me to become better at what I do. Recently, I was invited to write an article on singleness for the Annesley blog, and it was published on their website this week. The ladies who write for this site are extremely talented, and I'm sort of a sweaty mess to be included alongside them. Here's the link to my article, but singleness was the topic of the month for September, so poke around and read very thought-provoking and wise articles by other single/formerly single ladies!

Four.

Source

I am sharing this article, because I'm guessing one or two of you out there might wrestle with this same conundrum. How do you work with/for people you consider to be friends, and find a way to be fair to everyone? How to you offer your talents and ask for compensation without looking mean? It's hard! I'm learning this as I do more work on my own, because my time does matter, and I want to be fair to myself and to Ryan to get paid for what I do, but at the same time, I feel like a big ogre charging my friends. If that's you {for any service!!} check this out.

Five.

Source

You guys know about glamping? I've read about it, but I think this takes the glamping cake. Have you seen THIS??!!?!? 
 

Six.

Source

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you guys. I might as well just come right out and say it. I didn't like the book I asked to review this week.


{Insert all the gasping, crying emoji faces here.}

I was so excited about this book because it's a marriage book, and I love marriage books. I love learning from other perspectives and finding new ideas to implement to make the marriage I have {and love} even better. So when I signed up to read Your Marriage Masterpiece by Al Janssen, I hoped I would be chosen to get a copy. And I was. I sat down with pen and ruler in hand, ready to underline and learn.

And I didn't like it. I feel horrible about not liking it, but it remains the truth. I'm baffled, because the book was first released in 2001, was updated and re-released in 2008 and again this year. While it doesn't have many reviews online, all but one from all three releases are glowing. And the one guy who didn't like it isn't a Christian and was bothered by all the God-talk. So I have no idea why I could not bring myself to connect with and learn from this book, which has found its way to its third release, but I couldn't and I didn't.

The book bounces back and forth between telling biblical accounts with a bit of a fictional license and telling real-life stories intertwined with marital advice. I am not opposed to fictionalized Bible stories. I've even written a few. But these were a bit too fictionalized for me. His angle for these stories is that they are told from the perspective of a couple of angels watching from Heaven. It was just a bit too much for me, but if that angle doesn't bother you, his storytelling is good, so you might enjoy it.

There were a couple of fictionalized parts that were more of a modern-day retelling of Scriptural accounts, like Gomer and Hosea, and I don't mind that method of teaching either, but I was confused as to why the fictionalized parts weren't all consistent one way or the other. 

In the sections of real life stories, I just found myself lost most of the time. I don't know the people he's writing about, and that's okay, but sometimes I would be reading along, eager to see what happened next, and the story just ended. Sometimes he stopped a story for a while and then picked it up later, but by that point, I'd forgotten who the people were, and I had to go back to find it. Sometimes the stories didn't end well, which is fine, because when you're sharing real life, sometimes that's the outcome. But I didn't always find the application spelled out after the story. It felt like abrupt transition that led to new stories I hadn't expected.

I'm so sad. I wanted to love the book. I really did. I did make myself read the entire thing, and I do think there are good bits of advice peppered throughout. Unfortunately I was so frustrated by the chaos that I couldn't focus on them to draw from them.

As a writer, I'm so sad to leave this review, because I know if it were my book, I would want it to be loved more than this, but I also have to be honest, and for me, it just wasn't a win.

* Bethany House provided a copy of this book to me in exchange for an honest review. *

A Honeymoon Wednesday

I promise. One day we'll be done with the honeymoon - but I really really really wanted to tell you about the rest of our trip!!

Wednesday morning, we got up early {like before sunrise} and fixed coffee {of course} and went for a sunrise walk on the beach:

We looked down the beach...looked at each other...and said, "Yeah, that looks like about a mile...why don't we walk to the farthest point and back? We can do that and then get some breakfast."

Sounds good, doesn't it? And it was such a lovely walk. We saw dolphins:

We had our Baywatch moments:

We walked in the water:

We visited snowmen....

....and something like 2 hours later when we got back, limping from water-logged sandals, we discovered it had actually been three miles out to the far point. So rather than walking 2 miles, we'd walked six. In water shoes. Before breakfast. Obviously we were in love. :)

So we spent a few hours lounging by the pool to recover from that. {Read: we both took our computers to the pool and spent time blogging and paying bills. HA!}

And then that night, we had the chance to do something I've LONG wanted to do. Take a sunset dinner cruise.

My friend Christi recommended it to us, and we decided to treat ourselves and do it. We got all dressed up and headed out, mid-afternoon, to the marina in Sarasota:

We went early on purpose, so we could walk around the waterfront and look at the skyline, the bridge, and the boats in the marina:

We walked for quite a while and then we got in line for our cruise on the Marina Jack II!

When we got on board, we asked if it mattered where we sat. {One other couple got on board ahead of us.} The crew told us only 8 guests would be on board that night, so we could sit wherever. The other couple found a table downstairs right at the front of the boat, so we went upstairs. Here's our little table!

Shortly after we found our table, the remaining four people got on board.  Two couples...one couple was made up of the parents of the wife in the second couple. They had a table across the way from us, and obviously they were very important, because they had a reserved sign on it. {That just straight up cracked me up since there were EIGHT PEOPLE on board.} Someone came on board to greet them, further proving their obvious importance, and I heard the younger wife say to the person greeting her, "Now will they serve us up here, or do we need to go to the boo-fay?"

1. Boo-fay? This is Florida. It's just a regular buffet.
2. There are EIGHT PEOPLE on board. Really, how much is it going to tax you to walk down the stairs and stand in the boo-fay line?

I managed to not snort out loud and instead, turned my attention to the boat we considered purchasing:

Both boats, actually. {Insert big fat HA!!! here.}

The cruise took us by some magnificent homes and the sunset was {again} uh.ma.zing.

And speaking of uh.ma.zing....the boo-fay was so good. My first time ever to have prime rib. Spoiled now. Wow.

{That would be the boo-fay lady's mom coming up the stairs behind me.}

After dinner, we decided to really enjoy the views of the homes with their gorgeous Christmas lights, so we went out on the open-air deck and watched as we sailed past the huge, huge houses. It was so lovely out there...

We even drank some coffee out there...

They were playing Christmas music over the speakers, so Ryan held out his hand and asked me to dance. The boo-fay party stared at us, but we didn't care. Dancing after dark on the deck of a sunset cruise - surrounded by Christmas lights - YES PLEASE!!

I was walking away from the boo-fay party and I heard one of the husbands say, "Well, SHE got to take pictures and dance and make out." Well...you could have too, sir!! I had much fun with it! Too bad they didn't join in!

And before we left the boat...a quick kiss at the very front of the thing...

After we left the boat, we walked over to a little park we'd not seen earlier in the day. There was this really cool dolphin waterfall, so we stood there for a while, just soaking in the gorgeous evening. The main Marina Jack restaurant was right there, and they were having live entertainment. The music was such fun so we danced, right there in the dark in the middle of a park. Perfect end to a perfect day.

It's the Weekly Recap!

My first weekly recap as a married woman! :) Love it!

* Not much happened last Sunday. You know...just GOT MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) Hope you've been enjoying the wedding coverage this week. I guess there's no point in rehashing the day when I've been doing so all week and am not done yet! :) But here is one of my FAVORITE pictures of the day, taken by my friend Christi:

* Monday we went our for our first meal as a married couple...breakfast at the Broken Egg in Siesta Key! Weather was amazing, so we ate outside! We took it easy that day - just kind of lounging around the resort, enjoying the beach and pool. And we had a great dinner out that night too!

* Tuesday (are you ready for this? Brace yourself!!!!) we went kayaking. Yes. Your Bits girl is SO in love that she allowed herself to be talked into getting into a little rent-a-boat (literally) and went on an excursion in alligator infested waters. Ok that last part was a joke. I hope.

* Wednesday evening one of my bucket list wishes came true because we went on a sunset dinner cruise around Sarasota Bay. I was completely enamored with the whole trip. Loved it so so much. I think Ryan loved watching me be so giddy happy about the whole thing!!

* Thursday, Ryan's world became complete when we spent part of the day riding a tandem bicycle. My dear people, there will be much more about this at a later time and TRUST ME. You do not want to miss it.

* Friday we said a sad, sad farewell to our week in paradise and began our long trip home. We were not happy to leave the beach (and shorts weather) but we were really excited about our stop on the way home - at a bed and breakfast in Georgia! Check THIS out:

* And yesterday we completed our journey home...and we decided we really enjoy traveling together. Any couple who can survive that many hours in the car together and still feel love toward each other...has a great shot, I'd say. :) We are so excited to begin life.

Pinterest Inspiration: Someone sent this one to me on Facebook the weekend of the wedding:

Source: via Becca on Pinterest

So we tried it!