First Love

Hey,

So, since I've been back on here, I was, I don't know, for some reason not entirely connecting with my title, "Still Growin'". I still liked it, but I wasn't quite in that place anymore where it was me. I mean, obviously, I'm still growing--in Christ, anyway, but...that's beside the point.

I decided to change my title, to "First Love". I've always loved to say, "Jesus is my first Love", it's always been one of the titles for Him that's been really close to my heart personally. Because, He is. I mean, basically, He invented love. And He loved us FIRST. Our love for God is simply a response to His love for us, which is perfect and amazing and completely unfathomable to our small and simple minds. His love for us is SO great, we cannot even imagine how MUCH and how COMPLETELY He loves us.

And yet, so many people have turned away from Him, from their first Love. Even in the fullness and perfection of His great love for us, we turn away, in search of something better. When, in reality, we have the best that there is, right in front of us. What modern humanity brushes off as a fairy tale is really the only True Love in existence. He IS our first, and only, and true Lover.

Everybody always says, "Someday my prince will come." But what they don't realize is that our Prince has already arrived. He is there, waiting for us to open our eyes and see Him, and to accept Him, when He has been sitting there watching us the whole time. He hasn't come...He has been. He has always been. And He was. And He IS. He is a relentless Lover...my Relentless Lover. He came for the world, but He came for the individual. He came for me.

SOOOO, anywho...that turned out significantly longer than was my original intent, but...I basically just mean that it was kind of a reminder for me...that Jesus, and only Jesus, is my first Love. And that I never need to leave Him, because there is no one else on earth that is better than Him. I guess sometimes I get caught up in the material...because His love is so great, it's seems almost unreal. But really it's the most real thing I know, and I need to remember that.

♥♥♥Caitie

Update, sort of

So, I'm back, finally. I won't even attempt to cover everything that's happened in the past 3 months.

A couple weeks ago, our cousins were here from Missouri. We took them to Monterey and Yosemite, and geocaching around Turlock. I'll put up some pics from when they were here.

Steven with my daddy--Dad was showing Steven how to use the GPS

Sarah and Paigie

This is us eating Thrifty's ice cream cones in front of Rite Aid.

Here's Fish playing with some chain mail--Steven made it.

Now here's pics of us in Sand City and Monterey on Thursday.

All of us except Mamma, in Sand City. We stopped at this beach, and spent several hours here. From left (vaguely) is: Steve, Steven, me, Bailey, Libby, Sam, Sarah, Paige, Erin, Ainsley, Donna, Laine, Fish and Daddy

Most of us kids getting into the ocean. It was FREEZING!!!

Mamma told us to do this...everyone was slightly squished under other people's arms...lol! So much for posing...it's a cute picture, though, I thought.

From left: Sam, Paige, Libby, Bailey, Sarah, me, Steven, Erin

Us...still in Sand City...we buried Steven almost up to his waist in sand. (ok, it was about a foot from his waist, but...)You can't really see it but you can see how tall every one is compared to him, because we dug about a 2 or 3 foot hole that he was standing in.

All of us in Monterey...right after lunch. We were getting ready to go down to a small beach with really calm, shallow water and a bunch of rock and tidepool areas.

Steven & I looking at a hermit crab we found in a tidepool. We were trying to get it to come out of its shell and walk around but it was a little shy...lol. =]

Steven, Donna and me...we had found this really cute little purple sea urchin. We decided on not touching it, lol...we weren't sure if it would stick us. I don't think we have a pic of it cuz none of us had a camera handy. My dad yelled so we would look up for the pic. =] I believe at this time we were also trying to see if an anenemone would eat a small fish. It didn't. Apparently the anenemones are cool with all the small animals (fish, hermit crabs, etc) that chill in the tidepools because they were letting them walk all over them.

My daddy's cousin Calvin was with us, taking pics. He told us not to look directly at him, so we're looking in a multitude of different directions. Still, I think everyone at least has their eyes open and their head up, which is a feat considering the number of people and small children involved.

The 3 littlest girls: Erin, Lainee + Ainsley

I don't have any pics of it, but Thursday night after we got home from Monterey, Anne, Hayden and their parents came over. (Were Granny and Grandad there too? my mind is going blank) Anyway, they came over, it was right after Hayden's graduation, so they hadn't eaten dinner. They wanted to stay awhile, so Anne, Hayden, Steven and I took off to go get some food. Hayden wanted KFC, and Anne was trying to talk him out of it, since she didn't want to go over there. She was trying to convince him that he really wanted In-N-Out. Hayden wasn't convinced, but all the sudden I had an epiffany...we hadn't taken Steven to In-N-Out yet!!! He's been to Cali once or twice before and got away without having In-N-Out, so of course Anne, Hayden and I took it upon ourselves to remedy this situation. We speedily made for In-N-Out, Hayden telling Steven jokes the whole time. Annie and I tried to stop him, but as the oldness of his jokes can't be helped, we made the most of them. One of his jokes triggered a long trail of movie quotes, and Annie and I sat in the In-N-Out drive-thru quoting movies like crazy, one leading to another. It was hilarious! I think we might have scared Steven...jk, of course. It was fun though....oh, and we did get Hayden his KFC. And, (oops) forgot entirely to get anything for poor Uncle Dave to eat...

Now here's pics from Yosemite on Friday.

I normally can't stand pics without people in them but this one is amazing. My mum took it.

I believe this is Bridalveil Falls from a distance. But I could be wrong. We have so many pictures of waterfalls that I'm not entirely positive which is which. They all look the same to me. =)

Sam, Sarah, Paige, Lib and Bailey at the top of the trail leading up to Bridalveil. It was sooo wet, at first Steven and I didn't want to go up. We did a couple minutes later though.

Me, Steven + Steve at the top of the trail.

Me and Steven. We were soaked!!! I think we got even more wet because we ran all the way up to the top. It was fun! (but so much for having straight hair the rest of the day, lol... =D...)

This is right before they were leaving, so no one looks too happy or joyous or any of that sort of thing. We were all close to crying, so...you know. Anyways...

We had so much fun while they were here though! I'll post again with some other stuff too, on other stuff we've done the past few weeks.

Oh! Here's another pic...I just found it and it made me laugh at my own silliness...

We had waded out to this little outcropping of rocks to see if there was anything cool out there (starfish, etc). There weren't any starfish but there were other things. In any event, in this picture, we were on our way back to the beach, and the rocks where we had left our things, and I spotted some strange "plant". I was really proud of myself for finding it, and I was like, "Hey, Steven come look at this!...I'm not sure what it is..." So he comes over, looks at it for a second...picks it up...(it was a big flat orange thing, with little serrated teeth all around the edges, sort of ovalish...) anyway, Steven picks it up, and it's a piece of a crab. Oh...hahaha! I felt so dumb. =] (We had been finding pieces of crab all day...for clarity. It was nothing unusual.) Anyway, thought I'd share that... =) It made me laugh, anyway, even though it probly wasn't really that funny. Ok, I'm done for now.

I'm Back!!!!

SOOOOOOO, I'm finally back on here! It's been a while.
Tip of the Week: don't do stupid things online without asking your daddy first and you won't get grounded from the computer! I learned that the harder way of the two. Trust me. That's why I haven't been on here for 3+ months...But now I'm back, so I have some catching up to do, I guess. I'll do that in another post.