Catch Up To My Life

Apologies in advance for not posting for a while and for having a super long post, once again! :0)

Well, I thought was doing pretty good keeping up this blog. Hahaha, that changed over the holidays!
OK, let me try to catch y'all up in somewhat coherent order.
December 13: The Christmas H2O. I'm not posting pictures because this is just a quick run-through on what's gone on. Check the h2o blog, maybe Mrs H2O has updated it! :0) Anyway, it went really well. We played a story game where everyone wrote three lines on a piece of paper, crumpled it, threw it in the middle of the room, grabbed another piece, wrote two lines, crumpled it, threw it, grabbed another, wrote two or three lines for an ending, crumpled it, threw it, and then had to read the next story we picked out. It was hilarious! Some of the stories were incredibly funny. H2Oers should recognize these following quotes:
"Except for the Bear, who came back and killed the king."
"So his master went to his police car, got some tear gas, and...well, let's say the cat never came back."
"She went to her room, pulled her pillow off her bed, and pulled out a bazooka."
"Yes, Dresilla was a vampire fairy godmother."
LOL! I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair. We have some strange minds in the group (I mean seriously, turning a fairy godmother into a vampire?!?!? LOL, that’s for you, Justin). Maybe sometime I'll post some of the best stories.
Then we played a gift game. I got to start out, yippee, which I didn't want until I remembered that the first person also is the one who usually gets what they want. So....yeah! The most popular gift was a 12 pack of Mountain Dew, so many people wanted that it was really funny!
OK, moving on...December 19: The BIG Christmas concert, “Amahl and the Night Visitors”. It was a little crazy…OK, so like a lot crazy! We had three performances total that day, with the big finale one being the evening performance. I was so nervous I started shaking. Luke S told me my face was “white. As in the color of my shirt white.” I think the last time I was this nervous was probably my first piano solo at Federation. But, it went off pretty good, there was some miscommunication and all but nothing super serious. And we impressed a few doubters, which is always nice to be able to prove we can do something.

Something really major happened on December 21, but I’m going to devote a whole blog post to it so I’m jumping over that for now.

Hmm…let’s see….the next big event would be January 1^st, the party we had at our house just this past Thursday. New Year’s Day/housewarming/game party, to be precise. :0) The big deal of the evening was the big Capture the Flag game we had once it turned dark. We’d cleaned up a section of the woods (we had help from some of the T crew...thanks!) above our pond and divided it up with glowsticks. Oh yeah! No video game can beat a good game of Capture the Flag! The first game was over so quickly, I really didn’t do much other than work on organizing the border patrol. The second game we played, Mary P and I spent over half our time in the “enemy” territory, wandering around trying to find their “flag” (blue glowstick) and their prison. We found their prison, mainly because I listened to Caleb P and Colin C’s shouted conversation on where to take one of their prisoners. I didn’t even have to follow Caleb. Oh yeah, and we made a jump for the glowstick. Mary actually got it, then got tackled by Colin. She tried to throw the stick to me because I was almost in our territory, but it slipped right through my hands. Sarah S, who was on the other team, picked it up just as Owen mistakenly tackled her. They both landed on me and Colin dogpiled on the top of them.

So of course they decided we were prisoners and had to be taken to prison. Right after we got there, Josh’s time was up so he slipped away, met Sam in our territory, and they decided to rescue Mary and me. They pretended like Josh was a prisoner again, and they went right around Caleb P, touched us, and said, “We’ll be taking them back with us, Caleb.”

Caleb sputtered and grumbled about it but since they played by the rules, he had to let us go! :0) The night ended with bruised shins from crashing through brush piles, scrapes and scratches, and various degrees of soreness, but that was completely OK because it was so much fun!

January 2^nd, we played Frisbee at Willard because it was almost 60, very unusual weather for January but that’s OK cause we had a LOT of fun! :0) We had enough people that we just split into two strings per team and changed each string out every two points, which was fine because it gave me a chance to catch my breath. It was kind of a brutal game—the longest in this group’s history. We played to 23-21 because you have to win by two points. And my team didn’t win. Oh well. It was still fun!

And yesterday, Josh and I went over to the Hs for a surprise 21^st birthday party for Joy. Heehee! Quite a lot of fun…we all lined up on the road by the Hs and waved to Joy as she went past! Once she got over her initial shock, we had cake and ice cream, then we went downstairs and played Mad Gab for a while. That is one fun game! We also played Frisbee, and I got switched to the other team in the middle of the game to make it more “fair”. But that was OK. I didn’t play super well, but I was kinda sore and achy from Frisbee the day before and Capture the Flag before that. Jessi, Colin and Rachel, who didn’t play Frisbee, watched “The Inspector General”, a silly old movie with Danny Kaye in it. I’ve seen it once before, it's OK, one of the types were its best if you stay up late to watch it. :0)

And today…well, I’m working on my writing stuff. So far, I’ve researched a possible market for a devotional I wrote, emailed some interview questions to people, am writing a query letter, have emailed some friends, have posted on this blog, and tomorrow I’m going to sign up for the Writing For the Soul conference in Colorado Springs next month. Yay!

And hopefully later tonight or tomorrow, I’ll fill you in on one of the biggest happenings of my life so far. Until then!

Who Turned THEM Loose on Their Own?!?!?

Yep, I'm sure that's what some people thought. This is the official blog about my graduate group's 2008 trip to Silver Dollar City. What a day!!! It was exactly like an h2o, only smaller but probably just as noisy and rambunctious!
I drove over to Rachel and Colin's house, then together with Liz we all went into Springfield to meet the rest of the group. The Ts kindly let us use their shuttle bus, yay! I was official DJ for the group, so I brought a stack of CDs plus made my own special CD comprised of random Christmas songs from Mannheim Steamroller, Casting Crowns, David Crowder* Band, Kutless, and I don't remember who all else.
So, we all piled into the shuttle bus. Justin was driving (scary thought). Within seconds of him starting the bus, Sarah calls out, "Daddy, I need to go to the bathroom!"
"I thought I told you to go when we stopped last," Justin said.
So then everyone started doing it to Justin. "Daddy, Colin pushed me!" "She's invading my space!" "I'm tired!" "I'm hungry!" "Are we there yet?" "She's still invading my space!" :0)
That was only the start of the craziness. I kept the volume up pretty loud the entire way there and we all enjoyed singing and laughing. The Ts had provided red licorice (SDC tradition), Dr. Pepper, and trail mix. Mary P brought some cookies. So we nibbled snacks all the way down there. Oh yes and listened to a couple of songs from Justin's computer, which were the automated voice from the weather station singing Christmas carols. Someone seriously had way too much time on the night shift! "Jingle....bell.....jingle.....bells....jingle all the....way...." Yeah, it was kinda sad.
Here are some pictures from the afternoon. They're in random order, btw.



Guess who this is. I'll tell you at the end of the blog.


This is Sarah T. Yes I actually got her to try on the leprechaun hat with the beard, it was pretty funny.

This one of Joy is even better. With her eyes crossed like that she looks like a cartoon character.

Yours Truly!
In the Mine Shoot-out ride. Rachel and Colin are in the front (Rachel is on left) Then Joy and Liz in the back (Joy is on the left).

Waiting in line for The Christmas Carol. I don't think the play is as good as when it ran the first year, but Owen and Mary had never seen it, so we had to go see it. And ps, I have no idea what I'm doing, probably showing how big something was in a story. As most of you have figured out I'm like my mom and talk with my hands all the time. :0) Side note: Man, the angle he took this at makes me look super short next to Owen!

The Mine Shoot-out again, me on the far left, Mary's back, and Sarah's hand. :0)

The guys of the grad group, except for Chris C (on the left arm of the chair). We ran into him and he hung around with us for a while. Anyway, continuing from Chris, there's Joel, Owen, Colin...and in the front who else but Justin.

Owen, Mr. I-Hate-Pictures-Taken-Of-Me

Colin and Rachel

A disturbing picture of Justin known as the "disembodied head pic". And no this was not photoshopped. It was in the Mine Shootout, I turned and tried to take a pic of him and Owen. Owen moved, obviously.

Waiting in line for the Christmas Carol again....Owen and Rachel

The girls of grad group. From left, me, Joy, Mary, Liz, Sarah, Rachel in the front.

So yes, needless to say it was a crazy day. Cold, but well worth it. The way home was pretty crazy too, we listened to music almost full blast. Lots of craziness. I got home about 11:30, I think.....I dunno, its been over a week. Then Mom and I stayed up late talking about the day and everything, so it was nearly 1 by the time I got to bed.

The leprechaun picture at the beginning was Justin. Who else?

Coming up next, a post about the h2o!!


(And btw, you may wonder what the video below has to do with grad group. Nothing except Justin was involved in both of them. This is a Merry Christmas video he sent us....pretty funny, actually. Enjoy!)

Concert Jitters

OK, compared to the last couple, this is a pretty short post. Enjoy!

So, this last Saturday was the big orchestra Christmas concert bash! Whoohoo! I am so glad half of my Christmas performances are over!!!!

This year's concert was at Praise Assembly, Siah's church. It's bigger than Asbury, so we could comfortably seat all the performers and the audience for the first time in three years!

My family got there about noonish. I ran up the stairs to the balcony and claimed a spot in the choir section immediately by dumping my messenger bag and coat there. Then I went back downstairs, retrieved the keys from Mom, and went outside to bring in my black skirt for the performance (I was already wearing my red shirt) because of cours being me, I live in jeans so I wore jeans there. I popped the trunk and......no skirt. So I ran back inside and said, "Uh, Mom? I think I left my skirt at home."

"Surely not," she said.

"Yes, I did. It's in my room hanging on my closet doorknob." This is why I dislike performances. There's way too much stuff to remember to get. So Mom called Dad and asked him to run home and get it for me. His truck broke down in the middle of the driveway too, so he had to fix it and get back...sorry Daddy...love you! :0) But because of that, I got to perform the preconcert with the Bel Canto orchestra in jeans! I never thought I'd get to perform in jeans. So that was a nice first.

Coming up next Friday is our big performace at "Amahl and the Night Visitors" which I'm no longer really nervous about, because Saturday we performed the Hallelujah Chrous beautifically! For the Glory was shaky, but all the other songs went pretty well. And the upper classes sounded really good. I didn't get really good sound because I had to sit up in the choir loft throughout all of it (Mom & Lisa M said I looked bored, but its my "listening-to-music" face because I'm concentrating on the different parts to see how they sound) so that was kind of a bummer. Jingle Bell Rock sounded really good from the last time I'd heard it, they were hitting the high notes pretty well. Major improvement. All you guys did such a good job!!

Grandma and Grandpa L came for the concert too, yay! Thank you!

Sunday was the graduate group trip to SDC, which was fun!!! However, I really want pictures, and I didn't get many on my camera, so I'm going to wait and ask Justin and Rachel if I can get pics from them.

Saturday is the h2o, I'm super excited! That's going to be sweet! We're playing the gift exchange game, and everyone's supposed to bring a funny gift that's "new or used, but not alive." So I know that some people are going to bring something dead, that's the way their brains work. I have two sweet ideas and I'm having a horrible time trying to decide between them. Josh and Hannah won't dare do either of them! :0( Oh well........

OK, I'd better get back to my serious writing. See if I can't get a couple of pages or so written today. TTFN!