Thanksgiving time :)

Why do breaks go by so fast? I feel like I was home for two minutes. Oh well. In exactly two weeks from right now I will be at home again :)

Wednesday, November 23rd
I got to wake up at one in the morning (Minnesota time) to get ready to come home! I was home by 10 and spent the day in St. Cloud with my mom. At church that night there was the annual Thanksgiving pie social. It was so nice to see people that I hadn't seen since August!  

Thursday, November 24th
Madison, her dad, her aunt, and I woke up early to go to St. Paul and run in the Thanksgiving 5k. We felt accomplished :) and then we didn't have to be guilty for all the food we ate later!

We were with my dad's side this year so 15 of us were at my house. It was a very relaxing, fun day! We ate (obviously!), talked, went for a walk in the woods, and played games. So much fun!

 Me with my cousins, Marina and Britta

I ended the day watching Iron Man 1 with my dad and Hunter. We are preparing for the movie The Avengers that comes out this summer :)

Friday, November 25th
I slept in. That right there made my day. haha.

Kelly came over for a bit in the afternoon and it was so good to see her and catch up again! 

I had been waiting for this night for a long time. I finally got an anchor tattoo like the one my grandpa has! My cousins Wendy, Lynsi, and I went together and took Grandpa with us to get our tattoos :)

 Lynsi's first tattoo!

It was more painful than my last one

 My Grandpa and I :)

Live fast, die young ;)

 Love this picture of them with their matching tattoos!

 Mine and my Grandpa's tattoos

 family :) is what I am thankful for!

I am so glad my Grandpa was there for that experience! It meant so much :)

Over the rest of the weekend I got to see Amber and Kaitie, went to a movie with my mom, hung out and did nothing, and got a haircut. I'm counting down the days until I am back home again!

Creation Museum!

 Chelsea, Madison, and I went to the Creation Museum on Saturday. I have wanted to go there for awhile and since we got extra credit in our science class for going, it was a must!

I wasn't really sure what to expect. I think my expectations were a little too high though. It was really cool, but I thought it would be mind-blowing amazing. It was interesting to see how much of the stuff I already knew after having taken this earth science course this semester! I didn't even have to read everything since I already knew about it!

By far, my favorite part of the museum was the exhibit on Noah's ark.  I think because I learned about Noah's ark when I was really young and I heard it taught throughout my childhood, I grew up not being as amazed by it as I should have been. Seeing this exhibit really put it more into perspective for me and made me think about things that I hadn't before.

 This model of the ship compared to the trees, animals, and people surrounding it helped me to visualize what a massive structure it had been.  It is hard for me to visualize things if I don't have something to compare it to.  I couldn't even imagine working on a ship that size for over a hundred years and then being on it for a year!  I wonder how often they had to feed the animals, how they fed the animals that whole time, or how badly it smelled in there.  Did the animals ever get out?  Or did they ever fight each other?  I also wonder if the animals were mean and if Noah and the others were afraid of any of them.

Until taking the earth science course and going to the museum I hadn't thought about the fact that dinosaurs also had to go on the ark.  For some reason I always just thought that God wanted them all to have been wiped out by the flood and it did not matter if they were on the ark.  Now that I think about it and know that dinosaurs did actually go on the ark it does not really make sense that God would care about all of the other animals but the dinosaurs. It's so crazy to think that Noah had dinosaurs on the ship! 

One thing that was hard to see was the model where the ark was in the water and there were people and animals on the rocks trying to get to higher ground and not go in the water.  When reading the story in Genesis it is easy to just forget about all of the people because they were evil and it was there time to die anyways.  However, when I actually saw the people fighting on the rocks and being pushed into the water it made me realize what an awful experience that would be.  I don't know how I would feel if I was one of those people who watched the ark sail away as I was waiting on a rock preparing to die.  It must have been completely miserable knowing that they had years to repent and turn to God and they never did; now their time was over.

 

Overall, visiting the Creation Museum was a great experience and I would go back again!  It is a good place to go and learn about how God created our planet and we do not have to believe in the explanations science tries to give us.

one more picture from fall break :)

I just had to put this picture on here..I love it! It was taken at Cupcakes and the cupcakes were delicious!

Fall Break!

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

McKinley and I are ready to go to the airport!

The flight I wanted to get on at one in the afternoon was overbooked by one person that morning so I was expecting to have to wait at the airport until seven for the next flight.  Fortunately, there was one seat open so I got on!

I landed in Minnesota around 2:30 and my mom was waiting at the gate for me :) and Hunter obviously couldn't go through security so he was waiting elsewhere in the airport. When we finally got to Hunter we saw that he was talking to an older guy and was handing him something. We approached them and learned that the guy was an undercover cop and was running a background check on Hunter. Apparently Hunter looked suspicious since  he had been waiting for my mom and I for awhile. It only took a few minutes and then we could leave...Hunter was pretty freaked out by it but I found it to be rather hilarious :)

I got to drive right away; I was so excited...Hunter was scared I was going to kill us. I am still a pro though. We went right to my grandparent's house and played marbles and ate lasagna. My aunt Joan came to see me too!

When we got home Hunter and I watched Thor. If you haven't seen it I suggest you do.

 

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

Today was a pretty chill day. My dad made me breakfast and my mom and I went shopping :) I also spent time with Hunter playing basketball, wrestling, and jumping on the trampoline! Later that night the Schultz kids came down to see me and we jumped on the trampoline again :) It was fun to see my favorite little kids and catch up with them. I have missed them!

 We are pretty cute :)

Friday, October 14th, 2011


I started off today by going to Keaveny's to see all of my co-workers which was a lot of fun talking to them!


Then I went to Northwestern college to see all of my friends there :)

I hung out with Kelly and she showed me around campus, we talked a lot, and played video games :) Brieanne, Lexi, Kelly, and I went to a cupcake place to eat (obviously) cupcakes and talk and laugh a lot. 

After that, I went to Caribou with my cousin Lynsi and talked with her for about 2 hours, catching each other up on what has been going on in our lives. I went to a different Caribou after that, one closer to Northwestern, where Amber was working. Brieanne, Lexi, and I hung out there for a bit while Amber was working.

Amber, Brieanne, me, and Lexi :)

Amber got off of work around midnight and her and I spent the next couple of hours just talking about everything and finally went to bed around 5 in the morning I think :)

Saturday, October 15th, 2011

Kelly, Will, and I played tennis in the afternoon. At night I had a bonfire and Shannon, Kaitie, and Kelly came over!

Kelly, Kaitie, me, and Shannon!

I was SOOOOO happy to be home! I didn't realize how much I missed Minnesota and everyone in it until I was actually home and seeing them all. It was so great seeing everyone and catching up on everything :) Only 4 more weeks until Thanksgiving!

Cincinnati Zoo!

haha :)

On Saturday October 1st I went to the zoo with Madison, Greg, and Jeremiah! It was a lot of fun...I hadn't been to a zoo in years so I was really excited :) 

sweet picture. too bad mr. giraffe isn't looking at us.

The owl was probably my favorite. It doesn't even look real it's so beautiful!

We also went like ten minutes away to Kentucky because I was the only one who had never been there before. Fun day :)

Hiking!

First off, here are a couple more pictures from Printy Wars :)

 At our unit meeting last week, we made music videos and my group did a video to "I'll Make a Man out of You" from Mulan obviously. It was quite fun!

Last Saturday we went hiking with some of the guys in our brother unit, which was an adventure.

 Here is a picture of all of us 

Docks hate our unit. This is the second time in one month that we have almost sunk a dock. My feet didn't get wet though :)

We hiked for a couple of hours before heading to a park to grill our burgers and eat all of our delicious food.

The one thing we forgot to bring were plates. So we saran-wrapped the tables and ate off of those!

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears...oh my!

Picture a parking lot full of screaming girls in various costumes dancing and doing other crazy activities. This is basically what Printy Wars is all about.

Our unit did the Wizard of Oz theme and we got 2nd place for costumes! We went all out. Pretty legit. (I couldn't find the picture of all of us so here are a couple of pictures of most of us)

 You can't see our wings. But we had them.

At 9:30 all of the girls in Printy were in the parking lot dressed in different costumes. We danced, sang, and did a bunch of crazy activities that involved shaving cream, fruit loops, syrup, sponges, an orange, and soda.

Our brother units were encouraged to come cheer us on and dress up-our brothers came as the yellow brick road. 


It was a fun time, although screaming girls is one of my least favorite things on the planet.

Barefoot Thursday

This summer, Cedarville sent everyone in the entire freshman class a book called True Religion by Palmer Chinchen. In his book, Palmer talked about how his church had a 'barefoot Sunday' where he encouraged his entire congregation to wear their favorite shoes to church, leave them at the altar, and then go barefoot the rest of the day. The purpose was obviously to raise shoes, which they then gave to people in Africa. Over 1 billion people in the entire world do not own a single pair of shoes, and that is a very sad fact.

Someone in our freshman class had the idea of us having our own 'barefoot' day here at Cedarville to collect shoes. And when Palmer came and spoke at our school on Thursday, that is exactly what we did! Although it was rainy and cold, a lot of us spent the day walking around without shoes. We even raised over 3,000 pairs for Palmer to take to Liberia with him next summer!

Palmer speaking

People praying over the shoes for the people who would be receiving them

God is working in amazing ways here! I am so proud to be a part of this school :)

Check out this link for a video about what went on:

http://www.dispatch.com/content/pages/video.html?video=/videos/2011/09/08/cedarville-students-go-barefoot.xml

The Kitchen Sink 2

Here is a picture of us 4 that I didn't put up before :)

Labor Day Weekend

On Thursday we had a meeting with all of the girls in our unit. Well, it technically wasn't a meeting...it was a photo scavenger hunt race! We were in teams and had to run all over campus taking pictures.

 The rock that people paint with announcements!


 


I had a blast this weekend! The weather was really weird though. It was extremely hot last week and it was around 100 degrees on Saturday so we went to the beach for a couple of hours!

 Madison holding her rocks :)

Monday was a chilly day, but all of the girls in my unit got to go sailing! A girl in our unit, Hayley, and her family own a sailboat. We used their boat and three others that their friends owned because one boat is way too small for all of us!

Sarah, Chelsea, me, and Madison were in a sailboat together

We were in the boat called the Kitchen Sink II. We were kind of worried that Kitchen Sink I had sunk.

 

These pictures describes pretty much our entire two hour long boat ride :) We laughed A LOT!

 McKinley and I being normal :)

 

 All of us waiting to eat

 McKinley, me, and Madison

Hayley and her family's boat

When we got back from sailing we got to go to the Cedarville fireworks...Labor day is a pretty big deal here because the father of labor day was born here apparently! Overall I had boatloads of fun ;)  (pun intended)