Happy Monday! What are you loving today?

Yes Happy Monday :)

I've got a new job and it totally rocks. I'm not doing anything profound or decidedly ambitious. I work at a natural foods market in the produce section. And every time someone asks me how work was, I can't help but smile and say, "I really like my job."

I really like the organic, whole attitude of natural grocery stores. I worked at Community Natural Foods in Calgary for a summer and I absolutely adored it there. I was in bulk so again I was doing stuff with a lot of heavy lifting. But those kind of places just attract a very cool kind of person. They also attract a self-righteous, picky kind of person but for the most part, they are just people who want to nourish the planet while nourishing their bodies, and want to play an educated part in the whole farm to plate process. I'm learning a lot and I have this brand-new, harkening-to-a-past-positivity excitement about it. I work with great people and a lot of the customers who come in are really sweet too. And I get to eat fresh fruit ALL DAY.

So one of my favorite blogs, Bluebird Baby, does this on her blog every once in a while and I think it is so cool. She posts a whole bunch of links that caught her eye that she thinks are great.

• I love these gloves but I think they are slightly beyond my skill set presently. I want to try them out. I tried these gloves but they didn't turn out because my hook was the wrong size :( I am an ambitious and persistent crocheter.
• I love this belt. I love this whole shop actually.
• And these :)
• This is soooooo delicious. Matt and I will make a hugeness batch of quinoa so that we can have it a couple times a week. You can improvise with the toppings but the toasted nuts are a must.
• The way she does this song is so cool. This Dutch person I work with said that they have a saying that says, "Better nicely stolen than poorly come up with." This song straight up. She has another song called, "Belly up". Such a lovely husky, delicate voice.
• Another lovely delicate voice is Priscilla Ahn. My favorite song by her is called "Rain", but this song "Willow" is great.
• I love this blog! I posted the "Mulligan" post earlier and he reliably comes up with such truly awesome things!
• I want to learn how to do this!
• Poppytalk is a cute blog too. And she also does "link-posts". But she posted these beautiful necklaces. And I happen to know that I have a very talented sister who could totally do something like this. Something like this for me!

That's the fun stuff!

Bri

'Why do you set aside time to remember Christ? Because we need to set aside time to remember Christ."

I feel so at home.

Matt and I were commenting, as we walked in the rain, how settled we feel already here. We went to the AWESOME church this morning that we got connected with here through our friends Scott and Jolee and as soon as I stepped in the killer doors (they have a campus right on Granville Island), I just felt so energized. God really moves my spirit through that place. There are some aspects to it that I don't maybe agree with but I really feel that this is where the Lord wants us right now. When the Lord confronts me with those issues, then I will work through what I'm going to do with how I feel about that. But talking with Scott and Jo today, they said that they don't agree with everything either. You don't enter into community with people because you agree with everything they do. You do it because you are nurtured and find peace in the Lord in that community.

But man, today was so fun! Having people to hang out with, to have a church to go to, it is so what we need. Talking to Mama D last night, she told me about the same period in the early years of their marriage where they were still in school and having friends to really root into and enjoy during that period. I agree with her, it's a totally magical thing :)

Scott will say, "Norm threw it down this morning" which is always funny to me but it's very true. They've been moving through 1st Samuel for a couple of months now. Both of the times that Matt and I went to Van to visit and Scott and Jo took us to church with them, Norm was moving through 1st Samuel. But I would definitely say he threw it down this morning. I can't even really say how but he always teaches directly from the bible and I've never experienced anyone do that. And so it always feels really rich and grounded in the Word.

He mentioned an article he found but I will have to see if I can find it. It was this guy referencing a verse in Job:

"When you say to someone, 'the Lord is capable of so many miracles,' and they said, 'Like what', would you say, 'Like rain."

He went on to simply explain all of the specific, scientific details that have to be present in order for the plains to get water. Threw it down. For sure. All of the messages you can download on their website. I download message podcasts like there's no tomorrow. Revolution Church, Mars Hill, Unedited Spirituality. We are so blessed.

Vanny and Raven Hope

MMMMmmmmmmmmboy. That was quite a couple days.

Monday was so great. High spirits, made the ferry when we didn't think we would. Lovely Hannah rescued my water bottle for me and delivered it by hand. Ran into Christina and Johannes (also so lovely) AGAIN because they are our dopplegangers (I guess). Drove into Van on a cool but beautiful day, singing along with Foreigner and John Mellencamp, sights set on Ikea.

And then I bought the wrong map.

So, we missed our turn off but we had a map (after I got the right one) but there was another 'major roadway' coming up. Maps should really be selective about what is in fact a 'major roadway'. Ours wasn't. Not in my opinion, anyways. And that's what's really important in this story. So we continued along the roadway and then we got...kind of lost. EVEN WITH A MAP! It's absurd. Anways. Totally not the only absurd thing in this story.

So we somehow got off the bridge and got situated in Coquitlam where we encountered the WORST DRIVERS IN THE WORLD. Somehow not aware of the term 'blind spot'. So sad. And Coquitlam is also the land of the vertical climb. And this is a very bad thing in a uhaul. So as we achieve 500 ft above sea level in a couple of meters and boxes topple over in the back, we then realize that there is an irritating median between us and the road we need. And this happens a couple of times. And then I ask "what's burning?' and my husband calmly replies, "It's us." Oh sure. Just the tires, thankfully. Just! We finally catch a break onto the road, ignoring the smoking rubber smell and drive into New Westminster.

By this time my perfectly well-intentioned hydration habit is catching up to me and when I see the next traffic jam, I decided I can't...quite. So I pee on the side of the road and we're off again. Finally, the big blue and yellow comes into view. We were both about ready to throw someone through a plate glass window and we weren't even in Ikea yet. We grabbed what we needed in there and got out as fast as possible. Luckily, the Trans-Canada was right there. We sped along it and missed the turn off which led us right into North Van.

No kidding.

So we pulled over into a parking lot, took a deep breath, fixed our resolve and turned around. I'm obviously not a very good co-pilot. When we finally got into Mount Pleasant (which has been plunderously changed for the Olympics, we ran into more irritating median trouble. After screaming at the windshield, we turned down one of the narrow-like-a-bronchiole streets, clipped a mirror and finally pulled over in front of Scott and Jo's. While Scott and Matt when to see whether it was a mirror or a small person, I told Jo about our day.

And then Lovely Jo aks, "What were you doing in New West?" which was exactly what I needed to make me laugh finally. They made us delicious dinner, we went for a relaxing walk with the dog they were watching for a week and then cratered for a nice long sleep.

Scott and Jo were brave and sweet enough to come back and help us unpack which went super smoothly. Matt and I went for a big shop at Safeway (because we left all of our refrigerated food in Victoria by accident -maybe a nice parting gift?). We called a cab because we had a small nations worth of food with us and a super nice guy named Raven Hope picked us up, gave us some great advice about shops nearby and his facebook info. "If you ever need a friend in Van," he said.

Vancouver, despite our first tour of the ENTIRE city, has been very good to us. We have a really organized landlord, really sweet neighbors and a beautiful neighborhood to grow in.

Bri

P.S I think I've mentioned this before but I'm obsessed with Glee. I make Matt sit through it with me and he really gives it an honest shot, bless his heart. Anyways, the last episode I saw had this great song on it. Go figure, I go from posting worship music to Lady Gaga covers.