My Week in Pictures.

We started the week off with a really fun Luau celebrating three birthdays!!! These are me and my girlfriends and the guys in their Miss Hawaiian Tropic outfits.

I spent a long time reading this week (I am reading two Jimmy Carter books which I will review on Monday). This car was in the bookstore parking lot. It brings a new meaning to passion, doesn't it? I agree with the sentiment, but would I write it on my car? I don't think so.

The best part of my week? My own personal Oprah Christmas! Our amazing manager got the band an incredible endorsement deal with Tigi- Bed Head...the best hair and make-up products in the entire world!!! And I am not just saying this. I consider myself good at a few things. Eating. Shopping. And Talking. With runner-up categories being football, reading, and coloring. I have spent years trying out every major line of make-up and hair product imaginable and Bed Head is my favorite and the longest lasting product out there. To be endorsed by them is really a girls dreams come true!!! Thanks Bed Head.

We showed up at company headquarters, got the tour, and I left with over a thousand dollars in make-up and hair products. Incredible? Yes.

You want to know why this is amazing? I sat in the van Friday night before our show basically in tears because I felt so gross. My make-up was old and I have dropped my bags so many times while traveling that most of it was broken up in a million little pieces. It was barely doing the trick and I have been dreading the day it gives out because, simply put, I cannot afford anything extra right now. Friday it finally went out on me...much like a car, but more important because a car doesn't help me out on stage...make-up does. And by Friday night, I was totally out.

In that moment, I did not pray, "God please provide make-up for me!" Because really, who in good conscience could pray for this in light of, say, Africa??? It certainly did not cross my mind to pray that I would be provided for in that area. I would have felt lame and guilty and vein for asking (even though I would have only asked for drug store make-up, nothing fancy). Instead of giving that need over to God, I simply cried, then wondered what I could do this week at home to make a little extra money to get some new make-up. And then, Monday morning, I am given about a thousand dollars in make-up and told that I can actually stock up every three months with as much as I need.

Were they joking? Did God have anything to do with that? Could He possibly take care of something so little and at the same time be apart of taking care of the real needs of the world...the poverty, hunger, war, heart ache and disease? I do not know for sure. But I thinks that He often humors Himself at my expense. You need make-up? You just want cheap Wal-Mart stuff? You don't even ask me? Well, here is what I can do for you. More than you ever would have asked me for or imagined. And I find myself, first thing Monday morning, with more than I could ever need and then some; enough to share with all my friends. Like the little loaves and fishes. Except we are talking little mascaras and eyeshadows that have multiplied themselves all over my bathroom.

A modern day miracle.

And that was the highlight of my week.
I wrote my most previous blog last week on this exact night. I don't want to go senior adult on you, but oh my gosh, where did the week go??? Time is on speed right now, super speed. A wrinkle in time. Paul Allen...that explanation is for you.

Today is Ryan's birthday. 28 years old. So we've been playing birthday all day. Actually all week. Lunch with his parents and the most amazing homemade cake that only his mom can make. A wonderful dinner with all our friends tonight. Some John Madden on the Wii (a gift from my mom...she knows Ryan well). And now, you know, some more birthday cake.

It was nice to have a week off. I accomplished nothing. It was up and down for me. Too much free time and I wake up in a funk. I will feel sad for no reason or I will just be convinced that I have woken up with a fever and a disease. I blame that on the weather and being a girl. Ryan blames it on the fact that I rarely slow down so when I do, he says, I have a lot more time for feelings and for my body to remind me that it is exhausted. And this comes from the man who never seems to stop!

On that note, I will leave you with a great quote from my magazine, The Week.
This is an excerpt by Carolyn Y. Johnson originally published in the Boston Globe.

"We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around is a state of restlessness is one of life's greatest luxuries- one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival. To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one. It is in reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works. Granted, many people emerge from boredom feeling that they have accomplished nothing. But is accomplishment really the point of life?"

I don't think so. If you haven't been bored lately, I wish you a very boring weekend. It is a wonderful feeling. A luxury. Accomplish nothing...if only for a few hours.