Simply catching you up on what's been up...

There is something about spring...
The last part of March has ushered in all things green, glorious, wedding-y, birthdays-y, sunshine-y, and busy about Spring!

I don't have much that may be meaningful for you today, but maybe you would be interested to see in pictures and hear a bit about some of the things we have been up to lately!


After last weekend, we had two days to let my stomach settle and my knees feel normal and then its been a truly delightful whirlwind ever since. 


Kendall and Dusty came on Wednesday. We love them a lot, and its so nice that it feels like family hanging out with them. It was Kendall's birthday and so we went to dinner with some friends and then had cake and stayed up late talking and "solving the problems of the world". Kendall's birthday marks the beginning of TONS of birthdays we have coming up, so March in my mind begins birthday season. We laughed a lot, were probably ridiculous, and agreed that life is better when we live close. Sadly, they were only here for about 18 hours, but we were thankful to have it. 

Next, Adam and Jamie Wright. It was so fun to spend two days with the Wrights. Their energy is contagious, they are adorable together, and they just love to have a good time. For me, I felt so blessed to get to spend that much consecutive alone time with them because I never had, and Matt was just excited and thankful to have some great time with his old friends. We did Farmer's Market, ate delicious breakfasts, caught up, wine-tasted, "would you rather"-ed, and hung out at Upper Crust, the Wright's old stomping grounds as well. We all agreed more than once that St. Pierre-Wright time is awesome. 

My birthday was Saturday. Twenty-three. Here's to a great year, and full of change! Matt bought me the running shorts I have had my eye on, and even better, a new camera! I have been dying for one and was so excited. He is very thoughtful and takes really good care of me. We went and took a few pictures at Montana de Oro...which was gorgeous. Then it was off to our friends, Ben and Nichole's, wedding. Again, gorgeous, and very fun to catch up with some old friends and current ones, and to celebrate their marriage. It's also that time of year...they are the first of seven weddings we have so far this year!!

And then my wonderful parents came for a day. They are so great at making the sacrifice of the three hour drive if only just to see us for a day. We breakfasted at Apple Farm and went to church. They actually came to youth group with us to hear Matt give the sermon, which was very fun for us. Then we walked all around beautiful Pismo Beach and ended up at the Cliffs for some drinks and appetizers. It was so nice to soak up some sun and some good catch up time with my parents since we hadn't seen them since Christmas! All of our parents are so good to us. 

Needless to say, we have eaten out and eaten a LOT, slept a LITTLE, talked and laughed A LOT (Matt lost his voice! I think it's adorable), are very thankful for the week, and are very thankful for our quiet little apartment at this moment! 
Now...Here comes Monday, and work, and people, and play, then Easter, and more birthdays, more weddings, more marathons, more travels, and life just keeps a-comin'. 


And so we keep happily sojourning together...

Half Marathon, Check.

Well, race day has come and gone... How does that happen? You wait and wait and wait and worry for a certain day or event and then it happens and its gone! Makes you really want to live in, soak up, and be content in each day. Trite, maybe, but true. 

We had a nice San Luis weekend here. Mark and Kim, and Bethany and Dustin came to visit- it's always a sincere pleasure having people come visit us. (And its great we feel that way, considering we have 6 more visitors coming in the next week!) Mark, Bethany and I were the half-marathoners of the weekend, so there was lots of pre-race strategizing, pep-talking, and menu-planning prior to Sunday. We ate at Upper Crust, Pizza Solo, Applebee's and Firestone- so really, we got all the staples in. I made a berry crisp that we all enjoyed on Sunday- post-race, of course. Matt and I each got a new piece of running apparel...(well-deserved, we would like to believe). We all enjoyed a glass of wine on the patio of the Apple Farm, delighting in the gorgeous, and quite addicting, weather we have been having here on the Central Coast. All in all, it was a really nice weekend. 

We feel so blessed to have not just friends and family, but friends and family that we actually like! And we like all of you a lot.

Race day came on Sunday. We rose at 5am. Showered to feel alert. Ate breakfast. Donned race clothes and shoes. And hit the road for Paso around 6am. It's dark and cold at 6am. 

We arrived. We signed in. We froze standing outside. Then moved to the car to stay warm. Gu'ed up-- it's weird the little worlds you can become a part of as you develop new hobbies. Gu! I don't even really know what it is, but apparently you're only a runner if you eat it. We each visited the porta-potties (which Mark and agreed have come a looooong way in recent years).

We gathered around the start line with about two minutes left on the countdown clock. We waited two minutes. And we were off!

13.1...I think it started to sound shorter in my mind than it really was...because it felt long.

I won't bore you with mile-by-mile coverage, but I will say that I FINISHED! 

Let's focus on that. I finished! (We all did, actually...Bethany and Mark both did awesome!!) For a moment, I felt like the above photo. But truly, I think the day was best described in the photos below...

 I didn't do as well as I would have liked, or even as I expected to, I'll admit it. I felt cold, weak, tired, sore, and slightly nauseous for almost the entirety of the race. What a bummer. But even in it, exactly the way it happened, I was glad to finish. 

...Because I learned that sometimes in life, the race looks messier than we think it will. It might end up with you projectile vomiting in the figurative (or literal) car on the ride home...(Yes, this happened. I blew my three year no-barf streak.) But back to my point- you can train, prepare, plan, strategize, and hope, and most times you will probably be way better off for it, and its probably always wiser to do so. However, maybe there will just be those times in life, when you just can't control it, you can't make yourself be good enough, strong enough, or "together"enough to make the race look good. Sometimes, maybe we will have to slow down or walk when we were planning on running. Sometimes, we may end up sitting and asking "Why is this happening? How am I gonna make it to the end?" (mile 10 to 13.1 can seem long when you find yourself there...yes, that happened, too.) Sometimes, we may come in second, third, or we'll come in last- maybe a lot. And probably, there will be times when we stumble across the finish line- tired, sore, on the verge of losing it, crying because you don't know what else to do. But finishing...crossing the finish line nonetheless. 

Perhaps, These are the times when God is humbling us. Really making us stronger. Helping us to see that it was never really about us anyway. Extending His abounding grace in a whole new way. Teaching us to give ourselves more grace. Reminding us that He loves us still, is proud of us still, and that He was never really fooled that we have it all together anyway. 

So, I think I'll train for another one. I'll change some things in the way I train-prepare a bit more knowing my body and myself a little better. But I'll also be prepared that the race isn't always what I think it will be, and that's ok. The people I have waiting for me on the other side, that I have running alongside of me, and the God who always loves me are what it's most about. As long as I get to the finish line, and give it the best I have, I win. 

And I want to make it to the finish line of this life- knowing that, though I may not have always had it "together", may not have had enough strength in myself, though it hasn't always been pretty, and its often messy- despite these things, my God loves me, is proud of me, and I never had him fooled from the beginning. 

Keeping Things Alive

Meet Bruce, the ficus tree.

He was the first part in a three part plan for us to learn to keep things alive, with the hope of eventually feeling confident enough to have children.

1. plant

2. animal

3. a child

We bought Bruce with bright eyes and bushy tails in September. This was our first family picture. And sadly, Bruce was effectively no longer living by late October. 

RIP Bruce.

Needless to say, Step One did not go well. Bruce was replaced by our Christmas tree. That didn't count...it's a Christmas tree. 

So now, we bought an orchid. 

We went simple. It may seem pathetic. Too easy, perhaps. But we need success. Our future and the plan is depending on this beautiful purple flower. 

In other news,

I am loving Trader Joe's right now.  Could spend a lot of time wandering around its aisles and buying great things at great prices, like our $7.99 orchid.

Shoe Shopping.

On Saturday, we shoe shopped.

I mean, we really shoe shopped, and I am not a shopper. 
I am running my first half marathon this upcoming Sunday March, 21st. So I picked the Saturday before to buy new running shoes. Not recommended, but I'm a little unconventional. And Matt is in the middle of training for the OC Marathon in Huntington Beach, CA on May 2nd. He ran the race I am running on Sunday last year. We have become, and are becoming...runners. And runners need truly awesome running shoes. And so we were on the hunt. 


We were at the Runner's Warehouse (go there- they are so helpful) for an hour and fifteen minutes. I tried on close to every pair of shoes on the women's side of the wall. Matt had a few pairs he cycled through, trying to make up his mind. And like any serious "runner's warehouse" should, they have a treadmill you can try out each pair of shoes if you wish- and I wished. We made kind of a mess. But felt great about the experience and walked out with some very cool and fairly inexpensive running shoes, making us feel awesome (like our shoes) and even more like the runner's we are becoming. 


I have set out to compete in some kind of race a few times before and have never followed through. Running has always just been something that I want to do, but never have actually committed to doing. But this time, I did. I started training at the end of January and just completed my last long run on Sunday. I ran 11 miles. Matt ran 14- he always one ups me. I'm not sure how exactly it will go on Sunday, but I'm thankful to have had the opportunity to learn that I can do more than I think I sometimes can. My mind and body can handle more than they want to- if I just make them. I'm thankful to have learned a little bit of the blessing of discipline and submitting mySELF- mind, body, and soul- to training that is sometimes painful, tiring, lonely, frustrating, and discouraging, and sometimes glorious, exciting, exhilarating, and victorious, but always worth it. 


And here's the kicker...God says:

       "Rather, train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it hold promise for the present life and the life to come." 

1 Timothy 4:7-8

And He says:

"...let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith."

 Hebrews 12:1-2

This is us in our new running shoes, ready to run the race set before us, in every way. Running the race. And praying you find yourself doing the same. 

A Plan and A Bedtime.

Allow me for a moment to be practical rather than poetic...

Our lives, like most everyone else's on the face of the planet, are crazy. And we're thinking,  that if what we have seen holds true, it just keeps getting crazier. So, since our lives are kind of everywhere these days...multiple jobs, internships, and ministries...we have seen the great benefit in having a plan and, especially, a bedtime.

1. Having a plan.

You use your time so much more effectively, because you know what you should be doing at any given moment, and if you find yourself doing nothing, you can go to the plan (most often in list form). With Matt working from home for the Christian Alliance for Orphans, he has seen that he must have a plan in order to be efficient. For me, well I'm a natural list-maker, compulsively and obsessively so. However, I have started to learn the art of a helpful list. I am driving all over the county and from place to place out of the house all day long on many days, and so I plan for what I will need to bring that day, people I may need to call along the way, and if I didn't have a plan I would forget every costume change for the day. We have started looking weeks and months ahead at weekends we are busy, weddings we have coming up, and weekends we need to leave open; and overall it makes you feel a bit more sane. Having a plan helps us go to bed with the comfort of knowing what we need to do the next day and how the flow of each other's day will look. Though plans break down, and you definitely can't plan for everything, we think they're good.  

2. A Bedtime. 

And I personally think that having a bedtime is invaluable. Though we all railed against them in earlier years, I have seen that this previously dreaded bedtime now makes all the difference. I usually try to hit the sheets around 10:30, 10:00 if I have it my way, and wake up around 6:30 or 7:00 (sue me, I need a lot of sleep, and sadly this week I am seriously pushing the envelope on bedtime and am feeling the repercussions). Matt is a bit more of a night owl...he is kind to go to bed at the same time as me on most nights, but prefers a bedtime of around 11:30. The real kicker though is that he can still get up at the same time as me (ok, and sometimes earlier). Bless him for it, I guess. I love having time in the mornings to read, take my time getting ready, and enjoy coffee and cereal, and sometimes pancakes or waffles. Somehow, I still manage to be late most days, but that is a lesson still needing to be learned, another day, another blog post. All in all, "early to bed early to rise" has been a great change for us and product of being married. It is key to maximum energy, engagement, and preparedness for the next day and the week. 

It's A Boy!!!

Not us. Did I get you for a second, though?

But we are going to be Aunt Leah and Uncle Matt for the very first time soon enough, and we are so excited! And the latest great news is that we're going to be having a nephew! We're so happy that my dad will finally have a boy after all these years of women and more women!

It's so fun to see my parents so excited to be grandparents, and even more to see Amanda and Ben so excited to be parents. (Though they already do a great job with the animals...) What a time of anticipation and preparation! Life will certainly be changing for them; and all of us I suppose, as the third generation of our family is beginning!

We got to spend some time with Amanda in the beginning of February (a lot of time, actually, due to the 55 unexpected inches of snow we were blessed with while in Maryland), and though she was still pretty early on, it was amazing to see my sister growing life in her! I got to hear the heartbeat at her doctors appointment, her stomach was starting to harden up a bit, and then there was that minor detail of the poor little mama-to-be getting sick after every meal. We are so excited to go back in July to hold the little guy, and then I suppose all of that will have been worth it for her.

So as a beaming auntie, I couldn't help but make a trip down the baby aisle yesterday in Target. I can't get over those tiny outfits and shoes! It made me so excited to eventually start our own collection...

And the combined effect of all of the baby excitement has been to make me supremely amazed and grateful for a God who is creative enough, intelligent enough, gracious enough, and sovereign enough to create us and sow us together in the miraculous way He does.
He has creatively and intelligently designed our bodies to grow and sustain new human life in exactly the way it needs to...every detail in our bodies changes and adjusts to make room for the new life He is designing. And then He makes us each unique- our nephew will look and be different than anyone else in the world!
He is infinite!
He has been gracious enough to let us humans experience the love that He, the Father, has for us, by showing us such love for our own children (I can imagine...)
And even in the things that don't always work out the way we hope or think, He is sovereign enough that we can still just praise Him as our loving Father who is giving us everything we need and never more than we can handle everyday.

The psalmist expresses my sentiments like this...

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:13-17

Blogging Anxiety. And Married Saturdays.

I realized today that I have blogging anxiety.


I woke up and it dawned on me that now that we HAVE a blog, I need to BECOME a blogger. Matt has confessed and really come to terms with the fact that he is not necessarily the blogging type. Which is fine. I appreciate his self-awareness. HOWEVER, this means that the majority of the time it will fall on me to keep you updated our OUR life.
And that, my friends, causes me great anxiety. I think because I am a perfectionist and I have an intense desire to be creative and poetic and journalistic.
So my remedy for this anxiety today is that I just needed to post SOMETHING...ANYTHING...to get our second post under my belt. And then we can go from there.


In other news, I had the thought today how different married Saturdays are. When I was in high school and college, Saturdays were the day to really shine and live it up. Hang out with as many people as possible. Stay up late. Not worry about homework. Pressure was on for it to be AWESOME. But now, as the St. Pierre's, Saturdays are typically great, just without much of the pressure.
Like today- its a rainy day here in SLO and its quite delightful as we sit here in Sally Loo's (a local coffee shop), me sipping on my hot tea and Matt his black and white mocha (calorie conscious versus not). Matt is working on the sermon he will deliver to the high school kids tomorrow morning. I'm blogging. We are planning on going out to dinner tonight though we aren't sure where yet. I asked our barista where she thought we should go and I think I threw her a bit. We will probably end up at some delicious, and wonderfully quaint italian place, because that is normally where we end up and we're OK with it even though we eat, breathe, think, and work italian food 5 days a week. Earlier today, Matt worked, I worked down in Santa Maria and then walked around Target for about an hour afterwards just soaking it up because I don't get to see that big red sign enough. We may go buy some new running shoes in a bit. We really need to clean our bathroom. And we'll probably will finish watching "Up"...because we fell asleep last night. And if its up to me, we'll be in bed by 10:30. 


Married days. So different, but so good. 


p.s. I love taking photos and would love to be able to take gorgeous photos someday and make it a true hobby (and stalk Matt with a nice camera instead of my iPhone).  

Well, that's what we're doing.

Sojourning together, Matt and I. 

 ¹so·journ: \ˈsō-ˌjərn, sō-ˈ\: a temporary stay.

We recognize, I suppose, that our time here on earth is short in the light of the eternity that lay before us. We recognize that we were made for another place and that our time here, while blessed and beautiful, is preparing us for the greater joys and glories of heaven. Until then, "may Your Kingdom come and Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven"...Amen! 

And so, we're on the journey together, passing through, living our short days here with all the joy, obedience, fear of God, and love for people that we can muster. 

And we figured it would make the journey just that much better to share some of the highlights of our sojournings with our family and friends. 

(This is us, right at the verrrrrry beginning of the journey...We loved this day.)

So, we hope you enjoy our new little blog here. It's nothing that special, though we're (maybe a little more Leah) excited about it. We can't promise much- but we'll try to share good things, funny things, serious things, sad things, mundane things, and really exciting things, because I guess that's kind of life. And we want to share ours with you. 

Until next time, 

Matt and Leah