ashley’s thoughts

I have started compiling my reading list for 2010!  I love reading and pretty much am always reading at least 2-3 books simultaneously (one ridiculous cheesy one, one Christian/devotional one, and one other one).  My life is pretty busy but I read in the gaps.  Please add to my list and comment if you have read any of these!  Some I am reading for the 2nd or 3rd times but I still put them on the list!

A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg:  This book is FANTASTIC!  I started reading it as soon as we moved into the new house.  Abby, my new friend who actually bought and now lives in my old house, gave me this at the closing!  I love it.  She pegged me right.  It is sort of autobiography-esque, but is built around recipes and stories of growing up in the kitchen.  I have tried 2 of the recipes so far and have gotten great reviews on both!  She is very much a baker, and I never have baked much, so this has spurred on a new habit.  The new range with convection oven has not hurt either   If  you love food, cooking, etc. and love looking inside the doors of a very cool family/girl, then you would love this book!  I feel like I know her and her family.  Molly also blogs here.

Boundaries by Cloud/Townsend:  I have read this book before and am feeling the need to read it again!  I have always struggled with “boundaries” in my life, and this book is such a good tool and reminder of how healthy it is to have good firm lines you don’t cross (into others’ lives, out of your life, etc.).  I highly recommend it to anyone who has lots of stress or emotional stuff they deal with on a regular basis.  Its good for super compassionate people to learn that everything is not their thing to fix!  The Lord really helped me grow through this book so I’m reading it again hoping for another hop in a positive direction.

Peace Like a River by Lief Enger:  This book has been recommended by many people I look up to.  I have started it several times but life started spinning and I put it down each time.  This year I want to commit to it.  I absolutely love the Poisonwood Bible, and 2 people I know said that those 2 are their favorite books!  Sounds like good company to me!

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold:  This has also come highly recommended by people I trust.  Because of it being about a young girl who was murdered, I know it will be hard for me to read, but therapeutic at the same time.  It is her view from heaven, basically, and how her family members deal with her loss, her seeing them mourn, etc.

“A Homemade Life” is a grrrreat book! It’s stories and recipes and life and family and beautiful writing all wrapped up in one! Author is Molly Wizenberg, the author of orangette

It has started!  Check out this link for the first pics… www.ranchdressings.wordpress.com

Some of you may not know that I lost my little sister in a car accident.  I have so many new friends through the years who missed this part of my life, and sometimes it is just good for me to tell the story.  I do not get to do this very often anymore, but I want to do it today.  I’m also not a “personal issue” blogger, so if that makes you uncomfortable this is your official warning- big time stuff here!  This was the AD/BC moment of my life.  Everything is oriented as a “before the accident” or “after the accident” thing.  She was a huge piece of me. Leslie is my older sister, and I was the middle.  Joy was the baby.  We were three in the same in a lot of ways.  “The Sullivan Girls.”  We looked alike, sang alike, talked alike.  So much alike.  She was a live wire too.  I still cannot type or write our story without tears.  I’ll try to tell you this as best as I can because it is so incredibly ugly but at the end something is beautiful.

Basically, mom was driving and Joy was in the passenger seat.  We had all three been bridesmaids in my cousin’s wedding.  I was home in my LSU dorm room bed fast asleep (Miller Hall!) and Leslie was in bed in New Orleans where she was in med school.  My phone rang at 4 am and it was my dad.  He said “Joy and mom have been in a bad accident.  It is bad.  Leslie is almost to your dorm and you need to get up and get dressed and go downstairs and meet her.”  We were en-route to Alexandria where she and mom were in the hospital.  Basically, all we knew at this point was that Joy “had a bad head injury” and mom “had a back injury.”  It was so terrible- their tire just blew out and they went off the road and hit a tree backward.  When I saw my dad’s face, I knew it was not good.  He told us immediately “Mom will never walk again and Joy has a slim chance of making it.”  Life stopped.  Completely.  We spent about 24 hours at Joy’s bedside and got no response.  Not one single hand squeeze.  She was so perfect laying there.  Hair and makeup still fixed from the wedding.  Perfectly tan.  A little scratch on her hand was all that was noticeably wrong.  We held and kissed those hands and that face constantly.  We watched the brain monitors that just told us bad news over and over again.  Eventually it was confirmed that she had no brain activity.  She was brain dead.  We decided to let her go be with Jesus.  I believe she is with Him now.  To say I was sad just doesn’t even touch it.  My heart was paralyzed.  Mom was paralyzed from her mid-chest down.  Eleven years later, she still is.

Their rooms were side by side so we unhooked mom’s bed and all the machines and rolled it into Joy’s room.  We put the railings down between the beds so mom could have time alone with Joy- her baby girl, now 17 and not going to age anymore.  We each had time alone, as did Alan her boyfriend, Em her best friend, and Kyle her other best friend.  Several other family members came back there too but for the most part this was very private for our family.  We decided to donate her organs to people who needed them.  This was the one “light” amidst the pitch dark time.  Through the years we have gone through every stage of grief that you can imagine, but one thing has been constant- we have never doubted that decision.

I hope everyone reading this will donate their organs to people in need.  Click here to register:  http://registry.lopa.org/Registry/Signup.php if you are not in Louisiana, just google how to sign up in your state.  Another HUGE thing is that you absolutey have to tell your next of kin your wishes.  If not, NO MATTER if you have signed up or not- your organs will not be harvested.  The next of kin is who makes sure this happens.  Tons of opportunities are missed because parents/children or husbands/wives are not on the same page.  Let them know.  Joy’s organs arrived at the airport and split into seven different planes going into seven directions.  Can you believe that?

My dad has been working on tracking down some of the people who received Joy’s organs.  We have made contact with several!  Today was the heart.  He talked to a man whose mom received her heart.  I can hardly type that.  It is perfect to know that her heart gave someone life.  She lived for 7 years with Joy’s heart before she passed.  From what I know, that is longer than most heart transplant patients.  It was a good heart J  It definitely was.   We may have a chance to meet several of these people and that will be incredible.  My mom called today to tell me about them finding the heart recipient and she said “It makes me so happy!  I’m so sad.”  It was such a true “in the moment” picture of how we feel in this.  It is a new way that the Lord is healing my heart- just finding out more specifics of how she gave life.  She gave life.  She gave life.

I say all of this for several reasons.  One is to give a shout out to organ donation and to ask you all to donate!  I also just wanted to tell you a little about Joy.  She loved the limelight and looking beautiful and being trendy!  More than that though, she loved to bring Joy to those in her life.  She was an overflowing vessel of Joy.  Her name was so perfectly chosen.  I hope that you will live today to the fullest and just know that you are loved.  I believe that we are each loved unconditionally by our God, and that we each have a purpose.  The purpose is to walk daily being “alive” in our hearts- truly human.  Jesus was our picture of how God looks as a human, so striving to look and act like him is a very good start J

Kyle and I just got back from a treck across New England.  It. Was. Amazing.  There were several times that i stopped dead in my tracks and thought to myself that I had never seen anything so beautiful.  I’ve been to the Swiss Alps, the Northwest, and now- I put New England in foliage season up there with those things!  In fact, it reminded me SO MUCH of the mountains outside of Seattle, but there are mostly evergreens there, so no color!  This is a huge announcement (picture me screaming and begging and pleading):  PUT THIS ON YOUR BUCKET LIST!!!!!!!  We were there a week before the “peak” of color because we wanted to overlap with a Red Sox game in Boston and this was their last weekend series.  So- we missed the full out peak but we saw a game at Fenway Park!

Enjoy the pics…

We landed in Boston, got our car, and started driving straight north into the mountains.  We tried to make it to Vermont but because of time, stayed in New Hampshire for most of the day.  It was magnificent!

There were look-out points along the Kancamungus Trail, a stretch of highway in New Hampshire that is supposedly the most beautiful views of foliage in the country.  I believe it!  We were alone, so our pictures are obviously one of us holding out a camera!

If I told you this was more perfect in person, would you belive me??  It was!

My first it was really overcast but really COLD this day!

We stayed at a Bed & Breakfast in Dover, New Hampshire.  It was such a cute town!!  Probably 15 minutes from Maine (or less but we got pulled over for speeding so we dont know exactly how long!  haha).

And now off to Maine, but first a story!  We drove there Thursday night for a lobster and all the restaurants close at EIGHT!  As in the hour before 9 pm!?  What??  That was our biggest shocker.  We ate at the only non-asian restaurant that was open past 8.  Good lobster!  Kyle got pulled over for speeding by the small town cop and he thought we were drunk b/c Kyle’s eyes were red, but really it was because we’d been awake since 3:45 am to make our New Orleans flight

Cool, beautiful, and perfect.  This is Kennebunkport Beach in Maine.

Even to a South Louisiana girl, this was one of the best things I had ever eaten!  It is a lobster roll from The Clam Shack (roadside stand) in Kennebunkport, and a cup of Chowdah!  Sooooo amazing.  The end.

It rained ALL MORNING in Boston.  We really didnt have hardly any time in the city but still got to eat a Boston cream pie!  I was devastated that the game would be canceled, and since that was a gift for Kyle, I just hated that we wouldnt get to go!  Well, after monsoon rains all day, it cleared up for the game!  And by “cleared up” i mean it was not raining but there were super scary rainclouds looming in the sky!

This is the Green Monster from our seats!

Here you go…  http://ranchdressings.wordpress.com/

Well, we called off the addition and put our house on the market.  Dead serious!  It was totally the right thing to do… we just feel like we are supposed to renovate the house Kyle lived in during college and law school.  When i say “renovate” i mean “a serious overhaul… not just a few coats of paint!”  So0oo this is a good thing!  It is exciting!  It is a journey i will most definitely blog about.  I am trying to set up a new blog specifically for this endeavor and will post a link when that is ready to roll.

Lately life has been kind of crazy.  I seem to be surrounded by these crazy things, some of which are REALLY bad, some of which are annoying, and some of which are the Lord telling me to just be still and patient.  When all of those happen at once, life can take a toll.  Somehow- b/c of his grace, I’m very happy.  I think that is where the term “Joy” comes in!  (my favorite word)  Feeling Joy in your life is one of those times where the experience gives you the definition.  It is a feeling of happiness and contentment and hope DESPITE circumstances.  This is something that is new to me.  I have not always been one to be happy despite what is going on.  In fact, when people said that kind of cliche’ crap to me I usually wanted to punch them in the face and in extreme examples I would secretly wish that the knew how it felt to experience loss and pain.

A good thing/technique for me is to put things into categories.  Those which are ongoing.  Those which are temporary.  Those that are “mine.”  Those that are someone else’s and I am supposed to be a part of it.  Those that are not mine.

Here’s my breakdown!

Ongoing- Loss of my sister, Joy.  This is still extremely painful almost 11 1/2 years later.  The pain is not as sharp but the loss is still as obvious.  It manifests differently in each stage of my life.  In marriage the pain and loss are constant that Joy never met Kyle.  This makes me extremely sad.  The redeeming thing about it is that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would “approve.”    How could she not right??  Someone who is truly my match in every way, knows how to “speak ashley language”.  Dealing with mom’s condition is also one of those ongoing, constant things.  This is an every day thing.  Each phone conversation, each time we are together, each time i speak of her- each one is filled with an extreme sadness for her condition and an extreme thankfulness that we still have her.  Try being called into a room and being told that your mom is not going to make it three different times, and see her recover and still be filled with Joy just to hear your voice on the phone.  That one will get you every time… brings parent/child relationship to a whole different place in the heart and mind.

Temporary- this one is kind of self explanatory, but still really healthy to acknowledge.  Some things suck.  They suck really bad, but they are not ongoing and there is a huge amount of freedom in that!  So nice to be able to look at something and simply say “this is going to go away.  this will not be forever.”

Things that are “mine” – Some things are mind to deal with, and some are not.  I tend to put everything on my plate, when to be honest, some things are just not meant for me to deal with.  This is hard to accept when you want to “fix” things that seem so obvious.  The other person may need to deal with that, and the process of realizing it on their own can be a huge part of the experience.  I find alot of freedom in accepting that some things are not for me.  Some are, however, and I cant put those on other people… tricky   There are things that I am walking through that is best dealt with just by myself.  There are some that I need to talk to girls about, and there are some that I need to talk to Kyle about.  When in a marriage or serious committed relationship, I think it is important to not bring every single thing you are dealing with to your spouse… some may disagree but I think it takes up time you can being doing fun things and more importantly adds stress to your marriage that doesnt need to be there.  I’m no pro after this first year

Things that are someone else’s and I am supposed to be a part of them – Being a part of a “community” means that we share each other’s burdens.  I cant tell you how many times this has been used to get me out of something, and hopefuly I have been on the flip side where I am able to join someone in their struggles and be a support.  This comes in all shapes and sizes.  Sometimes it means physically being there with them, spending alot of time and prayer, and sometimes it is an email.  If you ever have had a friend go through a divorce or lose someone or have a big life tragedy, you know how it is just so important to be there, and can be so draining, but I do believe the Lord is pretty clear which ones we need to be a part of and which ones other people have under control.

All that being said- here are some life updates!

The addition- it is on hold for now.  I know I know… sad times.  Basically, we found out through the appraisal, etc. that it may be smarter to buy rather than to add on.  You can buy more for your dollar than build right now and we really just want to be wise in all of this.  We havent totally thrown it out the window, but for now we are re-grouping.  I put a TON of mental and emotionally energy into the design so this really does kind of stink, but at the same time, I would hate to put all that money into the house and it not appraise for a lot more.  Its just a numbers game.  Buying a new house will be fun too!

Trips- We are going to Boston in early October!  Yay!  We will drive to New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont as well.  B&B reserved for New Hampshire for night 1 and then 2 nights in Cambridge/Boston!  Woop Woop!  Tickets to the Red Sox at Fenway- check!  Convertible for driving in the mountains- check!  Peak season for the fall foliage- check!  I am really jumping otu of my skin about this trip.  I am SO excited!  Neither of us have ever seen the New England leaves at their peak but I hear it is life changing.  Leslie and Reagan have gone several time and so has my dad.

Vianne-  she is amazing.  i love her more than i thought possible.  she loves talking on teh phone now!!!  she always has but now she can have real conversations and really tell you all about her friends at school, what she is doing, how much she loves Little Mermaid, and how much she wants to come see Belle and Harley!

Football season is here!  Tickets are in our possession… YES!  (how can football tickets possibly cost this much money???)

Belle and Harley- Harley has begun to see Belle in a less than sisterly way- it happened all at once!!!  I’m not sure what we are going to do about this but it is making me SICK!  What aperv!  haha.  It’s ok to laugh

Kyle caught a huge fish.  We had a deal that none of them are hanging in the living room unless he caught one 8 pounds or bigger!  Well, this dang thing was 8lbs 6oz!  haha!  He wins!

I have been trying to decide if i would just lump in a kitchen remodel with our addition.  I think it would be best for long term value of the house, and because my favorite things in the world are cooking for a crowd and entertaining, a big nice kitchen is super exciting!  What i had been planning on doing is just a cabinet re-fresh and new tops, but the more I look at the plan, I think it would be pretty simple to move one wall and expand our kitchen by about 30%.  That being said, we would be adding a new strip of cabinets and probably could just remodel the whole kitchen.  I will talk to our amazing builder, the one and only Matt Laurence and get his thoughts on this as well

So then comes the decision on what the look of the kitchen should be.  When it comes to kitchens, I like clean and modern.  Simple shapes and clean hardware really make me do back flips.  I’m definitely not the “tuscan” or “old world” type of girl.  Once again, Kyle does not care at all as long as I am happy and continue making fabulous meals (thank you Jesus for my husband and his desire to do the dishes).

Here are some images I am drawn to, each for different reasons:

I like everything about this kitchen- the hardware, the square zero-radius sink, the square edges of the tops, the stainless toe-kick, the marble backsplash (which is probably outrageously expensive!), and the different color upper cabinets.

The way the countertop material wraps the sides of the island is so chic and Australian.  I also like the velvety gray kind of shark skin-ish paint color on the lower cabinets

Love how simple this one is.  The white on white is amazing.  I have this now and they are actually pretty hard to keep clean so I dont think i will do the all white even though it makes my mouth water.

GREAT concrete counter tops, great hardware, beautiful backsplash.

Speaking of countertops… I’m leaning toward concrete today.  These things change daily, but as of now, I am really digging them.  They are earthy and natural, but still modern, sophisticated, and able to do great sharp edges.  I would not want to stain them, but rather do a polished finish.  Check out the photos.  The integrated sinks are fantastic.

I am drooling all over my keyboard.  This house just moved into first place on my list of “Most Beautiful Homes On The Planet.”  I accidentally found it while doing some design research and have been meaning to share the love.  For those of you who know me- very few things leave me speechless, but this one did.  It is absolutely the most beautiful home I can imagine.  It stopped me dead in my tracks.  I really love the modern clean forms, but the materials are so warm that it really does not appear cold or untouchable.  The only problem I see is that in the bedroom there is no place for Kyle to nail his lunar fish tracking calendar.  I guess that would have to stay in his office dang!  Here is the text from the site that showcased the home.  It is for sale, by the way, and located in Australia.

“Lifestyle an architectural icon created by Ian Moore, this spectacular residence completed in 2006 exudes elegance, style and sophistication. Encompassing every possible luxury and enjoying panoramic views of middle harbour to the heads, it is positioned only moments to exclusive Balmoral Beach.

For further information please contact Kingsley Yates on 0411 875 017.”