Stranded

This morning I discovered that at least 11 complete strangers have pinned one of my blog posts to their wall on Pinterest. Does that make me your hero? Because if not, this probably will:

I have been frustrated because the new headband I bought to wear during workouts is too large for my head. (I'd say that's probably a clear indication that I'm a skinny beast and therefore why am I working out?). I've had this problem with several headbands but I really wanted to wear this one because it wasn't stinky, you know, since it was new and all. 

Being the innovative thinker that I am, I cut a chunk out of it and sewed it back together.

I know right? It fits me now! Even though it slides off the top of my head when I do jumping jacks. 

#i'mmyownhero

Last weekend my awesome husband bought me a plane ticket to travel with him to the Living Proof Life event in Omaha, NE so that we could volunteer at the Compassion tables. This also meant I was able to go listen to Beth Moore speak when the tables weren't busy. #bonus. (I bet you're all thinking: "wow, she's super great at hashtags").

You'll notice I'm all about the hashtags now and I'm even using them correctly. #itotallyknowhowtouseahashtag.

Omaha is a pretty great city if I do say so myself. See. Here's the view of a car and a building from our hotel window:

In our exploration of the city as we searched for this thing we call food, we happened upon this little place:

They won cupcake wars! I could totally win cupcake wars if they just took a brief moment to look at this picture and see my reflection in the window.

P.S. I took that picture just after I received the notification that I won a Spiralizer in a FB giveaway.

 
Yeah. I bet I'm someone's hero now.

I don't ordinarily share food pictures but cupcakes aren't food. Their sweets. Big difference.

Two sweet & salty, two chocolate chip cookie dough and two chocolate.

Poor Jason didn't get any. HAHA! j/k.
Right next door to the cupcake joint was a taco place where we ate. The restaurant has shiplap! I know shiplap because I'm now an avid fan of Fixer Upper. I'll probably shiplap my car. So.

We quickly made our way to the Baxter Arena to man our table.

Compassion hadn't been presented just yet, so the table was free and I was able to go listen for a bit. 
Travis Cottrell leads worship at all of Beth Moore's Living Proof Live events. They sang one of my favorite songs that he sings (he didn't write it, but I first heard of the song by the recording he has of it) I like it so much in fact, that I blogged about it years ago. 

I'll share my one regret. When I first walked in as the night was kicking off, there was a message on the 2 main screens at the front with a phone number. Then I heard someone announcing something along the lines that "if you have a birthday this month, you can text this number with your question". I jumped up and down in glee and yelled at anyone who would listen: "my birthday is next week!" And then I grabbed my phone and the message was no longer on the screen. I kept thinking, ask what kind of questions? As it turns out, the following day Beth asked several people to come stand by her while she read their questions out loud and responded to them. One ladie's question was "can I have a selfie with you". Awwww. I missed it!!

4,500 people in attendance. That's how many people come to my birthday parties.

I absolutely loved the message she presented (the parts that I got to hear). The theme was growing up in the faith. As opposed to throwing up in the faith. Just kidding. I added the throwing up part. The whole point was to grow up and live for Jesus. For whatever reason, this verse she focused on (which I've heard a million times) the second day really gripped my heart.
Ephesians 5:1 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
The words "dearly loved children"... they can fly right past you when you are familiar with hearing them. But after she read them she asked "how do children act that don't know they are loved?" 
You know, insecure children have the tendency to act out in the worst way. But dearly loved children? (loved. not spoiled.) how do they act? You tell me. I love comments.

Of course since I didn't get to meet Beth I had to settle for Travis.

The conference ended at 12:30 on Saturday afternoon so Jason and I had the rest of the day to find something to do. We had lunch with the Jason's friend David  (the Compassion independent contractor for this event). We had Thai food. Because I know you wondered.
Then Jason and I walked around the Old Market District, which has wonderfully old and historic buildings and cobblestone streets.
You know my love for old buildings. That being said, if I were a squatter, I'd squat here. 

We ate dinner (I had fish and chips and not an Omaha steak because I can't remember why, and Jason kept feeding the birds french fries).  Then the rest of the evening I continued reading and then finished "Miracles From Heaven" an excellent book and must read for everyone! I had never heard of it and didn't know it was even made into a movie until I won the sweepstakes on Twitter. I highly recommend winning sweepstakes. It's fun.

2 weeks before we even left for Omaha Jason fretted about the weather. Rumors were spreading about a big winter storm headed to our area the weekend we were traveling and it's hard for Jason to function when rumors like that are circulating. As it turns out, on Saturday tons of flights in and out of Denver were cancelled so it was looking like there was a good chance we wouldn't make it home. To make matters worse, our connection from Omaha to Dallas was being threatened by thunderstorms. 
We got up early Sunday morning and boarded our flight for Dallas which did in fact get hit by thunderstorms. As a result, we were put in a holding pattern until our captain told us the holding pattern was going to last at least 2 hours and we didn't have the fuel to go in circles that long (my paraphrase). So I went up and told the captain it was fine with me if he just skipped Dallas altogether and took us on to Denver or possibly Barbados but he pretended he didn't hear me.We got diverted to Amarillo and landed. As we sat on the tarmac Jason made some calls to find out if our flight going from Dallas to Denver was even going to leave. It was. So we sat and waited. After an hour, we started worrying that we weren't going to make our Dallas connection so we had a brief discussion about ditching, renting a car and driving the 5 1/2 hours home. Jason called and reserved a rental car just in case.
We told the flight attendants our plans and were told and then untold that we were allowed to get off the plane. Actually the flight attendants were having a rather heated discussion with the ground crew who came on board about getting us stairs and how the captain wouldn't allow us out of the back of the plane because he had to keep the left engine on and back and forth they went. So we sat there. Waiting. And Waiting. And Jason and I both wondered "how can the ground crew get on and off the plane but we can't?"
 After we sat for 2 hours we were notified that the Federal Regulations stated they were required to let us off the plane once we hit 3 hours. We knew there was no hope of making our Denver connection and when Jason called the airline they told him that there was no way they could get us home until Tuesday due to all the previous flights in and out of Denver that had been cancelled. That's when we made our final decision to drive home. But they wouldn't let us off the plane!
So I snuck through the cargo hold. 
No I didn't. 
They finally got stairs hooked up to the front of the plane and let Jason and I off (we were the only two who got off the plane).
We had to be escorted by a fireman in the airport firetruck and in all the excitement I got a picture of my nose and my hand reaching to get my suitcase.

We were in a hurry and I couldn't even stop long enough to get a picture of the entire truck.

But I did rather excitedly force Jason to take a selfie with me real quick after we sat down inside even though you can't even tell where we were.

As we started toward the airport, Jason got his iPhone headphones twisted around his seat belt so he unbuckled to release them. This stopped the engine. That is no lie. The fireman looked back at us and Jason just kind of stared at him like what is going on and I'm yelling "Jason buck your seat belt!" He quickly refastened his seat belt and the fireman was very nice about the whole thing and then I took a picture of our forlorn airplane as we passed by. 

We got our rental car (with about 5 minutes left before the rental car company closed) and drove home. 
The End.