Personality Shift

I was reading a blog post the other day about birth order and personalities, and it contained a link to a free on-line version of the Meyers Briggs personality test. I took this test in high school and again in college, and I'm pretty sure I was an ESFP. Extroverted, sensing, feeling, perceiving.

I suspected that over the years my personality has changed, and thought it would be interesting to take the test again. And it turns out I was right, my personality has changed.

I am now an introvert.

ISTJ

I remember in high school taking this test, and I knew before I even took it that I was an extrovert. There was no doubt in my mind. Funny how things change.

Granted, according to the test I am only slightly introverted. But still, that is a big change from how I used to be. I think that I used to think that introverts were really quiet and shy and not very sociable. Which now that I am one, I don't think is true. I think, for me at least, being an introvert just means that being around tons of people wears me out more than energizes me.

I do wonder, though, why the change in personality?

When I was in high school, I hung out with friends every Friday and Saturday night. I organized events and invited people over all the time. I brought people together and would plan fun things to do.

When I went to Kentucky for college, I didn't know a soul, besides my high school boyfriend, who I dated for the first couple years of college as well. I got involved in Young Life, became a leader and made lots of friends. It seemed, however, that nearly all of my new friends came to college with their best friends from high school. They were already doing fun things and hanging out together. Which meant that my role changed. I was no longer the person who organized get-togethers and brought people together. That was already happening. I just wanted to be a part of it. I went from the person who took an active role in planning things, to the person who tagged along and just hoped to be invited to what was already going on.

Throughout college I made lots of friends, and even some really close best friends, however the extroverted role I played in high school was never needed with this new group.

Being friends with mostly young life leaders put me in part of a group that was nearly all extroverts. I was out-extroverted by the majority of my friends, and I realized at some point that I was tired of trying to talk over everyone else. And so instead I just started listening. True story, sometimes when we're hanging out with a group of people, Derek gives me a hard time for being too quiet. But sometimes it just seems like a lot of work to be heard among a group of people who are all so outgoing.

In addition to being out extroverted by my friends, I was also a young life leader for nearly 10 years. That is 10 years of introducing yourself to random high schoolers, 10 years of being friends with awkward kids and trying to get to know lots and lots of them. 10 years of organizing young life clubs, hangouts, dinners and coffee with girls, of initiating and carrying conversations. Being in front of a big group teaching, or singing, or wearing a ridiculous costume and doing silly things. 10 years of putting yourself out there and facing rejection. Maybe a lot of my extrovert-ism got used up doing ministry, so when I wasn't doing ministry, I just wanted to lay low.

So there is my little analysis on why I think I had a personality shift. Although if you look at all the other letters of the personality test, those have changed too. I have no explanation for all of it.

One thing I have realized is that I really love hanging out with small groups of people or one on one. I love intentional two-way conversation. And God has been good to put some great friends in my life who I know care about me and who I can get together and talk about life with.

Sometimes I miss being the social butterfly I was in high school. It was great to have a group of people who were always ready and willing to hang out. Close friends who never got tired of being together every Friday and Saturday night. But I guess with the stage of life I'm in, that's not really realistic. And God is teaching me to be content right where He has me.

I had Derek take the test also and I was able to guess exactly what he was. Derek is an ENFJ, so we are exact opposites, except for the J. The funny thing is, sometimes we feel like the same person and like we share a brain, so I'm not sure how that works. Anyways, it's kind of fun to take those tests and I think it helps us figure out how God has created us. It's also interesting to see how our circumstances can change us over time. You should go take the test and come back and let me know what your personality type is. I would be interested to know!

Kitchen Reno: In Progress

It's been a very busy past couple of weeks, but our kitchen cabinets are being painted right now.

Derek and I chickened out when it came to painting them ourselves. Neither of us was confident enough in our skills to be sure that we would do a really good job, and we really didn't want to go through all the trouble if they would end up looking bad. So luckily, we found a professional who is able to paint them and do a few other things that should make the kitchen look really good in the end.

Here are a few photos of what it looks like now:

A few things you can see from the pictures:

1.  We decided to go dark. Really dark. The paint color is a 50% mixture of brown and black. We thought about white, but we didn't want bright white. But with white trim and light colored countertops, we just didn't feel good about it. We'll be installing a lighter colored backsplash, that will lighten the walls up and hopefully make the dark cabinets pop.

2. The old backsplash is gone.You can see the white space below the brown paint and above the countertops where it used to be. A couple of weeks ago Derek and his parents removed it, and we filled in all the holes it left in the wall and smoothed everything out, so the walls are ready for us to install a new backsplash as soon as the cabinets are done.

3. Our island is gone. It's in the shop, and is getting a little work done on it, including a little extra something special.

4. We already showed pictures of the new stove, but the rest of the new appliances have arrived. You can see the fridge and part of the dishwasher in these photos. The microwave isn't up yet, because...

5. The old vent over the stove is gone, as well as the cabinets that were above it, and the new microwave is going to be installed above the stove. A little shelf will be added above it, where I can put some cookbooks or other decorations. I'm really excited about this because it will open up a lot of counter space. And, with the work that's being done on the island, we'll have more counter space there too!

6. The sides of the cabinets are not painted. That is because they are laminate. So we decided to cover them with bead board. So that will be added on later, when the doors come back.

So there it is in progress. Hopefully by the end of next week I'll be back with pictures with the doors on and new hardware!

More Excitement

There have been a few more exciting things going on around here that I want to document on the ol' blog.

1. UK won their 8th National Championship last week!!! When I started college in the fall of 2001, I had high hopes that I would see a national championship during my time at college. That didn't happen. But now, 11 seasons later, they finally did it! This meant lots of fun times watching games with friends. And, since none of us got to experience a national championship while we were in college, we all went to campus to watch the national championship game and celebrate in the streets with all the crazies. It was such a fun night, and I'm so glad that we got to experience it.

During the game

All the people celebrating in the street after

Proud to be Kentucky Wildcats!

2. Lucianne had her baby! Last week, Lu gave birth to a precious little baby girl. I love her already. I'm bringing Kristian and Luci dinner tonight and can't wait to lay my eyes on the sweet girl again. I'm excited to watch her grow up, and see her little personality develop, see which of her parents' characteristics she got, and see her grow into a little girl who knows she is loved by so many people, but most importantly, by Jesus.  Here are a few photos from the hospital.

Luci and Maeli

Derek and sweet Maeli

3. Easter! We celebrated Easter with Derek's family. It was a wonderful weekend of time with family, and celebrating the greatest gift we could ever imagine. I'll end this post with a little picture of our nephew Oliver, cutest thing ever!

Celebrate

I was talking to my sister the other day and she asked what was new with us and I realized that there really isn't anything new and exciting going on with us, but it seems like there are lots of exciting things going on with our friends, and we've been spending a lot of our time celebrating, which is lots of fun for us. So here's a little recap of some of the celebrations that have been going on with our friends.

1. Lucianne is going to have a baby girl very soon, so a couple of weeks ago we threw an alphabet themed shower for her. We had lots of yummy treats, we made onesies for the baby girl, wrote stories about Lu, played a fun little trivia game and gave Lucianne lots of fun things for her baby girl. I didn't take any pictures, shock, but you can go here and here to see pictures and a more detailed recap of the shower. Another fun thing we did was each guest brought a letter of the alphabet and Lucianne was able to hang them all up on the nursery wall. She sent us a picture of the finished product, and here it is:

2. Our friend Randi is getting married in May and we had a tea party themed wedding shower for her. There was lots of tea and other treats, we wrote her letters for when she and her new husband move to Colorado, we played fun games, including dressing friends up in bridal gowns made out of toilet paper, as well as watching her fiance try to answer questions about Randi, and of course we gave her lots of fun things for her new life as a married woman.

3. Derek's best friend and one of my favorites, Bryan, got engaged a couple of weeks ago to the fabulous Fran, who we absolutely love. A couple of friends of mine recommended Fran's blog and I started following it last summer. Literally, the next week, I was talking to Derek and he said that Bryan had a girlfriend and that they were coming to Lexington and we were going to have dinner with them. I was super excited to meet Bryan's new sweetie already, then Derek told me her name was Fran. I asked if she was a flight attendant, and he said, "yeah, how did you know?" Well, funny story, I just started following her blog, so I kinda already  know a little bit about her. So funny! So anyways, we met Fran in real life and absolutely love her, and Bryan popped the question a couple of weeks ago. Derek and I got to help pick out the ring, although Bryan knew what we he wanted, so really all we did was agree that we loved it too. We also got to go up to Northern Kentucky for a celebratory dinner with their families and drinks at a sweet little tavern in Cincinnati with friends to celebrate their engagement with them. We are super excited for the wedding and for their marriage. They are both seriously awesome, and we considered ourselves blessed to be their friends. I actually did manage to take a few pictures throughout the evening with my ipod, meaning they're not great quality, but here you go!

The happy couple

Our view at dinner

Yummy drinks at The Blind Lemon

4. One of my close friends, and the sweetest girl you will probably ever meet, Jenna, got engaged too! She and her roommates were vacationing in Orlando and her sweet boyfriend, now fiance, Scott, flew down to surprise her and propose to her at Disneyworld. How precious is that? We all wished we could have been there to witness Jenna's surprise, speechlessness and giggling, but luckily there are lots of photos to document the occasion. The weekened after they got back we had a little party to celebrate Jenna and Scott, to hear the full story, look at pictures, and just let Jenna know how much we love her and are excited for her.

So there is some of the celebrating that has been going on. My friend Anna is also getting married this weekend, and our friend PW is getting married in about a month, so we will head down to North Carolina to partake in wedding festivities there. And my sweet friend Jen has a little girl on the way, so we'll be throwing a shower for her soon, so the celebrations will continue. It's going to be a fun (and expensive) year.

Kitchen Reno: Pendant Lighting

I left you kind of hanging with our "before" kitchen pictures and then nothing for a while. But I promise, progress is being made, just in spurts.

One of the first things we did was take out the can lights over our island and install new pendant lights. This is part 1 of our lighting update.

Part 2 of the lighting update will require an electrician, as we are going to be getting rid of that crazy plastic grid in  the ceiling, as well as the fluorescent lights on the other side of it and put in some new can lighting.

However, before we get to that, we were able to purchase new appliances, so I will be back soon with pictures of our shiny new stove, microwave, fridge and dishwasher!

Bad Pictures

I came across this today on the internets. Ellen had people send in their worst pictures. And you all, they are pretty hilarious. So if you need a little escape today, then I suggest checking this out. Enjoy!

Rocky Mountain High

Last week Derek and I took a little trip out to the mountains to visit my sister and go skiing.

The weather was pretty great for being the end of April. It was sunny the first few days we were there, followed by a snow storm with 6-ish inches of fresh powder and more falling throughout the day our last day of skiing.

I took no pictures this time around, probably because I am getting spoiled and feel like all of my pictures end up looking the same.{Here is last years post full of pictures.} But Derek never gets tired of the views, it's his favorite part, so he took lots of pics with his phone.

A few things to note from this trip:

1. I felt the best I have ever felt, physically. We're doing an exercise challenge at work, so I had been doing P90X for almost 2 months before the trip. While my legs did get tired from a full day of skiing, they were in soooo much better shape than they usually are.

2. This was Derek's first ski trip that involved skiing in serious powder. I think he liked it, even though it is a lot of work. He did great - I was impressed with his abilities. He is getting to be a better skier every time we go out, and it's fun to watch him improve and be able to ski runs that he hasn't been able to in the past.

3. The Pioneer Woman was in Vail at the same time we were in Breckenridge. Of course I didn't really read any blogs or spend much time on the internet while I was there, so I didn't know this til after the fact, but I can't believe we were so close!