Other

Yesterday morning I had an appointment with my dermatologist. I won’t bore you with the details but the short version is children of the 70’s and teens of the 80’s didn’t realize sunscreen was an important component to outdoor exposure and now it’s sad times as I try to make myself like Cher and turn back the hands of time.

I feel like I should clarify that I’m not doing anything drastic, just using various fancy creams and lotions like wrestlers use. But my life is good! Really good! I get to wake up every morning, at 5:00 a.m., and make some soup! It’s the best. I love it.

I’m sorry. I got carried away quoting Nacho Libre as one tends to do.

Anyway, I came home and was folding laundry when there was a knock on the door. It was the UPS man and he was delivering two packages. One was my new pair of white denim shorts from J.Crew which, frankly, would have been enough excitement for one day. As for the second package, it was full of these.

I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to holding an actual book in my hands and realizing that’s my name on the cover. It still seems totally surreal.

But there it is and I am so excited about it and can’t wait until you all can get your hands on a copy of your very own. I have so much to say about it but I can’t even find the words right now except to say that God had his hand in every bit of the timing of this book about friendship.

(By the way, Caroline is the one that came up with the idea of having two girls on swings and so I’ve promoted her from Best Daughter to Chief Book Cover Designer because how great is that cover?)

Here’s the book trailer video that we made using so many of the pictures y’all sent in. I hope you love it as much as I do. Feel free to share it and spread the word. And if you don’t see your picture here, there’s a good chance you’ll see it somewhere before it’s all said and done.

The book releases on Tuesday, April 7th but you can find out more about Nobody’s Cuter Than You on the official book page which includes all the various locations where you can pre-order a copy and also find things to tweet and pin and all that business.

Hope you have a great Wednesday.

And bonus points if you immediately knew that Mr. McFeely was the mailman in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.

One day your mom does something new and puts your bed on the back porch to air out. Piper will now refer to it as THE BEST DAY EVER.

And it’s fitting since she and Mabel turned one yesterday.

They won’t even tell you the part about how they were offered no cake to mark the occasion.

Well I am almost despondent that Spring Break is over. The whole week went by way too fast and I don’t even have a new episode of Downton Abbey to be my spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. So I’ve just had to appease myself by making up fictional scenarios in my head about Duchess Kate’s visit to Downton Abbey last week.

For instance, I like to believe she’s telling Miss Hughes that it’s about time Carson proposed and it seems a shame they didn’t seal it with a kiss as opposed to just a pat on the arm.

And here she and Lady Mary are laughing about how relieved they are that Lord Gillingham is going to marry Mabel Lane Fox and Kate is encouraging her to make sure she sees Henry Talbot again because he’s totally dreamy even if he’s not the future King of England. Not all of us get to be royalty, Mary, but we can find a handsome stranger who crashed a bird hunt and drives a sporty roadster.

Anyway, we had a great rest of Spring Break. After spending time in Houston with Mimi and Bops, we drove to Bryan/College Station to meet Gulley and her boys at Honey and Big’s house and watch some Aggie baseball games. We were able to watch the Aggies come back from 3-0 to win 4-3 in eleven innings and improve to 18-0 on the season.

Gulley and I almost decided to make the kids leave early because we needed to be home by 7:30 and wanted to have time to go eat dinner, but then the Ags tied the game up in the bottom of the 8th and the kids informed us in no uncertain terms that they weren’t going anywhere. Plus, I don’t think Big wanted to leave either as evidenced by the way he immediately sat down front with the kids and they sawed Varsity’s horns off for the next three innings when they played the Aggie War Hymn.

Then, later that night, Tiff came over to hang out with us and we loved every minute of getting to catch up with her and just spend time laughing and talking. One of the things I loved about writing Nobody’s Cuter Than You was that it made me really think back on how important different friendships have been in my life and what they taught me along the way and so I almost have a new, fresh appreciation for the twenty-five years of friendship represented in this picture. We’ve loved and encouraged and prayed for each other for well over half of our lives now.

The kids tried their hardest to talk us into staying one more day, but Gulley and I both wanted to get home and have some time to catch up on things around the house and just relax before the break was over. So we headed home late Thursday afternoon much to their dismay and laments about how Spring Break should be at least two weeks long because school is just trying to ruin kids’ lives.

Of course it is. All that book-learning is just ridiculous and unnecessary.

We spent Friday just hanging out and then P, Caroline and I went to dinner at her favorite hibachi grill place that night and then came home and watched a movie and had a great time being together. Then she had a soccer tournament that required us to be up at an hour that I can’t even process, especially when you factor in that 6:00 a.m. now officially feels like the middle of the dadgum night thanks to the time change.

But it was a fun tournament and P and another dad brought their grills and cooked quail and sausage and kabobs in between games which, honestly, is a tournament strategy I can get behind.

We even brought Mabel with us in her kennel because she has cut her foot open and we need to keep her still for the most part which is about as manageable as wrestling a hyena. However, she thoroughly enjoyed the whole soccer tournament experience and, not surprisingly, wrote a haiku about it.

Blueberry muffin
dropped by unobservant kid
Soccer is the best

And finally, if your Spring Break is this week and you’re just on Day One, please know I am terribly envious but I hope you have a great one filled with all manner of fun. I’ll just be here packing a lunch while it’s still dark outside.

You know what the bad part of Spring Break is? That it’s almost over.

Gulley and I loaded up the kids and headed home from Bryan yesterday and now we’ll do our best to enjoy the weekend and try not to think about the fact that the hour we lost almost a week ago is going to come back to bite us all over again on Monday morning.

Here are a few things I found this week:

1. vacay adventure tunic

I love this simple white tunic because you can wear it with all kinds of different colors and accessories when the weather warms up.

2. keep your fringe close vest

I think this is really fun.

3. ace of basic top

Sometimes you just need a good basic black tee. I like that this one has a hemline that’s not just boring and straight across.

4. nike free fit training shoe

Speaking of not boring and straight across, these are about the cutest tennis shoes ever. And they come in some other colors and patterns, too.

5. plaza sur knit cardigan

This would be so cute paired over a tank with some cuffed jeans. I love that it’s a little different than just a basic cardigan.

6. vaneli emmalee wedges

Gulley and I saw these shoes in a little boutique yesterday and loved them immediately. Sadly, they were out of my size so I didn’t try them on but they felt like they’d be really comfortable.

7. j.crew chino shorts

These were my favorite shorts last summer and I’m glad they’re back again this year. I’m going to get a few new colors to show that I really do believe a day will come when the sun will shine again and it will feel hot outside.

Plus everything is an extra 30% off with free shipping when you use code HEYSPRING at checkout.

8. j.crew denim roll up shorts in white

I just ordered these as soon as I saw them. I love denim white shorts because it’s all the fun of denim without worrying about them being see through.

9. pleated pintuck plaid shirt

And how great would this shirt look with those shorts?

10. raven + lily keranga hoop earrings

I’ve come to the realization that I am a fan of just a simple gold hoop earring. And I think these would be really great with just about any outfit.

That’s it for today.

Have a good Friday.

Caroline and I left Houston yesterday morning and headed to College Station to meet up with Gulley and her boys to spend a couple of nights and watch some Aggie baseball games.

And so it feels especially appropriate that I’m going to announce something kind of fun related to my new book, Nobody’s Cuter Than You, that comes out in less than a month.

I know. Less than a month. Where does the time go? It seems like just yesterday that the book was only a blinking cursor on a blank page on my computer screen.

Also – I hate to brag – but thanks to Amazon’s arbitrary computer system, my book is currently ranked the #1 new release in Ethics in Christian Theology. Just as I always imagined it would be had I only known it had anything to do with Ethics. Or Christian Theology.

In case I haven’t mentioned this before, Nobody’s Cuter Than You is about more than Ethics in Christian Theology. It’s a memoir about many of the friends I’ve made over the course of my life thus far and how they have made my life richer and better. I believe that our girlfriends are often the unsung heroes of our life stories and my hope is this book will cause us all to take a moment to hug our friends a little tighter and appreciate what they add to our life.

And the nice, artistic peeps at my publishing house, Tyndale, have created a series of some super cute downloadable prints from passages in the book. I’ll be sharing them with you over the next few weeks as we get closer to the release date.

Here’s the first one:

You can click here to download for the printable version. It will cost you free American dollars.

And, best of all, Nobody’s Cuter Than You is now available for pre-order here on Amazon and here on Barnes & Noble.

I didn’t write anything yesterday because it’s Spring Break and Caroline and I are currently in Houston with Mimi and Bops. But then Bops made the comment this afternoon that he missed the blog this morning. Which cracks me up because he’s with me and knows exactly what we’ve been doing. However, when your dad asks for a blog post, you give him a blog post.

On Friday I picked Caroline up from school early because she convinced me that everyone was getting picked up before the day was over. I’m not sure that was true, but I didn’t mind because I appreciate the need to get a vacation started early. We headed straight to Starbucks and then Bird Bakery to get some celebratory cupcakes while she did a little car dancing to Uptown Funk. I told her I wish I could have videotaped her because her dance moves epitomized the way I remember feeling when you’re finally on vacation from school, but she’s in junior high now and I’m not allowed to document these types of things anymore.

Later that afternoon I celebrated the beginning of Spring Break by de-pilling several of my sweaters with a little de-piller thing I bought at Bed, Bath and Beyond a few years ago. Which is almost the same way I celebrated Spring Break back when I was in college but with less Pina Coladas and swimsuits. Then P, Caroline and I went out to eat dinner and then to watch the high school girls play soccer where we had to bundle up in multiple layers because it may be Spring Break but someone forgot to tell the weather.

Caroline had her own soccer game on Saturday morning and then had a friend over for the rest of the day. We grilled burgers and just enjoyed that feeling of knowing that we had no real responsibilities or science projects involving models of the earth’s layers awaiting us.

Then Sunday morning we slept later than usual thanks to the stupid time change and then P cooked us a big breakfast before I packed our bags and the car and got us ready for the trip to Houston. And I will tell you the weather and the traffic were both so bad that we didn’t even stop for a DQ Blizzard along the way. This was an unprecedented move.

But when we got to Columbus, Texas, traffic was literally at a total stand still. Like I put my car in park type of thing. Fortunately, we’d just made a quick bathroom stop and gotten ourselves some drinks and snacks, but it still felt like an interminable amount of time sitting there on I-10. Eventually traffic began to move again and we slowly made our way into Houston despite all the horrible weather.

After we arrived at Mimi and Bops’s house, we went to eat dinner at Collina’s because it was already after 6:00. Which really means it was only after 5:00 but I have a strong policy to just let the clock dictate my hunger and sleep needs no matter all the governmental interference and so it was definitely time for some pizza.

Last night I slept a grand total of about three hours because time changes wreak havoc on my internal clock and I had all manner of dreams where I was working very hard towards some unknown goal or thing. I can’t remember all the specifics but I know one dream involved living in a house with no windows or doors and I was working very hard to get them all replaced. Thanks, Daylight Savings Time…you’re the best.

But we braved the rain and lack of sleep to get some shopping done today. Caroline managed to find more than a few things she liked and then we went to Kuhl-Linscomb which is one of my favorite places ever and spent hours there. This might seem excessive unless you’ve ever been there and then you know that it is totally possible to spend an entire day looking around at all the stuff.

Mimi and Bops bought this Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book for Caroline and she and I have been working on it ever since. I may have developed carpal tunnel in my index finger from all the coloring and, honestly, I don’t know that this type of elaborate coloring book bodes well for my OCD. But we did take a break to go eat dinner at Seasons 52 and it was delicious. All in all, it’s been about a perfect first day of Spring Break.

Except for the rain.

But I can’t complain about the rain because of the drought and I know what it’s like to have no rain and so I’m grateful, even if a little bit damp and in need of some sunshine. After all, there are still plenty of good sunshine days to be had. After all, this is Texas. And, odds are, it’s bound to feel like Spring Break weather before the end of the week.