when you look back on time we've had.. i hope you smile

ah.. december 31, 2009.

the last day of 2009.

as i promised earlier.. heres my "reflecting on 2009" blog..

every year, my sweet parents and i ring in the new year by going to dinner at Outback Steakhouse, seeing a movie, and spending the rest of the evening at one of our friends parties counting down til midnight and shooting fireworks. i love this tradition alot.. last year was our first year since 1999 to change this tradition.. and that kind of makes me sad.. but i had a wonderful new years last year..

we had already decided we wouldn't be seeing a movie last year because there wasnt one we were interested in. we went out to our traditional dinner at Outback, and our wonderful friends, the Donaldson's, joined us :) afterwords my parents headed off to some party.. and i went to a Mormon dance. for real. a mormon dance. every other month or so all the stakes (?) in the area and have a dance. and it was SO much fun.. i went with sarah and james and all of my wonderful other Mormon friends i'd met throughout the year. and we had a wonderful time.. and it was a wonderful start to the new year..

2009 moved on with more of senior year.. only now i was a second semester senior. best thing ever! i'm trying to remember specific things that happened early on in the year.. but i'm not having much luck..

i got the chance to go to washington dc in april with my incredible choir.. such a fun trip! we got to sing at the lincoln memorial and the national cathedral, as well as touring some wonderful museums. however.. best part of the trip was arlington national cemetery. not only was in an incredibly moving trip.. but i also was blessed with the chance to lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier along with three of my fellow choir members.. SUCH an incredibly moving experience.

a week after i came home from washington was my senior presentation.. also called The Yellow Rose Ball.. oh man. starting my sophomore year i dealt with the drama that is Junior Guild, especially my senior year. Senior year i was given the great opportunity to be 1st vice president of this organization.. something i thought would be a rewarding experience, but really just took years off mine -and my sweet mother's- life. But yellow rose ball made it all worth it in the end.. i had the huge poofy dress, a fabulous escort, and some sweet friends there to support me.. it was a wonderful evening :)

i guess the next big event after that was june 6... graduation! the day i'd been looking forward to since i first began schooling. i dont really know what all to write about graduation.. i think anything i say will end up sounding cliche.. i mean, it was a wonderful afternoon. i had a lovely dress on, covered up by that hideous blue gown and cap.. and of course, i was a nervous wreck. i was nervous about falling or tripping or just looking stupid. i was nervous because this was truly ending my highschool career.. however.. favorite moment of graduation had to be when i was about to walk on stage. i was in line, right by sweet jackie reyman, and i was shaking and i look out into all my fellow graduates.. and i see sarah and phil. they were in top 10% so they were sitting on the first or second row.. and they got my attention and just grinned at me. i gave a little wave and blew a kiss and breathed a huge sigh of relief. they totally calmed my nerves right before i walked across that stage.. such sweet friends i have! and then i walked across the stage (without falling!!) and that was it. i was done..

moving right along with 2009.. uplift! uplift is the summer camp our church youth group attends every year. i love uplift. love love loveee it! its a great chance to be myself and just experience God in a way i never get to at home. but this year at uplift was definitely special... on june 16 i gave my life to Christ and got baptized! okay.. it was my second time. but i really felt like it was something God was calling me to do.. its not like i didnt think the first time "didnt take" or something like that.. its just.. i feel like i didnt really know what i was doing.. i just did it because it was something i knew i was expected to do. but this summer at uplift, i really felt like God was calling me.. and it was great :)

right after uplift came my absolute favorite week of my year. honduras. every year the juniors and seniors at our church go on a mission trip to tegucigalpa, honduras to build houses and work with some local churches and orphanages. i LOVE this trip more than anything. this year was a bit crazy though.. we spend the first two days of the trip building 6 houses and the rest of the trip doing VBS's and visiting schools and such. well this year, we got a little bit of news one evening. we were having a church service with one of the local churches when one of our chaperone's gets a phone call.. as soon as the sermon is over we were rushed to our buses (such a scary feeling.. everyone was just saying "get to the bus! get to the bus!" and we had no idea why.." and we find out there is a military coup about to take place. and we are right there in the capital city. i dont know exactly what happened government wise, but apparently the prez was doing something he shouldnt have been doing and the military decided to step in. the next day or so was crazy.. we just kept waiting to hear if it was safe for us to stay or if we could even get out if we tried.. we decided to cut the trip short and come home, which i now realize was a very wise decision.. but we were so bummed about it.. but we still had an incredible time while we were there.. i really wish i could go into detail about how much this trip means to me.. but that could literally go on forever.. i really love honduras.. and i really think that God has something planned in my future with Honduras.. guess we'll wait and see :)

after we got home from honduras i spent the rest of my summer at home! i got the chance to work for a company downtown-- such a neat experience! i was the receptionist for the company and i absolutely loved it! but my time there didnt last long, because soon enough it was time for me to head off to abilene!

thats right. i started college. talk about an emotional rollercoaster! my first semester was absolutely CRAZY and i cant believe its already over! my classes were hard, well math was hard. but overall, it was such a wonderful semester. i've made some wonderful new friends, and i really think i've grown up alot. i made a 4.0!! sorry.. i hate hate hate when people brag.. but i'm SO extremely proud of that gpa.. i've NEVER made all a's.. ever! and so i'm pretty stinking proud out of my mind! so.. overall, pretty dang great semester :)

and then i came home... Christmas was wonderful. I'm so so blessed by the people i'm surrounded by. seriously. the donaldson's came over for christmas dinner, along with the family that's always here. it was such a wonderful afternoon/evening. i'm so so blessed..

and that brings us up to date! we went back to our new years traditions-- Outback Steakhouse and a movie. This year we saw The Blindside.. SOO INCREDIBLE! gosh. sandra bullock is incredibly incredible, and oh golly the little boy is just PRECIOUS. i really want to adopt him. and after the movie we went over to a friend's house and rang in the new year by playing games and watching the ball drop :) great evening with great friends..

soo.. it's been a pretty incredible year. hopefully 2010 is just as wonderful, if not even more wonderful! i hope everyone has a safe and wonderful holiday..

Do you remember me? I sat upon you're knee.. I wrote to you with childhood fantasies..

so last night, i went out to coffee with one of my closest friends. i kinda love/hate going to get coffee with him. I love it because he always helps me learn things about myself, i hate it because i always learn things about myself that are really hard to learn.. and tonight wasn't unlike any other night. i learned yet another hard lesson. tonight, my dear friend (who by the way is AMAZING for putting up with my horribly stubborn self) helped me learn that i need to grow up.

it's that simple. i need to grow up.

seriously. if i want God to do something, or anything, incredible in my life, i need to mature and grow up and accept that. I need to accept the fact that life is moving forward everyday.

among my group of friends in high school i was always made fun of for being the "emotional one" aka.. the one who cries to much. especially senior year. i cried ALOT. but that was because i didn't want to see it come to an end. I had the PERFECT senior year, and i knew that it would soon end, and i would be shoved into the "real world" of college and careers. and thats SCARY. but I'm in that "new world," and its wonderful. College has been INCREDIBLE so far. I have a 4.0, wonderful friends, and a lot going for me. i don't know what I was so scared of.. but i braved it, and made it through my first semester of college! and i think that God has done some great stuff so far.. but He could do soo more!

So, that's it. I just need to allow myself to grow up. And I've done a lot of growing up the past semester. But there's a lot more I need to do. And I think that growing up includes getting rid of some friendships, and baggage from those friendships, in order to grow even more. that's a really hard pill to swallow.

I also and talked with Matt Atnip last week when I got home. He's another person that's kind of amazing for always putting up with me. We have these little sessions where he "fixes my life" or whatever is going on at the moment. Usually it revolves around how stressed I am about stupid and silly stuff. I've been stressing a lot about my major and whether or not to change it. But he helped me realize that I'm stressing so much about it, and there isn't a whole lot I can do about it right now. And it's getting to a point where it's controlling what I do. And I really don't need to be dealing with that, especially during vacation. He helped me realize I seriously need to just let go of all of it, and let God take care of it in His own time- yet another lesson that's pretty tough to learn.

so.. that's what I'm working on right now: growing up and letting God fully take control of my life and whatever he wants to do with it. That's tough.

im currently listening to Grown-up Christmas List, sung by the Klein High School Chamber Choir :) hence the title of this post..

On a lighter note, it's almost christmas! I really really really love christmas. I wish i could add pictures of what's been going on lately.. but i left my usb cord in abilene..

would the song still survive without five golden rings?

On September 21, 1897 an article appeared in editorial page of The New York Sun. It was a reply to a letter that had been mailed in. The letter said this:

DEAR EDITOR:

I am 8 years old.Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O'HANLON.115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET

This was the New York Sun's reply:

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

I really love this. It's such an inspiration to the true meaning of christmas... I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday, full of "childlike faith" like in this article.

The title of this post is a lyric from taylor swifts song "christmas must mean something more" (yes. i'm lame, and quoting taylor swift.) but I really suggest listening to this song. it's all about the real meaning of christmas, not presents and earthly things.. but what really matters :)

Kelly and I went to prestonwood forest last night to look at all of the christmas lights (a tradition with our families, and something i highly recomend!) and saw this.. of course we had to take a picture with it..

Merry Christmas :)

update on my life.

i want to apologize in advance at how jumbled this is going to be. i've got a lot to talk about :)

first of all. it snowed last night. this is a BIG DEAL! i have seen snow a total of four times in my life. two of which, don't really count as snow. since this is such a small number, i can tell you about them all, because each snow-sighting is attached to a dear sweet memory.

the first time is probably the most special to me. everyone remembers their first snow (unless you grew up in a place that gets snow dozens of times a year) but when you live in texas, you're first snow is a huge deal. I was ten years old ( i think..) and it was valentines day. it was a saturday, which meant i had to wake up bright and early for ballet company rehearsal. my mom woke me up that morning and asked me if i would like to skip rehearsal that day. i said yes, but i didnt know why she had asked me that. She told me that it had snowed about two hours north of where we lived, and

they wanted to drive me up there- just so i could say i'd seen snow :) how incredible are my parents!!!?? they are such a beautiful precious b

lessing to me. so that valentines day, i saw my first sno

w. i through a snowball at my mom and made a baby snowman with my father (there realllly wasnt that much snow-- but more than i had ever seen!)

my second snow was the only really serious snow i've ever seen. my beautiful aunt nancy and her family have a house in the mountains of new mexico- so we went one spring break. we went skiing, built a snowman, made snow angels- all the cliche fun things to do in snow. but the best part was my best friend sarah got to come with me :)

the third snow was last december. december 10 to be exact. i had just gotten home from school and was watching gilmore girls in the living room, when i

started getting the text m

essages. EVERYONE started texting me "ITS

SNOWING!!!!" this NEVER happens in houston. NEVER. so i ran outside, and it was true! there were little white puffs falling from the s

ky. it didnt last long, but later that night, the beautiful white mist returned. it was absolutely wonderful and perfect. now, it wasnt that much.. barely enough to stick to the ground. but i managed to scrape ALL of the snow off of my car and my fathers car to make a snowball, which still sits in our freezer to this day. :)

and then there was last night. we knew that snow had been expected all evening, and it never showed. and i was bummed because i was REALLY looking forward to seeing snow. but i finally gave up and got ready for bed at about 11:30. i was already all snuggled up in my bed when sweet tori bursts through my door and yells "ITS SNOWING!!" so of course i rush out of the room, looking a MESS, and run outside to see more tiny little white puffies falling from the sky, along with some rain. we took a few pictures, then had to go back inside because of our wonderful curfew.. but still.. its snowed! :)

but i didnt mean for this whole post to be about snow.. so switching gears..

i was on facebook the other day (december 1 to be exact), when i saw someone's status. it said "well its officially the final month of the decade, how has your life changed in the past ten years"

WOAH. the final month of the DECADE. thats crazy! i remember exactly where i was when we said goodbye to 1999 and hello t0 2000.. there was the silly y2k scare, and i had enjoyed a dinner at Outback and had gone to see Bicentenial Man with my parents earlier that evening, a tradition we do every new years. its crazy to think an entire decade has gone by since then.. and its given me alot to think about! way to much to put into one blog-- but i'm sure closer to the new years i'll blog about how much my life has changed in the past ten years-- so be looking forward to that :)

new subject.

today in mike copes class he showed us a video about how his sister-in-law saw an article in the NY Times about these slave children in africa- and she went and saved them. like she just flew to africa and bought them out of slavery. it was so moving and i was balling by the time class was over. i really hope i can do something like that one day. his sister wrote a book about it and i really want to read it. thats just so powerful and moving. I've always felt a strong calling to Honduras.. maybe one day i can save some children there.. :) just a thought..

and switching gears once again...

ive realized that i stress WAY to much and WAY to easily. like its NOT good. I'm getting over a cold, that i KNOW was brought on because i stress way to much! seriously. i have a cycle i go through- and it needs to end. i start out by taking on too much work, or just adding to my already heavy work load. then i stress an

d stress and stretch out all the work even more.. which causes me to stay up way late finishing projects and papers.. which causes me to get sick, which causes me to miss a day of school sleeping/recuperating, which causes even more work to make up on... you see the pattern? and i stress about all these little details that really DONT matter in the bigger scheme of things. I really need to just take a step back and re-evaluate what's important and whats not.. especially with finals right around the corner.. my to-do list is way to long...

so thats what i'm currently working on. shortening my to-do list, and NOT stressing about the little things! i keep Matthew 6:34 (do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself- each day has enough trouble of its own!) posted all over my room to try and help me remember.. but it doesnt always work out so well!

on a lighter note..

jess and i decorated our mess of a room for christmas.. this is helping me to be in a better mood.. i LOVE christmas.. i'm not even going to go into detail right now on how much i love it because that would be WAY to much to read.. heres a pic of our tree/door :) we have lights all around the window, sink, and our bed also :)

i think thats about all thats floating around in my head right now, besides all of the piles of biology i've been studying.. hope everyone is having a beautiful day :)

ah, the cliche thanksgiving post

hopefully this isnt tooo cheesy.

so as i sit here in my cozy living room, football on the tv, the smell of turkey and stuffing filling the house, i think to myself, how TRULY blessed i am. i have WONDERFUL, caring, supportive, forgiving, loving parents that have never let me down. I have the BEST best friends anyone could ask for. I go to an incredible school where God is always present, I'm healthy as a horse, I'm doing extremely well in school, i live in a country where I can worship my Lord and Savior as I please, my roomate is an angel, my entire family is a hysterical, loving, beautiful bunch- i really could not ask for anything more.

I was extremely reminded of this on Tuesday night. I drove in from Abilene and was extremely exhausted. I really hate driving, it makes me very grumpy and i was just anxious to be home. But once i finally did get home, i called up my wonderful sweet friend sarah ann. Now, I havent seen this beautiful girl since I left in august. Thats a long

time! So she came and picked me up and we went out on a traditional coffee date, just like old times. And thats exactly what it was-- just like old times. We played Klein Choir christmas cd's and drove around town. It was WONDERFUL! and then we called up James. And he was home, so we drove by his house. And for a couple hours I just sat outside with the two greatest people I know, talking and catching up. Just like old times. It was one of the best nights ever. I am SO blessed by those two- they listen to me and support me through everything and I'm SO SO thankful for them.

So on this thanksgiving day, I have alot to be thankful for.. I'm so blessed, and I recognize that. But I do have one small pet peeve with thanksgiving. On this day, people talk about what they're thankful for. But just this day. Shouldn't we be thankful everyday? God has blessed us so all so much- on a daily basis. Shouldn't we be thankful everyday? Of course, today is a wonderful day to enjoy family, eat great food, and watch the cowboys play, so don't think that I'm dissing thanksgiving. I LOVE thanksgiving.. but I do think we should be thankful everyday. So thats what I'm gonna try and do from now on. To be thankful everyday, because I truly have SO much to be thankful for.

For the Beauty of the Earth

First blog. This is a big deal.

I'm currently listening to the song "For the Beauty of the Earth" played by John Schmidt. John Schmidt is an incredibly talented pianist. I absolutely love listening to his music, because it's so peaceful, calming, and simply beautiful. And my wonderful best friend introduced me to John, so it always reminds me of him when I hear any of his songs. But I digress..

"For the Beauty of the Earth" is a hymm that speaks volumes to me. I had actually never heard it before until John Schmidt, but it's one of my favorites now. And it is the inspiration for the title of this blog.

For the Beauty of the Earth

For the beauty of the skies,

For the love which from our birth

over and around us lies

Lord of all, to thee we raise

This our grateful hymn of praise.

For the beauty of each hour

of the day and of the night,

hill and vale, and tree and flower,

sun and moon and stars of light,

Lord of all to thee we raise

this our grateful hymn of praise

For the joy of human love,

brother, sister, parent, child,

friends on earth, and friends above,

for all gentle thoughts and mild

Lord of all to thee we raise,

this our grateful hymn of praise.

For each perfect gift of thine,

to our race to freely given,

Graces human and divine,

flowers or earth and buds of heaven,

Lord of all, to thee we raise

this our grateful hymn of praise.

For thy Church which evermore

lifteth holy hands above,

offering up on every shore

her pure sacrifice of love,

Lord of all, to thee we raise

this our grateful hymn of praise.

How beautiful is that? I think it's really just about finding beauty in everything- because everything has God's fingerprints on it. He made the earth, the skies, the hills and valleys, each tree and flower, and each one of us. And he made it all beautiful. He made us beautiful! So that's my new outlook on life. Finding the beauty in everything, because He has made it all.