Adventures in Winter Wonderland

What an adventure! We left for our youth group ski trip at 8:30 pm on December 28th. We were going from Dallas to Denver by charter bus without any stops. With almost everyone asleep at about 4am on the 29th I woke up to see how everything was going. To say the least we were driving in treacherous weather! The ground was completely white and the everything else completely black, the only way to stay on the road was to look from road marker to road marker…and between each road marker there was about 5 seconds that I was praying oh Jesus please show us another marker! Well, at about 9am on December 29th we were told that we were not going any further. We got snowed-in in Lamar, CO. Never heard of it? Well, don’t worry you aren’t missing anything!

We were snowed in for 3 nights and 4 days in the wonderland of Lamar, CO at the Cow Palace Inn (which is a Best Western). Though we were stuck and as each day the same report came in, that we could not leave, the 20 students we had kept themselves entertained with playing in the several feet on snow and then coming in the hotel stripping down to suites and going swimming in the indoor pool. We also had a restaurant in the hotel so we survived well enough. On January 1st, which is the day we finally were able to leave all the students had to help dig our charter bus out of the snow! It was quite a crazy site! When we finally did get to leave Lamar (or as our students came to call it LAME-R) we saw another youth group that had been on their way to a ski trip also and were snowed-in in Lamar, but they stayed in a hotel that had no restaurant, no pool, and all the door opened to the outside. The leader said that for two of the days when the Walmart and McDonalds were closed they ate at the gas station whatever they could find. They were with a Methodist church from Plano…so I guess God does the church of Christ more…Hahaha I am kidding, no really I am completely kidding. NO offense to anyone!

On New Years in Lamar, CO we had a midnight devotional outside while it was 1 degree. We all bundled up in our ski clothes (that got no action this year) and had a devo then took communion. Although our grape juice had frozen so it was more of a slushy then a drink…you think that still counts? It was a fun way to bring in the New Year! Anyway, it was an adventure and after that trip John and I went to NCYM in Colorado Springs. But I will wait for another day to write about that. Hope you have a snowy New Year too.

Merry Christmas

Our move went as smoothly as can be hoped for with a room full of boxes that will stay packed for the next four months until our final place will be ready! John and I are excited to depart Dallas on the 28th for our annual youth group ski trip, and then we will stay in Colorado for NCYM and drive back from Colorado Springs with some wonderful friends from Floridia. So, see you in the New Year and I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

What A Mess!

Well, the tree is down, the wreaths put up, and Christmas is not even over! The day is almost here, what day is that? No I am not speaking of Christmas but at last…the MOVING DAY. Below you get the low-down of how our month has gone, though it may sound like some frustration, know that we are excited about the ending…if it ever gets here.

November 27th: our “boss” tells John and me we are NOT moving until after Christmas.
November 30th: John and I go to Ft Worth to get our Christmas tree
December 1: I put up all of our Christmas decorations and clean the house so everything looks perfect.
December 4th: Our “boss” (which is our elder) says he has some bad news; we might have to move before Christmas.
December 6th: We are informed our move out date is Dec. 15th.
December 8th: I pack everything that we will not be using for the four months we are in the temporary house.
December 13th: It is realized among our staff that the youth group will be moving into the building and out of the youth house NEXT WEEK (and the basement still isn’t fixed from the flood in March, which means we are already short two classrooms and the youth are about to take the next two biggest classrooms.)
December 14th: John and I pack everything else.
December 15th: MOVING DAY…I will let you know how it went.
March: Our hopeful move in day for our newly renovated home.

YES! It is COLD!

So the Christmas season is here. How many of you tempted the waters and went shopping the day after Thanksgiving? I did, but I was in College Station with John’s sister, Kayla, so it was pretty empty because everyone in College Station was either in Austin or at home watching the game. It worked out great for me. J And I am proud to say that John and I took an afternoon off this week and from having no Christmas shopping done to having everything done except for each other! Are we efficient or what?

And how about that cold front!!! I was so super excited to have the cold front move through last night, it went from 80 degrees to 35 degrees in a matter of hours…I LOVE COLD weather! We have even been out driving all over the place today in this horrible wonderful weather. My sister asked me today if I had trouble getting to work because of the sleet and snow (I live next door to the church, literally across the parking lot) and so I told her “the traffic was awful, people were moving so slow and causing back ups…but then John feel and I was able to go around him.” Hahaha, I know you’re rolling aren’t you?

Well, I am off this evening to put up my Christmas décor, last word we got about moving is that it won’t happen until January now, so I get to put up Christmas decorations. Maybe even watch a Christmas movie like “White Christmas” while I do it. Hope you have a wonderful beginning to your Christmas season. Rejoice always!

Girls Retreat

The Girls Retreat was this last weekend, and it went great! I took all middle school girls, which I was sad that no high school girls went but it was still a great group of girls. My sister was one of the sponsors on the retreat too, which was really awesome. The girls all love her, and thought she was two years younger then me (even though she is three years older J) and it was really amazing to have her there when I taught and have her help. I taught on Deborah and realizing the gifts God has given you to use. At the end of class I had the girls make duck tape bracelets and write on them one character of theirs and is from God. They loved that part because we had like 10 different colors of duck tape. So the weekend was great, I am doing pretty great, and we are still waiting to move. Enjoy the pictures.

YS Convention 2006

What an amazing week! We are now back from the Youth Specialties Convention in Anaheim and we have so much fun! Not only did we finally get our instrumental fix for the month (and not just instruments but David Crowder Band worship) we were able to spend gobs of time with some of our favorite people that live no where near us, or even in Texas. The convention was great, David Crowder worship and our friends being my favorite part, the only let down was the Women in Youth Ministry luncheon. The main disappointment was that is was more like a bad excuse of a pep rally then an encouraging time where I met other women in ministry. I didn’t even meet one other woman from Texas, of course the table that was suppose to be for Texas woman had no one actually from Texas at it, so I just sat with Neena (and some other new friends in Phoenix) at the Arizona table. But that is my only complaint. Praise God for this break and community with friends, now I come back to hit the ground running with a Girls Retreat this Friday- Sunday and a staff retreat Monday & Tuesday. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

A Quick Update...

Ok, a quick update before I have to leave for the airport in 15 minutes! And now you probably need to know where I am going, so first John and I leave today for the Youth Specialties Convention in Anaheim, CA! I know it’s a rough life we lead. We are so SUPER excited to get out of town, to be in California, and most of all to see some of our favorite people.

Second, as for the boys that got into some trouble a couple of weeks ago in class, only one of them ended up teaching because he was the only one that showed up to work on the lesson with me. I do have to say though he did a great job, really knew what he was talking about and how to summarize the idea of the scripture. Although my favorite point during his class was when the other students were getting a bit out of control (but Summer and I bit our tongues to let the “teacher” handle it) and the “teacher” Franklin let out a huge sigh and said, “look you have to listen to me, I’m the teacher so do what I say.” I think for just a split minute he felt some of the frustration of getting people to listen. But he did great and I loved seeing him shine!

And third and last, I have a bit of a stressful and disappointing week. On top of being busy getting everything together for others to fill in for me we also got new news about our living arrangements. John sent an email to our elder, who is over the youth ministry as well as over the staff, concerning any news that he had. We had already been told that we will be moving next door to the apartment we now live in, the second floor of this duplex (which is currently two one bedroom apartments) will be remodeled into one two bedroom apartment for us. Which is wonderful, we are very thankful that they are doing remodeling and taking care of that. But then this week we found out that the apartment will not be ready when they will be tearing down our apartment that we live in now, so they will be moving us to a temporary (2-3 months which really mean 5-6 months) house somewhere around here…maybe. This is frustrating because no one took the time to prepare a place for us, and yes you could say well it’s just business…but no this is personal because it is our home. So now not only is our office space unavailable (it is still under construction from the flood in March) but now we are still in limbo with our house. And if you know me at all you know what an OCD person I am and to have both the spaces where I spend the majority of my days in chaos and unstable is almost more then I can bear. I am praying about this and trying to have a good attitude, but at this moment I just want to be angry that someone let us and our office and our home slip through the cracks.
Sorry it is so long, but next time I will have pretty pictures from CA instead of so much writing. :)

Me and My Memaw (Lou Sims) at her 88th birthday party, she is too cute!
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John & I with Allie, one of the girls in the youth group. She was a citizen of the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz!
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What a Weekend

Well I haven’t updated in a long time and I know Josh gets frustrated with that, so here we go. For a weekend off it certainly does seem like I was busy the whole time.
First, Friday (yes Friday is a day off for me) I substituted in an 8th grade Social Studies class. Which as tiring as it can be I really have fun doing. Out of all the times I have subbed only once did I not have any students I knew, this time I had a few and the others came by to see me. Oh, and I had this one guy in my class, an 8th grader never failed or anything and he was 6’5” tall!!! Can you believe that? It’s crazy I tell you. Then Friday night was HP homecoming, we were lucky enough to fall into some reserved seating so that was GREAT! And at HP every game is sold out and overflows so reserved seating is a really great thing. We left at the beginning of the fourth winning 63-0!

Saturday, we first went to a little boy’s birthday party about 20 minutes away and then drove back home so I could make some GREAT sausage/cheese balls. Then we drove to Fort Worth for my Grandma’s 88th birthday! Which was so great, all the family was there; dad, uncles, aunts, cousins, 2nd cousins, and my bro-in-law and my sister. There was tons of food and cake and my grandmother looked beautiful! I love getting together with my family, but this time my sister and I didn’t dress alike…incase you don’t know usually without planning it my sister and I show up in the same outfit, well one year she did it on purpose to me; she thinks it’s really funny.

Sunday we had church and class, in which I was met with some difficulty from a few of our middle school boys, which is not unusual just more aggravating this week for some reason. I kept the boys after class and had a talk with them, which is really hard for me sometimes. I don’t like being the adult that gives them a talkin’ to, John says it’s good for them to hear it from me but I am not sure it makes any difference. The students in the youth group even have a joke about my “authoritative voice” the joke being that I don’t have one. I find teaching a frustration sometimes too, feeling that I am not doing the lesson justice because they are not getting the importance, the intensity, or the understanding from what I am saying… do you know? It just doesn’t seem like they realize where the battle is, where the glory is, and where they are being invited to be. I did not find the solution from talking to the boys either, but two of the boys are teaching class next week, I am going to help them some but they both said they felt like the weren’t learning anything and so I offered them the chance to learn it from teaching it and they took it. So we will see.
And finally Sunday after church we went to go see one of our 7th grade girls in “The Wizard of Oz.” She was too cute and did great! So in a really long nutshell that is our weekend, great but a little busy.

Just Hanging Out...

Well, I guess it’s time to update my blog. Josh (Johnson) was bothering me today on AIM about how long it’s been since I last updated, I tired to tell him I had nothing to write about but he didn’t believe me, so I am updating to appease him.

I have started substitute teaching in Highland Park ISD, which is where our church and home is in Dallas. I have only done it a few times but it has been great so far. I have even already had personal requests from other teachers to sub for them, which makes me feel super special. I sub in the middle school and high school in order to meet more of our student’s friends and just get to know the community better, because the schools are really the heart of this “Bubble” community. Even at the HP football games most of the tickets are sold out because old alumni have all of the season tickets. Isn’t that crazy? If you would like to see more information on HP just go to www.thebubble.com no really, it’s the real website for HP.

Other then that we have simply been going with the flow, still waiting on everything (refer to Aug. 23 entry) and doing stuff with the youth group. The pictures I’ve posted are from our last youth Home Invasion, which is where we go to a youth families house hang out and eat. Eventually we hope to start having devo’s too but that is in the works.

So what do you write about when you don’t have anything else to write about?

I'm an AUNT!!!

I’m now an AUNT! Ok, well I have been an aunt for 6 weeks, but now it feels real. This past weekend John & I went to El Paso, TX to see our 6 week old niece which is John’s brother’s daughter. She is just the cutest thing, and has almost as much hair as I do!
We really had a wonderful time, we hadn’t seen John brother (Richard) or his wife (Melissa) since John preformed their wedding in December of 2004, so it was definitely an overdue visit. The whole weekend was about relaxing with Richard & Melissa and getting to see our precious niece. Her name is Catherine Elizabeth, but we call her Katie. Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure!

PS: No comments about how good John or I look with a baby in our arms…we still have 3 years before any of that!

the Waiting Game

Well, I know it has been a long over due update but not much is going on. I feel like I am just in a waiting phase. Do you know what I mean? I keep preparing for stuff, and planning for stuff that won’t happen until…well until someone else does something. Waiting on other people, other committees, the church, and time itself. I feel like it should be fall already, at least October. I really wish it was fall, and then maybe we could get out of these 100 degree days.
We are still waiting to find out where the church will move us when they tear down our house, which is supposed to happen by Oct. 1st. If you wonder why we are waiting, it is because our housing is part of our salary here, which is awesome and means we can stay in Highland Park instead moving out to Rockwall (45 min away) like most of our staff. So, we wait.
Also, our church is kicking off a new Sunday morning schedule with a new children’s ministry program, which we are so excited about. We are going to an hour of Sunday class instead of a 90 min. Sunday class, who wouldn’t be happy? But it doesn’t start for a couple of weeks, at which time I will gain a middle school teacher (YEAH for Summer) who is our new youth volunteer…let me rephrase that, ONLY youth volunteer! Which we are so excited about! So, we wait.
And last, our offices still have not been restored. Six months after the flood we are still crowded into a classroom. But plans are in work and hopefully before they tear down the youth house, we will be able to have offices because where our temporary offices are is where the youth are going to meet when the house is torn down. So, we wait.
I am so sick of waiting.

A Chilly 49 Degrees

12 hour drive what? I would have driven 20 hours for this weather! Praise God for mountains, rain, 49 degrees, and no cell phone signal. It has pretty much been raining the whole time we have been here but oh it is so beautiful. We are having so much fun, LeVondrick is here with us and 8 of our students and they are freezing their little patooties off! It is a wonderful week, and I looked up the weather in Dallas and its 101 degrees today.
Oh, and today marks mine and John’s 2 year anniversary at Preston Road Church of Christ…and they still like us! What a wonderful way to spend our anniversary as youth minister too. Well that’s it, enjoy the pictures.

It's the Craziest Thing...

Well, once again we are off. We are headed to Pine Springs this Sunday morning at 5am, before God even wakes up. So when you get to church that morning at 9 or maybe even 10am you can think of John & I who will have already driven for 4-5 hours. But that’s not the crazy part.
We have 9 students going with us, which we are excited about. It may seem small but you have to remember this is a new camp for our church. As of now we are taking both of our cars, the Suburban and the Tahoe, which mean yes we are both driving the entire 11 hours and we are the only two adults going. Exciting no, doable yes. But here is the crazy part, for the past two days we have called pretty much every place in Dallas/ Fort Worth that rents 12 passenger vans…and no one has one! In ALL of DFW there is not one single 12 passenger van! Can you believe that? It’s madness I tell you.
So you might ask well just get a 15 passenger van, b/c there are tons of 15 passenger vans available…ah, but our church’s insurance blocked 15 passenger vans out of our policy b/c they are too dangerous and there have been too many wrecks in them. HA, but take three of those seats out and it is just dandy. I am just in amazement, have you ever heard of an entire city being out of vans to rent? I’m flabbergasted…what do you think?

On the Road Again!

Thank you all so much for your prayers and words of encouragement! We had a great time at Pine Springs, we were up there with Natalie & Daniel, Link, Trent, and Tanner ( and more but those are the LCU people). It was a great week of camp and so wonderful to be up in the mountains and in cold weather!

Two days after got back from camp we left with Dean (campus minister at Broadway in Lubbock) for the NACC (noth american christian conference) in KY. It was a 12 hours trip but really great for John and I to spend that time with Dean, he is a mentor of ours...and John wants to be like him when he grows up. The conference was awesome too, it is the first time that the independent christian churches had invited the churches of christ since their split in 1906...so it is a date to mark history! It was really wonderful to be a part of something that is bringing unity to the church! And John and I saw several old friends there that we didn't expect to...it was a wonderful suprise.

We got back from KY on Saturday morning 3am, then went to Celebrate Freedom with some youth and didn't get back until 2am...then did church Sunday morning (well barely, it is all kinda of fuzzy now since we were so tired), and headed out Sunday evening for John's parents house in Caldwell, TX (near College Station). Thats right this is my third week to be out of town...and I really don't mind being out of town but its the being home for only a day or two inbetween the trips that drives me crazy. Its just a tease and long enough for you to get the house dirty and rush to clean it again before we leave. Because I can't leave my house dirty!

So, what have your summer adventures been so far?

Say a Little Prayer

Well, it is 11pm on Saturday and we leave in 6 hours for Pine Springs (our church camp in the NM mountains) and I still haven't packed :). It is a 10 hour drive and we will be there until next Saturday (June 24th). Keep John and I in your prayers through out this week, we are looking forward to going to Pine Springs b/c it is such a beautiful place and so cool in the summer, but we have come to some challenges in our youth ministry and are both a bit discouraged...so when you think of it say a little prayer not that we will have a good time but that we will entertain the presence of Christ and come back renewed and more reliant on Jesus for our ministry and our personal walks. Thanks.

Good News, Bad News, Worse News

So, I have good news, bad news, and worse news. I will start with the GOOD news just to keep you in suspense! I went to the dentist this morning, my appointment was at 8:45am and I walked out at 11:30am. Whew, but that’s not the good news, this was my first appointment at a new dentist and she was GREAT! I don’t think I have ever been able to say that about my dentist but she is a member of our church, and she is so great!

The BAD news is that I have multiple things that need attention in my mouth, although none of them have to do with poor hygiene so don’t even think that. But I have a crown that needs to be fixed, a (yes a, one) wisdom tooth that has to be pulled, and ….are you ready I have to go to the orthodontist to see a about a tooth on the bottom front that is causing trouble to other teeth…oh please say I don’t have to have braces a 3rd time!!!!!!!!! If you look close in the first picture you can see one little tooth on the bottom sticking up higher then the others. And crazy thing, what I learned today is that your teeth will keep growing until they hit something to stop them, I just thought that tooth had been crowded out of line but my dentist said that when I got my braces off they didn't aline the tooth right so where the other teeth hit the top teeth and stop growing this one didn't stop until it hit my gums...which is still weird. (oh, and no my hair doesn't look that for real, that was a bad bangs cut & a picture taken 2 years ago...so don't worry).


And now the WORSE news, if you have been a avid reader of my blog you will remember when our offices at the church building flooded, and all of the fun that surrounded that glorious event. The flood happened on March 19th, the first date given to get back in the offices was mid April, then we found that the carpet had to be replaced, so mid May; then we found mold (maybe black mold) in the walls and now we have found asbestos that has been activated so a new date has been given, the earliest we will be back in our offices is SEPTEMBER! Until then I am in a church class room with two admin girls and one right out side our class and then four of the ministers are in a classroom on the second floor and John is sharing an office with the people that count money on Sundays. Oh, and I though sharing an office with John was hard but now just have a table and boxing…UH. SEVEN months like this.

Ok, so that’s all of my news for this week…hopefully soon I will be able to tell you where John and I are going to be moved to b/c the church is tearing down our house to add on to the church building in August…so it would be nice to know where they are moving us soon.

Welcome to Culture!

Welcome to Culture! John and I went to Andrews, TX this past weekend, if you don’t know where that is at think about the farthest you can go and still be in west Texas and there you are. It is about 45 min northwest of Midland/Odessa if you know where that is. Anyway, John was the bestman in his bestman’s wedding…do you follow? Everything went great and we had so much fun spending time with the bride & groom and their families, they made us feel completely loved and special. The wedding was beautiful; I even was able to lend a hand with my expertise in bow making! We had great food from cookouts, to Buddy’s steak-fingers, to the most important some Bahama Buck’s snow-cones!!!! And no, Andrews does not have a Bahama Buck’s we got it in Odessa on our way from the airport. Oh man, talk about that best snow-cones ever!!!

Moving on from the snow-cones, I never want to live in a small town in my life! I thought that when I went to Lubbock to go to college I was moving to a small town but oh was I mistaken! Andrews consists of about 10,000 people…more people fit in a college stadium! Now I know there can be good small towns, ones that hold a quiet beauty, an escape from the busy & noisy life in a city but this is not one of those towns. J It is not even nice enough to call a desert, b/c still with a desert you think of loads of sand, cool cactus, ect. Well, think of a desert with weeds and you have Andrews. Ok, I think that’s enough.

MY NEW CAR!!!

This is MY NEW TAHOE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s right, a 2004 Tahoe fully loaded with leather, sunroof, quad-captain seats, a DVD player, third row, and 20” inch rims ride’n on the side. I don’t say this to brag, it is an answer to prayer! We have been looking for a new vehicle since February, and this past Saturday the dealership let us take it home on a test drive, John said if they can get the monthly payments to “this” much then we will get it, and they got it $27 under that amount. Whoa, God is good. The only thing we didn’t like were the rims, which John thought about selling on ebay and buying the factory ones. Each time we get out of it he says, “we have to hurry back out before someone steals those rims.”