i’ve moved!

sorry this is annoying. 🙂 here’s my new blog!

pray for katie!

okay, so i’m still terrible at blogging. hopefully that will change after graduate school, which really can’t come soon enough! but my internship hours are coming along at the speed of a turtle trudging through peanut butter, so it might be a while. bummer. i have lots going on these days, including a conference coming up next week (what was I THINKING submitting to present my thesis at a national conference!? i’m so not ready!), a short trip home to see family that lives far away this weekend, multiple other trips in july, my internship (nothing new there), and a new devotion to zumba. all that’s great, but right now i must share something that is on my heart:

my dear friend katie has lost her baby. this is not entirely out of left field, as her baby was diagnosed with potter’s syndrome  back when they went to find out if she was a boy or girl. something looked very wrong on the ultrasound, and the next day they were told that their baby had not developed kidneys and there was no amniotic fluid. their baby would likely not make it. most babies diagnosed with this are stillborn, but some live a day or two after birth. katie, being the amazing woman of god that she is, somehow endured the pain of all of this, prayed for a miracle while enjoying what time she had with her baby girl. katie made it 31 weeks and went into labor over the weekend. she had about 45 minutes with her precious baby girl before she passed. i cannot imagine what katie and her husband josh are going through. if you stumble upon this blog, please lift them up in your prayers. i love you katie!

the morning of my wedding

waiting for the rapture…

oh wait! no i’m not!

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

(Matthew 24: 36-44)

i hope you’re having a rapturous day! 🙂

still kickin’

yes, i’m still alive.

no, i haven’t abandoned this blog. i’ve just been busy. way busier than i care to be. that’s life. especially in 2011.

what have i been doing, you ask? well, i will fill you in:

-blowing my nose and suffering from the world’s longest sinus infection (okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but i have been feeling crappy)

-interning

-making art for my show that’s a few weeks away

-making coffee (at Starbucks)

-finishing up my semester/preparing for my summer class

-trying to maintain a social life, i.e. hanging out wish josh, mentoring, cell group, church, etc.

so none of that is very exciting, but that’s how it’s been. i’m stressin’ about getting internship hours big time. i’m seriously worried that i’m not going to finish up this year, but i’m trying to think positively. honestly, i’ve just been tired. but things are good.

i’ve missed writing on this thing. i’ll try to be better about it. 🙂

a meager update

i really hate it that i’ve hardly been blogging at all lately. it’s not that i haven’t thought about it or wanted to, i just don’t really have time to do anything i’d like to do. here’s a random little list for those curious souls out there.

1. i have a really huge assignment due next friday, and i’ve hardly worked on it at all. i’m trying to change that this weekend.

2. every assignment i have this semester, including my little weekly journal entries, are due friday at 8am. i leave early thursday morning and get home around 9 at night, and i work fridays, usually at 5 or 6 in the morning. so that means i have to get everything done wednesday after i get off work. ugh. i’m tired of that.

3. i don’t know what i was thinking signing up for snack at church the morning of “spring forward,” but alas, i will be making coffee cake to take in the morning. i hope it turns out yummy!

4. besides losing the hour of sleep, i LOVE springing forward! i hate it when it gets dark so early! and now that i have a lot of evening drives, i’m very happy that there will be more daylight for those!

5. another great sign of spring – the trees have started blooming here! hooray! that also means i’m sneezing lots more. you win some, you lose some.

6. if you couldn’t tell already, i’m so ready to be done with school. i think i’ve developed senioritis in graduate school. i didn’t know that was possible. it so is!

7. my fam (parents, us, and my sister and brother-in-law) planned a vacation to the gulf shores this summer! i can’t wait to lay on the beach for a week!

8. i also can’t wait to go home for a little weekend trip in a few weeks. it will be nice to see some family and friends – it’s been since christmas!

9. i’ll also be going to this when i’m there!

10. i think i’m going to buy this bag with some leftover birthday money. it looks durable and spacious. i take my laptop to my internship everyday, along with a ton of other papers, forms, folders, etc. and i change offices constantly, just depending on which one is available. it’s a real pain. i think one big bag (as opposed to multiple smaller ones) will make things a tiny bit easier. unfortunately i don’t think i’ll be able to drop the ugly and heavy locked brief case i have to carry around in order to have client files on me. oh well. i’m pretty excited about the bag. what do you think?

my life as of late

i hate it that i haven’t posted much lately. i want to, but then i’ve been feeling so completely exhausted that i just don’t have the energy to do more than necessary. which is why everything in my house has a nice dust patina. things are good, just busy. i finally broke down and told my boss at starbucks that i want fewer hours, so hopefully things will be a little less stressful mid-march once that goes into effect. my internship is going well, but it is very hard and i’m not getting enough direct client contact hours as of right now. i’m trying not to stress about that, because i know i still have a long way to go, but i’m already over a month in and, well, yikes. say a prayer that things pick up, a lot. i’m still quite nervous whenever i’m actually in a session with clients, but i guess i’m getting a little more comfortable with that. i also started planning a teen girls group pretty much as soon as i started, and the group finally started last thursday! it went pretty well, so i’m excited about that. it’s primarily going to be about self esteem and body image, so i really hope these girls get a lot of out of it. they’ve been through so much – drug and alcohol addiction, teen mothers, prostitution, etc.

so anyway, that’s pretty much what’s been going on – work, intern, homework, repeat. i did have an awesome little trip to columbus last weekend. i was going to upload a few pics, but the uploader is being weird, and you probably saw them on facebook anyway!

i hope you’re doing well!

 

this weekend…

this weekend i’ve…

1. seen some amazing friends

2. held a one-month-old baby – a lot

3. ate a ton of yummy food (cheesecake factory still to come)

4. gotten myself a couple birthday presents (one from my mom and one from josh)

5. been happy to be away from my internship (even though i’ve still written 3 clinical notes and thought about it more than necessary)

6. seen my adorable godson who is getting HUGE (he’s 17 months old now!)

7. learned a lot about breast feeding

8. enjoyed myself so much i don’t want to drive back to NC tomorrow!

pictures to come!

 

 

moving 101

i can’t believe i’ve lived in north carolina for over 6 months! craziness! i started this post quite a while ago (like december!), left it as a draft, and recently remembered that i needed to post it! ha! so without further ado…

josh and i were recently discussing how we’ve adjusted to our latest move much more quickly than previous moves. this sounds a little crazy because i think, “really? like this has been easy!?” but it has been better. for example, when we moved to columbus, i was a hermit for about 6 months. i think we tried even harder this time largely because we were so far away, no quick couple hour trip home from north carolina! so, in lieu of utter depression, we got our butts in gear and settled pretty quickly! so here’s my advice – for a future me gearing up for another move, or for you, if you happen to move far from home:

1. take a deep breath and say a prayer. you’ll need God to get through this!

2. know that you have very little control over most things, but God is in control. and he works all things for the good of those who love him. and his grace has gone before you and prepared things for you in your new home! so just trust him!

3. unpack quickly. this seems weird, but i think i adjusted to our new place so quickly because i unpacked everything within a couple days. seriously. i worked my butt off. it helped though because a place starts to feel like home when you can see all of your stuff and it’s where you want it and can use it. boxes don’t feel that way.

4. find a church asap! this doesn’t mean just picking any church. church shopping is important. josh and i went to several before we found one that felt right, that we agreed on, where we felt a serious potential for friends. what a difference that has made! we made the mistake of attending one in columbus for 6 months (the hermit months) without ever feeling a real connection there – just hoping the next week something would be better. what were we thinking!?

5. once in that church – get involved with a small group/bible study! that’s where real friendships happen. i will treasure my friends in columbus forever, and where did we meet them!? small group! i still wish we were back there with them often, but i also trust that our new friends here can become just as special. (if i had my way, we would have never left columbus, and we’d still be hanging out with the same group of people, because i’ve never been one to have/need a lot of close friends, but i’m not in control here!)

6. get a job! (or at least volunteer or something!) believe me – i miss my non-working days a ton, what a treat! but really, having somewhere to be and something to do has made a huge difference for me. my coworkers tend to resemble a super odd cast of characters in an off-broadway play, but they’re also my little starbucks family, and i’m grateful for them.

7. move on! you can’t welcome new things into your life if you’re holding onto the past. accept that change has come, and that you are wherever you are for a reason. stop holding on to the past, constantly remembering the way things were, and know that things aren’t the same there anyway because change has happened there too. i made the mistake of doing this a lot when we first left columbus, lamenting every thursday and sunday night that we weren’t hanging out with our small group. if i was being honest with myself, i would have realized that my old small group wasn’t the same group that i had left (not to say that it wasn’t great, but it was different, of course!).

so that’s my advice on moving for me or you, but probably mostly me!

10 second DIY

in an effort to clear some of the overwhelming number of pictures from our refrigerator and a small bulletin board i have above my desk (that is best used for tacking bills to), i decided to take on this little project (if you could even call it that)! i came home from work one day, and before taking my usual i-was-up-at-4-or-5-and-i-didn’t-get-enough-sleep afternoon nap, i decided to do this!

you’ll need:

tacks, some sort of string, mini clothespins, and pictures or cards!

i won’t bother writing instructions, because… well… look at it. i did run out of mini clothespins that i had left from a baby shower a couple of years ago and i decided to supplement with paper clips. that turned out to be a bad idea, because the paper clips didn’t look nearly as cute and they got stuck on the string and it was super annoying. so i changed them all to mini clothespins within a couple days. this is nothing fancy, but it is a nice way for me to enjoy my pictures in a controlled not-taking-over-the-refrigerator fashion! and it’s extremely low commitment, which is nice when you live in an apartment, and you can change out the pictures or cards whenever!

figure skating!

despite my insanely busy and stressful week, i’m still reliving the joyous experience of seeing the women’s free skate saturday night! it was wonderful! i was hoping michelle kwan would be there, and she wasn’t, but it was still great! here are some pics from the night:

figure skating face!

warming up...

Mirai Nagasu - she's so cute!

Rachael Flatt

(rachel & mirai were both in the last olympics)

awards ceremony time!

i loved the girl that won (Alissa Czisny) too, but i didn’t get any decent pictures of her skating.

sarah hughes handed out the medals

she won the 2002 olympic gold medal. i wasn’t too fond of her at the time because i wanted michelle kwan to win (go figure) but it was still neat to see her!

yay!

also, a girl from northern kentucky got 5th, so i’m really hoping she continues to improve and makes it the olympics!

thanks for taking me to see figure skating, josh!

i told him to look happy so he did this.