Me and Christina "dancing the night away" at the Barnyard Dance two Fridays ago (Nov 19th). We had a blast...and Christina was such a lovely dance partner! 

4 days of school, 4 days of finals, and then "that's all folks!"

It is good to be back at school, but I am definitely counting down the days till the semester is over!! This is what I have left:
Today's Monday: I had my PE final today (I got 109%, thank you), so I don't have to go to that class again; and tonight is my last Speech class.
Tuesday: chorale sings for chapel, Chorale class at noon, English, and then my Bible class.
Wednesday: no PE, no chorale, only my last computer class at 1:00.
Thursday: no chapel, only English and Bible.
Friday: nothing! Except our chorale is singing at a rest home. Other than that, I'm free!!
Saturday and Sunday I'm sure I'll be studying for finals, although I've already decided to begin studying this week as well so I'll have plenty of time and won't be over-stressed.

Final schedule!
Monday--Speech final at 6:00 PM
Tuesday--English final at 8:00 AM
Wednesday--Computer final at 1:00 PM
Thursday--New Testament final at 1:00 PM
evening--carroling with Chorale at 6:00 PM
THEN IT'S OVER! Woo-hoo! Lance may come visit Tuesday evening, when I only have two finals left, so that he can drive me home Thursday evening. I really hope so, because I didn't want to stay until Friday! I can't believe how fast this semester has gone by. It has had some of the saddest and best moments of my life--and God has been so faithful!

Thanksgiving!

Welcome back from Thanksgiving, everyone! I had such a great break, it was almost a shame to come back to school. Well, almost. I have to admit, driving back onto our familiar campus, going back to my own dorm room...it had a wonderful "homey" feel to it.

My break was wonderful! Lance and I got to leave Tuesday afternoon about 4:30 PM to head to Ft. Worth. Unfortunately, we caught the tail-end of a bad storm and followed it all the way into Ft. Worth. We had rain, wind, and even hail at some points! I felt extremely safe with Lance, though; he is an excellent driver in bad weather. So we got in about 7:00 and had time to watch a couple of Star Wars movies (which was so exciting because I had not seen those in forever!). We watched the third one the next morning. Wednesday I got to spend an early Thanksgiving with Lance's family, and that was a lot of fun. All his sisters were there, with their husbands (and Lori's kids), and Lance's grandmother. It was a neat time, and we played games later that evening. I played two of them, which was great for me because games often make me nervous. But I did fine!

Thursday, Lance took me back to Grandmom and Granddad's and was invited to stay and have Thanksgiving with us. Lance and I got there early enough to help fix up last minute things, and then my aunt, uncle, and cousins came over, as well as 5 international students and a friend of Aunt Kay's. We all squished together and had a wonderful time. The food was great, and we read scripture and talked about what we were thankful for. Then--of course!--we turned on the Cowboy football game and got to watch that. They actually won, 21-7! That was exciting. My aunt taught the international students how to play Chicken Foot, but with 12 players, Lance and I just watched the football game. Half the time, though, I was having a wrestling match with my cousin Seth to keep him from changing the channel to cartoons! That was fun. So I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family.

Friday, I got to sleep until 11:00! It was great. I hung around the house until 2:00, when a friend of mine came to interview Granddad for a paper about leadership. He lived in Arlington, so I went back with him and met Lance in Ft. Worth. I didn't get there as soon as I would've liked since my friend had a couple of errands before we got to head on, so I got there about 5:30. Lance and I had been meaning to watch The Passion of the Christ together for a long time, so since we hadn't seen it, we rented it and watched it that night. It was an incredibly moving portrayal. When it was over, Lance and I just sat there. I had cried several times throughout the movie, and I'm pretty sure Lance did, too. Finally, Lance pulled me up because he said we needed to go meet my granddad, and I just said, "How does one watch something like that and then stand up and go back to normal life?" He just said, "I don't think you're supposed to."

So that was a powerful experience to watch that movie. It really brings you onto your knees before the Father in a new way. I did leave and met my granddad that evening, and then on Saturday, I got to spend the whole day at the home with my grandparents. I got to sleep late (again!), and then just relaxed most of the rest of the day. At one point, Granddad took me out to practice driving, so that was neat. We met my aunt and cousin, Noel, at a place near the mall (and I got to drive there as well, I have to add), and then Noel came home with us (might I say that I drove home, too) to spend the night. We got to watch It's a Wonderful Life, which I haven't seen in FOREVER, and I absolutely loved it! It's such a cute movie. It was fun to watch that with Noel and my grandmom (Granddad was in-and-out some, too).

We went to bed and got up on Sunday for church. I went to both the traditional service with Grandmom and Granddad and the later contemporary one with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. I got to see Seth baptized, which was a really amazing experience to get to share in that. He is such a cutie! All those kids are getting so big. My uncle got to baptize him, as he did with all the kids, and I thought that was neat. Dad has baptized me and Lins, so I know that's cool to be baptized by your father. It was special to get to be there and with the family for that. Seth was so excited all day! It made me think back on my baptism and be thankful anew for the amazing gift of salvation (seeing The Passion and a baptism in the same weekend will do that for you).

We ate lunch at my aunt's (turkey sandwiches!), and then my granddad took me half-way (again) to Ft. Worth. (I really need to thank my granddad for all the times he's run me around places! He never minds it and is always more than glad to do it. And Lance is the same way) Lance met us half-way (again), and I got to spend an hour or so with him before meeting my friend Cassie, who I drove back with. We got Taco Bell on our way in, and then I was back in my dorm. I studied some that night for my PE final this morning before getting to bed at 10:30. (Before that, I did get to see Kirstin and Christina, and it's amazing how excited I was to see them again, even though I'd only been gone five days!)

So that was my break. I hope all of you had as blessed a week. I'm so thankful to God for all that he has done in my life: for the amazing gift of salvation and of knowing Him; for the love and faithfulness of God that have carried me through everything; for my wonderful, loving Mom, Dad, and sister, who have shaped me into the person I am today; for the wondeful family I have near here who let me come and have a home-away-from-home and who love me so much; for Lance, the gift he is to me, and the fact that he's my best friend in the world; for Christina, Kirstin, Melissa, Rachel, Cassie, Ashley, and all my other girl friends here who are the joys of my life; and for the fact that my semester is almost over and the Lord has brought me through all of it. Just wait to see if I make it through next semester, and that will be my first full year of school uninterrupted by an episode of clinical depression! That will truly be a reason for Thanksgiving.

Indeed, each day itself is a day for Thanksgiving. What are you thankful for today?

Off for Thanksgiving break!

Hello friends! Today's the last day of school, and then we're off until Sunday...hooray! This weekend's been great. Lance has been here the whole time, and I'm riding back to Ft. Worth with him today. He's helped me on a speech I gave last night for speech class on kidney donation (which went well). I'll be with Lance and his family tomorrow for an early Thanksgiving, and then I get to go to my grandparents (yay!) for the rest of the weekend. Hooray for breaks from school!

I have so much to be thankful for this semester: mostly for such a faithful, loving God without whom I would be lost.

May you be blessed with thanks-giving this week. The Lord be with you all.

TGIF!

Woo-hoo, I'm updating again! This is very exciting, I'm sure.

Have I mentioned lately how thankful I am for Fridays?! I adore them! Especially when after the weekend all I have is Monday and Tuesday, and then it's Thanksgiving break! That will be so wonderful.

This week's gone well. Since I updated on Tuesday, I didn't end up babysitting on Wednesday, so I don't have any cute babysitting stories to tell. I found out I got a 91% on that computer test I was saying I hadn't done well on...I guess I'm happy with that. I still don't have all of my speech together for Monday night, but I've done some more research on it, so hopefully I can put it all together. I've gone to bed fairly early the last two nights (10:00 both nights), so I'm trying to catch up on some sleep. I definitely have had some VERY weird dreams lately. Anywho...what else to say? Ah, last night I went to see Rachel and Ashley's band concert with Christina, Melissa, and Nick (Kirstin was at class and came a little later). Nick got to come in for this weekend, although I don't know you could say he came in on the "weekend," since he got here Wednesday afternoon. So he'll be here until Sunday...and Lance comes tomorrow! Yay! I'm going to see if I can get him to take me to see The Bourne Supremacy at the dollar theatre here, cuz I've really been wanting to see that. And I think we'll be going to Cici's Pizza, so I'm excited about that!

Tonight, my friends actually talked me into going to a barn dance our school is doing. I usually don't go to dances (or parties) very much at all, but I think this will end up being fun. I'll get to hang out with my girl friends, so I know I'll enjoy that. Then I can come home, sleep, wake up, and Lance will be here! Did I mention I'm excited about that?

Alright, I'm gonna run for now. Who knows, maybe I'll actually get some homework done this afternoon before tonight? I hope ya'll have a wonderful, blessed weekend!

Been a while (again!)

Hey friends, I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to make another update. These last weeks of the school semester are just flying by! I will try to be better at updating, though. And if you do stop by to read my updates every now and then, let me know in my comments section! I'm always more encouraged to put up posts when I know people are stopping by.

I would like to say that our choir concert on November 5th went really well! It was very exciting. There was this one difficult accapella song that we kept completely going flat on every time in practice (it could sound pretty awful at times), but our choir director didn't want to cut it out. So let's just say we were all rather nervous once the time came in the concert for that song! Our choir director paused for a few seconds before we began, and we could all tell he was lifting up a "devout prayer," as he put it (I was definitely lifting up my own at that moment!). And we nailed it! Or at least did the best we've ever done on it. It came off really well, so that was awesome. Almost all my best friends came to see me: Lance, Christina, Kirstin (and Nick), Rachel, Ashley, and several others (Melissa was in the choir, so of course she was there). That meant a lot to me.

So that weekend was a good one, and then the rest of that week went by pretty quickly. I had a speech test on Monday (which I think went ok), and a paper due that Thursday for English (although then we ended up having more time to edit it, so it's now due today). Lance came (again!) that weekend, although he was just here Thursday night through Saturday morning. But it was enough, because on Friday morning he registered for classes here for next Spring! How awesome is that? I am so excited that he will be here...it will be so weird--and wonderful!--for him to actually be in the same city where I could see him almost every day. It'll be the first time we've lived in the same city together since the first two months we knew each other (March, April 2003). We even get to be in choir together, so I'm looking forward to that. It's definitely an answer to prayer how the Lord has worked everything out for Lance to come here. We'd been praying about it since Lance first started thinking about it, and he'd said, "I know that if I get to come, it'll be God who has to work everything out." And God has! It's such a praise.

So that weekend Lance was here for part of it, and his sister Leslie. I got to spend time with them, and that was a lot of fun. Then I had the rest of the weekend for homework and other things. I went to a play our school did on Saturday night...it was very interesting. Sunday at church went well, and I took a nap, did homework, and then went to church for supper. I got to talk with Lance on the phone that night for a while, and it was a really nice talk.

Yesterday went well; I had a computer test that was probably the lowest grade I'll make on a computer test. I think it'll probably still be a low-A, but oh well. There was just one part that I could not get!! It about drove me crazy...but such is life. Then I got together a rough outline for my final speech in Speech class. I'm doing a persuasive speech on organ donors (mostly influenced by Lance), but last night I found out someone else is doing one on becoming an organ donor, too. So now I'm going to have to change the slant of mine, and I hate doing speeches when someone else is doing the same thing. I know it won't be too bad, and I get to go before him anyway, so it won't look too similar (I hope). But again, such is life.

So things are going well. The Lord's taught me a LOT lately about having a renewed faith and trust in him, about learning to rest in him and live daily in his presence. I feel like I still have such a long way to go...but praise the Lord, he is faithful and patient and oh-so-loving towards me.

Oh! And today I registered for my classes for next semester! Exciting, exciting. I'll be doing 15 hours, so it'll be a decent load. I also got an application today for officially declaring my degree, so that will be exciting. I think my new advisor is an English teacher I had last semester, and I really liked her, so I hope that works out.

By the way, for those of you who know what I'm talking about...today is my 700th day! Just thought I'd share that.

Well, I am going to sign off for now to finish editing that English paper due today. I promise that I'll try to be better at posting updates. I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we could ever dare to ask or hope.
--Ephesians 3:20

Been a while

Hello friends! It's been a while since I've posted much of an update. This last week has been busy for sure! Last Sunday, I drove back to Dallas with my aunt and two cousins after church...and what an interesting drive! Let's just say we drove an hour in the WRONG direction and then had to turn back, so two hours later, we were right where we'd started! But we did make it to Dallas. Monday, I had my doctor's appointment, and that went quite well; I don't have to go again until February, so that's nice. I got to spend a couple of hours with Lance, and then he drove me half-way to meet a super-kind, sweet lady from my church who brought me back the rest of the way to my dorm. I got back in time for my Speech class (woo-hoo). :-)

The rest of the week has flown by: in choir, we're practicing like mad for our concert, in English we're studying Hamlet (which I have not read before), and my other classes are just going by at their normal pace. Wednesday I didn't actually end up babysitting, which was rather nice in some ways, because it gave me time to get a head start on a lot of homework. I'm about to go do some more now; Lance gets in tonight for a short visit and to hear our concert, so I'm excited about that. And all my friends have our whole weekend planned cuz they want to teach me how to play games like Life and Clue (they were absolutely scandalized that I had not played those before). So it should be a good, fun weekend! I hope all of you have a blessed weekend as well. I pray the verse for you all below:

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
--2 Corinthians 13:14

"Oh, the weather outside is frightful..."

I would just like to state that it has been COLD today! Thank goodness for jackets!

Tomorrow's Wednesday! Choir concert on Friday! Yay for weekends!

Yes, this is rather short....