It's a Special Day...February 2, 2012

Iola & Frank Morris

with baby Wanda Jean 1943

Happy Birthday to my Sweet Mom...

Thinking about what a gift you are to me and so many others!

May you feel the love and thoughts of many today. 

Enjoy your day!

You are Special today and everyday!

Love it when you come to visit...

One of our favorite things to do: Enjoy going to tea houses...

You have such a beautiful Smile...

I love you Bigger than the Sky!

Love,

Shelley

Kaylee turns "22"

My niece Kaylee turns 22 today! It feels like it was just yesterday when my Sis would bring Kaylee to meet me for lunch when I worked at UC Irvine. Kaylee is all girl! Loves accessories! Loves to plan her outfits! Loves to  get manicures and pedicures! Loves to have things to look forward to! 

Kaylee is just a few months old here...wearing an outfit I got her!

Enjoying my lunch hour with her at the UC Irvine Arboretum 

Kaylee and I all dressed up at a friend's wedding...

Kaylee's Beautiful Wedding Day!

(all grown up)

Happy Birthday Kaylee!

May this 22nd year be blessed with God's promises and plans He has for you. I am so excited to see what is in store for this year. May you continue to fall in love with Jesus more and more each day! 

We love you Bigger than the Sky!

Love,

Aunt Sis

My little place of my own...

Oh so nice to have a place of my own...a place where I can dream and imagine! A place where I can pray for others and believe for answers. A place that says, "Shelley" all over it! We need places like this in our mind and in our heart. Where in the middle of chaos and noise we can close our eyes and picture Jesus sitting next to us. Where we can be quiet and still and Know that He is God!

On one of my little daily flip calendars it says, "Security is not the absence of danger, it is the presence of God." Wow isn't that true? Anywhere the presence of God is we can feel safe. Knowing He is right there with us!

So thankful for the Hope we have in Jesus! Thankful that he created us to dream and imagine all the things he would have us to be and do in this life! We are the ones who place limits on ourselves not Him.

Oh how I love how He knows me so well! He created me to worship Him! I see God in the details of life. In flowers, in landscape, in the sky, in situations that sometimes seem to hard for me, in people that have touched my life in one way or another, in music, in quiet places and times and in the loud places too!

Take time to imagine your happy place! Dwell with Him there! Invite Him into all the dreams you have! He desires them for you too!

"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10 NIV

Landon turns "19" tomorrow on January 2nd...

 

Thinking about this weekend nineteen years ago...Larry was watching football, Chase was playing with his toys. I was having contractions...they were getting closer and closer. In the meantime I am telling Larry I think we should go to the hospital. He kept saying one more play, one more play. As in he was watching a football game lol! Sure enought we arrived to Kaiser in Anaheim Hills, CA with 20 minutes to spare. Our dear friends The Price family met up with us in the parking lot and got Chase from us so he could stay with them while I was having Landon! We are so proud of Landon. It has been an awesome nineteen years. He was born on a Saturday! Now that I think of it, of course he was. He loves the weekends! So thankful he loves the Lord with all of his heart and knows how to enjoy life!

Happy Birthday to my Lil Sis "Laura Lee"

Through the years the five year age difference between my Sis and I seems to grow closer and closer. When we were little it felt like I was so much older than her or that she was so much younger than I. Crazy how now as we are both adults and now both share the same decade things feel different. I learn so much from her. She is a great cook! She is an awesome Mom to her kids. She loves her family and she is great at her multiple businesses that she manages and runs.

She loves to laugh and it is contagious! She is thoughtful of others. She can whip up a meal with-in minutes and it tastes like I have been to a Bistro.

So proud of her! She is so amazing! I now look up to her!


Happy Birthday Sis!

Love you Bigger than the Sky!

Love,

Sis

Grandma Hazel Smith 1913-2011

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"Choose Joy"

By: Sara Frankl from her blog @ www.glitzengirl.blogspot.com (from October 10, 2010)

And then she asked the question that so many of you email and ask me:

“How do you manage to stay so positive? So happy? Don’t you ever just get really mad?”

I suppose the cop out answer, while true, is that I just don’t have the energy to be mad. Seriously. It takes so much effort and energy to wallow. And it’s not any fun. I live 99.8% of my time alone, and if anger was all I had to live with I would lose my mind.

I think, for me, it has been about learning to want what He wants for me more than what I want for myself.It's a tall order and I don't say that flippantly. But my joy has truly come from Him finding His joy in me rather than me finding my joy in what I desire. It doesn't mean I don't long for different, it just means I find peace in fulfilling rather than understanding. In the knowledge that this life isn’t about me, it’s about Him.

The thing I try to remind myself of, as I am without all the things that I wish I had to make me happy, is that my biggest need is Him. More than I need to be outside in the fresh air, more than I need to move without pain, more than I even need Dad... I need His will to be done in my life whether it is comfortable or not. There is not one thing that feels comfortable about my world right now, but I need Him more than I need to change my circumstances.

It's still brutally hard. I have to remind myself of these facts every day. It doesn’t always come easily.

But it doesn’t make the truth any less true.

And the truth is that I can choose the joy.

So I do.

Me: Shelley - I want what Sara talks about above. I want to Choose Joy! I need Jesus more than anything! 

May you be blessed by Sara Frankl and may her words challenge you in your faith.