Oh What a Beautiful Day!

After purchasing the CUTEST little Easter suits for the boys at Sam's Club (I know, right? The things you find at Sam's...), my mother, Bebe, desperately wanted professional pictures taken of my cutie booties for giving as Easter gifts. I am all for picture taking, so she made it happen. Therefore, today, we trekked out to Bebe and Papa's, the boys got dressed in their Easter best, and a lovely woman took such precious pictures of my sons that I had to squeal. No, I will not ruin the surprise and show you, mainly because I don't have any on me, but also because a lot of my family are getting a framed print of the best one for Easter.
  After the picture taking was over and I gave my boys their promised cookies if they behaved (I am not above bribery when it's needed), Bebe played with Noah and Witten while I set to work cleaning out and organizing one of the closets in one of the spare rooms. It didn't take long, save for the multiple breaks I had to take to help manage the kids, and I found so many neat things tucked away in that small room. I found a ton of high school memorabilia from my sister's GCHS days, and, at the end of it all, the very last thing I uncovered was an envelope containing just a few of my pictures from my crazy time in high school. I relived happy moments and embarrassing clothing choices and then bagged those pictures up to show my friends, because none of them believe me when I try to describe how I was in high school.
My friends; a glimpse of who I was-

I played softball and loved it. I'm the special one of the group. What was wrong with me?

I had the best friends in the world who totally got me and made my high school experience something I cherish.

I did many things that probably embarrassed my parents, but not for the purpose of embarrassing my parents. I loved my parents. I just enjoyed being a little stupid sometimes.

 As you may gather from these three pictures, I was a much different person. God was not near as important to me in my naive immaturity as He is now, and my life reflected my misplaced priorities. Yes, He was there, a fact that I knew and that kept me from doing truly crazy and stupid things, but my self-centered thinking was focused on what I could do to find happiness as opposed to what I could to to make God happy and get true joy from that. I enjoyed my 4 years in high school and I regret very little (except for the guys I dated and a few outfits I wore). If I could relive my high school days, I would do most of everything I did except with a totally different purpose.
  Also, I'm very glad Stephan never met high school me, because we were both such different people in high school than we were when we met, and we probably would have never even gone on one date. And then we would never have realized what true love is. And then we would have never made babies! And I'm so glad I found love and made babies. Just look at how precious they are, waving their hands in the air like they were riding a roller coaster as we drove with the windows down on this glorious day:  

Look at his wind-swept hair and overjoyed face! Presh!

I've forgotten what it's like to find complete happiness in a breeze blowing in your face. Ah, sweet innocence!

   So, dear readers, the moral of this post is, God is good and does great things if you're smart enough to always keep Him front and center in your life. And even when I don't give Him his due praise and honor, He still shows me immeasurable kindness, even when He lovingly corrects me. What a great God I have!
 Be blessed, readers!