Interesting views

After the forecast the last couple of days for snow, I expected to wake up to some snow on the ground. I did not expect to have to shovel my car out of my parking spot. It's only the second time I have had to do this and I didn't expect the second time to be at the very end of March. But I must admit, as much as I was not looking forward to the snow, God sure knows how to get me to stop and see the beauty in his creation. I wish I had had my camera on the way to church this morning because the trees were super white. The snow was super wet and heavy, so it was sticking well in the trees. Now the sun is shining and I expect most of the snow will be gone by this evening. Praise God for His indescribable gifts to us!

Now it's on to the beauty of cleaning supplies! My bathroom and bedroom are in desperate need of some attention and with the sun shining I finally feel motivated to do something about it! Well, that is after I eat lunch, call my mom, and maybe do some reading for discipleship...okay, so maybe I'm not so motivated after all!

I ALMOST FORGOT!

Only one hundred more days until my birthday! Just thought you might want to know that tomorrow starts the double digit countdown!

Distractions

I was trying to browse some stuff on the Internet but Sophie decided she wanted to chase the mouse!

She almost caught it!

And then when I was uploading the pictures I got even more distracted because I found these pictures of Sophie and Samson that someone else in the house must have taken! :)

New Glasses

Here are the wonderful pictures of me in my new glasses. Tonight will probably be night 3 of trying to get used to them. Unless I decide to go out. Can't wear them while I drive yet!

Just in case you weren't sure what you were supposed to be looking at in the picture : )!

You asked for them!

Okay, so I narrowed the pictures down from 190 to 19 (actually 20 but I just accidentally erased one and don't feel like going back right now!) One of John's favorite things to do is play with blocks. He will dump the whole bucket over. He says blocks with a lot of "bllll" and tongue spitting, almost like Daffy Duck! This particular picture was cute because he had positioned the lid just right so that he could put the blocks away one at a time underneath the lid!

And of course a cute foot picture!

We went to the GA aquarium on Saturday. John seemed a little overwhelmed. I think he had fun, but I don't think he ever cracked a smile! This is him pointing after being asked "Where's the fish?" Goofing off with Grandpa!

Walking with Dad. I LOVE these pictures!

Walking with Dad and Grandpa. Three generations!

Ride 'm cowboy!

Just hangin' out at the park!

What's in your shoe Dad?

I still don't see it!

Hanging out with Aunt T.

Knock. Knock.

Catching a breather after climbing to the top slide. Give me five!

Down the slide we go! Yippee!

When he gets really excited he arches his back and sticks out his tummy. This picture doesn't do it justice, but I promise it's really cute!

Close up self portrait!

So, ZuZu, do you really want me to throw the ball, or can I just hang on to it?

Just me and my dog! Josh was actually way back in the woods and it was everything I could do not to get John and the dog to go after him! But they were both obeying the "Stay" command very well! : )

Yummy Juice!

Spring is in the air!

You know it's almost spring when you walk out to your car and discover much bird droppings (that's my polite way of saying there was a whole bunch of bird poop on my car this afternoon!). Note to self: don't park under the trees at work.

Evening # 2 with the new glasses is starting much like the first. Lots of close calls with open doors. My depth perception is off. Lots of confusion over the movement of all things when I turn my head. Last night when I finally went to bed I felt a little queasy. I can't look down or to the side without moving my head because I can't see anything. If I want to look down at the keyboard right now I have to move my head down to see the letters and numbers. Good thing I took typing way back in the middle ages so I can type most things without looking (and by taking typing in the middle ages, I mean that I actually took typing class on a typewriter not on a computer!).

So, step one of getting pictures of my nephew have commenced. I loaded my pictures onto dad and Amy's computer today but blogger was being really slow and I had to get to a baby shower. My plan is to go over there tomorrow and get them uploaded to my Walgreen's account and then I will post some on my blog. There are so many cute ones I don't know how to choose what to show you guys. And I'm thinking of getting up now and taking a picture of me in my glasses. We'll see how that goes...

Okay, I can't remember what else I was supposed to cover from last night. I'll have to get to that later. Now, to master the art of walking to my room and searching for my camera while wearing a pair of glasses! :)

Sorry

I am a blog slacker. I have lots of things I want to blog about...my new glasses...my trip to Georgia...how cute my nephew is...my new lessons in contentment...my Biggest Loser obsession...my new fascination with the southern accent...

Those are just a few things. But I am exhausted. The computer is really slow and irritating the heck out of me tonight. I have a headache THIS BIG. I almost cried in the grocery store because I couldn't find the syrup. Like, seriously, tears coming to my eyes. I know it wasn't about the syrup, but the syrup was just the final straw, so I decided I needed to go home and relax.

So, just wanted to let you guys know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth or any such thing! I promise I will update y'all (just wanted to throw a random southern phrase in there) soon!

Blogging out my frustrations...

and procrastinating!

So, the fun new power cord came in over the weekend. It worked well for two days. My computer is now dead again because everything is plugged in (as far as I can tell) and it was still running off of battery. :( My fear is that it's a connection thing inside the computer that I definitely don't know how to fix. Does this mean that I get to stimulate the economy even more than I already have by buying a new computer? Oh joy!

On to more exciting news...I leave in two days to go to Georgia. Yippee! Thus the procrastinating. I need to pack. I don't like to pack. Sometimes the shorter the trip the worse the packing. And it's going to be low to mid 60s, so I'm going to have to pack long sleeves and short sleeves and flip flops and closed-toed shoes. Sigh. Three days of packing and at least 6 outfits! Plus, I'm driving down but flying back, so I have to pack things to do in the car but I have to be practical because I have to bring it back on an airplane. Another sigh.

So, what else can I talk about instead of packing. Oh, while we're in Georgia we are going to the aquarium. I'm very excited about this. Danell took me to the Dallas Aquarium for my birthday one year in Texas. And the Atlanta aquarium was built after I moved to Texas so I've never been. I've also heard through the grapevine that my nephew is doing all kinds of fun stuff and is trekking all over the place so that will be extremely fun! I am very excited, but need to get through tonight (did someone say something about packing) and tomorrow (lots of clients and paperwork and Bible study and more packing and hopefully getting to bed at a decent hour). Okay, so really there is no decent hour about it. I have to be at Dad's house at 4am. I am going to take a shower before I go. I know, most people have said I'm crazy, but I don't think I could be in the car all day comfortably without a shower. Plus, I have to drive my car to Bloomington to leave at the airport so I do need to be awake and a shower is like coffee to me. Okay, I'm done justifying wanting to smell good! All that to say I'm going to get 5 hours of sleep max tomorrow night! And that's being optimistic!

Okay, I think I'm done :). Now, off to throw the computer out the window (you know, the one that is evil and doesn't want to run off of electricity like it was designed to do.) and then I'll pack. I think. Maybe I'll clean my room first. Or talk Emily into watching an episode of Gilmore Girls (Did I mention she has a working computer? That makes her an amazing, spectacular, wonderful, stupendous, roommate!). Or organize my sock drawer. Just kidding. Packing. That's what I'm going to do! I LOVE to pack! It's my favorite thing in the whole wide world! Well, next to sleeping! Maybe I should sleep now and pack later...

A 9 month journey

No, not pregnancy. And actually a 9 month, 3 day journey.

July 13, 2008, Pastor Ritch gave a 14 day challenge. He challenged us to spend one hour in Scripture a day for 14 days. He suggested starting by reading the New Testament. So I started this challenge. Sadly, I did not do very well with the 1 hour. 30 minutes to 45 minutes, but I could never quite get the 1 hour on a regular basis. But, out of that challenge, I decided to read through the Bible without following a plan. And as some of you might remember, I also made a pact not to get on the Internet until I had spent 30 minutes with the Lord. So, out of all of this, I managed to read the Bible through in 9 months! I was very excited to finish this journey. Equally excited that I think I'm ready to just start all over again!

Gotcha!

I went to get the mail today, and guess what I found??? My computer cord! I was so excited because I didn't think it would come until later next week! I was already planning on finding someplace else to do my taxes tomorrow, but now I don't have too!

Without a Computer (sort of)

My computer is temporarily uninhabitable! Well, the computer works fine but the power cord went caput! I have known that it was on the verge of not working any longer, but of course I waited until it completely broke to attempt to replace it. Oh the joys of being a procrastinator. : ) I first discovered the problem when I had the cord plugged in and my computer died. I have checked all critical points of the cord, only to discover that everything was hooked up the way it should be. It was then that I discovered that the cord was beginning to expose some wires at the place where it hooks into the computer. My original solution was just to take the cord and wrap it over the screen and around my external linksys card, which for some reason made the cord work just fine, although I knew it was probably only a temporary fix. Boy am I smart! So, I am temporarily using my roommates computer (although she doesn't technically know yet!)

10:50 to 4:10 does not equal 8 hours

Today was another one of those days at work. Now, I know I often get accused of never working and I do have a very flexible schedule, but even I decided that today was ridiculous. I went into work late today because I had discipleship. Tuesday's are normally a good day for discipleship because I have averaged getting off work around 6:30. But today at 1:00 I got a call from my 10 year old client (literally from him! Boy was it cute!) asking if we could cancel our appointment because he really wanted to go to aftercare to catch up on school work he had missed because of a doctor's appointment. So, I was again without an afternoon appointment. Which is becoming a very scary trend because I am definitely not getting the client contact hours I need. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) because my client contact is low, my work load is also low, so by 2:00 I had pretty much nothing to do. I managed to occupy my time until 4:10, but could not stand it any longer. The up side to all of this is that I was able to spend some more time with my family (and got dinner out of the deal too!).

A Lesson I Apparently Need to Learn

During our weekend retreat Daniel spoke about idols of the heart. This past Sunday, Pastor Ritch spoke about idolatry. In my daily Bible reading this past week I read Psalm 106:39, "They defiled themselves by what they did; by their deeds they prostituted themselves." Apparently, there are some lessons I need to learn about idolatry. I have continued to process the information from the retreat and am now processing the information that Pastor Ritch gave on Sunday.

One of the things that Daniel mentioned is that when we want things more than we want God, we are being adulterous people. He talks about what makes a desire wicked. There were two things he mentioned. A desire becomes wicked when I am willing to sin to get it and when I am willing to sin if I don't get it. He challenged us to look at our own hearts and answer this question: What are the things I am saying I can fit into my heart with God? These things are the idols in my life.

Pastor Ritch defined idolatry as the refusal to acknowledge God as the only God to the measure He deserves and in the methods He demands. It is the adoration or acknowledgement that something has equal or greater value than God. It is the acknowledgement of the true God in wrong ways. It is the slandering of God's character. One of his main points is that when we think of idolatry we think of wooden idols that were worshipped and bowed down to in ancient times. Those are not tempting to us. But am I tempted every day to put other things above God? YES! At the heart of idolatry is an exchange of the infinite nature of God for the finite nature of anything else.

Needless to say, I have been taking these lessons very seriously. One thing I have concluded is that I need to stop minimalizing the things that I put above God. It is so easy to say, "This particular thing is just a struggle in my life" instead of seeing it as the seriousness of an idol in my heart. I continue to pray daily that God would reveal the idols in my heart. Jonah 2:8 says "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be there's. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you."

A Somewhat Planned Visit

After 3 years living in Illinois, my mom finally came to visit me! I was very excited to see her in my own environment. My aunt was travelling to Champaign to see her son and we met in Bloomington . Mom and I didn't do anything exciting. We went shopping, where I think I finally found a new pair of jeans that I like (it has been a year long process!). I picked up a gondola from Avanti's because I thought this was definitely something of Peoria I could share with her. Other than that I took her on a tour, showing her the major points of interest (work, apartment, Dad and Amy's house, the malls). Then we hung out at my apartment until my aunt called for us to meet her back in Bloomington. I was SO excited to have her come visit and hope she can come again soon.

A New Look

So, I have been wearing contacts since I was a freshman in high school. I also haven't bought a new pair of glasses since I was a freshman in high school. Yes, I sleep in my contacts. Yes, I am blind as a bat without my contacts. Yes, every time I go to the eye doctor I get a lecture about not having glasses in case something were to happen. So, I had my annual visit to the eye doctor and decided this was the day. I might have made a different decision if I had known what it was going to cost me, but I'm actually really excited to get my glasses in a couple of weeks. Of course, unless I take a picture, most people won't see them because I don't plan on giving up my contacts, but I'm excited nonetheless.

Update

I am extremely tired and cannot think of a better title!

One year ago yesterday I arrived in Thailand. I cannot believe that it's been a year! I was thinking about the warm weather, the beautiful time of fellowshiping with kids, and the time with the team.

This weekend was the Career Impact Winter Retreat. It was a weekend of great fun and fellowship. Pastor Daniel spoke from the book of Hosea. He challenged us to examine our hearts and look at the idols we have in our hearts that keep us from truly worshipping God. Then we played a lot and stayed up late and ate lots of food. I sometimes forget that I am almost 30 and I need sleep. Although, after a weekend of not a lot of sleep, I had expected to sleep really well last night and did not. I was basically a zombie today at work. My coworkers were highly amused! I am hoping to sleep tonight, otherwise I might not make it tomorrow!