Kley's birthday celebration weekend!

Even though Kley's birthday was in October, this weekend was the big celebration! My parents gave Kley dinner at Fogo (his favorite restaurant) and tickets to the John Mayer concert! So we headed up to Minneapolis for the day/night. 

It was really awesome! We had a great weekend. First, we met my brother at Fogo. If you have never been there, it's an experience (an expensive experience), but Kley LOVES it. It's meat heaven for him. If you've never been to a Brazilian steakhouse, it's basically men walking around with gigantic skewers of all different cuts of meat, and you can try whatever cut and however much you'd like. It's pretty insane, but a great place for Kley's meat love. :)

He was pretty pumped, if you can't tell.

There is bad window glare, but you can see the meat turning on the skewers. 

Each person gets one of these- turn it to red if you are eating or full, and turn it to green if you want meat!

Salad bar trip. They have an intense salad bar also!

(They had heart of palm in the salad bar. Do any of you know what that is? I didn't, and I should have tried it. It's a vegetable harvested from the inner core or growing bud of certain palm trees, according to google.)

Kley and my brother, Keaton. 

Kley and I.

Then we headed to the concert! Phillip Phillips opened. 

John Mayer! This was such a good concert, and great that we both like him, so we both loved it! Kley had always wanted to see him, so this was an awesome birthday present! It was a great show.

We also had amazing seats- best we've ever had at a concert by far! Thanks, Mom and Dad!

He sang so many great songs, but this was the backdrop for Olivia- makes me wish my name was Olivia! :)

Encore at the end was Gravity.

We stayed the night at the Downtown Marriott, and I had Kley's best friend and wife, David and Jacquie, surprise him at the hotel this morning for breakfast. He was very surprised, and it was so good to see them!

It was a GREAT mini trip! :)

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Tree Lighting.

My dad and I love Christmas. Not that the rest of my family doesn't, but my dad and I love it the most and are all for celebrating early, including listening to lots of Christmas music way before it's deemed socially appropriate. :) (106.3 in Des Moines has been playing non-stop Christmas music since November 1 this year, and it's been awesome!) So, when I heard about the tree lighting at the mall, we had to go. 

Before we went, I hadn't heard of this before, and was wondering how I could have possibly missed something so great related to Christmas. Unfortunately, I think I built up the event a tad too much in my head. It wasn't as great as I was expecting, but I'm still glad we were able to go. (It didn't help that it was only a balmy 19 degrees outside either.)

First they had a band play Christmas music. They were from Des Moines, called Decor. They were okay- more rock than we would have hoped without much singing. We watched them for a little bit, then headed into the mall to warm up.

Kayla and Dad enjoying the musical stylings of Decor. They requested a picture and this is what I got. (Mom had already headed in to warm up. She lasted maybe five minutes.)

I must say, the end of the event was much better, and worth waiting for. (If you're going to go next year, you could just go for the last 10 minutes!) They had fireworks and lit up the big Christmas tree. They first had one firework shooting right to the tree from across the lake, and when it "hit" it the lights went on. (Dad thought it was a misguided firework. Ha.) Then they had a bunch of fireworks after that, which were really good!

Tree.

Then my battery died at the end, so I didn't get many good firework pictures. Kley had to miss out because he was working, but he came to dinner afterwards. 

Merry Christmas- start celebrating now! :)

My blog is famous!

Last week I was contacted by someone at Dwellable. Ever heard of it? (I hadn't before she emailed me.)

It's a site people can go to if they are planning a vacation. You can check out reviews of places all over, complete with pictures, maps, blog posts, etc.

"Vacation rentals and reviews with photos, maps, and more. Where do you want to go?"

Remember in July when we visited Beaver Creek, CO with Kley's family? You can check out each day of our vacation there here. The person from Dwellable specifically contacted me about my Day 6 post of our vacation. She asked me if she could feature my blog post on their site, for anyone looking for a review of Beaver Creek.

I said sure! So, now my blog is famous.

Check it out here (my day 6 post- I blogged every day of our vacation). This is a link to my blog post- at the bottom there is a Dwellable button that connects you to the site.

I was impressed they found me, and thought my post was good enough to feature!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

The De Jong household is ready for Christmas! It's only November 16th, you say? Oh well. I say it's better to decorate early and enjoy it longer- Christmas is the best! (Also, weekends are the best.)

Tree.

Window clings. (The teacher in me can't resist buying these.)

Stockings with our names! We got these as a wedding gift, and it was one of my favorite gifts, because it's so meaningful, you will use it every year, and you'd never think to register for stockings.

Nativity scene. I love this, and I just completed it last year when my mom gave me the ox and goat. :)

This was another one of my favorite wedding gifts. When I was 12, my family went on a mission trip to Ecuador with other families from our Church. It was a very meaningful trip and impacted my life a lot, so when one of the families gave me this Ecuadorian nativity scene for our wedding, I loved it very much.

This is from my mother-in-law (one of the many super cute things she has given me over the years.)

Snowman/star stand and berries under the candle.

Door wreath.

Merry (very early) Christmas! Enjoy your decorating!

Song and verse of the week.

This is the song and the verse that have impacted me most this week:

Acts 11:19-20- ¹¹ God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, ¹² so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. (How cool is that? Even a HANDKERCHIEF that Paul touched healed people!)


How He Loves- David Crowder

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

And oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves us all

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

Oh, how He loves, yeah, He loves us
Oh, how He loves us, oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves

And we are His portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking

And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way

Oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves all
How He loves

Yeah, He loves us, oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves us, oh how He loves
Oh, I love

Yeah, He loves us, yeah, He loves us
How He loves us, oh, how He loves us all

Highlights.

This week was busy...we were home Sunday and Thursday night. Which some would say is enough, but that's really busy for us. We also had a law school scare for a few days, thinking Kley wouldn't graduate as planned, but thankfully that fire is simmering and he is still going to graduate. Needless to say, it was a worrisome couple days. Thank you, Lord, for being the ultimate planner, for providing, and for caring for us. 2014 is going to be a big year for us! Help us to trust You, God, and seek You.

But...I wanted to share the highlights for the week.

Since my job does four 10 hour days, I don't work on Tuesdays. I was able to go out for lunch with my parents and then go Christmas shopping with my mom. It was awesome, and I will treasure that memory. Not only do I not get much time with my parents, or just my mom, alone, but I treasure it even more since we will not always live close together. It was a great afternoon.

Friday night was also really awesome. We had a bunch of friends over from our small group, and we just hung out, ate, talked, fellowshipped, and played games. We felt very full in all senses of the word, physically (yummy food!), literally (our apartment was crammed!), emotionally (great fellowship and laughter!), spiritually (friends are such a blessing!), etc. It was a wonderful night.

Thank you, Lord, for highlights.

Touching Proposal.

I saw this video the other day of someone proposing to his girlfriend, and wow, did he do a good job!

It's a little big long (7-8 minutes), but so good. He put so much thought into it and it's so meaningful!

Watch here.

(Kley, not that you didn't do a good job! You can read our engagement story here.)