It all started with family and friends around as I got my hair did and my makeup done. Soon it was time to head to the church.

Me and my Daddy.

I think I know which parent I look like.

Off we went.

I got into the white SUV we had rented.

This is one of my most favorite photos of myself. Ever.

While I was busy being a Princess, a certain young lad named Matthew was getting ready. If you look at the photos alone, it would appear that I married a twelve-year-old. (Though we both remain twelve at heart.)

That would be the artist currently known as Honey.

In the meantime, I arrived at the church. Thanks to my Dad/Chauffeur/Bodyguard/Secret Service Agent.

I made it to the church in time.

I walked up the aisle to a teary Matthew. I whispered that he was not allowed to cry or I would be a weepy mess. We both sucked it up, sniffling and red-eyed.

Next thing I knew, we got to make out in front of everyone.

We were announced as Mr. and Mrs. Dykstra.

We had a bunch of photos taken by the “Professional Photographer”, most of which I dislike. This one is not so bad.

We then went to the reception and had a lovely dinner.

We cut cake. I thought that the crowd might like a sneak peek.

Keeping it classy, per usual.

Then the dip happened.

Thirteen years later and we’re still going strong. We’ve weathered storms and celebrated victories and cemented the commitment that we made on that cloudy Saturday. If you’d told me that we’d be sitting here with three kids, two dogs, two cats, and one hundred chickens, I’d have raised an eyebrow. If you’d told me that I’d be a pastor’s wife, I would have laughed until I wept. Yet here we are, and it’s one thousand times better than anything I could have dreamed up on my own.

Happy anniversary, Honey. Here’s to forever.

I don’t know if it’s post-conference hangover, or the five jobs that I have, or being a pastor’s wife, or a billion other reasons, but all I want to do is get into my truck and drive. Far, far away. During my mini meltdown yesterday, I summed it up for my husband:

It’s not PMS, so I can’t blame it on that. It’s nothing and it’s everything and I don’t even know where to begin.

I came away from Mom 2.0 so incredibly inspired, but I can barely keep up with my day-to-day commitments. There is so much that is expected of me in so many different areas of my life that my “me time” consists of a few minutes sitting here in front of a blank page.

*The cursor has been blinking for five minutes now*

Once upon a time, this is the place where I would vent. That has blown up in my face multiple times and I miss the freedom to speak freely. I also miss my running partner, who has been out with a hip injury. She is one of my best friends and those three hours a week to talk about everything helped keep the balance. She is feeling better and was supposed to run with me today, but has come down with the flu. First World problems, yes, but I need that time to talk with someone other than my husband or my children.

I don’t know, you guys. Everything is bouncing around in my head. I’m discombobulated and angsty and a little bit ridiculous. I’m also getting wrinkles that I’m passing off as dimples and I’m making NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

This too shall pass and soon I’ll be back to post about my beautiful (albeit LOUD) kids and a cute kitten.

Over at YMC: 5 Tips For Having A Great Relationship With Your Kids

I have a friend named Hillary, who also has two Ls in her name. We met through this crazy thing called the Internet many moons ago, and I can’t remember exactly how it all started. I think she found me first, and found the double L to be a point of connection. Soon we were reading each others sites and emailing and then she asked me to be the photographer for her wedding to Shawn back in 2008. She knew that I was a newbie and she entrusted me with her WEDDING DAY. When the contract came in the mail, our bond was sealed: Her husband’s last name is my maiden name. Moran clan!

Hillary is someone who blesses me constantly. When I’ve gone through rough patches, she’ll send amazing mixed CDs in the mail. In the mail! (I suck at sending mail, though I do love getting things in the mail. I need to be better at reciprocating.) She writes witty and insightful posts, she is awesome at the Tweety, and she shares so many beautiful/hilarious photos of her son Grady that they make my every day. We live four hours apart, but I make the effort to hang out with her if I’m there or if she’s here because she’s Hillary.

If you know her at all, even if only on the Internet, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Hillary has been dealing with a wonky thyroid. It came to light that she had a tumor on her neck and she recently had it removed. This past Friday, she had the follow-up appointment to her surgery and she texted me to tell me that her thyroid has cancer. To quote her post:

So I’ve got thyroid cancer. Papillary/follicular cancer to be exact. My bastard thyroid is not content with only one type of cancer. Fucking overachiever grew two.

Hillary is on my mind and heart all day long. She goes back a month from now for another surgery to remove the rest of her thyroid, then will know what the next plan of attack is. BUT, she is in limbo for a month.

She’s mad that she has cancer. I’m mad that she has cancer. She’s HILLARY. This can’t be happening.

Doctors keep telling her that this is a “good” cancer to have. “Cancer” and “Good” are mutually exclusive.

I’ve never had anyone this close to me have cancer, so I don’t know what to do, especially since I can’t drive over and hug her. I’m pouring as much love as I can via texts and emails and I hope to hug her in person this coming weekend, if they make it up this way. In the meantime, can I ask that you lovely people shower her with some love? Maybe you’ve had cancer, or you’ve had friends or family with cancer, or maybe you can crack her up with an inappropriate joke. (She loves inappropriate jokes as much as I do.)

Her website: two L’s please

Her Twitter handle: hillarywith2Ls

Her Instagram: hillarywith2ls

Can you leave her comments of encouragement? And email her if you’ve been there? And maybe tweet words of encouragement to her? I know that “F Cancer” is a standard, but many of you don’t cuss. How about “Thuck the thyroid”? Or something. She has a month to wait before the next step and a month is a very long time.

I’m going to stop typing now. Go forth and love on Hillary. Please.

Love you, Hills.

I am not a perfect Mom, but I am a good Mom. They are not perfect children, but they are great children. They are the reason that I make school lunches, and drive to third grade running races, and help out with first grade journals. They are the reason that I cook eggs on toast for breakfast and plan meals that we can sit down and share as a family. They are the reason that we adopted a kitten who seems to think that 5 a.m. is an acceptable wake-up time. They are the reason that I take care of my body so that I can keep up to them, and so that I can model a healthy life. They are the reason that I make their Dad drive to the lake on our way to dinner so that I can be with them in a photo more than once a year.

They push me and they pull me and they make me wonder if I’m cut out for this. They love me and they make me laugh and they make me think that I might be doing something right. They are the flesh of my flesh and the bone of my bones and I would not be the woman I am today if they were not by my side.

I still can’t believe that I get to be their Mom.

When we first got married, I would drive my new husband crazy with my morning-person tendencies. He’s a night owl who likes his sleep and mornings are not his ‘thing.’ I would hop out of bed ready to talk (and talk and talk) and he needed at least an hour before he could process what I said, never mind replying to anything. Thanks to good communication, I learned that Talking = BAD, and it had nothing to do with me. I would still do it — I am what I am — and it got to be something we’d laugh about because WHO TALKS SO MUCH AT 6:30 AM?

(I do.)

Fast forward thirteen years and we have three children who wake up before we do, make themselves breakfast, and are REALLY LOUD while doing so. There are slamming cupboards (Graham) and there is hysterical laughter (Emily) and there is slurping of the cereal milk (Nathan). When we make our way downstairs, we are bombarded with random stories (Graham) and questions about the day (Emily) and demands to have sunblock applied the moment we enter the kitchen (Nathan). They are all HAPPY TO BE AWAKE and SPEAK IN THEIR OUTSIDE VOICES and DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW LOUD THEY ARE.

(If I could harness their superpower to go from sleeping to TALKING LOUDLY AND RUNNING EVERYWHERE in 1.6 seconds, I so would. I’d also sell it to the highest bidder.)

I may be a morning person, but I keep my volume at an acceptable level. Matthew might disagree, but it’s a much lower level than the kids use. I’ve become that stereotypical Mom who says, ‘Please don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee.” And then I laugh, because I only drink a small cup of coffee each morning and I think I’m just using it as an excuse to get them to lower the volume.

I should add that Sir Nathan is the worst offender, all day long. He seems to have lost his inside voice along the way and we miss it so. Every thing that he says is AT TOP VOLUME. The most annoying/hilarious use of his REALLY LOUD VOICE (Irony: My slightest child is the LOUDEST) is when he tries to get my attention to tell me something.

MOM!!

I reply as an adult should.

NATHAN!!

And then we laugh, because he knows why I do it. And yet he never scales the volume back. Never ever.

As for Emily, can I just ask for prayers before we get to the teenage years? There is stomping, there is door slamming, there is throwing herself on the couch in a fury. All while yelling. About how I’M NOT YELLING. I will turn away and giggle, because YELLING ABOUT HOW YOU’RE NOT YELLING is pretty dang funny.

This post is sponsored by the bedtime routine which contained kids yelling about how YES, I BRUSHED MY TEETH (Graham) and I NEED MY WATER BOTTLE (Emily) and LOOK AT ME SHAKING MY BOOTY ON THE STAIRS (Nathan).

I think that I’ve used my allotment of ALL CAPS for the rest of the year, but it was a necessary evil. Welcome to my (VERY LOUD) life.

(Do you see the wee red dot that is the sun?)

There are so many things that I took away from this weekend, but I’ll share the ten biggest ones.

1. You are with your people. You write your feelings on the Internet, which may be foreign to people in your social circles at home. At Mom 2.0 you can be as geeky as you want to be.

2. You get face time. I have made many connections via the Internet, but the majority of the strongest ones are with those whom I’ve shared a meal/room/post-midnight snack with.

3. You hear from gifted people. Sitting and listening to words and wisdom spoken vocally is ten times louder than reading it online.

4. You learn new things. We are in a new frontier, which is an ever-evolving space. Sometimes it can feel like you’re treading water. Listening to those who are clipping along and sharing how you can get afloat and get your motor running (head out on the highway) gives you new direction.

5. Have I mentioned the view?

6. You get hours and hours with your closest crew, who sat with you in sessions and lounged with you by the pool and were there to find you when you got lost in the massive hotel. Man, I miss them.

7. You make new connections and strengthen other connections. You may not take photos of every person — because you’re busy connecting — but just because there isn’t a photo doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.

8. The photos you do take of the people you spent time with bring you no end of joy.

(That center one was staged in response to the WSJ article about Mom bloggers going to conferences in order to escape their families and drink from the mini bar.)(I can’t stop laughing at it.)

9. It’s big enough to meet new people and small enough to connect with your usual people by simply walking through the hotel lobby.

10. You might win something amazing that makes you feel extra special. You might also decide to keep it, because even those of us who live in the buttpoke of nowhere deserve to have something fancy. You might fret about when you will actually use it in a town of 10,000, but know that even if you use it once in a special blue moon, it’s worth it. You are worth it.

Those of you who have been to conferences know that there are always sponsor booths. Sponsors pay to be there, which means that us attendees get to stay at fancy hotels with breathtaking views for far less than we would normally pay.

Hooray for sponsors!

To encourage the attendees to talk to all of the sponsors, we we given a card with all of the main sponsors on it. After talking to a sponsor, they would stamp their spot. When all of the sponsors had been stamped, you handed in your card to be part of a draw on the final night for a grand prize of a Prada bag. I KNOW.

I never win anything huge. Okay, I did win a Wii Fit at BlogHer ’09, but that was four years ago. There were 550 attendees at Mom 2.0, so the odds weren’t that great. That aside, we made our way to all of the sponsor booths because, why not? They were sponsors whom we liked and use, or will likely use in the future. Blurb was there, and I’ve worked with them a few times. Dove was the main sponsor and I love their Girls Unstoppable campaign. When Rob Candelino showed the videos with the stats about how women and girls view themselves, I was in a constant state of tearful emotion.

We made our way to all of the sponsors (Who doesn’t like Starbucks, either?) and handed in our cards when they were full of stamps. Fast forward to the final party — with a Kentucky Derby theme — and we were standing at the back of the room chatting while Laura and Carrie thanked everyone and prepared for the draw. All of a sudden, they announced who won the Prada bag.

ANGELLA DYKSTRA!

You guys, I won a $2,000 PRADA BAG. I guess all of the times I haven’t won things has added up? Or something? I had people asking to touch it all night and I don’t blame them. Because, PRADA.

I still don’t believe that I won. I sent that photo to all of the Internet places, and texted Matthew. He was as excited as everyone else, because even he knows how cool that is.

When I got home, we were talking about it as part of the general debriefing and he asked if I was going to sell it. Sarah had asked me the same thing, and I said no, because PRADA. But where would I actually use it? I live in the sticks, I work from home, and aside from conferences, I don’t go to fancy parties on a regular basis. He pointed out that I could sell it and use that money to buy WHATEVER I WANT. Not to spend on bills or household expenses, but to spend it on myself.

I … don’t know. Part of me thinks that’s probably the practical thing to do, but the other part of me is a small town girl who thinks that it’s pretty special that she won a fancy purse. In the meantime, I’m going to leave it sitting on my dresser and smile every time I look at it. Winning it has had me beaming for days.

*Our church secretary commented on Facebook that the devil wears Prada, so I might not want to bring it to church. Ha!

**She also told me in person today that I deserve it, and than men just don’t understand.

***It’s really pretty in person. And I WON IT, against the odds.

****But maybe I should be practical. Sigh.

*****I’m going to stop typing now.