2005...or is it 2006?

Well, I already went to a New Years Eve party yesterday...so for me it's already 2006! I'm serious. I went to this party I didn't really know many people...but I got to hold their babies! It was fun!
I guess I have accomplished my top 10 things...except the wedding hasn't happened yet...but we've decorated and had the rehearsal already...so it's half done...we just need to do the real thing!
This Christmas has been wonderful...some Christmas's are okay, some are good...but this one was wonderful (in my opinion). I can't put my finger on exactly what made this one so good...but it was.
but now, I need to get ready for my day full of skating, watching hockey, and of course the 'real' New Years Eve celebrations!
Happy New Years!

Praise the Lord!

I made it through this stretch of exams! Now, bring on Christmas! I'm super excited to go home! here's my top ten things I'm looking forward to (in no particular order):
1) Seeing my family (especially 'my' babies)
2) Play hockey with my friends (hopefully!)
3) Singing in church (especially 'der Friedensfurst'...no Christmas is complete without that beautiful song!
4) Playing football in the snow with my sister! (one of my favorite christmas traditions!)
5) Did I mention that I'll get to see my kids?...I can just hear Adria shouting "Doe-ie" and making me chase her...what I won't do to ensure my place as favorite auntie...jk JB ;)
6) Being in a wedding...wow, time flies...I can still remember when Missy and James first met!
7) NO HOMEWORK!!
8) Baking some Christmas goodies!
9) Since I'm on the food topic...I can hardly wait till I can eat some delicious enchilada's (another one of my favorite family Christmas Eve traditions)
10) well, since I promised 10 things, I better come up with a 10th thing, otherwise my dear readers will be disappointed...mind you, I could always go back and change this to a list of my 9 favorite things...but that would be cheating...so I will think of one last thing...and it is: being able to sleep in.
okay, that was a lame one, but that's all I could think of right now...sorry.
Gotta go pack and clean now, so I can actually go home (instead of just dreaming about it!)
Merry Christmas, y'all!

just your average Joe

First of all I want to say: THE LINZ'S WON! Way to go boys and girl! Okay, so I was excited! I'm over it now...What am I going to do now every tuesday at 8?....Maybe I'll actually study...(good one, Lori!)
So there are a few things I've been pondering about this last week. First of all, I've always thought of Joseph (as in, Mary and Joseph) as a distant father that had nothing to do with Jesus...maybe he was embarrased with him and cast him out of the family or something...I don't know. But this week, I started reading in Matthew, and I got a totally different perspective. Here it tells how Gabriel appears to Joseph, not once, or twice, but 3 times in the middle of the night. And how did Joe respond? He obeyed God immediately! First it was to marry Mary and call 'their' son Jesus. Then to leave his family, home, and carpentry shop to move off to Egypt suddenly...no questions asked. Then, when they just start to settle in...oh look, we're supposed to move back to Israel where the former ruler has been murdering innocent babies because he wanted to make sure my son was dead. Crazy! Joe was very concerned about Mary's baby, and took care of him like a true father would, even if it meant sacrificing his reputation and the comforts of home. He obeyed God, and did the best he could to protect his child (even though it wasn't even his). Amazing! I don't know why he wasn't mentioned later on in the gospels...maybe he died, I don't know. I often think about the sacrifice that Mary had to make, but I realized that Joseph also made huge sacrifices in his life for Jesus. What a crazy and miraculous story of regular people saying 'yes' to God when it made no sense at all, knowing that most people would probably not believe the truth. That was my new insight to the Christmas story this week.

"a diversion"...from reality

For those of you who like Amazing Race (family edition), here is just one of the numerous funny quotes from my favorite team...The Linz's:

Nick Linz: There needs to be a leader involved and...
Tommy Linz: Nick thinks he's the only one that can do it.
Nick Linz: I didn't say that.
Alex Linz: Real life situations have been experienced more by Nick and I. Tommy and Megan are still in that educational stage of maturing and learning how to deal with an electric company and paying their electric on time, or their landlord...
Tommy Linz: Shut up, Alex, you're living at home!

I laughed...so hard! So I finished my demonstration exam today...I would've failed if my partner hadn't helped me out...hopefully that still counts for something! Otherwise I'll have to do it again! I don't even want to think about that...so my next exam is on saturday. I wasn't going to study today (cuz I'm sick of it)...but maybe I will. Good Luck to everyone who is knee deep in books, preparing for exams! (and more luck to those of you who are writing exams that you haven't been studying for!)

trivia tidbits

Did you know that each month has a flower? Kind of like a birthstone...there's a birth-flower. I didn't know that. check it out! So I read that and thought of Jen...cuz she used to call me morning glory!
Another random, useless fact: Apparently, the US has never lost a war where mules were used. (read this for more useless, but kind of interesting facts) Can you tell I've been procrastinating? I'm bad at this studying thing...I get worse at it every time I have to do it. well, my study break is now over...time to read some more about justice, truthfullness, integrity, and other very important moral issues.

what a crazy weekend...and it's not over yet...

Well, Friday was quite the eventful day for me. I was going to skip class that day and sleep in...but I was supposed to meet one of my friends to give her some pamphlets for a project we were working on. So I got out of bed...turns out, she decides not to show up...so I felt that it had been a waste of waking up....but after the crazy events that followed, I soon decided that I was glad that I had gotten up in the morning! I could go on forever, but I'll tell the short story. As I was walking home from school, I walked past a hairdresser shop and thought to myself: "I should get a haircut". so I turned around and started walking towards the building. meanwhile, there was this older lady and her daughter walking in front of me. As they started up the front step, they lost their balance and toppled over. Meanwhile I'm freaking out...not quite sure what to do! the one lady got up and said she was okay, but the other lady couldn't get up and she thought she broke her arm. so, anyways I went into the building and called 911 for the poor lady. and waited with them till the ambulance arrived. It was a super crazy experience...it made me feel so inadequately trained to be a nurse. I totally didn't know what to do...I freaked out (well, inside...on the outside I stayed calm, I think.) In case you were wondering about my haircut...after all the hoopla, I went inside and made a haircut appointment for later on that day (which was quite the experience in itself....) I won't go into it now, let's just say I walked out of there feeling like I walked off the set of Anne of Green Gables. It was very funny!
Today I went shopping and restrung my guitar and went to our College and Career's 'Christmas in Tinseltown' party thing. I met a girl I had a class with last year, and a girl that I went to camp with in grade 5 or6...quite random! It was really neat, I just wish we could've gone to play poker...oh well, it was fun anyways...now I really should sleep...get ready for another day!

less than a month till Christmas!

I'm having a lot of fun with a few of my assignments...I used to think I hated doing 'creative' assignments...but now I realize that I find it quite fun (I think it's because I know the alternative is writing papers, and ANYTHING is better than writing a paper!) Right now I'm working on my second pamphlet thingy. I like making pamphlets....Planning the layouts and fooling around with differents designs reminds me of good old Desktop Publishing! Great class! We had the best group, eh Jen...oh Diamond Dan...he was a diamond in the rough!

On a serious note...I got an email today from my mom about my grandpa. He had surgery this last spring to remove some cancerous skin cells. At the time the doctors said that they were confident that they had removed it all. However, now they are doing more tests and don't think they got everything. So if you could pray for my grandpa, that would be great! Thanks guys!