Happy New Years!!!

And Happy Birthday Ives!!!

Santa Clause by Magnum in Motion

Even More Christmas Fun!

This weekend was full of tacky Christmas sweaters and other "interesting" attire! Since last weekend we laid low and missed quite a few fun parties, this was the time to make it up! Friday night we went to The Half Birthday/Tree Decorating/Dance Party/Tacky Sweater Throw Down ...OR The Slash Party. It was a great time and I'm pretty sure the hosts are thinking about making it an annual event. Thanks to Maripat for the early Christmas gifts of bubble lights! They look great on our tree!On Saturday we met for brunch with my good friend Mia at one of our favs, Busboys and Poets. They have great brunch on the weekends and are known for an eclectic mix of food including a banana and honey panini.

Saturday night we went with friends to The Costume Christmas Party and had another fun night out. Turns out one of Leslie's best friends from Kanakuk (summer camp) lived at the house so it was fun to catch up!

All Things of God are Good, Not Easy

Thank you for the encouragement and prayers! Over this last week I have come to the realization that God is not drama-free and neither is pursuing Him. I was recently thinking about the Christmas story. I know I take it for granted that Christ was born in Bethlehem in a stable. But when I think more about the story...the realization of it, it is interesting to ponder.

First, an Angel of the Lord came to Mary telling her she was going to give birth to the Son of God. Amazing, but Joseph was not there. In fact, upon learning of her pregnancy, he was getting ready to privately "divorce" her until an angel appeared to him. Then there was the census and I'm pretty sure that traveling to Bethlehem very pregnant and on a donkey was not the same as loading up the car for a road trip. And then they arrive at Bethlehem to have nothing available to them except a stable. I can only image that Joseph was thinking "Please Lord, we are having Your child and we really need a nice, clean place to stay." But God had another plan....that included His Son being born in the lowest of the low. Not exactly a earthly king's birth.

And yet, even through all that hardship, it was perfect! Exactly what God planned. And I love the fact that even in the midst of this battle, upon Christ's birth, the heavens bursts in praise and song: Glory to God on the Highest and On Earth Peace, Goodwill to Men!

Christmas Fun!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Blessings and Disappointments

So I've decided that I am not a "good" blogger. I procrastinate and then have to catch up. I don't write little cute entries, I wait and write novels that I am surprised anyone would read all the way through. So with all of this in mind I will try to be brief in this entry and break it out a little more.

The last month has been a whirlwind of blessings and disappointments. While working the campaign I realized I was feeling a little funny, but thought it was nothing more that working super crazy hours and my body responding to stress. Turns out, after a little test, that I found out I was pregnant. Wow! Not what we were expecting! In fact, I seriously had to do some research to see how far along I was...that's how busy things were working for McCain-Palin!

John Mark's company was in open enrollment so we put me on his insurance asap. We had a wait a bit for the insurance to kick in so on December 2, at which I was 11 weeks we had our first doctor's appointment. Long story short...there was no heartbeat. I was sent to all kinds of imaging places and numerous appointments for the same conclusion, we had miscarried at almost 7 weeks, but my body was holding on to everything. Medically it is called a "missed abortion." So my treatment options were surgery or tablets to induce contractions. I choose the tablets and JM was able to work from home the following Monday to make sure I was ok. It was a sweet time of grieving together, but unfortunately the pills were not effective. Back to the doctor's office where they decided to schedule me for a D&C surgery the next day.

Thankfully, my sister Leslie was already scheduled to come into town since we won't get to see each other this Christmas holiday. It should also be mentioned that Leslie is an Emergency Department nurse so I was in extra good hands and JM could save his vacation days for Christmas. Leslie and I were up Thursday night chatting online with my sister Ivey who decided she wanted to join us. So, in true Ivey spirit, she bought a plane ticket that night, flew in Friday morning and took a cab to the hospital, and arrived about 20 minutes before I was wheeled into the OR. The doctors were pretty impressed and confused at her arrival...Ivey is 32 weeks pregnant and just walked on in with her suitcases.

Nothing like your sisters cracking you up before surgery :)

I was told my procedure went well and am very thankful for the support of my sisters. This last weekend we laid low...I promised them DC is usually alot more fun! But we did get to take advantage of Georgetown Cupcake and frozen greek yogurt from Sweet Green so we were all happy! I am still recovering and taking it slowly. JM and I are going through bouts of mourning and then being fine...it's kind of unpredictable at this point. We are not sure what the future holds for us, but are taking comfort that God is good and has an amazing plan for us. I am hoping to hear about a job I interviewed for soon, but above all, am praying God's will for us right now.

Working the Campaign

While other bloggers may shy away from their favorite candidate, there is no hiding my amazing opportunity to work for McCain-Palin 2008 for the past two months. Living in DC, the political opportunities are endless! I think it almost comical that good friends of mine are having dinner with #3 in the country this week (Bush- #1, Cheney- #2, this guy-#3) or that one of the guys in JM and my small group is Secret Service. No, this is not to brag, this is simply what living in DC is like. Unlike other big cities that have their society pages, in DC you never know just how cool of a neighbor you could have.

So back to working the campaign. I thought this would be one of those once in a lifetime opportunities where I could really jump in. Just finishing law school, sans job, sans kids- perfect! My friend Erica sent some emails for me which ended up with me in campaign headquarters one Monday morning. I was told there was a 25% chance would be working in legal, but that I needed to do my time on the volunteer floor making phone calls, etc. Well, my first day I was trained on the phone system and about to make my first call when I was approached by Lee, an attorney in Election Day Operations. So that 25% chance turned into a 100% surety in the first day.

My first order of business was recruiting lawyers to be deployed into battle ground states. This was no easy task. We called about 7,000 attorneys total and thankfully got a great team together. I balanced this with doing election law research so that the attorneys could be briefed when they arrived to these other states.

As the time at the campaign went by, I met the greatest people. It is a very cool experience to be with such a group of like-minded people working so hard to accomplish the same goal in very different ways. As the time went on, lots of people were deployed from headquarters into certain targeted states. I ended up working with three other women and in charge of half of our deploys. It was crazy to say the least! When you are receiving 100+ emails a day from type A personalities, just keeping on top of things was the most we could accomplish in a day. Thankfully we had wonderful volunteers that made life easier!

As election day grew near, I assumed I would be in town to work the DC National Response Center. However, I had volunteered to take video footage of voter fraud in Virginia. Overnight, that turned into me leading a Media Team for all of OH, and oh yea, I needed to leave today. So the weekend before election day, I flew into Columbus, OH and was there with the State Heads of OH, coordinating with the different counties to have media teams ready to go. On Monday, I drove up to Cleveland, OH and met up with the Heads of that county. We had great media people in Cleveland, so it was a pleasure to work with them.

On election day, I was ready to go in the car with my camera guy at 5:30am. Our footage was only ok, but later that say we got some amazing video of voter fraud and some serious violations (that even made AP jealous). By 10:30am, I could not believe we had been working for 5 hours and it was only the middle of the morning. The thing I enjoyed the most about the media team- PRESS PASSES!!!!! Those suckers are awesome! Forget rules or line or "no photography or videos." None of that applies when you are with the press! It is an all access pass to getting the footage you want! By 10:30pm, I finally had uploaded the last of the video footage and was absolutely exhausted. I stayed up in time to see McCain and Palin concede and fell asleep about half way through Obama's speech. Pulling four hours of sleep for the last week left me exhausted, but satisfied that I had given it my all.

So all in all, I am sad that McCain will not be my president for the next four years, but very happy that I was blessed with the opportunity to work for such a great man. I think the future holds lots of hopeful anticipation and I am curious to where God will lead us as a country.