the plan v.s. The Plan

we have a plan for our lives. its ridiculously foolish, but its a plan. actually, to be honest, its more my plan than omar's. hes much more go with the flow. im much more panic and organized chaos. hence, the plan. im scared to death of our perfect little plan because it has little detours and those detours have plans and sometimes i share part of the plan with people and they say things that make me readjust the plan. ive always tried to order the steps of my own life, because i think im god. well, i dont actually, but my "plans" make it seem like i do. anyway, i think about the plan constantly and ive realized that its much more stressful than counting on The Plan. The Created Plan. the One that i have no control over, and therefore, doesnt have any deadlines or goals it has to meet. and i married a guy who finds a new interest every three days and makes all of my day to day and month to month plans go awry.

future baby name list on the eve of my (other) best friend's wedding.

i have two best friends. they are incredible. everyone says they love their friends (duh.), but when people meet either one of these girls they say that they wish they could be best friends with them. like, this has happened on numerous occasions in both cases. im generally really bad at social skills, and these phenomenal girls have put up with me and shared life with me for extended periods of time. they love like its going out of style. as of tomorrow, i will probably have cried my weight in tears because of their weddings. i literally thought that i had run out of tears at whitneys wedding last month, until tonight's rehearsal where i thought i was going to throw up because my tear ducts werent able to express the intense wave of emotion. weddings are insane, man. 

 (jessica crying her eyes out at my wedding. its entirely possible that i will beat her in the most hysterical bridesmaid contest that neither one of us chose to enter)

but, what i really want to blog about right now is names of future babies. (no, not in 9 months, future, like down the road, future). im really good at distracting myself from stressful things by thinking of things of absolutely no present relevance. like baby names. so, here are the potential names of our future children, unless we change our minds (which happens every other day. except for the first one, that will never change):
Grace Amara (meaning grace; without limits) ((the only drawback to this is that her initials will be GAG)
Anna or Hannah (i just really like palindromes and anna means grace, and were totally into that) 
Ava(like aww-vuh, again with the palindromes. meaning: life)
Lucy Skye (we like the beatles and girls with kaleidoscope eyes)
Kaiah (a little hawaii-ish, means rare beauty or start of a season, both are cool if you ask me)
Ciella (Ella for short, omar says he made it up and it means heaven. whatev.)


there are exactly zero boys names that i love that sound good with our last name and are not taken by someone we know. i cant name my kid after a living person, living people have so many opportunities to mess up ya know?

Gabriel Cole (god is my might)
omar tried for Gibson for a while. haha.

and just for kicks, here are some that i love love love but that we could never name our kids because, really? mia garcia? (or above mentioned reason.)
Mia
Max
Teagan
Liv
Luke
Brennan
Callie
Molly
Tyler (for a girl, side rant: i love love love love love the name Grace Tyler. not going to happen though.)
Kaila
Thomas
Averie



i think baby names are so funny. i mean, you think you know a person and then bam! they tell you what baby names they like and youre like, "huh?"

p.s. (ive never used more parenthesis in my life.)

nakedness.

when i was in 12th grade geometry (yes, 12th. not a misprint. certified genius, couldnt figure out how to not fail algebra until 11th grade.) i used to ask my teacher the same question every day. the lovely question that every teacher dreads, but every teacher should be equipped to answer. "when am i ever going to use this?" and he would give me a wishy washy reply about figuring out how much tile ill someday need for my bathroom. to which i would reply, "i wont need to know that. im going to be a famous actress. ill pay somebody to do that." and then he would roll his eyes and i would go back to reading "Lolita," which i would have placed just right so that it looked like i was reading my geometry book, but really wasnt. anyway, that is not at all what im trying to say. what im trying to say is that i had another favorite question for when i really wanted to throw off my teachers. "did adam and eve have bellybuttons?" i know. i know. so lame and overdone. at the time, i didnt know anything about adam and eve and only knew that they wore leaves and i really couldnt figure out the belly button thing. i still dont have the belly button thing down, but ive figured out the leaves.

ive never been a huge fan of clothes. i like fashion and whatnot just fine, but ive just never had an overwhelming sense of modesty or a natural human desire to cover up. i spent the first 9 years of my life in my underwear, then my mom married my dad and i became a teenager and walking around in my underwear got me alot more lectures about propriety than what it was worth. since ive been married ive learned a whole lot about modesty and about how to love people by covering up (except omar, who feels alot more loved when i dont cover anything up. just kidding but not at all). weird, right? so weird. i had no idea about this concept. here it is: being modest in the way we dress is a way to love the men in our lives by not letting them stumble or be tempted or whatev, however i am starting to think it is also a very good way to love the ladies in our lives. for reals. this isnt even the point of this blog, but i was reading something about mormons and modesty and i really like what this guy said:

"Does the outfit make members of the same sex more conscious of their physical inadequacies?  If your dress causes feelings of inadequacy in others, then you know you are being immodest.  It is not Christian conduct to make other people feel bad because they were not blessed with your physical bounties." -John Welsh (some big time mormon guy who makes a really valid point)

cut, right to the heart. i think this applies to all people. it got me thinking about humans, and the way we try to look our best and that is commendable. but the guy has a point. i think there is a much deeper issue than clothes here though. there is a spiritual modesty that happens, and i think its entirely possible that im totally missing the boat on that one.  i think that its possible that we are created to be naked. actually, from what ive read, i know it is. we were never supposed to cover up, and yet, if you knew the stuff that goes on in my heart or home, you would call me a hypocrite, and possibly never speak to me again. and the same might happen for you. i love facebook and all of its glory, and im not so fond of debbie downers, but wouldnt it be interesting if we posted what was actually happening in our lives? like, "allie garcia is... hungover at church this morning and also just got in an argument with her husband because she overdrafted their bank account" or "just got back from the store where i saw a girl that was way prettier than me and spent the last hour trying to look up pictures of rachel bilson so i can dress cuter and feel better about myself" or, you get the idea. im going to work on that because i think that being naked is a really good idea. also, dressing modestly is good too. and adam and eve probably did not, in fact, have belly buttons. just kidding, how would i even know that?


donald miller, who also happens to me my favorite author, wrote a blog about nakedness too. read it. its good for your soul.

can i just share some thoughts about life?

im really bad at doing laundry. i know at some point i should have given omar some kind of disclaimer, like "doesnt understand the concept of laundry and will trick you into cooking dinner every night but also love you alot forever" that would have been much more fair. i dont really get why its assumed that wives do the laundry. youre literally carrying huge loads of clothing down the stairs and loading them into giant spinning machines. that sounds more like guy stuff to me. like lumberjacking.

why are cheese and chocolate so delicious? im trying so hard to live without them and its not working. especially cheese. cheese is the bane of my existence and the cause of my squishy little love handles. if cheese was removed from the world, i would be invincible. and really really sad. peanutbutter too.

summer is here summer is here summer is here and i want to eat it up and drink it til i feel it tingle all the way in my toesy toes. delicious summer, how i love your freedom.

another thought, anytime i get annoyed with omar, there is one thing that always comforts me. I DIDNT MARRY SPENCER PRATT. thank you jesus. 

i cant wait to blog about disneyland. another day.

delightful, darling weekend

we graduated college and celebrated mothers day and it was the best ever. sitting between my best friend and my husband next to the girls that have held me up and pushed me through the last 2 years was perfect and totally made up for the most boring ceremony ever. we felt blessed and supported and anxious and walked towards the stage together. i really like life events where you enter a room one way and leave the room as something else; ex- weddings and graduations and births. pivotal. life is so fun and exciting!!!!!!

a letter to my husband on the eve of our graduation

baba,
we sat in an overpriced coffee shop in a fancy hotel with your spanish-speaking venezuelan aunt, your brother, and your plate of crab legs. i still wasnt sure what to think of you- you spoke spanish! and your cracked your crab legs with your hands! i didnt know then that you stick your gum on the counter when you think you are going to use it again. you reset your odometer everytime you get gas. you brush your teeth for much longer than the average person, and you have a beautiful singing voice that sounds most akin to the lovechild of mark hoppus and david crowder. before i knew any of that, there, in that cafe, we picked significant numbers and played a mean game of keno, the only money i have ever won gambling. four dollars. those four dollars shaped our future together more than almost any other tangible item. we made a decision for our small spark of love that night- that we would use the money wisely. and only one dollar every ten years. you folded up all four, and stuck them safely in the credit card section of your wallet. then, you found a piece of paper napkin and a stubby keno pencil and began to create our first list. that night, we decided that we would get married, but not yet. we had to do alot of things first. we made plans to visit venezuela together, and to finish school, and on that not-quite-proverbial piece of napkin we wrote that we would get married, only after we graduated college. we both had 1 and a half years left. were backwards people, you and i, we make alot of plans and forget all about them. im going to go ahead and attribute 100% of the reasoning behind that to our Creator. in any case, we forgot to graduate college first and got married instead. which prolonged our graduation and had me wondering if either one of us would ever walk across that stage, diploma in hand. and now, here we are, the eve of our graduation, our caps placed neatly side by side on the table, our robes hanging in the hallway, and that elated smile on your face everytime i mention anything about tomorrow morning- because it hasnt been easy for either one of us. we have both fought off our demons, worked our butts off to pay for this, stayed up late late late into the night studying and finishing projects, fought to the death to finally, finally, get to this point. we did it! we did what only 28% of americans have done! im the first female in my family to do what we are going to do tomorrow morning! you moved here from another country, learned a whole new language, and are now graduating with a degree that requires a vocabulary i could only hope to understand! i am so proud of you and i am so excited to walk with you across the stage tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives. i love you, pal.

love,
babas

from summer to summer

ive always lived from one summer to the next. im a big fan of freedom and not having a schedule, so summer works really well. i have alot of thoughts and ideas about this summer, the summer after college graduation, before i start my career and masters degree, one of the last few that doesnt involve the pitter-patter of little feet, where my love has an entire year before he has any real obligations. this is our summer to be young and alive and i feel it all the way down to my toes. as time has caught up to the present, ive had an overwhelming feeling to remember what it is to be alive. to say yes to every invitation. to make decisions based on the flip of a coin. this is the last summer where its still okay for us to be a little bit reckless. i feel healing moving in and the winds of change blowing through our home, sweeping us up and taking us to a new place. anticipating that, by august, we will not be the same people we were in may. 

"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to ...me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit."-dm