So This Is Christmas...

Hey y'all!! Deek and I have been crazy busy, so the blog is a little lacking. I got a last minute, end-of-the-year editing project, and I'm been heads down focusing on that amidst the normal Christmas fray. Meanwhile, Deek has bee busy editing my still nameless Molly and Ryder story!

But I'm happy to report that we are completely done with our Christmas shopping (and came in *under* budget--YAY Dave Ramsey)! So, now we can relax and enjoy the holiday festivities until the Big Day arrives.

We went on a holiday lights tour and had a blast!

This will be my first Christmas without PaPa, and I must admit, I'm having trouble getting into the jolliness of the season. See, not only is PaPa gone but things are changing because of it. Our annual family Christmas Day gathering will be no more. Thanksgiving and Easter will be at someone else's house, if they continue at all. All these traditions which so defined my childhood, my life, are slipping away. I've always partially defined myself by the big ole, loving Southern family I come from. Without spending time with them at every holiday, a big part of me is changing, forever altered. I know I'll still see them, but it will be different. I'm usually one who can roll with change pretty well, but I'm having trouble adjusting to this particular one.

Add about a hundred more people, and that's my family...

I hope and pray that the generation before me (my mom's generation) will keep the family gatherings and traditions alive. I'm thankful to my Aunt Tammy and my I-don't-even-know-what-level cousin Marion for offering their homes to ensure the family celebrates Christmas Eve together as we always have. They're stepping up, and I'm beyond grateful that not everything died alongside PaPa. He would be proud of his baby girl for keeping the family together at Christmas. So, a big PaPa thumbs-up to Tammy! <3

Isn't my aunt purty? And my PaPa...oh my PaPa...

Deek and I set aside a budget for Christmas adventures, and we've been enjoying that random sprinkling of fun inside the holiday bustle. We've been keeping up regular traditions and adding news ones as we find them. This is wonderful time of year for traditions, and we're big on that! :)

We miss Portland, so we're trying to get a downtown experience in the South.

It's so not the same, but it'll do for now.

Deek and I got coffee and had a walking Christmas lights date!

Got to sit on the Big Man's lap and make my Christmas wish.

I asked him to keep my whole big family together for the holidays, and he said he'd do his best!

Thanks, Santa!

My hubster surprised me with a lunch date.

I LOVE spending time with this amazing man, y'all!

And we've been checking out Christmas lights at all the local "best spots."

We saw some that have been featured on TV!

Even Shakespeare got in on the lights action!

I don't know if I'll post again before Christmas, or even the week after Christmas since Deek has the whole week off (SQUEE), but I wish you and yours the happiest of holidays!! If you lost someone precious this year, I feel your pain and sorrow. I really and truly do. But gather those you still have into your arms and squeeze them extra tight. Because when you strip away the tinsel, lights, and gifts, Christmas is about family and love. So love on that family of yours with all your might.

And I'll be over here loving on mine. My parents, my Mema, my immediate family, my big ole extended family, and my beloved, beloved Deek! Despite the pain of losing PaPa, I know I'm epically blessed to have my family and Deek's family so full and present in our lives. And that joy will glow inside me--past the pain, past the hustle and bustle--forever!

This man, y'all. This amazing, astounding, out-of-this-world man!

No matter what's going on, we always find a way to laugh.

I love you, my Deek. Now and #always!

Until next time...Happiest of Holidays from our family to yours! 

Looking For A Gift?

Would you sacrifice everything for love?

A life must be lost. Who will make the ultimate sacrifice? 

Lawson lives a simple life: a job at a brewery, and his basketball and hockey leagues. Even his eccentric lifelong friend and roommate—who is intent on discovering time travel—doesn’t complicate things. Then Jory appears. Lawson feels an immediate attraction to her, yet their attempts at dating end with him thinking it just isn’t meant to be. But Jory refuses to give up. 

When one date ends tragically, Lawson turns to his best friend and the experimental time travel program he’s invented. But, no matter what he does, each time the reset ends with a loss. 

It’s clear…a life must be lost, and Lawson is prepared to give his for Jory. But he isn’t the only one playing with time. 

Will he spare Jory by forfeiting his own life? Or will someone else make the ultimate sacrifice?

Buy now:

Amazon| Barnes & Noble| iTunes| Goodreads

Excerpt:

Chapter 1

“So you’re going for the stalker approach, I see.”

Lawson sighed and shifted his gaze to the table. Der- rick was a jerk, but he was also right.

“She just moved here from Washington.”

Despite himself, Lawson raised an eyebrow and prompted for more information from his boss. Their boss. “State or DC?”

“State. Some small town east of the Cascades. I don’t remember the name.” Derrick took a big bite of his ham- burger and only half chewed it before continuing. “She at- tended Central Washington University, but didn’t graduate. She was going for a B.S. in Craft Brewing. That’s the main reason she got the job. She’s qualified. The fact that she’s smoking hot is just a bonus.”

Lawson cringed. “Pretty sure admitting that you find her attractive is verging on illegal, dude.”

Derrick shrugged. “Probably. Hell, not finding you at- tractive could probably get me in trouble these days.”

Lawson snorted. His gaze wandered to Jory one more time. He’d barely said three words to her in the few days she’d worked at the brewery. Her beauty intimidated him, making him stammer like a pubescent teen. He seemed to be the only one having that problem. She sat at a table with three guys from bottling and a girl from the office. The guys looked like total vultures, with beady eyes and hunching postures as if ready to pounce. But Jory appeared oblivious. She laughed at their stories and seemed to share her own.

Why the hell was he sitting with Derrick instead of at that table? He should have sat down with them when he came into the break room. It would’ve been natural. Instead, he slumped his big, bulky body into the corner like the stalker Derrick accused him of being. The light that glinted off her auburn waves when she tossed her head back to laugh made his fingers itch. The long line of her neck taunt- ed him: I know you want to taste me.

Curling his hands into fists, he tipped his head forward so that his chin length hair made a curtain between them and focused on his plate of food, deciding to finish his lunch fast and get the hell back to work.

Derrick took a healthy swig of his beer and slammed the pint down on the table with determination. “I’m gonna ask her out.”

Lawson’s throat went dry, and he almost choked. He forced his bite of food down before replying. “You can’t, dude. You’re her boss. You can’t date her.”

“We just won’t tell anyone.” “You just told me.” “Are you gonna run to the big wigs and tell them?” “Well, no. But...” He wanted to come up with a compelling argument against Derrick asking Jory out. Derrick was good looking and made more money, and he had some weird charm that girls seemed to fall for all the time. If the risk of losing his job wasn’t threat enough, Lawson was screwed. “Dude, I’d hate to see you go.”

Derrick laughed. “I guess it would be pretty stupid of me to put my job in jeopardy. It’s a sweet gig.”

Lawson nodded, hopeful.

“Maybe I’ll fire her.”

Buy now:

Amazon| Barnes & Noble| iTunes| Goodreads

About the author:

***Straight to the heart***

LA Dragoni isn’t too particular about who falls in love or where they fall in love. She simply considers it her job to capture the story about their love. Whether it’s paranormal, mythical, or time travel, LA will be there to divine their story for you. She lives in Central Oregon with her husband and children, but haunts ghost towns and cemeteries up and down the west, in search of the next adventure to sift through her storytelling brain. Learn more about LA and her work at ladragoni.com

Thoughts for the New Year

Happy New Year, everyone!! Deek and I had a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and we hope you did too!! 2017, baby!

Christmas kisses

Dancing to Lionel Richie on New Year's Eve. 

Deek had a cold and didn't feel particularly well, but he still danced with me. <heart eyes>

I had planned to do this whole "Here's Our Christmas" post with some reflections of the past and looking forward to the future, but then I came across an article. And after reading this article (it's at the bottom of the page), I knew I needed to blog about it.

In October, for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I wrote about my past experience in a domestically violent relationship. You can read about that here.

To expound up on that, I'd like to speak, in particular, to women of faith in abusive relationships. Deek says I should write a book about my experiences, and maybe I will. But writing and publishing take a long time, and some of you need to hear these words now. So here it goes.

I'm Southern, and I grew up in very devout family in the middle of the Bible Belt. When I was a little girl, I used to sit at the kitchen table and listen to my Mema sing songs about Jesus while she cooked. I went to Christian school during my last few years of high school, and though my college broke from the Southern Baptist Convention, I still had to take religion classes as part of my general education. In fact, I took so many that I have a minor in Religious Studies. I've led Bible studies, taught children's church, and directed church Christmas plays. To say religion and faith have had a big influence in my life and upbringing would be an understatement.

Me with my grandparents, who'd come to visit me at college

 (excuse the squinty eyes--bright sunshine)

I got married at a young age, ready to start my wonderful little Christian adult life. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the boy I'd married was not what he'd claimed. Yep. You read that right.

I was married before Deek.

I am divorced.

I am remarried (spoiler alert: I'm remarried to the greatest man who's ever lived, so this story has a happy ending).

If you're like me and have grown up in a religious community, you can appreciate how hard it is for me to even utter the words "I am divorced," much less put them in a blog for the world to read. When I got married that first time, I intended it to be forever. My own biological parents are divorced (spoiler alert: my mom remarried, and I call that man my dad because he IS my dad--biology has no bearing on that). And although I am eternally grateful to have my dad in our lives, I never wanted to follow that path and be divorced.

Me and my beautiful Mama on her wedding day

But I'd married someone who purported to be one thing and ended up being another. So, I was stuck in a bad place, in a bad life. For years, I tried to make the best of it. I gave being a proper Christian wife the good, ole college try. I threw my whole self into making him happy and creating a nice home. But nothing made him happy, and our lives spiraled into dark, disturbing places.

Now, as a Christian woman, I was told to "never speak ill of my husband" and to "submit to him." I was told my body was his to do with as he pleased. So, I felt like I didn't have a voice. On the outside, I smiled and pretended everything was great, as I'd been instructed to do, but on the inside, I was dying. I was losing myself and being forced to do things I abhorred.

The fake smiles that I used to try to hide the truth about my life.

I joined a Bible study with a group of wonderful women. Our leader, whom I adored, told us we could tell the truth about ourselves and our lives in this group, and we built a circle of trust. As women in the group shed their masks and shared about eating disorders, their husband's pornography addiction, and other real truths about their lives, I opened up and shared one small thing--testing the waters. At the next meeting, the pastor stormed into the room and told us our Bible study was over. He said we'd been speaking ill of our husbands and could no longer meet, and he forced our Bible study leader to leave the church. All the women in the group were told to read a new book, about being better wives. This book said that we should not expect our husbands to change, so we should change ourselves instead.

Having attempted to speak out about my life and being summarily, and epically, shut down, I clammed up even more. And as a young woman of faith, I took the book's words to heart and tried to change myself. Every time my husband did something awful, I tried to turn it into a positive in my mind. And I died a little more inside. But instead of showing how much I hurt, how much that life was slowly killing me, I smiled and said nice things about the man who constantly hurt me. If you asked any of my friends about me at that time, they'd tell you they knew something was wrong in my life, but I always had a smile and an upbeat attitude.

As the days and years passed, and the violence escalated, I could no longer keep up the smiles. Every time I imagined my life in one year, five years, ten years, twenty years, the sheer weight of the depression that notion caused almost crushed me. But I stayed because good wives stay. Because my beliefs told me divorce was a terrible sin.

But it got harder to force those smiles.

One day, the violence spilled over into a new area, and I realized I faced a real life or death situation in our marriage. And I chose life. Now, let me say, my friends (many of whom are Christians) embraced my choice and rejoiced in the fact that I'd gotten to safety. And my family supported me wholeheartedly because they'd seen my fake smiles and had known something was wrong, but they hadn't known how to help me. In fact, my Mema (the one who sang all the Jesus songs when I was a little girl) told me, "God wouldn't have wanted you to keep living like that."

Despite their outpouring of love, I still felt ashamed I hadn't been able to keep my marriage together, to be a "good," long-suffering Christian wife. And I felt an overwhelming sense of failure.

Over the last few years, I've been talking to other survivors and to women who are trying to bring attention to domestic abuse in churches. And I've come to realize we all have similar stories of staying way past the point we should have because our religious convictions and community structures kept us there.

Profound

So, I'd like to speak to women of faith right now...women of all patriarchal faiths, not just Christianity. Please, read this article and understand that you don't have to stay, and if you've already left, know you are a brave warrior for having made that hard choice.

http://www.garythomas.com/enough-enough/

You are NOT alone. There are others like you. Be strong. Be safe.

There are many, many agencies set up to help women get out of domestic violence. They can point you in the direction of lawyers and law enforcement to protect you. Here are some (but be sure to check the ones in your local area):

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence: http://www.ncadv.org/

National Domestic Violence Hotline: http://www.thehotline.org/

Battered Women's Justice Project: http://www.bwjp.org/

Futures Without Violence: https://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/

National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence: http://www.ncdsv.org/

No More: http://nomore.org/

(Keep scrolling to see my REAL smile, brought about by the sheer joy of my life now)

Wedding photo shoot w/Deek

Deek and I got married twice, for both sets of families on opposite coasts. 

At the second wedding, my PaPa walked me down the aisle!

Caught in a downpour

Deek makes me smile so big I think my face will crack! <3

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year -- Part II

In my last update, I told you all about the birthdays we have that fall within the Christmas season. Speaking of that...today is my beautiful Mama's birthday!! Happy Birthday, Mama! I promised I wouldn't say how old you are, so my lips are sealed on that one! But nevertheless, you're strong yet tenderhearted, fierce yet loving. I'm so thankful to be your daughter and to come from a long line of tough Southern belles!

Happy Birthday, Mom! <3 <3

In the last post, I told you Deek and I had been busy doing Christmas-related events, and now I'm here to share those with you!

Main St. Christmas

The little town I lived in before I moved to the Pacific Northwest with Deek has an annual Main St. Christmas. It's not a big affair, but it's quaint and fun. And...it has a hayride. I'm a TOTAL sucker for all things hayride related, so I'm there. Deek's heard all about it, but this is the first time he's gotten to go.

Happily, Deek has been saving his vacation days, so he's able to take every Friday off leading up to Christmas. On Main St. Christmas Friday, we started the day by chillin'. We watched Home Alone, ate popcorn, and did some writing. Just hanging around, enjoying the day off. 

Gus sleeps during chill day

To avoid mad traffic, we went early and ate a local restaurant with THE BEST fries and ranch eva!

Hayride!!!!

OMG! I'm so excited! I love the hayride!!

This pic of Gus CRACKS me up! He's like "I'm the man."

Deek snapped a shot of me waiting for the mayor to light the tree!

The Parade

The next day, Deek and I had the chance to march in the local parade. In the South, you never know what kind of weather you'll encounter in December. I've been to the parade when it's 75, and I've been to the parade when it's 27. This time, it was 32! Brrrr!! That's chilly for this Southern blood. So, we wrapped up in multiple layers, donned some Christmas gear, and marched!

Ready for da parade!

Rudolphin'

Surprise...I'm talking. See my lovely friend Denise indulging my gift of gab?? :)

Post Parade!

Wait, Erin's in trouble...

Yep, she did it.

Rogue One

This time last year, we went to see The Force Awakens on pre-opening night. Well, history repeats itself because we went to see Rogue One on pre-opening night as well!

The Force Awakens-- a year ago

Rogue One this year!

We tried to copy Jyn Eros's serious face, but we accidentally turned her into Voldemort! 

Light Show

This past weekend, Deek and I decided to go to a local lights show. I went there when I was a little girl, and it's changed a lot since then. And we went again with my friend Kathie and her family two years ago when we came back to the South to visit and had a great time. 

Riding the train at the lights two years ago.

So, we trucked back there. The actual lights themselves are only 45 minutes away. Except...from the time we got off the highway until we reached the lights took another hour!!

OMG...

When we finally got there, the line for the train was almost 3 hours!! Since we didn't feel like waiting around for 3 hours (and since standing in one place for a long time is a no-no for my physical therapy right now), we decided to walk around instead. You can't actually get inside the lights without going on the train, but we saw most of them. AND to top it all off, out of those hundreds of people in attendance, we bumped into my high school bestie and her husband. We had so much fun chatting with them, so it made the whole night worth it! We laughed on the way home that our adventures may not always go as planned, but we always find a way to have a good time anyway!

My high school bestie. Years and years of friendship.

PS. Everyone called us "The Twins." We *do* have exactly the same birthday...

Lights from afar

3 hour line for the train ride?

We picked a bad day to come!

 Snowman Poop

Then, to continue with the festivities, we watched a Christmas movie and made snowman poop for Deek's co-workers! You can read all about our Christmas traditions and get the yummy recipes from Deek's blog!

Snowman Poop -- YUM!! It was a big hit at work!

When we lived in the Pacific Northwest, I used to surprise Deek a lot with coffee at work. Since have access to a 24/7 Starbucks and he gets a big cup of it each morning, I don't often have the opportunity to do that anymore. But I did today, so I took it! :)  

Physical Therapy Update

In this season of good news, I've got good news of my own. To catch you up, because of the horrors of my past (you can read the blog posts I wrote about that here and here), I've been on pain medication for many years. Without it (and sometimes with it), I'd lie in bed and cry because the damage done to me hurt so bad. So, Deek and I worked really hard to do research and get me into the right physical therapy. And boy, have we. My physical therapist is AMAZING. Not only is she used to working with abuse victims and is very understanding, she's super knowledgable in how to fix even the worst of damage. Thanks to PT, I stopped taking medicine last week, and I'm doing really well. I felt like the physical therapy we did with medicine was the minor leagues, but without it, we're in the major leagues. Everything we do now is an actual, real, tangible step toward total healing. I am stoked by the progress we've made, and I'm ready to put this last part of my old life behind me.

So, that's what Deek and I have been up to! I'm kinda shocked Christmas is at the end of the week. WUT? But I'm excited to celebrate with my Southern family. I missed our big shindigs while I was away in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm excited to share this special tradition with Deek. He is SUCH a joy in my life. My family adores him (of course they do, what's not to adore?), so it's a cool collision between my childhood and present. I am more thankful than I can ever express that I get to spend this Christmas and every other holiday for the rest of my life with my beloved Deek. He spreads joy and laughter wherever he goes! All I want for Christmas is him. <insert heart eyes>

All the ladies love Deek! LOL!