Thank You Sarah!

Just to catch you up to speed in case you missed some earlier posts, or are just stumbling upon this blog for the first time. I have chosen to be INTENTIONAL with family and friends this month. By saying that, I mean that I have been deliberately setting aside time from my normally crazy life to be with my wife and son, as well as my friends. After 15 days in to the month of December we as a family have noticed a difference. 

• I have been feeling more connected with Renae and Logan, and have a renewed sense of energy.
• Renae has noticed my intentionality, and has been feeling more loved by me recently than she has in the past. 
• Logan, well he can't speak for himself, but we have noticed that he acts differently on the days that I spend more time with him and seems to be happier and more easy going.

OK, now you are all caught up to speed. So....what was my "surprise" or line-up for our normal Thursday night hang time? I started off by taking Renae and Logan down to my parents house to eat a nice little dinner. Renae cracked me up when she was trying to guess what we were doing on the ride down and could not figure it out! She though maybe we would be going to our friends, the Harper's, for dinner, but she was wrong.

After a nice dinner with the family, Renae was thinking that the night was probably coming to an end. But I had one more surprise for her. When Logan was first born we took close to 1,000 pictures within the first 3 days. Out of those 1,000 pictures there were a few that seemed to catch my eye, and Renae seemed to like as well.

Lucky for me I knew a girl from my former school that is an amazing artist. I remember the first painting that I saw of hers, and it took my by surprise that someone so young could produce something so beautiful and intricate. I pretty much knew from my first week back in school that I was going to ask her if she would consider making a painting of Logan. She agreed and so I gave her a packet of photos (these were a few of them). When she analyzed them and got back to me with the one that she thought would make the best painting, I gave her the go ahead and she began working on this piece. I must say that she did a phenomenal job! I am still blown away by her painting. 

I was originally going to pick up the painting from Sarah back in October, but then her art teacher had asked if she could hold on to the painting so that it could be displayed in their annual Art Show!!! Hence, the surprise for December 15, 2011. After dinner, I took Renae over to the school for their art show. As we walked and talked, we slowly made our way to the high school art display. Then we made our way through the crowded room to Sarah's area...and there it was...such a beautiful oil painting. I could not stop saying thank you to Sarah for doing such an awesome job. 

She is truly an awesome artist and has a wonderful gift! She was very humble about her work too which is another plus in my book. I now want her to do more paintings for me so that we can finally have some things to put on our living room walls. 

Something that really put a smile on my face was after a car ride home of talking about how awesome the painting was, we get out of the car and Renae says, with a huge smile, "I really love the painting!"

So thank you Sarah! Trust me, we will be asking for more paintings in the future. And for anyone reading this blog, if you are interested in getting in contact with Sarah for a possible painting let me know and I will connect you with her.