Substance

Today I feel like writing about a topic that carries alot of substance.The past few days it has been unusually foggy in the Seattle area. The weathermen have a stagnate air quality alert out for us. Funnily enough I feel like that is mirroring the way I feel about my spiritual life. It feels stagnate. I really hate to say that too. It really bothers me. It bothers me because it means that I have put it to the wayside of everything. I have let wedding planning, work,friends, life- get in the way of my relationship with God. That is not OK.

For my birthday I received the book, Blue like Jazz. I am really enjoying it! This book is challenging me. Making me ask questions about myself and my faith.
This book has a chapter in it on Belief. I think this chapter so far has been my favorite. The author talks a lot about different people in his life and the conversations he has with these people.

In this chapter he talks to this friend of his that he calls, " Andrew the Protester". Andrew is what i like to call a "doer". "He believes that it is not enough to be politically active. He says that legislation will never save the world. He sets up a makeshift kitchen on a sidewalk and makes breakfast for people who live on the street. He serves coffee and sits with his homeless friends and talks and laughs, and if they want to pray he will pray with them. He's a flaming liberal, really. The thing about it is, though, Andrew believes this is what Jesus wants him to do. Andrew does not believe in empty passion.
... Andrew is the one who taught me that what I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do."

The author ends the chapter with," I am learning not to be passionate about empty things, but to cultivate passion for justice, grace, truth, and communicate the idea that Jesus likes people and even loves them." I am finding that there are so many things in this world that i am passionate about but I don't act on them. Racial profiling is something that REALLY bugs me. I understand that we live in a post 9-11 world. It has gotten to a point where we are paranoid of EVERYONE. People are shutting off to others. We isolate one another. This does not help the situation. Don Miller states, " Nothing is going to change... until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror." I think that this is very true. In order for me to be apart of change- I need to change me. In the earlier part of the book, Don Miller touches on being selfish. That the motive behind some of the things he did was for self satisfaction. I will say that, that is true about me. If I truly want to change the way that we profile/judge people- I need to change that within my own heart.

Honestly I think the real reason I love this book is because I love the way that the author talks about Jesus and God. He touches on everything, Faith, Redemption, pleasing God, understanding God, God's grace and unconditional love and how that for some people it is easy to understand that but for others it is hard to accept. They feel like when they sin they owe God a favor. I can also relate to that. I live in a society that when someone does something for you, you will have to do something for them. That's the way some relationships work. With God it's different.

I apologize if this is hard to follow- My brain is feeling scattered. There is just so much to digest in this book. I think that it will be my goal to get back into Church. Hope all is well with everyone. Thanks for stopping by!

A New Year, A New Status, and A New Chapter

Hey All,

Currently it is 40 days until Mine and Dustin's wedding! Very exciting. Things are falling nicely together. I feel accomplished- Like I have done well with getting things done in a timely matter. With the exception of the Save-The-Dates. That was a DISTASTER! On the upside though, we have almost all of the wedding paid for which is seriously a huge weight off our shoulders.
I am very proud of Dustin and I. We have worked very well together in getting this wedding on it's feet. Of course we had our disagreements- and there were times that we both really wished we had taken this a different route- but now that the end results are falling into place- we are both very happy with the way things are turning out and glad that we stuck in it together. I would definately say that this was a great test to see how we will work together in our marriage. I know that life will get harder and the challenges that we will face will make this seem like it was the easiest thing, but what a reward it is to see our wedding come together. Family on the other hand--- well that's a different story ;0)


The Holidays have pretty much come and gone. This year was definately a year of transition- yet again. Dustin and I are moving from fiancee to being married. It's weird when there are nearly tangible shifts in a relationship. This by no means is anything bad- It's just a weird feeling to almost physically see and feel it happening. Something that we say often in our house is, "After the wedding we will..." It's almost comical how much we say this. A lot of things in our life have fallen to the back burner when it came to the wedding.
This New Year will bring a lot of change to it. A lot of good change. We are planning on getting a gym membership and start working out. I know how cliche that sounds- but for me I need to be more careful about that.
Now that we are getting married- Dustin and I have set some goals for ourselves. We both would like a family one day- Currently we aren't prepared for that. We have some personal goals and goals that we want to achieve together that we would like to get in place first. I would like to loose weight and get healthy so that when we do want a family we will both be in good shape and teach our children a healthy way of life. A goal that we want to achieve together is we would both like to go back to school. We also like the idea of just being married for a bit. We are both young- would like to do some traveling and just enjoy us for now. Plus our little tiny apartment is about to burst at the seams!

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and that the new year will bring people joy and happiness.
Until Next time ,

Kandra (soon to be Edwards :0) )

Fireworks, Babies, and Camping- oh my!

Ok, so the last time i wrote was about 2 months ago. LOTS of things have happened since then.
--The List of LOTS of Things--
- My friend Christina came to visit me from Anchorage. She is a good friend of mine whom i've known since grade school. She was able to be apart of our amazing pyrotechnics- aka- "The 3rd of July". I do believe there is a youtube video pending however i do not have that yet. She helped design THEE best wedding cake 2008 has ever seen! The show also featured, "The Electric Banana" and there may or may not have been two pirate ships duking it out. One of them of course made around a metal shopping cart that had been used in the prior two years...**pictures pending**



We also did a very nice hike called the Ebey's Landing hike by Fort Ebey; just north of Fort Casey.
It was really pretty, and Ivars was delictable as always. The 3rd of July came and unfortunately Chrissy did not get to stay for the show but her help was much appreciated!





- July 8th 2008 8:42 pm 9lb 6oz Abigail Grace Clemence was born. My friend Christa had her baby and I was very fortunate to be apart of such a miracle! Christa had a natural at home birth. She labored for about 23 hours and only pushed for about 37 minutes. It was such an increadible experience, it's really hard to put into words what it was like.


- July 18th-21st Dustin and I went on a camping to trip to Mt. St. Helens. The original plan was to go to Beaver Bay camp ground. We all figured it being a Thursday and all that we would beat the weekend crowd. However... this was not so. We got to the Beaver Bay camp ground and it was so increadibly packed! I should also mentioned that we had lost Dustin's parent's at this point and cell phones do not work in heavily forested areas... just so you know. We drove about 18 miles further( i don't really know what direction we went.. i will guess that for the purpose of the story it was... north east..) NE on a road with probably 13 million switch backs going at the speed of snail.


The bonus, it was a beautifully clear day and at some parts you could see the south side of the Mt. St. Helens; from the south side you can't see the crater. So we reached the swift resevoir and were very lucky to have found a camp site where someone had just left. Our debacle at that point was how will we fit 2 Rv's AND 2 tents?? The groundskeepers- who were much nice than the last place we had gone- explained that there is "over flow" parking and can keep some of the cars AND the other rv there. Personally i would have liked to set the tent up there because it was right next to the water. So we took the site but we still had no idea where Dustin's parent's were. Dustin and myself set out on a journey to go and find them. We did pass them going the opposite direction- needless to say Dustin's dad was a bit... shall we say peeved at not being able to get in contact with eachother. In my defense they never should have gone on ahead with out us... but it's really water under the bridge at this point. By the time we got back to the camp grounds another camp site had opened up and Dustin's parents had a place to put their RV. It ended up working out well and we had a REALLY good time.






Friday we went to the trail of 2 forests.
It's this 1/4 mile boardwalk around a small forested area where lava had flowed and created a lava tube that you can actually crawl through. It's pretty neat. The vegatation had grown back- this was not done by the explosion in 1980- this was 1000's of years ago. After that we went to the Ape caves- ridiculously LARGE lava tubes. Roughly a mile long; again- very fun and very cold!





Saturday we played out on the water and did some tubing.
It was neat. I had never done that before. Sunday was when Dustin and I planned to head out. We started to pack up and had just about everything ready so I asked Dustin if he would get the car from over flow so that we could load it up. Dustin leaves and his oldest sister Robin goes with him(taking the camera). I am busy folding up the tent when Tom(his brother in- law, married to Robin.) called me into the camper saying," I have something funny to tell you." I stopped what i was doing and went to talk to you. I asked him what was up, and he says," Well let's just say... Dustin's jeep is looking a WHOLE lot better than your car is now." A light bulb goes on and i respond, " YOU FOILED OUR CAR!?" "Not quite." he says," More like- plastic wrap." I jumped on one of the bikes to catch up with Dustin. We get to where the other cars are parked and it's extremely obvious that our car has fallen victim to cation tape and plastic wrap. Dustin looks around and says," It is so georgous out!" I look at him shaking my head and say, " You don't see our car do you?"



His mouth dropped and I start laughing. The reason this is funny because many a time, our friends have been the center of his and Chris's evil plans of litterally boxing in(with cardboard) cars, forking and skewring lawns, as well as foil cars. He had this coming. They call it our early wedding present. I fear for our car on the day of our wedding as i know our friend's will not fall short of making sure the entire state of Washington knows that we have "Just been Married". All in all a good time was had by all.








So that is the small update of the on goings here. Stay tuned for the next episode of, " The Dress fittings and trying to cooridinate several peoples schedules to meet all at once!"

1st blog

Hey all! ok so i thought i would give this a try. I thought that my life wasn't all that exciting to write about, but i do have some eventful things coming up. My friend is about to have a baby and i have the honor of being her birthing coach while her husband is in Iraq. I am planning a wedding(lots of details to come on that) and well i work at a clinic and there are some interesting things that happen there as well. Soo i'll give it a try! see ya around !
~*~Kandra~*~