Work and Youth Group

I am sitting here at work. I was pretty bored so I decided to make a blog post! My boredom is your gain!

This past weekend Brad and I were at a Disciple Now weekend with our youth group. They divided us up into small groups (high school boys, middle school boys, high school girls, middle school girls) and those groups stayed at different host homes. We had big sessions were there was a band and a speak and such, and then small group sessions in our host homes. I taught our high school girls; Brad helped teach the high school boys. It was a really fun time. The theme was "live love"; so we talked about how as Christians we are called to lives that imitate Jesus' love for others. Things we talked about were loving others, loving God, obeying God, and a few other aspects of "living love". I thought it was pretty good. Sometimes I'm afraid the girls didn't get much out of it, but at least they were there. I was lucky because I had my own room and my own bed, so I slept fairly decently over the weekend. Some other leaders weren't so fortunate, haha. Most of the girls slept in the living room, so they were up for a while. Overall, I  think the weekend was a good weekend even if it didn't go perfectly.

The month of February has been very busy. I'm looking forward to it slowing down a little! Every weekend Brad and I have had something going on. This weekend I am hosting a recipe exchange and movie night. We're going to watch Julie and Julia, so it's a cooking themed evening! I'm looking forward to it; it will be nice to hang out with girls! We're all so busy that we hardly have time to hang out anymore. It's kind of sad, but I suppose that's how life goes sometimes.

Brad and I have been watching the Olympics almost every evening. Unfortunately they never play the events I want to see when I am able to watch them! Figure skating is my favorite, but I've only caught a couple routines here and here of Ice Dancing. I'm hoping to watch some of the women's figure skating and maybe the pairs skating (did I miss that already?). They also never play any of the hockey. It's sad... I like hockey. :( They did play the last two minutes of the USA vs. Canada game. They must play all the hockey on a station that we don't get here.

I went to our church's young adult small group this week. Brad has been going, but this was the first week I had enough time to be able to go. It was really good. They're looking at the life of Peter and his faith walk. Last night we looked at the episode in Matthew where Peter is walking on water out to Jesus. It was a pretty good study. I'm looking forward to going back. Speaking of churches, I found out about a church that will be looking for a new youth pastor in July. I'm not sure if I will apply for it because I really like the church we're at. I don't really feel like we're supposed to leave yet. I guess I just need to pray about it and see what I'm supposed to do. I'm really starting to flounder a little about jobs. Everyone is sending out resumes and such, and I have no idea when I should start doing that. All the jobs I can think of are hiring immediately, so I can't really apply right now. I won't be available to work until at least the third week of August. I'm trying not to worry about the job situation because I know that something will work out. It always does.

:)

Snow, Apple Pie, and Valentine's Day

Since I last updated this, there have been some eventful happenings! Last friday we had a snow day. We got something like 4-6 inches of snow. And it stayed on the ground! We didn't get the whole day off, but they delayed school until Chapel (so no morning class for me!). Then one of my professors cancelled his afternoon class because too many of our commuters weren't able to make it in. In a class of 15 missing six people is bad! Here's some of the pictures of the snow:

 

 

this was from Thursday. Not much snow; a light dusting, really.

 

  

This is Friday morning. It was incredibly pretty. Students were our playing in the snow all morning. Lots and lots of snowmen being built! I didn't play in the snow because I wasn't feeling well, but it was kind of fun to see all the snow creations people made around campus. Some people even made three large "snow boulders" and put them accross the road to make a road block. It was really funny. I enjoyed my day off by babysitting Sam and doing homework. The babysitting was pretty fun, the homework was not. 

For Valentine's day, Brad and I had a pretty low-key day. Brad baked me an apple pie (my favorite dessert!) and made me dinner. He didn't tell me what dinner was, but it ended up being Tortilla Soup (another one of my favorites!). It was very good. He even put rose petals on the table and put out some candles. It was really cute, and the food was yummy. Then we watched the movie "The Proposal". I recommend that movie, it's pretty funny, for a chick flick. I also got a fair amount of chocolate. Yum!

This weekend is a D-now weekend for our youth group. That means on Friday and Saturday night i'll be staying with the girls from my small group. I'm sure there will be little sleep involved, but that's the fun part of d-now, right? All youth group trips come with little to no sleep. I just hope there won't be too many shenanigans! I'm also singing in the worship band on Sunday morning. I've never sang before at this church, so I hope it ends up being good. I would be very sad if everyone thought I sucked, haha.

Time to work on some homework!

Bowling, Homework, and Superbowl.

Last night Brad and I went out for a little date. We went to a place called Moe's for dinner. They make burritos. Well, they make tacos, quesadillas, salads... a whole array of southwestern stuff. It was pretty good. Kind of expensive, but good. Then we went bowling. It was a lot of fun, even though I think my best game was a 90.

Today was a pretty good Saturday. I got to sleep in, which was nice. The rest of the day was spent working out, doing homework, cleaning, and going grocery shopping. Well, Brad did most of the cleaning. I did the homework. But I got most of it done. All I have left for tomorrow is to put the finishing touches on the take home Greek Exam.

We went grocery shopping today. It was crazy there! I guess everyone (like us) was buying goodies for the Super Bowl. We're having Jeremy and Anna come over tomorrow. We're having some snackages: chips and salsa, cheese ball and crackers, and cake balls. I'm going to make cake balls for a girls night, but I had never made them, so I practiced for tomorrow. They turned out pretty well. Cake balls are just crumbled up cake mixed with frosting. Then you make them into a ball and dip them into chocolate. I love them. Brad wasn't a fan, but he doesn't really like chocolate covered stuff. More for me and Anna, I guess. The did kind of crumble in the chocolate, so I think next time I'm going to freeze them before I put them in the chocolate. They are yummy though!

At Church tomorrow i'm in a skit. I'm portraying Jesus questioning a Luke Warm Christian. I end up throwing the person out of Court. It'll be pretty powerful.They might tape it. If they do i'll ask for the file to send up to MI. It's been a lot of fun getting back into dramatic stuff. I'm in the play for school, and our church is hoping to start up a drama ministry. I'll probably get involved in that as much as possible. People seem to be really responsive to the skits. I guess it just helps the message sink in a little deeper.

I'm up to eight memorized verses. I'm falling behind on my goal... but sometimes you have to revamp your goals, right? So I'm only doing one verse a week. It's do able. OH! My schedule worked out to where I think I can make it to Bible Study now! I'm excited about it. The book we're going through seems like it's a really good book. We're going through "Respectable Sins". It's about all the "little" sins we like to let slide by without even thinking of them as sin. It looks like it's going to be a challenging book.

Well I need to go vaccum up Brad's hair. I just gave him a hair cut a little bit ago, and now it's time to clean up the mess!

-Liz

For Anna

Today has been an ok day. Brad had to go into work this morning, so when he got up at eight I surprised him by making him breakfast while he was in the shower. I made him bacon, eggs, a huge pancake, and cut up an orange. It was pretty good, if I do say so myself. After he left I worked on some homework and did the laundry until Brad came home at 12. Since we had eaten a pretty big breakfast, neither of us were hungry for lunch so we went to Solheim and worked out. When we got back and showered we ate pizza (the pizza dough in the bread maker is pretty good). Lunch was really late today, so that means neither of us are hungry for dinner yet! But that's ok, we have left over pizza and snacks for when we do get hungry.

This semester is shaping up to be a very busy semester. My school work isn't too bad, it's just my other commitments. They all happen in the evening... so my evenings are jammed. I made the decision today to not go to Bible study. I am very sad to have to make that decision, so I've been thinking of ways all day to avoid it. I think I might talk to Carl and see if it would be possible to only work two shifts a week. If not, my compromise is to work from 4:30-5:30 on Tuesday and Thursday, which would only leave me a half an hour short of the required hours. I'm hoping, though, that he'll just let me drop a shift. We'll see though, he gave me grace last semester. I've also been thinking about quitting my job just because I'm really busy. But I think our finances say that I need the job.

I did get a part in the play that the school is doing. I am sharing the role of Susan with a friend of mine (Kelsey) so we get to split the performance time. I'm kind of excited about being in a play again; it's going to be so much fun! The only unfortunate thing is that rehearsals are at 9pm. So that means I'm going to have to give up going to bed early and getting up early. That's ok though, I'll be able to manage. Instead of getting up at six i'll get up at 7:30. I think I can take that. Haha.

I haven't got much other exciting news to relay. My life is getting back into the swing of things, so that means routines, routines, routines! 

World Vision

 Yesterday evening Brad and I decided to sponsor a child through World Vision. I chose a little girl from Kenya, who lives in a community severely affected by HIV and AIDS. Through our sponsorship we can help provide education, health care (including HIV/AIDS counseling and prevention education), food, clean water, care for their sick or dying parents (so sad that this is even a service that needs to be offered), and other things we like to take for granted over here in the States. We chose to sponsor a Hope Child, which is a special program that works with children and families in AIDS affected areas. The little girl we are sponsoring says her health is satisfactory, so I am assuming that means she is not HIV positive. I'm sure, though, she knows many people who are. Her name is Amina.

Auditions, life, and spoiled Hamburger.

So yesterday had a great start to it. I remembered as the alarm went off (i'm not sure why) that I had probably left some ground beef on the counter all night. When I went and checked, of course, I had. I took it out of the freezer while I was cooking dinner the night before to let it thaw a little before I put it back in the fridge, that way I wouldn't have to leave it out tomorrow and I would be mostly thawed by dinner time. I could have sworn I put it back in the fridge after we were done eating, but apparently I didn't. I was extremely annoyed.

Yesterday I could not for the life of me get motivated to do anything. That's probably going to bite me in the butt, but for some reason I'm having a difficult time making me buckle down and do homework. I really need to get over that before the semester gets too busy! I have another Greek quiz on Wednesday, I have about half of the words memorized. If I buckle down, I should be able to get them all memorized today. I also have some tour guide training today after my Noon class. I'm giving tours for admissions this semester. I'm a "back up" tour guide which means I only give tours during preview weekends and when the regular tour guides can't make it or forgot about their tour. Grading is going to be less this semester, but that's ok. I'll stay plenty busy, I'm sure.

Last night were auditions for the play "All My Sons". I think I did pretty well. I'm hoping I get the part I want. I think I have as good a shot as anyone else. There is another round of auditions tonight, and i should find out after the auditions (so probably 11 or 12. Haha). I might just wait until the morning to get my email and find out, depending on how tired I am today.

Babysitting!

I am here at Christian and Krista's babysitting Sam. He's napping right now, so I took the time to do some homework and make a blog post!

Tonight I think it's going to be pretty low-key. Matt is in town, so he wants us to go to the skate night (it's put on by the school) with him and Bekah. I think Brad and I are going to pass... it doesn't start until eleven and goes into the wee hours of the morning. We're losers and are in bed well before midnight. Haha. Besides, we're going to do something with them tomorrow at some point. I think we might try to go bowling or something. We'll see, i'm not sure what everyone is going to want to do. I envisioned dinner and a movie, but we'll see how that goes over.

This week has been a pretty long week. I guess it's all about falling into a routine. I hope to have mine established soon! On monday night I'm going to audition for the play Stage Right is putting on this semester. It's "All My Sons" by Arthur Miller. I'm going to try out for the lead role, Ann. The only thing is that the role requires me to kiss another character. Brad and I discussed it, and we're ok with a stage kiss. It's, well, a stage kiss. Devoid of any emotional attachment. And it's just acting. So we'll see how that goes. I should know by next week whether or not I got the role. I think I have a fairly good shot at it. There aren't usually many girls that audition for the lead roles. They're usually begging people to fill them.

I've memorized six verses already this year. I'm already "behind"... I'm supposed to get in 3-4 a week, but I just don't think that's possible with school and everything. My new goal is to have two done a week. So I won't get through my whole stack in a year, but that's ok. I can keep working on it for a while. :)

I think I hear Sam, so I'm going to go check on him!