Friday Favorites!

It's Friday Favorites!

This week has been beautiful & exhausting.

I started in SE MI visiting my dear friend AJO & going on many lovely walks talking about life, love, & college memories. Then it continued to central IN to meet this sweet little pea in my photo & be Aunt Juls for a few days in person. A bonus brunch with my cousin LR was especially sweet with the treat of mimosas from Cafe Patachou. Then of course a return North with a quick stop at my parents.

I hope your week was filled with as much fun, love, excitement, & adventure!

Tuesday Tea Time!

YaY for Tuesday Tea Time!

It is officially cold out - there's white fluff sticking a little more permanently now - & therefore there is MUCH more hot tea being consumed.

What teas make the best hot teas? 

I'm not too picky, but I am curious what your favorites might be.

Yesterday, I tweeted that I had the most bizarre tea time & it was! It was the most bizarre I've had in years. It reminded me of sitting in Cup or Joe, working on my senior thesis project for Capital's religion department, minding my own business, & being approached by a woman who said she had premonitions. She just HAD to talk to me. She proceeded to tell me how I was going to have my heart broken by somebody very soon. Well this person that broke my heart & I hadn't even met yet. We met maybe 2 months later & then broke up roughly 7 months after that. However, I would say that it was a mutual breaking of hearts. Fi & I are still friend, even though, at distance (literally, he lives on the East Coast).

YESTERDAY! I go to the closest Starbucks about 45min away to work outside of the office & I have barely sat down when this guy starts in on our maybe 45min conversation. He starts by asking if it's still snowing outside. It wasn't, but then it blossomed into that Z & I are ministry leaders & that he is a "born again Christian." He proceeded to tell me his ENIRE STORY of how he was a hard sale on Christianity or really religion as a whole. It wasn't until he nearly died - or in his words, he did die for 3 days - that he believed in God.

How do we get it through our thick skulls that there is something - I believe it's God - that is SO much bigger than us & loves us more than we know & keeps us & this world going forward?!

I don't know what I do to attract these people & their stories, but it sure does make life a touch more interesting. 

Who do you attract? Who do you believe in? 

Happy Tea Time!

Tuesday Tea Time!

Do you have a favorite travel mug?

I ask this because there are dozens of styles of travel mugs these days. I know we have some even in storage either in IN or MN (at either of our parents' homes) that I am eager to use eventually. However, at the same time, a good travel mug is not something that I lack. Last year for my birthday my friend M gave a nice new travel mug & a matching floral thermos. She knows how much I love my tea!

A couple of years ago, when Z & I first started dating, I bought him a Contigo travel mug. Naturally, he has misplaced it several times, but thankfully always been able to find it. I was so impressed with his, that I got one for myself shortly after. Naturally it had to be purple, as I'm slightly in love with the color purple.

It looks something like this, but not this because this is the new style:

This is purple & shiny!

There's only one problem.

I attract leaky travel mugs!

I kid you not, I had a travel mug that I bought freshmen year at CAP & when I lived in a van doing traveling ministry with Youth Encounter, it rolled to the back one day & I never saw it again. Van 78 - if it was on my New Dawn year - ate my travel mug. It was all down hill from here. My life-long bff bought me a beautiful gold sparkly one for Christmas, before the van ate my other one, & I had a brain fart & tried to microwave it one day. BAD IDEA! So I bought a new one & it is nice, but small. 

How hot does your tea kettle get?

I believe my problem is patience. Tea kettles of all sorts make water incredibly hot. I think I put such hot water in my contigo travel mug, & others, SO many times, that I have melted some of the seals that help keep it warm & with Contigo, the seals that help keep it from being spill proof.

If I turn my purple Contigo upside down full of hot water, it sprays out horizontally from the mug like a garden hose when you put your thumb over the end.

What's leaking out of your mug today?

Sunday Snippits

Sunday Snippits with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Props to Kati & Kate!

GOOD: Easter Sunday was a fun & eventful day spent with family. Then the week sped by with class, assignments, appointments, & meetings. Last Monday two of my friends & I enjoyed dinner together at Shish. I met both friends in seminary, but one actually started at CAP after I had graduated. The Bible finished it's series & is now on the shelves at Target. It's an alright depiction of the stories. Thursday some of my senior girl friends & I had dinner with a group of the women faculty of Luther. It was a blast! We bid on this dinner at the annual variety show a few weeks back. The weekend has been filled with Spring cleaning, thesis writing, & weddings. Yesterday we attended the wedding of two of Z's high school friends & today we celebrated with my friend AWC & her new husband. They just happen to live in MI, so we'll be reconnecting again in the near future!

BAD: My great Uncle Roy passed away last weekend. I didn't really know him, but he was the last of my Grandpa Harold's brothers to pass away. Grandpa Harold passed away back in Oct. '94.

UGLY: Feeling suffocated as the weather gets nicer & the school work still exists. SENIORITIS

UP NEXT: more thesis work, meetings, class, & other homework. Depending on how all that goes, maybe a service project & maybe a party. Next Sunday we'll be at the Twins game vs the NY Mets!

Sunday Snippits

It's a cold, icy Sunday in the Twin Cities! We tried to go to church & got on the highway only to get off at the next exit.

Last week in review:
SuperBowl party was great (though the blackout was dumb)
 *Thanks A&T!
I successfully came down with a head cold & slept a LOT.
I got to visit my college professor at Pub Theology with the community of Humble Walk Church
 *This was great discussion of where we find hope in our every day
Tuesday we spent the WHOLE day doing laundry & I watched the first 3 episodes of season 2 of Downton Abbey
 *Now I'm stuck because I don't have a blue-ray player & it's not on Netflix yet! Help!
We prepped for the Spring semester, which started Thursday
 and then learned that we didn't have classes till tomorrow Morning
I was reunited with another CAP friend who was two years behind me & is considering seminary
 *Shout out to the wonderful MD for her enthusiasm towards life
We went to a lovely graduate dinner at the hotel where we had our wedding reception - and hadn't been there since our wedding reception
 *This really helped set in the multitude of emotions of being a senior.
We celebrated our friend's ordination to be a pastor in the LCMC
 *Congrats B&A on your new journey
Then we had an impromptu date night to the MoA where we enjoyed dinner at Tucci Benucch & a walk around the Ice Castles

There was a lot of fun & good life moments this last week & all that I'm certain of this week is classes, work, meetings, & the Grammys.

Tuesday Tea Time...even though it's Wednesday

Yesterday was laundry day. You might wonder why this would prohibit me from updating with Tuesday Tea Time. Well one reason is because I did not have internet access on my devices because we were at our family's home & another reason is because I took the day to vege out, in between the mass amounts of laundry (at least 6 loads), & watch Downton Abbey.

Tea Time was rushed though as I woke up groggy from a head cold I've been fighting & had to run errands to get our car to the shop for an oil change. Yesterday I had a nice English Breakfast blend from the Kurig at Mom & Dad N's house & today, as I write, I'm enjoying the second squeeze of a my Tazo decaf chai with a splash of milk & honey.

Tea Time make me take a a few moments in each day to breath deep & sort out my too often cluttered brain.

Tea Time is a time to be thankful for the hopeful moments amidst the despair of life's everyday news.

Boosted by Pub Theology ( with Humble Walk church ) & the discussion of Hope led by a college professor from my time at CAP I ask this week:

Where do you find Hope in your life & what are some ways to cultivate Hope for our communities?

This blog prompted by Capital University pride & ministers now located in MN