Monday, July 30, 2007

Back from being farmed out, and on to Camp Barnbas

All right. I've got time to type a few words before I leave for Camp. My family is having tons of fun without me on their vacation. They should be back later this week. I had a great time staying with some of my best friends. I went camping on Thursday and Friday of last week. Good times, caught some really big crawdads. And ate them. They are pretty tasty really. I came home this morning and did all my laundry, cleaned out my bags and repacked everything for Camp. I'll be at Barnabas for 2 weeks, so you probably won't hear from me in that time. If you do want to send me a note of encouragement, or just want to say hi, then email your note to camper@campbarnabas.org and put my name in the subject line. Getting mail is fun, so don't hold back. :)

Cling to the Saviour alone!
Fezzik

Thursday, July 19, 2007

The big 1 7!

So tomorrow my family is leaving me to go to Montana. They are going for a wedding of my step-cousin. Of course, they have to make it a vacation, since they are driving so far. So they'll visit Mt. Rushmore, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone Park, probably the Garden of the Gods, and maybe even Pikes Peak. And don't forget Rabbit Ear Mesa. The reason I'm not going? I signed up to work at Camp Barnabas for 2 weeks this summer. And the 2 weeks that I am supposed to work end up overlapping on the family vacation. So I am getting farmed out to 3 poor unforunate familes over a 10 day period before I leave for Barnabas on the 30th. I am staying with the C-'s and the S-'s and the S-'s. Hopefully I'll be able to camp with some of my friends while I am at the second S-'s.
Tonight we celebrated my 17th birthday. We went to Golden Corral for dinner. Our next door neighbours had given us a gift certificate of a significant amount becuase we helped them clean up ice storm damage when we rented a boom lift and cleaned up our trees. So we used the gift certificate to pay for the meal. $49 for the 7 of us. And that was during lunch. It's $3 more per person if you go at dinner. Actually, we got there at 3:45, so we got the lunch price, but the dinner price was efective at 4:00. So we ate a little cheaper anyway. And we ended up staying until 5:30. Dad had some of the waiters and waitresses come over and do the birthday song thing they do at some buffets. Scribble Girl, do you remember the birthday rap from Barnabas? I just thought of that now, but I couldn't remember it.
Just in case you're wondering, but you probably aren't...my birthday is tomorrow, but we celebrated it tonight, since the family is leaving at 4 AM tomorrow morning.
Now comes the traditional routine of any of our family vacations. Pack...go to walmart...pack...think about what you just know you'll forget to pack the next day...go to walmart...go to the bank...clean out the car...pack some things that you just know you'll neeed on the vacation...and then to walmart one more time to get whatever it was you forgot to get the last 4 times you went in the past 3 hours.
Btw, if you hear a song on my little finetune player on the blog and you are suprised that I listen to that kind of music, I probably don't. Some of the songs on there I have never listened to, but I had to have 45 songs to be able to use the player, so there you go. If you have suggestions on song picks? And also btw, it randomly shuffles through my picks, so you never know what'll come up next. That's the only down side of it. :)
You know how much I love frisbee. I think frisbee hates me. Everyone jokes that unless I get hurt or something, it wasn't a true frisbee game. Well... I've got two black eyes and a busted nose...does that count? I was playing at the S-'s, and I was guarding J-. I tried to block his throw by coming from behind him and diving in front of him. I dove too late and the frisbee had already taken off. But J-'s hand was still there. Next thing I know, I'm laying on my back with my hands over my eyes and feeling like my nose got busted. The side of J-'s hand had hit my face square on the bridge of my nose. I never felt it actually impact on my face. All I remember is laying out, then seeing J-'s hand come around and I blacked out just as I felt his hand start to hit my face. I came to laying on my back. Now it's almost a week later, and my eyes have been getting blacker as time goes on. I'd post a pic, but I don't have one. I told my family that I'd always remember this birthday as the one that I had 2 black eyes and a busted nose on. Oops, ended my sentence on a preposition again. :)
More later...

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Football, Weddings, and Far Up Lakes.

This weekend went by fast. Here's the highlights. On Friday, I got together with 7 of my guy friends and we played flag football for 3 hours. In 90 degree weather. Understatement of the day: It was hot. But we had a good time. And my team won. Not that that made it a good time, but it did help a little.
Saturday, I played at Elizabeth H.'s wedding. There was supposed to be 2 ensembles and 2 quartets that played at the wedding reception. I was in the first ensemble, and then the older quartet, and besides that, I was kind of heading the whole thing up, getting everyone organized and stuff. The first ensemble went great, at least from what I could hear. I directed about half the time on the younger ensemble, because they were having a hard time staying together. Then a little kids quartet played. They were soooo cute, and totally were good too. By this time most of the people had left, and they were just taking some last minute pictures. So we had to have our pictures taken. End result? The older quartet that I was supposed to play in ended up not playing. Which was sad, because we had spent at least 4 hours together practicing. And we had this totally cool song called Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 by J.S. Bach. But we didn't get to perform it. Oh well.
Right after I got done at the wedding, my dad and I left to go home. We changed clothes, and went with Mr. Purvis and Ethan to a K.C. Royals ball game. My dad is a huge Royals fan, and sometimes he can get free tickets to the home games. This was one of those times. The Royal's won 8 to 7 off a single in the bottom of the 9th. The Devil Rays (the team we were playing) walked 5 Royals in a row in the bottom of the 8th. That really killed them. I drove most of the way home from Kansas City, talking with Mr. Purvis to keep awake.
Sunday afternoon we went up to see my dad's parents. They live in Eldorado Springs. Did you know sleeping makes a long drive go faster? It really works. It's amazing. After visiting my grandparent's, we went to the RA beach on Stockton lake. My word, the lake is up really far. The picnic tables and the charcoal grills are sitting about 5-1o feet out in the water. So that's how far the water is up.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Pyro Fanaticism

We had some old friends over last night. The Friedman's. They used to go to our church like 17 years ago. Mr. Friedman pastors a Messianic Church in Pennsylvania. Mr Freidman is a Messianic Jew. Right now they are feeling led to switch from Home Missions to World Missions. They are Assemblies of God missionaries, so they are here going through a mandatory school program at AGTS so the can switch to World Missions.
They have a 16 year old son named Adam, who I don't recall ever meeting before. So that was kind of cool, getting to know someone new. We hung out all afternoon together, trying to get to know each other. Then we went to JRA's I Love America for the fireworks. We got dropped off at Division and I-65, and walked the rest of the way. And we were moving faster then the traffic. :)
Some of the Missionary Kids from AGTS that Adam knew were there, so we talked with them till the fireworks started and then sat together to watch the pyrogenic lights in the sky show. It was too cool. I'd never been that close to big fireworks before... It got really loud at some points. After the show, Adam and I walked back out onto Division and got picked up by his dad.
Adam and his friends might come over tonight to shoot off fireworks, since they can't do it on the Evangel Campus where they are staying. Well, they could, but if they got caught, it wouldn't exactly be a good representation for the Lord, ya' know?

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

July 4th, 1776...2007

Happy Independence Day, everyone!
Always remember what this Day really means, and no, it's not about shooting off fireworks. Think about the price of Liberty, and not just those who originally secured it for us, but for those who have kept it for us over the years. This is a great day in the history of our great nation. But the moment we start to forget what this day really meant, and means, that moment marks the end of a nation.

Remember Independence Day!

To those who did what was considered wrong in order to do what they knew was right. To High Treason!

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Back to Normal - Whatever that is...

Jessi and Mom are both back from their respective trips. Jessi just got back on Wednesday Evening from a 5 week missions trip to Haiti. Check her blog for info on how that went, cause I really don't know. http://www.anurseslife-jessi.blogspot.com/. So now I've got to start obeying my elders again, since I've got someone at home to boss me around.

Mom just got back last night from being with her mom in New York. Grandma has been in the hospital for 3 weeks now. She is stable at the time being, but they as of Friday, they just finished doing another surgery because her infection came back. They took out an area of infection the size of a grapefruit, and put in another drain. Her red blood cell count is low, so she is constantly having to have blood transfusions. If y'all could pray that Grandma wouldn't get discouraged, and would be able to continue fighting, it'd be appreciated.

I went to a wedding on Friday. A girl that I'd met on the trip was getting married, and she invited me to her wedding. And since I also knew that a lot of the people I'd made friends with on the trip would be there, I got my sister to take me to the wedding. It was nice being able to visit with them. Somehow, being together 24/7 for 15 days really brings people together. I may not be extremely close with any of them, but it's a bond that's different...and difficult to describe. And of course, the inside jokes always abound. It was really funny to see my sister looking at everybody real funny like, while we are all busting out laughing about something that would make absolutely no sense to somebody who hadn't been on the trip.