Worship Wednesday- "Give Me Your Eyes"

New shoes and Worlds of Fun

On Saturday in the afternoon I went shopping with my cousins: McKenzie, Haley, Lacey, Kylie; aunts: Twila and Michele; grandma, great-grandma, and mom. We went to a mall in Kansas City and it was pretty fun. The theme for everyone shopping was buying shoes. I think 5 of us each bought a new pair of shoes. Having a size 10 shoe makes finding fun colored shoes very difficult for me. They normally only have the small sizes left so at multiple stores I asked to try on a shoe and found out they didn't have my size.I bought 2 pairs. One pair of Nike tennis shoes that are black with some bright blue and pink on them. I really like them and they are super comfortable. I also bought a new pair of Toms. I've been wanting a new pair for awhile and when Tradehome had them in fun colors I thought I'd have to see if they had my size. They did and so I of course had to buy them.

Around 5 my cousins: McKenzie, Lacey, Kylie along with my uncles: Mike and Todd and Aunt Michele all went to Worlds of Fun. I had a lot of fun. I've never been there before-I like to tell my parents that I'm a deprived child. I love amusement parks and don't really go as often as I would like. My cousin Kylie got dehydrated so about half of the group left a little early. Michele, McKenzie, and later Todd (when he came back to the park) stayed until almost closing time of midnight. I got to ride on all of the roller coasters-some in the light and in the dark. We also rode on most of the other rides in the park. Overall it was a very successful day-and my new tennis shoes got some great use!

Cousin's Wedding

On Friday night my cousin Nick got married to Leslie. It was a small wedding, but full of tons of little details. It was really cool. It was also great to see all of my family again and to hang out and dance the night away. I also got some wonderful coloring in with my cousin Haley that I didn't take pictures of. 
I love weddings and it was especially nice to be at one where I actually really know the couple. So Leslie welcome to our crazy family!

The happy couple!

 

Some of the little details...

Photo Booth shots....

                     

Some final pictures:

Remembering Grandpa Todd

On Sunday my great grandpa Lloyd Todd passed away. Over the past few years his health had slowly declined. He wasn't able to do a lot of the things that he loved like: garden, farm, drive, fish, and travel. He's been in the nursing home now for about a year and it was somewhat difficult to watch his health decline. For that reason I had mixed emotions about his death. I was happy that he was no longer in pain, but sad that he was gone from this life. This February the Sioux City Journal wrote an article about my great-grandparents that was really good so click the link if you'd like to read it.

I thought I'd post some of my favorite memories of my grandpa Todd [some I remember and some I remember because they're stories that have been told for so long I feel like they are my own memories]:

• Every December making popcorn balls and other Christmas treats with Grandma and Grandpa Todd, Grandma Marcia, Grandpa Don, and my family. It was also fun to squeeze together the popcorn balls. When we were younger we made SOOOO many-grandma and grandpa todd would pop most of the popcorn and he would always help us squeeze them together. The last couple of years he really wasn't able to help us and I know that was hard for him.
• Whenever we would visit their house in the summer-we would have fresh veggies and they always made sure that we brought tons home. Also occassionly we would go out in the garden and help them out.
• Grandpa Todd always had candy to give us. I also remember going to their house and them having frozen ice cream snickers bars, which I loved to eat.
• I'll always remember camping with them. At South Sioux campground one weekend I remember getting to fish with grandpa. Everything we caught were tiny fish, but it was still fun.

Those are just a few of the many memories that I have of my great-grandpa that I will always remember. He was always a very happy guy who was full of tons of stories of growing up during the Great Depression with all his siblings. One of his favorites to tell was that when their mom called them to eat you had to run to the table or you wouldn't get food. I was never sure how much he embellished that story, but it was still a fun one. He always had a smile and loved to talk to everyone he met. I will miss seeing him and spending time with him, but am glad that he is no longer suffering.

Worship Wednesday- "Blessings"

Recently I've started posting music videos of songs that I've really enjoyed. I decided to start a new thing on my blog called worship wednesday where I post a worship song that I like. Hopefully I'll be able to remember to do this each wednesday.
Here's this weeks song:

First Blessing Bag

*Just to warn you this isn't the best writing-it's more my rambling thoughts from awhile ago so I apologize for this.

About a week or so ago I had the opportunity to give away my first blessing bag.

To be honest I'd had a least one opportunity to give one away, but I was in a hurry and the guy was holding a sign about a couple lanes of traffic away so I used that as the excuse as to why I didn't stop to give him the bag. After I did this I was really disappointed with myself for not just taking the time to stop and give him one. Then a couple weeks later I had the opportunity.

I was driving to target and as I pulled in I saw a man holding a sign that said something about how his family was hungry. I was like ok I can give him a bag. The only problem is that they're in my trunk and so right now isn't the best time to stop in the intersection, when I'd have to get in my trunk. I did have the idea that maybe I should just pull over in the parking lot, get the bag, then walk it over to the man. Later I realized it was probably God telling me to do this.

Instead I made the decision to go into target then put a bag in my car so I could reach it and hand it to him on my way out of the parking lot. When I came out from target and drove to the intersection where he was standing he wasn't there anymore. I was again very mad at myself for not just stopping and giving it to him. It was a little selfish of me-since it wasn't at my ideal time to be handing it out. I was also angry that I hadn't listened to that gut feeling [God] and instead gone with what I thought would work out the best for me.

I then had the feeling that I should drive a different way home through more intersections because maybe the man had moved. [Again God telling me this] As I drove home I didn't see him and didn't see him. I was still thinking it through in my head and just getting mad at myself. Then at another intersection I saw the man. So I turned around and drove to this intersection, rolled down my window, and gave him the bag. He told me God bless you, and thanked me. I turned around so I  could go back home and as I did this I saw him drinking the water. This made me happy-that God could use me in such a way to bless this man and give him a drink. I did feel bad that the water has been in my car since April so it obviously wasn't cold, but at least it was wet.

It was a great reminder during a difficult week for me that God was there and had a plan. Even when I don't listen to what he wants me to do. When I think that I know the best way to do something or have my own plan that makes sense to me-it doesn't always work out in the best way for others. But when I do listen and follow his plan then I have the opportunity to bless others. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to give out more bags and have the willingness to listen to God when he wants me to do something.

HP Again

Well this will probably be my last Harry Potter post, but I can't promise anything. Well on Wed. night I finally finished the 7th book. I'm not quite sure why it took me so long this time to read this book, but it did.

On Thursday after swimming lessons I went to the mall and barnes and noble and hot topic to get the newest edition of entertainment weekly [with multiple articles about hp] and then a t-shirt to wear to the premier. Enjoy the myspace mirror pic of my shirt and magazine.

Then I went to the theater to pick up our tickets to make sure we had them for the show and it wouldn't be super crazy during the night. I also asked the guy what time they'd start letting people into the theater and he told me 15 minutes before the show, but that the lobby would start getting crowded around 10.

Courtney and I decided to leave at 10:30 so we'd get there a little before 11. When we got there the line was very long and it was outside. This is what the line looked like when we got there.

All these crazy Harry Potter fans waited in line. The line moved pretty fast once they started letting people into the theater (they let us in earlier than 15 min. before it was probably around 11:30ish when they started leading people in).

Courtney really isn't that into HP, but she's a good friend so she went to it at midnight with me. As you can tell from this picture she was pretty excited.

I was super excited [if you couldn't already tell by the multiple blogs about Harry Potter and the shirt, etc.] so I made her take a picture showing my shirt as well as my excitement.

The movie was really good. So everyone should go see it even if you don't really like Harry Potter. It would probably be helpful to know the story of HP from the other movies to really understand it, but that's up to you. Anyway the movie was good-epilogue ok-they looked about the same age so that was kind of funny. Everyone in our theater laughed during the beginning of the epilogue. I was glad that I went to the last one at midnight-even if it did mean I only got 4 hours of sleep before teaching swimming lessons :)

Tonight at Midnight!

You can read all about my love for HP here. Tonight at 12:01 I will be watching the final movie with Courtney.

Here's a little video someone posted on facebook that's a look back and really good so you should all watch it-even if you aren't big HP fans.

Rabid Raccoons

Source: http://www.minnesotawildanimalmanagement.com/raccoon_removal.html

Ok these raccoons most likely weren't rabid, but they did just scare the crap out of Nikki L and I this evening. They were huge and overtaking our driveway and yard. We had just gotten done babysitting and were pulling into our driveway when we saw a raccoon run across the driveway by the garage. We were obviously creeped out and Nikki told me to get my keys ready to get into the house. As I was about to get out of the car I saw something move in the yard next to me. It was another raccoon, this one didn't seem to be really running and hiding. I told her to get back in the car and I turned the headlights on so we could kind of see it. We then sat in the car wondering what to do next. The raccoon then started walking closer to the house so we didn't want to get out. It finally went around the porch, but we weren't exactly sure where so we didn't want to get out of the car in case it came after us or something [the whole time we could still see the other one by the garage]. Then I decided I would just back up the car and park it right next to the porch so we could run out of the car and quickly open the door to go inside. We did this and after fumbling a bit I got the door open and we ran inside as the creepy raccoon watched us from the garage. We felt much better as we were safe in our home. About 5 minutes later I was in the kitchen looking out the window and saw one of them back in the driveway walking towards the porch. I watched from the window as it walked up on the porch and then I tapped on the window a few times. It looked up and saw me and then ran away back towards the garage. Hopefully they'll both gone for the night and won't be sneaking up on us anytime soon, but I'm guessing that they will make an appearance again.

4th of July Weekend

My official 4th weekend with the family started Saturday afternoon when my family came to pick me up. The boys then went to the science center for body worlds and the girls went shopping around east village. We mostly just looked around stores, but did buy a couple of things in raygun. When the boys were done at body worlds we started our drive to omaha.

We got to Omaha later on Saturday and sat at the campground for a bit before heading to Lincoln for fireworks. We ended up just sitting in the truck and watching them and they were super close and really good. We also got there like right before they started so we didn't have to wait to long to watch them. I tried to take a picture of the fireworks on my phone. The picture isn't the best quality, but you get the idea. It was a really good fireworks show. [I've come up with my own theory that when fireworks are legal in a state their professional shows are SOO much better than states where fireworks are illegal]

On Sunday my mom, Carina, and I went to a church that is nearby Creighton that Carina wanted to check out to see if she wants to go there in the fall. It was a good service and a nice church. Then we went shopping for a bit to find a dress for my mom for my cousin's wedding at the end of July. We found a dress and then met the family for transformers. The majority went to transformers but others did go to Cars 2 and Bridesmaids. Transformers was really good!

Then we got back to the campground, ate, and talked for most of the night.

Monday started out with me taking some random pictures of the family camping while waiting for people to get ready for crafting and swimming.

Then my cousins, aunt, Carina, and I all went to the craft place and painted some very beautiful ceramics. I painted an E, Carina painted Piglet, McKenzie painted a deer, and Haley painted a cat.
Hard at work....

The finished projects....

Then we heading to the busy pool for some hot summer swimming. It was fun-we went down the slides a few time, got attacked in the wave pool, and then also layed out for a bit during pool checks...

After we were tired of swimming we went back to the campground and showered and changed into our matching flag t's. I decided to buy these Saturday morning at Old Navy since it had been so long since the family had them. They only had women and childen's sizes left so the boys didn't get them. Isaac instead was in charge of taking a photo of the 3 of us, which turned out to be a little difficult.

Then we made him take some nice ones of Carina and me....

Then we ate, loaded up our stuff and headed home. They dropped me off in West Des Moines to meet the Nikki's for my last 4th of July firework show. Here's a couple of pics of the fireworks.

It was great to see the family and get to hang out with them even if it wasn't for very long. I hope that all of your 4th of July's were good. Now a little extra credit for you all. Please leave a comment if you know what this lovely tattoo that I made Carina is of....