Heaven on Earth

I really think I have found heaven on earth, or at least I sincerely hope that when Christ returns and we are made new as part of the new heavens and the new earth it looks a little something like this...

My Hunka Hunka Burning Love and I have gone from 0 - 60 in 3.7 seconds. The summer was absolutely wonderful. He was working at the U.S. Attorney's office here in town, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. and after 5, he was all mine. No reading and law school work from 6 p.m. - 1 a.m. We fell asleep most nights together, we spent good time with great friends, we went to the beach... twice. It was simply splendid. However, then came interviewing with law firms for next summer, 2015 (already, geesh! He only finished this summer's internship 2 weeks ago). We have had 2 weeks of interviews here at the law school followed by 3 weeks traveling to the firms for callback interviews.

For all those asking, "Where?!?!?!" - Washington, D.C., Richmond, Birmingham, Atlanta and Charlotte. You'll have to stay posted to see what we decide.

All this to say, we are fully back in the swing of things and running 90 miles a minute. This past weekend we wanted to go to a B&B for a little QT before he was out of town, again, this week and next. Just some time to sit and be with each other before we said an official goodbye to summer and hello to the craziness. All in all, we decided the B&B was too expensive and too much of a hassle, so we called on our dear friends J&E.

J&E are some of our favorite older wiser friends. They graciously and so generously opened their home to us and allowed us the opportunity to get out of Cville and settle our hearts and minds the way we were hoping. When I asked my HHBL if there was anything he'd like to add about J&E he responded, "coolest cats this side of the Mississippi!" I Yi Yi - he's nuts! 

I think I sat in this position from about 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. I took a little nap, read my book, snuggled my HHBL and (emphasis specifically inserted for J&E's pleasure. They seem to think I say "and" funny when I'm telling stories) still found time to take a break for a little lunch of grilled cheese with fresh tomatoes from their garden with a side of raspberries and mangoes - YUMM!!

Who doesn't love a little Calvin and Hobbes on Sunday morning?

If I had to describe my favorite place to feel at home one of the hands down contenders for first place would be their house, sitting on the porch, overlooking the vineyard. One of the only other places that really comes close would be the sofa in the sunroom at my parents' house, gazing out the window into our backyard. 

Our backyard wasn't one of those lush, green yards with lots or room to throw the baseball, but it's home. Now a days, typically at Thanksgiving or Christmas, you can occasionally look out the window and see my oldest brother (35 yrs old, 6' 7", 260ish lbs) sitting in his childhood tree fort, bow and arrow in hand, trying to shoot a deer.

Sorry, the only picture I had of my backyard was from fall 2008, I was living in NOLA and missed home, so my mom took several pictures of the changing leaves in our neighborhood to bring me a little consolation.

I don't know what it is, but I just eat up the juxtaposition of the manicured grape vines, the groomed pasture with grazing cows, to the complete ruggedness of those Blue Ridge Mountains. Maybe I just have a thing for staring out into the wilderness and getting lost in the infinity of the Lord's creation and even attempting to grasp how much creativity, joy and pleasure he takes in his creations. Food for the soul!

Shark Week!

It's one of my favorite weeks of the year... SHARK WEEK!!

If you haven't been watching, get with the program (literally, hahaha, Discovery Channel).

Thus far I have seen researchers crazy lunatics on the search to find Colossus, last seen here on Shark Week 2012 from the footage taken for Air Jaws Apocalypse.

Apparently, we can tell it's Colossus based on the notch that is missing from his dorsal fin.

Then I got to see a double feature of researchers people mentally bonkers on the search first for the legendary 38 foot great white "Submarine" - the infamous scar across his face, the dead give away that it's obviously him continuing to terrorize people. Then the 60 year old, 20 foot, hammer head in Florida "Old Hitler"/ Bahamas "Harbormaster" - could they be one and the same...?

Last night I wasn't paying much attention. I've become a little burnt out on the research for the elusive legendary blahdy blahdy shark, but of course we had it on. My Hunka Hunka Burning Love was paying only slightly more attention than I and says with total enthusiasm, "Babe, guess what's on next!" Me - "Air Jaws IIV?" My HHBL - "No... look in the top corner of the tv screen." Me - "Uhh (cue eye roll as I look up) ZOMBIE SHARKS! Are you kidding me?!?! That is soo stupid, what is the deal with zombies?" My HHBL (completely genuine) - "Babe, don't worry, they aren't real zombies." BAHAHAHAHAA, really baby?!?! They aren't real zombie sharks, whooo I'm safe!

We both just lost it laughing on the couch. Thank goodness those sharks aren't back from the dead attacking anything and everything in their wake under the sea.

Oh My Hunka Hunka Burning Love, you keep me laughing!

This is a card My HHBL gave me last year just because it was Shark Week!

Intellectuals

You know your friends are nerds intellectuals when... you have 15 great book recommendations but not a single decent movie recommendation.

Every Thursday my Hunka Hunka Burning Love and I have date night. Last night was no exception; however, we're leaving for the beach on Sunday, so we have no groceries and  my Hunka Hunka Burning Love is in law school, so we have no money. Date nights do not have to be super, uber romantic or expensive, but last night was pretty low key to the extreme. We were going to do "frozen pizza and a movie," but... we had the pizza only couldn't find a single movie we were interested in watching.

I don't know these two, stolen from google, all rights reserved.

Netflix has how many thousands of live streaming movie options and we couldn't find one? I guess since I, myself, didn't have any good movie ideas this must make me an intellectual too.

We ended up watching 2 episodes of Mad Men, which is definitely good television, but not exactly what we were going for with "pizza and a movie" date night. (A small Mad Men clip for your viewing pleasure).

Speaking of Mad Men here's a small advertisement: If you're anything like me, I have a mental list of books I want to read (that I can never fully recall) and then people ask me if I have any recommendations and I know I do, but I can't think of which books I've read, and the ones I can name I can't recall if I like it or not. For this my friends, there is a solution, goodreads.com (there's even an app)!

I joined goodreads in 2008, was active for about 2 months, not sure what happened, but I gave up on it or maybe I stopped reading. Anyways, I've just recently re-discovered it and it's wonderful. I can add all the books that are recommended to me or that I uncover on my own, when I finish a book I can rate it 1 - 5 stars, I can see other people's reviews, it links to all those ebook, kindle, downloadable book things. The best part is that I no longer have to keep a desultory, haphazard google doc, which I can't even access on my phone - dumb!

If this is an annoying predicament of yours, then you should join goodreads.com (and invite me to be your friend).

The River

"And the best part of twenty years flowed past like a quiet country river, deepening its path with time."

-The Light Between Oceans 

Isle of Palms - 2014

The beach was so wonderful!

I'm really sad to be back in the real world. I enjoy my life for sure. I'm happy, content, blessed beyond belief, but there's just something about vacation that it's never long enough.



All the Luzar ladies!

Don't tell the golf cart rental company that we had 10 in a 6 person cart... It was starting the lightning and rain.

Luckily, I got a few of the books off my list before I left. One from each library and two that my mom found at a used bookstore. I finished Beach Music by Pat Conroy - soo good! I agree with many of the reviews that the beginning half of the book is redundant and could use some chopping, but the second half of the book was just incredible - in typical Pat Conroy fashion. I don't always like his endings and I thought there was a great ending with about 60 pages remaining. But those last 60 pages were meaningful and significant, so I enjoyed the double ending.

As I say this, I can't actually remember the ending because I so quickly picked up my next book, The Light Between Ocean's by M.L. Stedman. I usually hate picking up a new book so quickly after finishing one because I find I compare authors too critically and I get the story lines confused with each other. Both of these books have supporting characters named Lucy, but one is the mother and the other is the daughter, so occasionally I have to do a check, "Wait is that the baby or the mom? - Ahh, baby, got it!" I have to say Stedman is holding her own against Conroy - and that's a hard thing to accomplish. She definitely gets to the meat on the bones much quicker (which I don't mind) - you go girl!

Really, the whole family did some reading. Unfortunately we didn't start taking pictures until day 6 of 7, but here are just a few - evidence to our love for books.

Kase is going to kill me for putting this pic up.

Even Bitty Baby did some reading at the beach.

If you don't know us Luzars very well, there's one thing you should definitely realize. We are a lot of fun, and therefore can be talked into trying a lot of stupid dare devilish things - particularly if it pertains to watersports. Here's a video of my oldest brother attempting to barefoot ski off of a tube. Later he admitted the last time he barefooted he was in the 5th grade and probably only ever went a few hundred yards. If you look closely through the spray, he really does ski for a few seconds. (Please keep in mind, he's 6'7" and about 260 lbs).

If anybody knows how to make this video bigger and clearer on the blog, please let me know!

Me, as a little tyke, learning to ski! I was about 4 in this pic.

I left out the pictures of the wipe outs to allow my family to save some face in their hometowns.

There are many perks to being married, but one is definitely that you get two summer vacations. My Hunka Hunka Burning Love and I will head off to the beach again in early August, this time to OBX with his family. I'm so grateful for a little more beach before summer is over!

Getting Antsy

This time next week I will be pacing back and forth at my desk (literally, I just got a standing desk, whoop whoop!) waiting for 5 p.m. when My Hunka Hunka Burning Love and I get in the car and head to the beach!!

I CAN'T WAIT! I love the beach. I honestly don't think I'd mind too bad if one day My Hunka Hunka Burning Love wanted to buy his family a beach house, then me and the (hypothetical) kiddos would go down for the month of June (or maybe even June, July and August) and Dad would join us on the weekends. We've been watching Mad Men lately and in one of the episodes we saw recently the women were asking, "Where are you summering this year?" I think I could handle quite nicely this notion of "summering." I'm not sure why it disappeared. Let's bring it back... PLEASE!

Oh wait, people still do this! I just spoke to a woman and she is taking her two kids up to the Jersey Shore for the entire summer - sign me up! I will admit there are many perks to marriage, but one is definitely that you get to go on two summer beach trips.

For our summer's first family vacay, we'll get to see both families. We'll make a pit stop in the Outer Banks for a day to celebrate the Fourth of July, catch some rays and watch the fireworks with these goons.



Sassy!!

Then we'll continue on to Isle of Palms, SC for some R&R craziness with these cats. I didn't realize there were multiple ways to spend time on the beach, but after spending 26, ok, ok... 28 years on beach trips with my family and a few with My Hunka Hunka Burning Love's family, we definitely do it differently (but that's another story for another day).

OBX 2011 (Tootie and Squishy weren't even thoughts yet).
We had some good eatin' this year, tuna and mahi mahi (not pictured).

OBX 2012

Tootie's first birthday, April 2013 (now insert My Hunka Hunka Burning Love).

To prep for my R&R on the beach I reached out to many a folk to compile my summer reading list (which really consists of me finding 10 books I want to read and ultimately only finishing one, two if I'm lucky).

(I have to admit I basically stole this idea of compiling my summer reading list from a dear friend, but hopefully she won't mind that I'm borrowing her fantastic idea).

• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty


• In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez


• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt


• Divergent by Veronica Roth (I was told this has a good love story)


• The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy


• Me Before You by Jojo Moyes


• Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter


• The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman


• Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

You know the books on your list are good when you have two different library accounts and every book on your list is checked out. I have access to the U.Va. libraries and My Hunka Hunka Burning Love and I just went and got our accounts at the city library too - no books to be had at either. I put my name on a list for three, I'm 10th in line for one book, 13th for another and 64th for the last. UGH! Good thing I have about another 200 pages in my current Pat Conroy novel to keep me occupied until it's my turn for any of these. I sure do hope I get one before next Thursday though, so I can have a backup with me at the beach.

Oh the beach, CAN'T WAIT!




Grounded

I'm grounded...

Ok, so I'm not really grounded for doing something wrong, but rather I'm grounding myself as a way to establish some checks and balances in life. A great man always says once said, "Life is all about space and balance."

No looking at Zillow for the month of June.

My Hunka Hunka Burning Love and I are slowly talking about places we might want to end up after he finishes law school. We've backed away from the edge of some locations, while other dark horses pull into the lead. (Don't get any ideas, we're still completely undecided). Although I love Charlottesville and our current home I must admit that the idea of another adventure still in our future makes me pretty excited.

Some people hate change, and there are a few particular things that I cringe when I hear they are changing, but for me, a new location is not one of them. After college I moved nearly 1,000 miles away from home to New Orleans, with only a handful of acquaintances there to greet me when I arrived.


The people who showed up to help move me in at my apartment in NOLA, my friends!

I have always been interested in "home" things. Growing up some of my favorite TV shows were Home Again with Bob Vila and Trading Spaces with Ty Pennington (man did I think he was hot!). My dad and The Brothers were always using power tools and making things and my special job was being "The Best Helper Ever." During several of my college summer breaks I spent time down on the Gulf Coast literally re-building houses after hurricane Katrina. One job, I was hired as the Work Site Assistant, except they didn't tell me they didn't have a Work Site Manager, so... I got an instant promotion (one I was completely not qualified for). I learned a lot that summer about drywall, roofing, floors, plumbing and electrical. If you're ever remodeling, I might be able to help.



Ty Pennington

Bob Vila

















Whatever network Bob Vila used to be on was put on steroids and has morphed into HGTV, my newest favorite channel. Why did I not know about this sooner? For a long time I've wanted to be an interior designed or stager, but there aren't exactly degrees for that, you kinda just have to know the right people in the right place to make that happen.

So here's my current predicament, how do I know when my God given passions and interests become idols or hold too much value in life? What checks and balances do I have in place to make sure that my loves are ordered appropriately and that I'm not constantly living in the future of what great things are to come rather than what great things are here right now in the present. Hence, I'm grounded from Zillow. I'm putting on the brakes to the life that is to come in two years and I'm choosing instead to embrace the tiny little home we have and the fun life we're living right now on Monday, tomorrow, then Wednesday and so forth.