Hopes and Dreams

Yes, the title of this post says it all. I had the hopes and dreams of blogging many many times over Christmas break. And I did mean to.....but you know how the Christmas season goes; it was pretty crazy around here a few times :-)

So here I am two days into the new semester and finally posting some pictures from Christmas!

Cosette went to the Christmas program at my Grandparent's church

Grandma Carol with Mariah, my cousin's baby

Eli with his new bike from my parents

Wray in a Christmas program at my Grandparents church

My brother-in-law Joel opening his gift from me....

one of my favorite gifts I gave this year. haha

No need to buy Noah any gifts, he just enjoys eating the wrapping paper :-)

I love this little man so much!

Me and Jaime with her gift. As soon as I saw the picture frame

I knew I had to give it to her. It said "Having a sister

means having a best friend for life"

You're the greatest Jaime! I love you!

Christmas night playing "Would You Rather" in our rec room.

haha What an experience :-)

Well, that's all for now. I'm sure I will have some stories from this semester real soon :-)

From Me to You........

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you a blessed Christmas Day!

Semester Memories

Ok, so I know I said I'd post after my final last Wednesday, but I decided to wait a little while so I could remember every thing I wanted to tell you about my semester. In the past week I've remembered lots of fun...and not so funny....memories from the semester. Some made me and my friends laugh, while others made us want to cry (or loose our lunch, but hey, its anatomy class...what do you you expect :-) )
So my hope is that this post will make you laugh and bring some joy to your day.......

• We were warned on the very first day in anatomy class that we would be dissecting a cat mid-semester. Yeah, not exactly the news you want on the first day of class. However, we all tried to joke about it and tried not to dread that day too much. So, a few weeks before 'cat day' me and my friend Ashely were in the lab room studying some slides before an exam that afternoon. While we were there a rather large box was delivered to the room with our instructors name on it. Convinced that the box contained our little cat friends, we tried to ignore it and continue studying our slides. However, curiosity got the best of us and we wandered over to get a closer look. Everything about the box said "MEOW" to us :-) We decided to take a peek inside.....A copier machine! Relief and disappointment hit us at the same time :-)

• Cat day came! Clad in aprons and a double layer of plastic gloves is how you found Me, Ashley, and Shayla. Its not that we didn't want to do it, we were actually getting kind of excited...we just didn't want it on us. However, somehow in the process of pulling off cat fat, Shayla slipped with her tweezers and sent a HUGE piece of fat flying toward Ashley. It landed right in the middle of her arm and sent fat juice onto her face. Needless to say it was a topic of our discussion the rest of the semester :-)

• Ashley and I were studying in the Library for an exam that afternoon when the fire alarm went off. Everyone was evacuated from the school and sent to the parking lot. However, as soon as we got outside they sent us back in.....We figured it was just a drill. I was talking to another friend later and found out a theater student was practicing his scene with the smoke machine and set off the alarm on accident. "Whoops" is about all he could say :-)

• Due to having some house guests, I missed a day of school. We had a quiz in math that day, so I had to go to the math lab to make it up. I sat down to take the quiz, and quickly began to freak out! I didn't know anything that was on the quiz! None of it looked familiar; even the way it was set up looked different than the way my instructor normally did her quiz'. Nobody was in the room, so I sneaked into the file cabinet with all the quiz' and found that the 'math lab person' had given me the wrong quiz! *breaths a sigh of relief.....*

• Word of advice: never listen to the conversation of your classmates who sit behind you in class.....you probably don't want to know what they're talking about.....'nuf said :-)

• In my sociology class I was often know as 'the pencil girl'. How college students can show up on exam day without a pencil is beyond me! I always carried extra in my bookbag and let me assure you that every week in Sociology, every one of those pencils was being used by my classmates.

• Due to two weeks of Sociology class being canceled, me and my 'team members' put together a 20 minute presentation at 7:00 one Tuesday evening.....class started 7:30 :-) Hey, what could we do...it snowed for two weeks! The pressure must of helped because our group received one of the highest grades on the presentation.

• There was a guy in my Sociology class from Ethiopia! How cool is that! He has only been in the US for a few months.....well, since the beginning of the semester. None of us could say his name, so we all just called him Hizzy.

Well, that's all for now. I'm sure there is more, but I have all of break to remember and post :-) I'm glad to have a break, but I'm looking forward to next semester. I really enjoyed meeting so many new people, and classes kept me occupied. In fact, I feel lost without my friends and classes.......

For Your Enjoyment

Well, blog readers, I don't have much time to post but I have several pictures that I've been wanting to share with you. Enjoy!









My family's Thanksgiving day table. Before we ate Cosette and Eli both said their 'thankful' Bible verse and then Cosette said the blessing on the food

Afterwards a stressful game of Cooties was won by my mom.....aka Grandma Karen. Grandma Rosina (background) was an amazing referee.

In the end, the winning and losing teams kissed and made up :-)

We celebrated my cousins birthday on Thanksgiving too. Grandma Rosina was quite creative and brought along a pumpkin shaped birthday cake.

Cosette and I after a long evening of playing. She spent the night with us a few nights ago and I realized even more how much she is growing up

My dad with his namesake, Noah Shaun.

On November 1st I took a bus trip to New York City with some friends. We had an amazing time! We were very amused, however, to discover that the only place you can find trees in NYC is on top of buildings! And even then they're more like little twigs stuck in the ground.

On September 27th, I took a bus trip with my friend Lacey to Washington DC. We spent the day visiting the Lincoln Memorial, World War 2 Memorial, Washington Memorial, the Arlington Cemetery, Vietnam Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown soldier, and the Holocaust Museum....quite the busy day! We had a blast though...

You probably won't hear too much from me in the next week or so. This is where you will find me....comfy on the couch studying for finals next week. It seems like just yesterday I posted about the beginning of the semester....now its finals week already!

Well, I'll post next week when my stress level has dropped a little...probably Wednesday around 3pm, after my last final.... :-)

Have a blessed week!

Mood Music

Have you ever heard the statement, "The music you listen to will decide what kind of mood you're in"? I read an article in a magazine last month that said just that. It caught my curiosity so I decided to do an experiment.

I have a lot of time when I'm just riding in my car; 20 minutes to school 3 times a week ( an then again headed home), 15 minutes to the church several times a week, any other time I do stuff during the week usually involves at least a 15 minute ride down the mountain.


So, I separated my Christian Artist CDs from my Secular Artists CDs. For one week straight, I listened to only the secular artists during drive time. Artists such as

FM Static

Plain White T's

Linkin Park

Jordin Sparks

Hello, Goodbye

I must say that I had a very depressing, emotional week! As I listened to these songs all these emotions would start popping up. My heart was heavy with hurts, I was irritable with my family, I hated school, and my life centered around my hurts.

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So, the next week I listened to all Christian Artists. ( Too many to name them all, so I'll just mention a few that I listened to)

Casting Crowns

Brandon Heath

Newsboys

Fireflight

Jeff Johnson

Chris Tomlin

It was amazing how much of a change there was! I had such an encouraging week. My heart was light, I couldn't wait 'til my family got home in the evening, I looked forward to going to school, and God turned the hurts into JOY!

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The secular songs were all about heartbreaks, relationships failing, hurt, depression, and so on. But during that second week God reminded me how much HE loves me. I don't need to rely on the things of this earth to make me happy. People will fail, hurts will come, life will not go how I planned it, and yes...that anatomy homework will still be waiting for me when I get home.....but God never fails! He is my Constant.

So the next time you go to pop in that CD or turn on that ipod, think about the message of the songs. Will they bring you down, or will they remind you of the love of God and give you a Christ centered day........

Last Chance

This is how my friends and I spend our Sunday afternoons. Five of us, all on one four-wheeler with a cart attached to the back :-) It was quite fun until we ran through some groundhog holes in the field....Elizabeth and I (who happened to be riding in the cart at the time) didn't think that was too funny. Ow!

We also managed to rake up a huge pile of leaves in the backyard. Can you find the brother in the leaf pile? :-)

The next day we woke up to find this. Over night our world had turned from a sunny fall day to a day that was filled with snow. We're all happy we took advantage of that last warm day before winter arrived.

The Joy in My Life

These are the three little people who remind me daily of the joy in life. I've been through some weird times lately, and when I feel my world crashing around me these little creations always pick me back up......funny how God will use such tiny people, huh?



Cosette Elise

Elias Jacob

Noah Shaun
Thank You, God, for Your smallest of people!