So Blessed!!

Last night, I was able to have a sleepover with my friend from church, Annaka (the one who teaches us dance), and really enjoyed that! It was so cool being able to get to know her a bit more and be able to hear about all her experiences-good, and bad. Then this morning, Katie from church came and picked us up and we went to The Living Room (aka my absolute favorite place to go for chai and other such drinks). So Annaka and Katie and I sat outside and got to have a cool talk.T hen the owner, Michelle, came out and sat down to talk to us. That was kind of fun, too. I had mentioned earlier that I was supposed to have gotten a job this summer, but I didn't want to work fast-food and hadn't really looked that seriously into it anyway, and I had said that I would acctually love to work at The Living Room, but I didn't know if they hired since it's a family-run place. So when Michelle was talking to us, Katie asked if they were hiring in the fall. Michelle asked if she was looking for a place to work and Katie just looked towards me and said, "Well, someone is," and just smiled. I was super excited to hear that Michelle said that she would keep me in mind!!! They only have seven people on their staff and won't just hire anyone, so that was really cool! We ended up talking to Michelle longer that we had planned for and didn't leave the cafe until 11:15 and I had a babysitting job at 11:30! And I still needed to run home to find out where they lived. I knew that they were near the middle school I went to, but didn't know exactly where. Katie offered to drive me there and after getting their address, still needed to call the the person I was babysitting for to get directions. We eventually made it there at about 11:35. Thankfully, Allison (who I was babysitting for) was just fine with it. She only wanted me there early to explain some things about watching Lydia (who was born about a month and a half ago and absolutely GORGEOUS!!). After showing me everything, we still had about ten minutes to talk before her student got there. So for the hour that I was watching Lydia, I just walked around the neighborhood with the stroller and now here's my point that I've been trying to get to. So I was walking around and the sky was blue and everything around me was green and I was thinking about my day and all those people in my life and I just felt this total feeling of being overwhelmed. I was thinking of how totally blessed I am! I have these awesome people in my life... awesome Christians that I can talk to and be around and I just felt extremely blessed and it was really cool. I am SO glad that God has put the people He has into my life! They are such and encouragement and such a blessing and for that, I am truely thankful!!!

SUPERCHICK!!!

For those of you who don't know, the new Superchick CD came out yesterday, and I so convienently was able to stop at the Family Christian Bookstore on my way walking home from Olive Garden with my friend. So I bought the CD and had just enough money to get it and I am definately loving it!!! Yet again, Superchick has another amazing CD!!! I've listened through the CD twice now, and two of the songs that I especially like are Crawl (Carry Me Through) and Cross The Line. I do have to clarify that on Crawl, I was a little bit confused by the first line of the chorus: And if I had to crawl/Well you'd crawl, too. The song is being sung to God and so I was a bit confused by that, but after talking to my dad, he referenced the verse of the Bible talking about weeping when others weep and rejoicing when others rejoice... So it makes a bit more sense now. Here are the lyrics to Crawl. Let me know what you think!!

How long will this take?
How much can I go through?
My heart, my soul aches
I don't know what to do
I bend, but don't break
Somehow I'll get through
Cause I have You

And if I had to crawl
Well You'd crawl too
I stumble and I fall
Carry me through
The wonder of it all
Is You see me through

O Lord, where are you?
Do not forget me here
I cry in silence
Can you not see my tears

When all have left me
And hope has disappeared
You'll find me here

Rebelution!!

Yesterday, my family and I got up at 5:30 in the morning in order to be able to leave for Minneapolis by 6:30 so that we could get to the Rebelution by 8:00 to register. I can't really say that getting up at 5:30 is something I enjoy (getting up at 6:00 in the school year is bad enough!) but it was definately worth it!!! Alex and Brett Harris, who started the blog, The Rebelution, recently wrote the book Do Hard Things. The book and the blog is all about teenagers rebelling against low expectations. The link to the blog is www.therebelution.com and I strongly encourage all of you guys to check it out!! Anyway, the tour was absolutely amazing!! The singing was awesome and the preaching was great! There's so much to talk about from yesterday, but I'll only point out the things that stood out to me the most. One thing, that I know is in the book (I've only read the first 4 chapters so far...) and got me when I read it, too, is talking about the elephant (on the blog, there's a couple links on the right hand side-go to the Myth of Adolescence parts 1 and 2). Summing it all up, an elephant will stay put if it just has a rope tied around its back right leg that's attatched to a wooden pole because when it's younger, it's attatched to a tree with a chain and when the elephant gets older, once it feels that resistance from the rope, it gives up. The elephant could easily break that rope and run away, but there are "shackles around its mind" and therefore gives up. (Okay, so that was kind of a not-so-good summary of it, so I guess you now have to go check out the blog :)) The elephant was compared to teenagers because we could do so much more than we do, but because of our culture and their low expectations for us, we've given up-we have shackels on our minds, too. Another thing that stood out to me was when Brett was talking about how the challenges that we face now are no more difficult to us than the challenges we've faced in the past. But now, as we grow older, if math is hard for us, we just say, "I'm not a math person," and it's accepted as an excuse. But if a toddler who is being potty-trained (I found this part quite funny, but it was also very true) is having issues with the whole training, and if they were to say, "I'm just not a potty person," that would be no excuse. They would keep being pushed until they were potty trained. But going back to the old challenges/new challenges things, he said that a high schooler learning algebra was no harder for them than a 2nd grader learning basic math functions was for them. And thinking about it, I remember when I was learning division in 3rd grade, and I wondered why 7 divided by 3 couldn't work. I definately had the same type of confusion this year in geometry. Although the problems were more complex and difficult, it wasn't (much) harder for me than when I was learning division. And knowing that was super encouraging knowing that I've gone through challenging things in the past, but that I'm able to get through the new challenges that I face, also.
Oh, and also the title of the book was a thing that I've come home really excited about- doing hard things. I really want to challenge myself to do things that are difficult for me. Except almost all of the things that are really difficult for me (mostly talking to people I don't know/I'm not comfortable with) are things that I would be more able to doing at school. So right now, my hard thing is acctually finding a hard thing I can do right now... :) haha not really. But I definately am brainstorming!!
I really hope you guys check out the blog and tell me what you think!! I've found (and this is acctually something they pointed out in the last session) that sticking with doing things (in this case, hard things) is somuch easier to stick to when you have good friends/companions to do it with and it would be awesome if I could stick with you!! :)

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Andrew had his Fever Fest today, which is this day-long baseball tournament. They played two games- one at noon and one at 4:00. They won the first game easily-in an hour and fifteen minutes, 5 innings, 6 to 0. Their second game was the championship game and I really wanted them to win. They've worked so hard this year and done so well, but I suppose the other team has, too. For a while, they were ahead by quite a bit, but in the 4th inning, ended up beind by four, which is what the game ended up being. They lost, 12 to 8, but it was a really good game and although it didn't sound close, it really was. I was really excited because Andrew got a really great hit and got a double off of it. It was pretty sweet. :) Also, for those of you who know Josiah, he got a triple, which was also extremely exciting, and Jake, too, got a really sweet hit. It was a really fun day. Although, being out in the sun forever, I got a pretty bad sunburn (the worst I've had) and I really hope it doesn't peel, because I've never experienced that before and I hope not to have to!! There's also this really weird rash-like thing on my arms and I acctually got that last year at Fever Fest, too. It looks like I had an allergic reaction to something and I'm pretty sure that I'm allergic to the sun one day out of the year. :) There have been days where I've been out in the sun for even longer amounts of time (like the camping trip I went on with the girls from church a few weeks ago) and that never happens, so I'm not really sure what's up with Fever Fest, but oh well!! I got some pictures from today, so maybe I'll try to put those up once I get them on the computer, although they're mostly of Andrew as catcher, and you can't really see his face, but still. All in all, today was pretty intense, very fun, and just amazing. :)

Intense

It has been way too long since I've written in here and SO much has happened!! If you're reading this today, it's pretty much going to be a novel, just so you know...

So, to get the smallest thing out of the way (which I have been counting down the days for for 3 months-that just shows you how intense everything else is) SCHOOL IS OUT!!!!!! I'm definately really excited for this summer! I started my summer book list already (I've probably got almost 20 books on there!) For today, I think I'm just going to relax for reasons that I'll share later.

Secondly, last week on Wednesday, my parents showed me this little boy named Tong Ju on the America World website that my parents felt pretty strongly about. They asked Andrew and I what we thought and asked us to pray about it. I went from Wednesday-being almost dead set against it because I had become very attatched to a sister, to Sunday-after praying about it, felt like we really needed to look at Tong Ju's full file, to this past Wednesday-after giving the file to our doctor, we learned that this little boy probably had fetal alchohol syndrome, which explains why he's so small, active, and why his IQ scores were so low. Our doctor said that he would possibly never be able to live on his own, he would have difficulty learning to speak the language, and he really needed to have a stable living environment. Living in Eau Claire for 7 years has been the longest time we've ever lived in one place and after praying about it, felt like we probably weren't going to be the best family for him. He was absolutely the most adorable little boy I've ever seen. And over those few days that we all really believed he was going to be a part of our family, I grew pretty attatched to him. So please be praying for Tong Ju!!

Lastly (maybe, because there has still been a TON that has happened within the past few weeks), yesterday, as I was biking home from school, the plastic bag that I had my sweatshirt in got caught between my wheel and the metal bar by my wheel, making my front wheel stop, and I flew over the handlebars and slid on my face. My friends, Rachel and Laura, were biking home with me and Laura came pretty close to crying. For the first 5 seconds after the crash, I just looked up and really had no idea what was going on, but eventually figured it out and got up with some help from my friends. I acctually started laughing when I got up, so even though I'm pretty sore today, I dont think I broke anything. I went to the chiropractor today and got adjusted, got my nerves and muscles tested and some other stuff, but the x-ray machine kinda broke, so we're waiting until Monday when I go back in to get checked out again. The spot on my forehead was a pretty sweet color red, though, so that was cool. :) I'm kind of bummed, though, because Bekah left for Pennsylvania yesterday morning, so by the time she gets back, it'll probably be mostly healed and I think she would probably appreciate it. It would also be kinda fun because I think she would probably be able to laugh at me (in a friendly way, of course), instead of pity, which would be a nice change. I took pictures, though, so I guess I'll just show those to her when she gets back!





There was also last night's end of the year party, today's issue with another friend's party, camping last weekend, and a really good talk I got to have with Katie from church, but maybe that will have to wait until later.

Love you guys and miss you lots!!