Picture Update

I'm home for Christmas break now. I got in on Wednesday evening after I finished my last final for the semester. I started work at the bank yesterday so I can get a little bit of money while I'm home. I don't feel like typing up a long post right now so I'll just post some new pictures and explain them. :)

Here is a picture of me with Santa at the church Christmas party...


He was saying, "First of all... have you been a good girl?" What a silly question!!! OF COURSE I have been a good girl... :)

Elijah on Santa's lap...

I got a new haircut and asked mom to take some pictures of it... then we got a little carried away...

What is this? A normal picture of us?!

Ok well here's the story for this one... Not too long ago I found that thing that I am wearing around my neck. I don't know what they are called... but I remember that I used to wear them a lot when I was little. Well it still fits, and it was Christmas so I HAD to get it out! :) Haha! I wanted Matt to have an old man sweater and I really wanted some huge glasses but I couldn't find either one. Oh well, this picture made me laugh anyway...

This is a picture of my new haircut. It was real dirty the day I got it cut, so it was kind of flat. You get the idea though...

Ok well thats it for now... just a quick picture update. :)

Operation Evacuation

Whew! It has been an exhausting day! I was supposed to have a final this morning at 10:00am. However we were awakened by someone pounding at our front door and screaming at 7:00am. Kirby got up to check the door and I listened to the conversation from my bed. I heard, "All finals are canceled, the power and heat are out. If you need heat, go to the student center." Whereas I was excited to go back to sleep, I had really been dreading them canceling finals. I was just ready to get them over with and be done with this week... NOT drag it out even longer. Even so, it didn't take me long to get back to sleep and stay that way until after noon. Once we all got up we sat around for a while trying to decide what to do. Having an extra day to study for finals was really a great thing. It would only make sense to spend that time really burying our heads in the books and learning the material... instead we decided to play Yahtzee. :) Here are some pictures of us being slobs in our sweats and playing Yahtzee!

I had just seen a red light flash on Kirby's leg but I didn't know what it was. So I asked, "Did anyone just see that red light?" Then I got looks from Kirby and Karlie as if saying, "Lauren, are you kidding me?" (the looks in this picture) Then I turned around just in time to see Jessica snapping a picture. The light had been from her camera and APPARENTLY Kirby and Karlie knew that... but I didn't. Haha!

Jessica cheesing for a picture during our Yahtzee game. Jessica and I kind of teamed up during the game because we were the two who had never played before and had to ask all of the questions. Jessica would ask something and Kirby and Karlie would then give HER "the look". I would have to reassure her and let her know that I was wondering the same thing... :)

Me thinking about my next move...

Don't I look nice? I really dressed up for the day. And, YES, I fixed my hair so that it would stick up on top like Alfalfa...

Kirby being a Yahtzee genius...

Karlie playing... she won the whole game... but Jessica and I think she cheated ;)

Then, while we were playing we heard another knock on the door. It was a guy handing out some papers with tons of information on it and informing us that they were "evacuating" the apartments since the power was out and there was no heat. They also rescheduled a bunch of finals for awkward times and even mentioned having people come back early from Christmas break to take finals.... that really didn't go over well with a lot of people. They said that we had to be out of the apartments by 5:00pm and could either leave campus and go stay with someone, or that we could sleep in the student center. Sleeping in a huge room with hundreds of other students didn't sound very appealing to us so we immediately started trying to find somewhere to stay. Kirby knows a couple that she goes to church with so she called them to see if we could stay there. They were so kind and let Kirby, Jessica, and myself come stay at their house. So while we could still use the light from outside (since we didn't have any lights to use in the apartment other than the light from our cell phones) we decided to go ahead and pack our bags. Plus, it was starting to get a little chilly inside our apartment since we had been without heat for about eleven hours. We all over packed just in case the weather was bad the next day and we got stuck there. Then we realized that getting into our vehicles may be harder than we thought. Everything outside was completely frozen... including our cars. So whereas Kirby was going to drive, I needed to charge my phone so I could let people know what was going on. And since I couldn't charge it in the apartment I decided to go to my car and let it get a few bars. Getting into my car turned out to be quite a task. I took a few pictures of it before i started picking off the huge ice chunks. Check it out...

The ice was so thick. It was like breaking and pulling off huge chunks of glass...

The whole door was frozen shut... including the handle!

That is actually my sunroof... but you can't see it at all because of all of the ice on top!

So I had to pour warm water on it, punch and kick it a few times and pull as hard as I could before I was finally able to get my door open. Cleaning off Kirby's vehicle took even longer. All three of us were out there working on different parts of the vehicle trying to get it cleared off. My fingers were FROZEN! I even had gloves on!!! We FINALLY got it though and were able to leave campus before 5:00pm.

So then we headed off to the house where we were staying. They fixed chili for us and it was VERY good! It was so nice to have a home cooked HOT meal! Then, to our surprise, they had just gotten a Wii! The woman had asked for a Wii for her 50th birthday and since she knew we played a lot, she wanted us to have a Wii Tournament! After we ate we drew up a bracket and had a Wii Tennis tournament. Can you guess who won? That's right, ME! It was a lot of fun and it was hilarious watching everyone play. Even "Grandma" played with us! After the tennis tournament they decided they hadn't had enough so we decided to do a Wii BOWLING Tournament. Can you guess who won? That's right, JESSICA! Haha, I actually came in dead last on that one. :) Bowling isn't really my forte. We still had a blast though. In the meantime, Jessica got a call from someone on campus saying that the power was back on and that people could move back into the apartments. So whereas we were having fun playing Wii we decided it would be a lot easier to be back on campus. Kirby has a final in the morning and it takes 20-30 minutes to get back to campus from their house. So when we finished playing we thanked them and headed back to the apartment. We were a little frustrated because when we first got back the power went off about three times for a short period of time. Hopefully it stays on all night and we don't have to do this all over again tomorrow!

So the final that I missed on Monday, I am now taking on Tuesday. It was supposed to be an in-class final with no notes, but due to all of the craziness he decided to be generous and let us take it ONLINE and WITH our notes! I am VERY grateful for that decision! They are hoping that by tomorrow things will get back to normal so hopefully I can continue on with my normal schedule and get home ASAP! :)

That is about it for now. I have a few more days left in the semester then I'm heading home. Once again, keep me (and everyone else here) in your prayers since this is an extremely stressful time in the semester!

ICE and SNOW

Church was canceled this morning due to ICE and SNOW. We've been getting warnings for the past couple of days about the coming ice storm. They have been planning for the worst, expecting that it could be really bad. Whereas the snow is fun, the ice really isn't. This week is finals and I would hate to have the schedule changed because of faculty and students not being able to make it to campus. So anyway, here I am stuck in my apartment for the day. I have a ton of things to study and to write, and the Cowboys kick off in approximately 15 minutes. :) So have a nice day and STAY WARM!

Worm vs. Salt

We had our JV Softball Christmas Party last night. We were supposed to bring a gift that started with the first letter of our last name. I brought Chocolate Chip Cookies, Cocoa, and Cheese Nips (hey, it's finals! everyone needs junk food!). :) All in all, the party was pretty uneventful. When it came time for doing presents we did a Chinese Christmas, or Dirty Santa, or whatever you call it. I was one of the last people to go and as soon as I picked up the bag I was going to open a few of the girls started snickering over in the corner. I knew the girl who had brought that gift and I knew it was probably something ridiculous but I got it anyway... I thought it might be fun. Well... her last name starts with "E". I took my time opening the nicely wrapped present (it was in a Braums paper bag) because I was kind of afraid of what might be inside of it. In the end, it ended up being English Muffins and...

Earthworms. Not just ANY earthworms, but GLOWING earthworms. The girl who gave them to me quickly notified me that I just need to keep them in the fridge and give them some water to keep them alive. It was pretty funny at the time, but what in the world am I going to do with a box of earthworms?! Whereas fishing would be fun, I don't exactly have the time or materials or the place to do that right now. We laughed about it then I headed back to the apartment trying to figure out what to do with them. Kirby and Jessica thought that it was pretty odd that I came in with earthworms, but they insisted that we open up the box and check them out. Apparently we are very easily entertained because we stood around playing with eartworms for who knows how long! Kirby and Jessica both refused to actually TOUCH one at first (though Kirby did it later!) so we moved them around using... a bobby pin. Here is a picture of Kirby and I being disgusted by the sliminess that was stuck to the pin after playing with the worms.

So now I have a story that is pretty sad... we killed a worm. His name was Willie and, really, for all we know he COULD still be alive, but our guess is that he is not. Kirby (for whatever reason) wanted to put one of the worms outside on the concrete... I guess to see it crawl around instead of squirming through a small box of dirt and eleven other worms. So we took the box outside and Kirby PICKED up one of the worms and put it out on the concrete. It was pretty boring and wasn't moving around too much. Well then Jessica says, "What happens when you pour salt on earthworms? Is it like a slug?" Now I KNOW this is mean, and its torture, and that the worm didn't do anything mean to us.... but it's the end of the semester and we are all desperate for distractions from our schoolwork. So, Jessica got the salt and, well... it IS similiar to a slug. It wasn't quite as disgusting as a slug though. It did make the worm start moving around more though. It also left a lot of slime everywhere. We were actually even lame enough to video tape it.... I had the video on here, but the more I watch it, it really makes me kind of sad. Plus, it isn't the most flattering video so I decided to leave it off. :)

Ater a few seconds we started feeling really bad for our little friend, Willie. (Jessica decided that Willie the Worm had a nice ring to it) Since we felt so bad, we decided to take him downstairs and put him in the dirt somewhere. Kirby picked him up and we carved out a little hole for him in the dirt and left him there. He crawled away (even though he was moving a little slow) and for all we know he found a new family and is really happy! :) But we think that most likely he died... :( who knows.

When we went back inside the other earthworms started going nuts! We think that they heard what happened to Willie and were really upset with us. They were crawling all over their little box and some were even trying to crawl out! Even though it is a silly worm and can't hurt us, you wouldn't believe our girly reactions when one would pop out of the box all the sudden!

Ok, ok... I know that is a horrible story, but we took a vow to not kill anymore worms (on purpose anyway). We still have eleven earthworms that we're not sure what to do with though... any suggestions? :)

Here is a video of Kirby being brave and picking up Willie the Worm.

*EDIT* I was just thinking... taking the worm fishing and sticking a hook through it and letting it get eaten by a fish isn't THAT much nicer....
:) that's all.

Worry Wart

I don't know what ever made me think that life was supposed to be easy and go just like you planned or just how you would like it to, but the fact that it is NOT is driving me crazy right now. The truth is, in the long run, it isn't even major things that I should be worrying this much over. Maybe it is just because most of my life thus far has been pretty easy going and pretty good. It is STILL good, but it is just getting harder. I know, I know... "it won't get any easier!" I can hear all of you saying it now. :) Anyway, it seems like I am constantly worrying about SOMETHING lately. Sooo... there is no real point to this post. I guess I just needed to say it. I have four days left of classes then finals... keep me in your prayers.

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."
Philippians 4:6

Cartoon

I made this video today using Windows Movie Maker... let me know what you think! (make sure your sound is on!)

A Little of Everything...

Ok! Here comes my long blog post that tries to explain everything that has happened in the last couple of weeks. It’s long, so you might as well get comfortable! The spacing between paragraphs is being really weird for some reason, so if it all runs together - sorry!

I went to Athens, TX for Thanksgiving to spend a few days with Matt and his family. We got there on Tuesday and stayed through Friday afternoon.

When we got there we ran inside and changed clothes then went to play Racquetball! Matt and his dad play quite a bit so they invited me to tag along so they could teach me how to play. I LOVED it! It took me a while to really get used to it, but I finally got the hang of it! I might of even beaten a certain somebody… *cough* matt *cough* :) Matt and I went back again on Friday to play. I tried to learn how to play tennis this summer but it didn’t go so well… I think I like racquetball much better!

Thursday (Thanksgiving Day) was Matt’s 21st birthday. I was so excited to give him his birthday present that I gave in and gave it to him at midnight. So technically it WAS his birthday, so I didn’t cheat. :) I got him one of the new iPod nanos. They are really cool! I didn’t think that I liked them when they first came out, but after I bought Matt’s I got it out and played with it some and they are really cool! I had done a good job of not letting him figure out what I got him, so he was pretty surprised.

On Thursday morning we went to Matt’s grandma’s house for Thanksgiving lunch. I had met most of Matt’s family before then except for his two aunts. I think I scored some bonus points though because I brought homemade rolls! That’s right, Papaw Mac, I made the rolls and they were a big hit! (Don’t worry though – I didn’t share the recipe, haha) Their Thanksgiving meal reminded me a lot of Thanksgiving at our house. It was very relaxed and casual and we had really good food, so I felt very at home. After we ate we turned on the Cowboys game so we could stay updated then played games. We played Musical Catch Phrase, which I had never played before. It was fun, but it was hard to describe the song titles sometimes! You get BONUS points if you SING the song, but I didn’t know how to sing most of mine. :) After we played games for a while we just sat around and visited and watched TV and spent some time relaxing.

On Friday morning we slept in then got up and ate pancakes and bacon and sausage! It was sooo good! If you know me well, you know how much I love breakfast food! Once we were completely stuffed, Matt and I went and played racquetball again. By the time we got back, we had just enough time to clean up then… can you guess? I’ll give you a hint…


Turn on the A&M vs. Texas game, of course!!! I had been REAL nervous about it and had finally convinced myself that it didn’t really matter… but I was still really anxious about it. We watched the first quarter then we left to drive to Dallas to eat at Spaghetti Warehouse for Matt’s birthday. A bunch of his family and a couple of friends showed up there to surprise him. We listened to the second quarter on the radio on the way there. A&M was playing really well at the time and was ahead by quite a bit so I was able to relax a little more. As excited as I was inside, I tried to not show it TOO much since someone was cheering for the other team (I’m too embarrassed to say who…. :) Haha, just kidding! Yes, Matt was cheering for Texas). While eating, I was waiting on updates from dad and got a few updates from Matt’s dad who would walk over to the bar area and check out the scores for me. In the end A&M won so I was very happy! I did all that worrying for nothing… :)

When we finished eating Matt and I hit the road toward Gainesville. On the way back, though, we decided that we wanted to stop and see if there were any good movies playing. We went and saw “August Rush”. It is VERY good!! I would definitely recommend it! SO GO SEE IT!


Saturday morning we woke up to SNOW! It wasn’t cold enough for any of it to stick, but they were HUGE flakes. Matt and I went out and played in it a little while. It snowed for quite a while but, like I said, none of it stuck. It was fun to have snow for Thanksgiving though! Considering how often it snows in Texas, we thought it was pretty fun. Here are a couple of pictures of us in the snow!

Look at the huge flakes...

Catching the flakes in our mouths...

Around lunch time, Cheryl and Tom came over for lunch. Then, OF COURSE, Elijah came over too… oh and Jason and Summer as well. :) We all had a good time eating and visiting and eating and watching football and eating. We had soup and cornbread! You can’t get TOO much better than soup and corn bread. So anyway, it was a nice relaxing day, and all together a GREAT Thanksgiving!

I headed back to OC on Sunday to finish up the semester. ( I only have a week and a half left now!) So now I’ll move on to all of the latest from OC. (I told you this would be long….)

Well, our volleyball season is over now. We had two games right when we got back from Thanksgiving break to end our season. Whereas we had fun, we weren’t very good, haha. We didn’t even make it to the playoffs! Oh well, it was a fun season. Our next sport is basketball but it doesn’t start until next semester, so I have a little break as far as my Athletic Director duties.

On Friday night a group of us had a “date night”. Some of the girls got dates and some of us went stag (Matt couldn’t make it) and we headed out to the Chickasha Lights. Before we left we invited everyone over to our apartment for soup and a few games of Tennis on Wii. I must admit that when we left I wasn’t really looking forward to it. Whereas I think Christmas lights are fun, I don’t find all that much enjoyment from going around and looking at lights. HOWEVER, in the end I had a pretty good time. It was a little over an hour drive to Chickasha so the long drive wasn’t too fun, but the lights were pretty cool. When we left there we stopped at Braums and got ice cream and hung out there for a while. I got an Eggnog MILKSHAKE! It was REALLY good! Eggnog is just one more thing that I love about Christmas time. Since I still haven’t checked into getting my camera fixed, here are some stolen pictures from the night.

Us with the short Santa...

Some pictures of some of the lights...

This is what it looked like to stand underneath that big tree...

On Saturday a big group of girls went wedding dress shopping with one of my roommates, Meagan. She is getting married this summer. I was sick so I just went out to eat and to one dress store with everyone. The whole group ended up spending almost the whole day going from store to store! It was fun shopping with her and being the “judges” of each dress that she tried on. There was one that Kirby really liked and Kirby just kept saying, “Meagan I like that one…” over and over again! I’m not sure if she found “the one” or not, but she definitely found a lot of cute dresses!

That evening I went to the Pi Christmas Party. It was so much fun last year, but I was really pretty disappointed in it this year. The girl who planned it did a great job, but Pi’s participation this semester has really been pretty sad. There weren’t very many people there and that kind of messed up a lot of the plans. I stayed for a few hours then came back to the apartment to relax.

Lately, Matt and I have been looking into different options for this summer. We would really like to work somewhere together again. We have looked into interning at another church, at mission based programs and summer camps and all sorts of things! The two that we are most interested in right now are located in Denver and New Orleans! We weren’t really TRYING to find somewhere far from home, but those are the ones that have really jumped out at us the most so far.

We have been talking a lot with the guy from New Orleans and learning about what all opportunities we would have there. It is a very small church that focuses on inner city missions. The inside of their church building was completely torn up from the hurricane so they have had to kind of start over. They are also in the process of planting a church in the inner city area. It is very close to downtown New Orleans. The minister there told us you can walk to the corner and pay a dollar to get on the trolley and take it downtown! Matt and I discussed the perks of the good food and the good music! Haha! We are still learning a lot about the church and the things we would be doing. Kirk offered to pay for our expenses if we wanted to come and visit and check it out, so we are trying to plan a time sometime over my Christmas break. If you want to read more about this church you can go to http://www.carrolltonavenuechurch.org/. When I told mom about this church she told me that, after the hurricane, she had found this church's website while trying to find ways to help out. She said she really loved their website because it was very personal and even printed out parts of it to show people. She said she still checks up on their website to see how the church is doing! We couldn't believe that it was the same church!!! Coincidence? Who knows.... :)

Our other option right now is with a program called Dry Bones in Denver. We have contacted some people there and have been emailing some with them, but are still trying to figure out what we would be doing there as interns. This is also an inner city missions program. You can find more about this program here: http://www.drybonesdenver.org/

We are praying about these options and would love to have your prayers as well. We are trying to learn more about both options and make the decision that God leads us to. Hopefully something will work out and we will have another opportunity to spend our summer working together, serving others and, most importantly, serving God.

I think that I have FINALLY gotten y’all caught up on everything… for now, anyway! Oh yeah, it’s officially Christmas time now so you should listen to this CD… :)

The end!