Im finally blogging again....yay.
Well, my life has been good, I miss Mark a ton, but my good friend Alyson is home from California and so that has been real fun. She is getting married over labor day weekend, and I am in her wedding and she is in mine. Yesterday we went and got her bridesmaid dress from the store in Otsego where I got my dress (yay - I finally got a dress!!). My friend Amy came in from Lansing too, and got her dress. Then (with Lex and Anna t00 of course), we all went to Applebees for lunch. Then after I was done babysitting Anna, Alyson and I went rock climbing at Climb Kalamazoo. It was suuuuper fun, even though we both were wishing we were stronger so could climb longer, our arms just got pooped out. Then we went to dinner at Qdoba, Walmart and went to a movie at M-89. Some shocking news....Plainwell's M-89 Cinema raised its movie prices to $5, from $3.50. It was very sad, although I shouldn't complain about $5, because that is pretty good compared to most places.
I only have one more week working at Origami. This is bittersweet. I am so excited to not drive back and forth as much, have time at home, and babysit Anna full time, but I have worked there for almost 2.5 years, and I will really miss a lot of the people that I work with.
Here is a wedding update...
- I cannot get married at Richland Bible anymore. I am having a heck of a time finding a place, so if anyone has ideas, let me know. We are working on it still, and I am sure something will work out, its just makign a lot more work. Bummer.
- I got my dress! Its amazing, and I bought it right off the rack. It was also %40 off, yayyy. I took a couple pictures, and for some reason they are not showing up on my memory card.
- Almost all my bridesmaids have ordered their dresses.
- I met with my photographer, and she is really great, and I am excited for the pictures.
- Its about 130 days away!!!
Anyway, I dont really have too much else to say, guess this turned into a pretty boring post! Mark is on a staff retreat now, and hopefully will have some news about an apartment soon :)
Love,
Brittany
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Pictures that I promised!!!
Ok, so here are the pictures that I promised earlier. The first few are from camp and the rest are from my day trip to Dallas Fort Worth (DFW). At camp, I spent quite a bit of time hiking and exploring the canyon. There was a great waterfall that you could hike to. Around it there were some great rock formations. On afternoon I was on top of the waterfall and I looked down and saw a water snake. Now, no big deal if you like snakes. I don't. Just like Indiana Jones, hahaha. So the waterfall is about 20 feet tall. So figured my best course of action to share my dislike of snakes with the snake was to through rocks at it. I actually hit it a couple of times, but didn't kill it and it swam off across the pool with me showering it with some more rocks. Thats my waterfall story, you probably had to have been there...
This is a picture of your favorite fearless explorer. You can't see it, but he is on top of a cliff (which he just climbed, a small 15 footer) overlooking the land that he just conquered.
Here are a couple of my fellow explorers. We blazed a trail quite a bit off of the beaten path. We crossed a marsh and fought of some large bushes and found our way to the base of this formation. Great little climb! I looooooved it!
This is my small group that was in my second week of camp. A dozen 7th grade boys! I felt so bad for my co-counseler Lauren. She was a good sport about it though. Every boy was a little bit different, they ranged from athletic to videogamers to outcasts to homesick to didn't want to go back home. It was a fun group. They were crazy!
Just another Canyon shot. Pretty, huh? All week I just wanted to see how far I could make it down the canyon system and survive like Bear Grylls, but I refrained. Maybe someday...
This is Todd Rogers. I went to DFW with him and his dad, Mr. Rogers. hahaha. These next to shots were in the Fort Worth water gardens. Really neat! Imagine a giant bowl of stairs with steps that water flows over. It was really loud too.
This was the quiet reflective part. Really peaceful and a good place to get away from the world. The trees were beautiful, the pool was really shallow. Oh yeah, the walls that you see around it, they all have water flowing down them.
Warning: Historical Content! I will keep it to a minimum. This is in Dallas and its the Grassy Nole(sp?) This is where they thought the gun men were that killed Kennedy.
This was a guy that was selling books about how it was all a government conspiracy and coverup. You could tell that he really didn't have a strong grasp of physics or how people act in a crisis situation(which I am an expert in both...). He was kinda interesting to listen to.
The book depository. Where John Wilkes Booth did his sharpshooting. The sixth floor is the one with the arched windows.
There is the where JFK was shot. X marks the spot.
This whole part of the trip was a little weird. It was just different. It had a wierd feeling being somewhere that history was changed. I saw some people taking pictures on the X, so I figured it was thing to do. I didn't really know how to take a picture at a place where someone was murdered. So this was the best I could muster. I hope it isn't offensive. My pose felt better than just standing there awkwardly.
On to the new Texas stadium, or as they call it, Jerryland. In honor of Jerry Jones the owner of the Cowboys and the mand that built this palace. It cost 1.4 billion dollars! That is a thousand millions! It was cool though. Didn't feel much like a stadium, it felt like a hotel that happened to have a football field in the middle of it. I will just highlight a couple of things. That huge screen, it's 150 feet wide and as crystal clear as any flatscreen you will see. That was my favorite part of the stadium.
This was the Cottonbowl conference room, I just thought it was cool. I also sat in the NFL replay room, where they do all the film replay for when they throw out the red challenge flags. This place was was large!
We also were in the Locker rooms. Those were really neat. They had all of the players names on them. Pretty cool. It was really popular for taking pics at Romo and Witten's cubbies. So I just took a pic at a random. It was really cool. We saw the tunnel that they cool out on to the field and where they do the post game interviews too. Pretty Cool! After this I went to a Rangers game. Nice ball park. The people I was with were pretty proud of it, but it's no Comerica, or PNC (where the pirates play)park either. It was cool, I mean hot, hahaha. I forgot my camera in the car. It was an exciting game. 4 homers and 8 stolen bases! Crazy!
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Normal Day
This is a little video that I worked on with a couple of my students. We are planning to add a little more in the future, so I will update then. This is what an average, standard day looks like in my life. Enjoy!
Saturday, August 8, 2009
It's been a while.....
Hello faithful blog followers!
First I would like apologize for my lack of faithfulness to the blog and ask for some grace. I would say that I have had probably the busiest month of my life and I am very happy to see it start to settle down a little bit. Right now I'm house sitting for the senior pastor of my church, he is out of town for a couple weeks visiting friends and family in mexico. So I'm enjoying some peace and quiet and shark week from the parsonage. Reminds me of the time my family lived in the parsonage at maplewood, hahaha.
Oh yeah, and sorry, I don't think I have any pictures for this blog post, I will try to add something, but no guarantees. I promise to add pics on my next post!
Lets see, where should I start? Let me rewind to to about a month ago.
As part of my job, Director of Youth Ministries, I attend two consecutive weeks at church camp, which is awesome. The camp is called Ceta Canyon, which is part of the Palo Duro canyon system that lies north of Lubbock and south of Amarillo. It's about a four or five hour drive from Abilene. Just as a side note, the citizens of Abilene don't think it's a big deal to drive a long distance to get somewhere, I guess it's normal when you live in the middle of nowhere! Back to the story. You know when you go on a trip and you just show up and hop in a van and go? That's nice, it's a little bit more stressful when you are the one planning the trip, making sure that everyone is where they are supposed to be and that everything is accounted for. I had the task of organizing volunteers to drive together in a caravan fashion and I rode up in that caravan on both sunday mornings. The kids all rode up on monday in the church van, and driven by a member of the church. When the van got up to Ceta, I switched cars with the driver so that I would drive the van home, trailer and all. Which I was pretty impressed with myself and my driving skills with a 15 passenger van full of kids and a trailer behind it. I think I'm ready for family vacations ;) Anyway, the camp of awesome. When you are driving up to it, it is flat, flat, flat and then you just stumble on this giant hole in the ground.
In the canyon, there is no cell service, which is great for students that are enslaved to their mobile devices, not great for councilors that want to stay in touch with their beautiful fiancees. So a couple of nights, all the councilors drove to the rim to call their loved ones. One such evening while I was on the rim I was able to watch a thunderstorm moving across the horizon, AMAZING!! It was so cool.
The camp was really great. It was neat to interact with students from other churches. It was fun because they are sometimes more willing to open up to councilors, because of the environment. I saw a lot of kids really have great camp experiences, along with realizing God's love for them perhaps for the first time! Very cool! Other events included usual camp experiences like swimming, hiking, games, singing, and the like.
So like I said, I did this for back to back weeks. It was kinda cool to be able to do that. The first week was high schoolers and the next was middle schoolers. It was definantly draining, but great. I can't wait to go back next year.
On the way back from the second week of camp I had the not so great experience of losing my wallet :( Which of coarse is a less than desirable event and consequently added a nice bit of stress to my life. I'm slowly piecing my life back together as you read this.
But, all that aside, the next week of my life was quite amazing. Brittany came down to visit for a short week and see what life is like as a texan. It was so great to see another northerner that had my same accent! Hahaha, but seriously, it was so nice to be able to see Brittany and hold her hand and just "be" together. Although our entire relationship has mostly been long distance of one sort or another, it genuinely sucks to be 1200 miles apart. I had the wonderful opportunity to show her around town, see my church, and meet the people that I interact with. It was really great! My host family even through a small party so that Brittany could meet some people from the church. We also got some engagement photos done, the ones that we saw were good. Some were a little awkward, but I'm a little awkward anyways, so it's all good. Brittany even borrowed some cowboy boots for the photo shoot! Very cool. I'm looking forward to trying to get her down here as soon as possible again. It was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo hard to drive her back to the airport. That seriously sucked, no joke. But while she was here, we got new phones and are now on the same phone plan. As we pretend to be adults, this is just another way that we are trying to make people believe that we are adults. Hahaha, it's so weird trying to be an adult! Anyway, we got phones with texting and I have literally not stopped texting her since she left! So now it's back to the long distance stuff, but I feel incredibly renewed by her trip. I can't wait to see her again.
Well, after that great time with Brittany, it's back to "work" for me. I love my job! It is so rewarding and challenging. The more that I do it, I realize that most of my everyday tasks involve planning. Planning for games, talks, parties, trips and everything in between. I had a couple of short days to prep some last minute plans for our mystery trip. And we left on wednesday and just got back friday night, or yesterday. We had a great trip to the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Huge Cities! That was another fun driving adventure. Driving the van with trailer while having another van follow you through a busy city that you have never been in while not having a great navigator as your copilot was to say, "an adventure." We saw and did a lot of fun things, from a scavenger hunt in a huge mall, to a zoo, to a water park, to touring the original dr. pepper plant. Very cool. Both nights we had a devotional time with one night my intern Austin gave the message and the next it was myself. Both nights the kids had the pleasure of trying to sing worship songs with Austin and myself playing our guitars. We were not great at it, but it was good none the less, just make a joyful noise to the Lord, right? It doesn't have to be great, thank goodness.
So this upcoming week is my last week with Austin and then he goes back to school at Oklahoma University. It will be really interesting because he has basically been there the whole time that I have, so it will be weird without him. Then, towards the end of august I have an overnight staff retreat. I'm pretty excited about that because I really like the people I work with. I will try and update you on my life a little bit more timely and with more pics in the future. Can't wait to hear more from you later! Love you all. Miss you like crazy, but lovin my call here.
First I would like apologize for my lack of faithfulness to the blog and ask for some grace. I would say that I have had probably the busiest month of my life and I am very happy to see it start to settle down a little bit. Right now I'm house sitting for the senior pastor of my church, he is out of town for a couple weeks visiting friends and family in mexico. So I'm enjoying some peace and quiet and shark week from the parsonage. Reminds me of the time my family lived in the parsonage at maplewood, hahaha.
Oh yeah, and sorry, I don't think I have any pictures for this blog post, I will try to add something, but no guarantees. I promise to add pics on my next post!
Lets see, where should I start? Let me rewind to to about a month ago.
As part of my job, Director of Youth Ministries, I attend two consecutive weeks at church camp, which is awesome. The camp is called Ceta Canyon, which is part of the Palo Duro canyon system that lies north of Lubbock and south of Amarillo. It's about a four or five hour drive from Abilene. Just as a side note, the citizens of Abilene don't think it's a big deal to drive a long distance to get somewhere, I guess it's normal when you live in the middle of nowhere! Back to the story. You know when you go on a trip and you just show up and hop in a van and go? That's nice, it's a little bit more stressful when you are the one planning the trip, making sure that everyone is where they are supposed to be and that everything is accounted for. I had the task of organizing volunteers to drive together in a caravan fashion and I rode up in that caravan on both sunday mornings. The kids all rode up on monday in the church van, and driven by a member of the church. When the van got up to Ceta, I switched cars with the driver so that I would drive the van home, trailer and all. Which I was pretty impressed with myself and my driving skills with a 15 passenger van full of kids and a trailer behind it. I think I'm ready for family vacations ;) Anyway, the camp of awesome. When you are driving up to it, it is flat, flat, flat and then you just stumble on this giant hole in the ground.
In the canyon, there is no cell service, which is great for students that are enslaved to their mobile devices, not great for councilors that want to stay in touch with their beautiful fiancees. So a couple of nights, all the councilors drove to the rim to call their loved ones. One such evening while I was on the rim I was able to watch a thunderstorm moving across the horizon, AMAZING!! It was so cool.
The camp was really great. It was neat to interact with students from other churches. It was fun because they are sometimes more willing to open up to councilors, because of the environment. I saw a lot of kids really have great camp experiences, along with realizing God's love for them perhaps for the first time! Very cool! Other events included usual camp experiences like swimming, hiking, games, singing, and the like.
So like I said, I did this for back to back weeks. It was kinda cool to be able to do that. The first week was high schoolers and the next was middle schoolers. It was definantly draining, but great. I can't wait to go back next year.
On the way back from the second week of camp I had the not so great experience of losing my wallet :( Which of coarse is a less than desirable event and consequently added a nice bit of stress to my life. I'm slowly piecing my life back together as you read this.
But, all that aside, the next week of my life was quite amazing. Brittany came down to visit for a short week and see what life is like as a texan. It was so great to see another northerner that had my same accent! Hahaha, but seriously, it was so nice to be able to see Brittany and hold her hand and just "be" together. Although our entire relationship has mostly been long distance of one sort or another, it genuinely sucks to be 1200 miles apart. I had the wonderful opportunity to show her around town, see my church, and meet the people that I interact with. It was really great! My host family even through a small party so that Brittany could meet some people from the church. We also got some engagement photos done, the ones that we saw were good. Some were a little awkward, but I'm a little awkward anyways, so it's all good. Brittany even borrowed some cowboy boots for the photo shoot! Very cool. I'm looking forward to trying to get her down here as soon as possible again. It was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo hard to drive her back to the airport. That seriously sucked, no joke. But while she was here, we got new phones and are now on the same phone plan. As we pretend to be adults, this is just another way that we are trying to make people believe that we are adults. Hahaha, it's so weird trying to be an adult! Anyway, we got phones with texting and I have literally not stopped texting her since she left! So now it's back to the long distance stuff, but I feel incredibly renewed by her trip. I can't wait to see her again.
Well, after that great time with Brittany, it's back to "work" for me. I love my job! It is so rewarding and challenging. The more that I do it, I realize that most of my everyday tasks involve planning. Planning for games, talks, parties, trips and everything in between. I had a couple of short days to prep some last minute plans for our mystery trip. And we left on wednesday and just got back friday night, or yesterday. We had a great trip to the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Huge Cities! That was another fun driving adventure. Driving the van with trailer while having another van follow you through a busy city that you have never been in while not having a great navigator as your copilot was to say, "an adventure." We saw and did a lot of fun things, from a scavenger hunt in a huge mall, to a zoo, to a water park, to touring the original dr. pepper plant. Very cool. Both nights we had a devotional time with one night my intern Austin gave the message and the next it was myself. Both nights the kids had the pleasure of trying to sing worship songs with Austin and myself playing our guitars. We were not great at it, but it was good none the less, just make a joyful noise to the Lord, right? It doesn't have to be great, thank goodness.
So this upcoming week is my last week with Austin and then he goes back to school at Oklahoma University. It will be really interesting because he has basically been there the whole time that I have, so it will be weird without him. Then, towards the end of august I have an overnight staff retreat. I'm pretty excited about that because I really like the people I work with. I will try and update you on my life a little bit more timely and with more pics in the future. Can't wait to hear more from you later! Love you all. Miss you like crazy, but lovin my call here.
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