chaos

Well, our world has spun out of control. Most days I'm barely hanging on but Mark and I keep reminding each other to just breathe through and thank God for each day. Don't freak. Nothing bad is happening, just an insane amount of busy. Too many balls in the air and each time I drop one, the world just shrugs and says, "that's fine. here's 3 more." Despite all this, I decided to break the silence with a random picture post. Here's a couple shots from the past few weeks and some news on what's going on.

Here is one of my new favorite dresses.

 I've decided to mock our culture and it's lack of dresses for everyday wear and I'm wearing more dresses. I love dresses. And thanks to ModCloth, one of my favorite online stores, my stock of dresses has increased without killing the bank account. This day I wore this dress to work from home and then Mark and I drove to Maryville for a lunchtime showing of Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical which was fantastic, made me actually cry and also made Mark and I giggle that we were the only ones in attendance without a child as an excuse. And yes, this dress has acorns all over it.

Next picture, Mark and I all gussied up and ready to attend the Knoxville 2011 Addy Awards.

(thanks Adam for the iPhone pic with fancy photo filter!)

If you are wondering what is in the background, we are at our church where Mark was recording for hours upon end and I joined for a couple hours to help with a particularly impressive "stomp-clap" group recording. So that pile is a drum kit covered with blankets to help separate sound, of course. More info about this to come, hopefully, but our church music team is recording an album right now. We've been practicing for about 2 months and started recording sessions. Mark is playing second guitar and I'm singing back-up vocals for many songs and lead on one. It's exciting and something we've never done before. The album is set to come out Easter week (appropriately so as it is an Easter album.) Just in case you are wondering, our group has a great folk element, a little Indelible Grace/RUF edge, and features great musicians on banjo, mandolin, electric guitar, marimba, and typical instruments such as piano, guitar, brass, strings, drums, etc…. Yes, all those together. You'll probably want to check it out.

But back to the Addy Awards. It was an exciting evening, and not just because I got to dress up which I never get to do, but because we actually won some awards! Mark got a silver for one of his web designs and I won a gold for my design for The Happy Envelope. It's my company's first gold! Here's a pic of the developer and I who worked ridiculously LONG hours on the site.

And while I'm tooting our horn, here's a program that our music team did for Christmas. It's an hour long, and has the Scripture readings and homily in the midst, but you can get a feel for our music style. You can jump around in the recording and hear great things like the children's choir belting it out. A little short of a quarter in is a dramatic Latin song that Mark plays the lead guitar on(!) and a couple songs beyond that is one of my favorite songs we do called Hail to the Lord's Annointed and I happily got to sing the lead on it with our worship pastor harmonizing. It was a really fun program to do. Mark and I created the advertising materials, which I need to take a picture of and post. We also got to perform a shortened version of it at a local venue called The Square Room.

Rosie is still quite alive and seems to be very happy with us.

She can often be found retrieving her beloved tennis ball in places like under the sofa.

Well, that's all for now from this girl. Work is calling, laundry has piled up and everything must get done before a marathon evening of singing for the Ash Wednesday service, practicing for Holy Week music, and then practicing til late for the recording session this weekend. I never thought music would be my life.