recap of 07

january: warmth in winter
theme-learn to fly
strangely i don't remember much from warmth. i do remember, though, that the church we stayed at was super creepy. in the middle of the night we got woken up by some random singing. we call her the hippie. we never actually saw her. oh and there was the scary Jesus statue we found. i remember more about the church than the actual event. haha

february: ski trip
lots and lots of snow!

march: the alleged pickett state park trip
we never actually got there but we still spent all day just driving around

april: car wrap! nuf said

may: this is pretty much a good sum-up
and daytona

june: mission trip

july: laser-tag lockin and youth 07

august: start school as a junior and summer sizzler; theme-good enough. i had to eat this nasty jello, bean, vienna sausages, and much more gross stuff. oh man that was horrible.

nothing interesting for semptember

october: pumpkins and squirrels and youth pastor-less and cool school

november: sr. high retreat more youth pastor-less... ness

december: merry christmas and my first pass out

i finally got it in. it might not still be 2007 on some places but right here right now, it is. what can i say? i'm a procrastinator. :P

happy new years eve everyone!!

-em

good story:

it's actually not all that great but it's a first

so i'm about to start on this new medicine and before i can take it i have to have blood work done. today i went in to get the blood drawn and i had to fast for 12 hours before. well i get there and get my blood drawn and right after i have it drawn i start feeling light-headed. the nurse tells me to lay down so i do. they tell me my color starts to come back in my face so i sit up. then as i am getting ready to walk out the door, i start feeling light-headed again and my sight starts getting black. i start to turn around to go back in the room to lay down again and they ask me if i'm okay. the last thing i remember is saying no and then i passed out!!! i have never passed out before today. my mom was right behind me to catch me so i didn't get hurt. she laid me down on the floor in the office hall and when i woke up they were telling me i passed out. the first thing i said was that i didn't pass out. but then i looked around and noticed i was on the floor so it was kind of hard to deny. my mom told me i had only passed out for about 15 seconds. when i woke up i just sat there for about 5 minutes. they went and got me cookies (yum) and a bottle of water then everything was better. it was so weird. it didn't feel like any time had passed between the last thing i remember and when i woke up. i remember dreaming sort of. it was so weird. i really wish i could remember it all or been a fly on the wall. all i can say is just that it was so weird. i guess now i know i shouldn't be a blood donor.

-em

merry Christmas again everyone!
guess what??



i got a nikon d40! i like it a lot.
some of the family came over yesterday and if they weren't here yesterday they came today. actually some people came yesterday and today. fun stuff.
i hope you all had a greeeeaaaat Christmas this year. happy early new year, too.

-em

merry Christmas, happy holidays

i'm pretty sure this is one of the best Christmas songs of all time. you have to watch it alllllll the way through!!




how can you not love 'nsync? they're definitely the best.
-em

so true

i loved this! it's so trueeee!



-em

there is a person in my life right now that this is about. just don't get mad or offended reading this. to say the truth i'm just not strong enough to come right out and tell them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i don't want to be friends with you anymore.
you are not the person i thought you were
you've changed so much in the past few months
or maybe you haven't changed at all
and this is how you have always been
it just seems like now i'm really noticing
because you're allowed to come out of your shell
when your held back in a world of safety
and you're around people you influence
you have to watch your every move and every word
but that world is gone
the real you shows
and that's not the person i thought i was friends with
why can't you just change back to the person you were before
that person was such a good friend
and a great person to talk to
this "change" makes me not want to trust you with my feelings
i don't feel like you are a person i can come to now
when you keep secrets from me,
how can you expect me to trust you
some secrets, i agree, are better left unsaid
some of your secrets are things about you that i did not want to know
it was even an accident that i did know
you never tell me anything on your own
i have to find out for my own
so why should i tell you my secrets
there are closer people i know,
people i love and people i can trust
people i know i know.
you have even drifted from God
even if you say you haven't
the way you do things and express yourself
show me that you have
if someone met you,
wouldn't you want them to know you love God?
but you don't
you curse, you drink, you... do other things, too
but you say these things make you happy
that they keep you from hiding your true self
well if this is your true self then i don't know if i want to know you
the reason i still talk to you is because i keep hoping for the old you
but if i met you, the person you are now, now,
then i don't think you would be a person i would be friends with


sorry if this hurts but i had to get it out
i hope we can still be friends
i really do want to be friends with you
and i know i should accept you for whoever you are
but it's just so hard
i haven't even known you that long
and i'm not asking you to change
i really just want you to be faithful to God
i think this might be why i don't like you
i am finally getting closer to God
and the one person i thought i could talk to about it
is gone and drifting
from me and God
how can i talk about getting closer
to someone who's getting further
you might not be getting further
but i know you aren't growing closer
how could you be?
you certainly don't show it.


-em

Christmas shopping

Christmas is in 9 days and i have done zero Christmas shopping. i haven't had any time. Christmas snuck up on me this year. i usually do like candy or chocolate dipped pretzels or something holiday-ish like that for my not-so-close friends at school and i didn't even do that this year. i only have to get gifts for 4 friends this year. i don't know if that's a bad thing, meaning i don't have many friends or a good thing meaning i don't have to spend that much money. haha. then there's those weird friends where you feel awkward getting gifts for because you don't know if they got you anything and you know you're getting them a gift for the goodness of giving them a gift but then they feel guilty for not getting you anything. yeah, i have a few of those. i guess it's always better to get someone a gift rather than ponder about their response to the gift. i'm nervous that when i go Christmas shopping, everyone else in the world will also be going late Christmas shopping so it will be extra crowded. i guess that's what i get for holding off to the last minute.

-em

ooo fun stuff

i got my class ring yesterday! it's so cute! i'm really happy with it.
last night my friends, cara and sallie, and i all had a study session at sallie's house. we are all in the same chem. 2 class and that class is crazy hard. yesterday our teacher informed us that our lab notebooks were going to be due today. she thought we knew that all along but we all assumed she wasn't really going to take them up so none of us did them. so last night cara and i went to sallie's house to finish them up. when i got there we worked on them for about an hour but then we just started getting hyper and acting crazy. we left her house around 7 to go to kroger to buy some stuff for extra credit in her class. while we were there we decided to get her some Christmas presents. we had to get some paper towels for part of the extra credit so then we started playing football in the store with the paper towel rolls. oh and by the way, we decided to be super ghetto and wear aluminum foil grillz to the store... i took mine out because i already looked tacky enough without it. it was so much fun and so random but we actually got a lot of work done. by the way we finished our lab books and turned them in and our teacher liked all her gifts we gave her. :)
2 half days left of school! (finals)
today i had a party in my first block class, did my last day of the news in my second block, studied for the final in third, and went to another person's class because they were having a party in fourth. yeahhhhh, i'm random. :P

-em

poor alex

so my friend alex got in a wreck yesterday on her way to school! she's only had her license for about 2 months.
here's what happened: the road that she goes to school on is really curvy and it was slippery because it had rained. she was going around the first curve and her steering locked up! the car swerved and went off the road, into the air, and in a ditch... on its' side. it fell over on the drivers side. she had to crawl out through the sunroof. she wasn't speeding and she had her seat belt on so she didn't get hurt bad. she only had a bruise. the car wasn't hurt that bad. obviously the steering was messed up but the side view mirror broke and something on the front. she told me they had to total the car. :( it was a '97 explorer. she was worried that her dad would be extra mad but she said he wasn't.
she was so freaked out. i'm glad she was okay. :)
i'm the only one of my close friends that hasn't been in a wreck/fender bender yet. one of my friends backed up into another car in the school parking lot and put a dent on the back of her car. my other friend was driving at night (she was going rolling. lol) and she was backing out of someone's driveway and hit a tree. she put a dent in the back of her car too. when i had my permit i was pulling in our garage and was too far over so i knocked off the side view mirror and dented the side a little. i didn't even notice the side until about a month later. i guess we all have our times when it comes to driving.

-em

i'm still not done doing anything. i'm working on lab reports right now... sort of. on wednesday i have one of those lab reports due, a project due, a notebook due, and a test... all on wednesday!
we still have the rest of this week for school and finals on monday and tuesday next week. boo.
ok so i cannot believe that tomorrow it's supposed to be 75 and on saturday it is supposed to get down to 28! it's sooo crazy. kind of like school.
this is a painting i did for my project. it's on the history of this symbol. we had to have a visual so i painted one. :)


yeah so i'm not exactly an excellent painter but whatever. it was easier than making a powerpoint.
so i'm pretty sure i need to start proof reading my posts....
i love God!

-em

time is a runaway

this week i've been so busy!
monday: prom committee meeting after school
tuesday: ACT readiness class after school and a warmth in winter committee meeting downtown
wednesday: stay after school to clean everything at my lab station in chemistry and youth
still to come:
thursday: warmth in winter management team meeting
friday: prepare for the ACT and my dad's birthday
saturday: take the ACT's and finish end of the year stuff

i like to be busy so i'm not complaining. it just so happens that this week i am super duper busy with meetings and such. i usually only stay after school one or two days a week for random things but this week i've stayed after 3 days in a row. i still have to do two lab reports for chem. and get my dad a birthday present.
i probably shouldn't be spending 45 minutes on my computer with all these things i could be doing. what can i say? i love to procrastinate.

i love that it is super cold outside.
:)

-em

how does God make the sky look so amazing?

life

so these four guys at my school won 1,000 dollars in a local radio station contest. the contest was to create a commercial for the sation and all the videos entered were put online and the viewers voted. whoever had the most votes won and the guys in my class won. this is the second time a guy that was in the commercial and helped edit it has won a big contest. it's kinda cool i guess.

jon foreman of switchfoot is making a series of four cd's over the course of the next year titled fall, winter, spring, and summer. fall came out wednesday and i listened to some of the songs from it on his myspace. they are really good. i might be a little biased knowing that he is from switchfoot and switchfoot is like my all-time favorite band.

early wednesday morning my mom and my sister left to drive to oklahoma to go see my sister's ex-boyfriend graduate from basic training so it's just me and my dad in the house for 4 days. the ceremony was today and they said it was really nice.

my dog is sick. :( he's throwing up and... well some other stuff. i don't think i need to go in to detail..... i'm hoping he'll be okay.

i've been really in to "to write love on her arms" lately. i don't know why. to write love on her arms is a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading hope and finding help for people who have suffered from depression, self-injury, and addiction. i have never suffered from any of those things and nobody really close to me has either (that i know of). so i dont know why i feel like i wanna help them so much.

i am sooooo ready for Christmas. i feel like it will be a lot different this year in a lot of ways, ways i don't feel like explaining because i'm tired and ready to go to sleep.

-em

go vols!

ok, so i'm pretty sure last week's game against vandy was nothing compared to today's! ut went in to 4 overtimes against kentucky and won 52-50!! it was so exciting.. i wouldn't have guessed this game would have run this long. it was insane! just a little fact for those who might possibly care, erik ainge, ut's quarterback, made 7 touchdowns in this game breaking the ut record for most touchdowns in a game...

peace everyone
-em

happy turkey day everyone!

hope it's great!




-em

i'm angry

i'm not as angry as i am sad. the only hope of our youth group staying together after losing our youth pastor has been kicked out. any adult leaders that we had volunteering now have to be members of the church. well let me just say that we had about 5 that were not yet members. these people were just working for God to help us. they were all friends of jonathon that came to help out regularly and after he left, they stayed which showed a great deal how much they cared for us and about what they were doing. two of them had been with us for over a year and the others helped out when we went on trips. the pastors' reasoning for asking them to leave was that they needed to be members of the church to be leaders. technically, the rule applies to lay leaders, not the awesome people that are volunteering to hold us together.

also the "real" adults that help with the youth are putting together what they call a youth council. in my opinion it's not much of a youth council as much as it is an adult council. we have already been volunteered to sing a song in our children's christmas play in december. i can't speak for anyone but i'm pretty sure nobody wants to be forced to sing a song for a children's play. the worst part is that they are taking up youth group time to rehearse it. i don't know who they are expecting to be there because everyone's going to stop coming since the only reason some people were even still coming after jonathon left was because of tyler and mellow (two of the adults they asked to leave).

i have stated to the right people what i think about the whole situation and that is unusual for me. usually i just go along with whatever they hand us but i can't take it anymore. they people in charge of youth now say they asked the other adults to leave becasue it was best for our situation. BUT IT WASN'T!!!! making them leave because they weren't members of the church would just make our situation worse!!!

these are some of the awesome people who can't come back.

thank you, God

my life is so good right now. i can only pray that everyone around me had as good a life as mine. (i'm not bragging about my life i'm saying that the almost all the people around me are have issues). i thank God that i am blessed to be getting good grades, have no relationship issues, have no medical problems, have my parents still be together, not losing a best friend, not have anyone close to me die recently, be making good choices, not be getting kicked out from somewhere i love to be and never thought a person could get kicked out of. all of these issues i am blessed to not have yet i still feel depressed and empty a lot of the time. everything i listed is an issue that at leats one of my close friends is going through and it really sucks for them. i don't know how they have these things happen to them yet they still act cheery. i think i'm really being hit with their issues because i care so much about them and i want to help them as much as i can. all i can do is ask God to be with them. they are all just so optimistic and worry-free. i give them kudos for that.


-em

sr. high retreat

i just got back a few hours ago from cedar crest camp. i was there with about 27 other people for the sr. high retreat. there were probably only 3 people there i knew and a few that i had met before but never really talked to. with the small number it was really easy to get to know everyone that was there.
the first night we had small prayer stations set up inside.
the next day was a pilgrimage-type day. we hiked around the camp in groups and stopped at stations along the way. one we did that i really liked was one where we had to walk a short way with a rock in our shoe then we got to the next station and we thought about names we had been called or called ourselves that hurt us. then we wrote them on a girl that was stading there. we were supposed to think about how God doesn't want us to walk around with all these words weighing us down but let God have these words. then we took the rock out of our shoe and thought about how it was easier to walk without it in there. saturday night we did kind of what we did last year. we broke up in four groups and planned the sunday morning worship service.

i think i got a lot out of the weekend and i'm really glad i went. it was much needed for me. it actually wasn't as cold as i had planned it to be (which was good).

also: pray for my friend and her family. she just lost her grandfather and it taking it kind of rough.

=)
-em

i'm pretty sure i'm feeling a lot better than i did yesterday. no need to worry. i'm getting things done and worked out so it's all good.

-em

tough

i'm so overwhelmed with life right now. i don't know how to handle it or what to do. i just want to fall asleep and sleep for an entire day and everything will be better. too bad that can't really happen. i guess it's better to actually live through tough times rather than just letting them blow over. then you can learn from them and make sure they don't happen again (although they probably will). there is just so much on me right now that i can't figure out how to make time to work it out. all i can do right now is pray. :)


-em

switchfoot has a new song out. they recorded it with the lead singer from relient k and a guy from ruth. the song is called rebuild and it is amazing! it's about habitat for humanity. then the fires in california (where switchfoot is from) and relient k's tour bus catching on fire made have such a personal meaning for the groups. i love it so much. i wish i could see them play it live but they aren't coming to nashville. but they are going to atlanta, knoxville, and evansville... everywhere except nashville basically. it makes me sad that i can't go see them. i bet the three put on a great live show. i have seen relient k in concert and switchfoot in concert... but not together. oh man.


-em

happy halloween!

i celebrated by handing out candy to the little kids that stopped by.

randomness: i won 5 dollars today for selling magazines for my school. it was a life changing moment (not).


and that was my super-exciting day.
(obviously i'm in a sarcastic mood.)

-em

class of '09

i ordered my class ring today. my mom didn't think it was worth the money so i offered to pay for half of it. i'm really excited about getting it.

here's a picture of it. the top isn't really what it looks like in the image.
/Users/emilymastin/Desktop/Jostens Share My Ring Designer.webarchive

last night was our first sunday night without jonathon and i have to say it went pretty well. other than having such a small number of people, i think we will be having good nights at youth. we started out playing a 90's trivia game girls v.s. boys and the girls dominated! we knew the answer to every question including the ones the boys had. then we related that to how jonathon left in some broad way. we wrote letters to him that these two young adult helpers are putting in a scrapbook. it was good and i wish more people had been there.


-em

my old volleyball coach got arrested

my former volleyball coach and teacher at my school was arrested a couple of days ago for statutory rape. she taught at mt. juliet two years ago and was only there for that one year. i don't know what she did last year but this year was her first year at gallatin high school. what's sad is that this wasn't much of a suprise to some of the people that knew her from mt. juliet... including me. here's a piece of the article from the story news channel four had:

"A Gallatin High School teacher was charged with statutory rape after being accused of having sex with a 17-year-old male student at her home in Nashville...

Nashville police charged social studies teacher Holly Hatcher, 25, with six counts after she admitted having sex with the teenager on six occasions in the last two months. She was arrested on Thursday.
Police affadavits said the teenager drove to her home for the encounters and that it was consensual sex. One time the student told his parents he was at work, the affidavit said. Another time the two went to the Nashville Zoo before returning to her home...

Hatcher has been released on a $6,000 bond in Davidson County and a $15,000 bond in Sumner County, and has resigned from the school, where she also coached volleyball and softball..."

2am, what?!

this week my school, mt. juliet high, was news channel 4's "cool school" of the week. we were on the morning news and had live feeds so everyone that wanted to participate had to be there by 4a.m.! it takes me 15 minutes to get to school and we had to be there early so i had to get up at 2:15!! i still can't believe i got up in the middle of the night to go to school. we were there from 4-7 having live feeds every 25 minutes or so. sometimes they just recorded so it was about every 10 minutes they made us act hyper and excited (not that we aren't already...). everybody that showed up went to the gym then it was like a massive pep-rally. we played really good music (soulja boy, cha-cha slide, old-school stuff, etc...) and they recorded the 1100 people that were there dancing on the gym floor. almost the entire school was there. i think they said we had 600 people from our student body that weren't there! also if we went we got to leave at 11:00. the only bad thing was that it was so early and nobody had eaten breakfast so there were 4 people that passed out including our mascot. they had to take her to the hospital. i felt so bad for her because she was supposed to sing live with our school's vocal ensemble. = (

here's a video of some things they recorded wednesday. the two teachers they show are teachers i have right now. one for trig. and one for chem. 2. there was some more footage they showed this morning that i was in but it didn't make it on the internet.
http://www.wsmv.com/video/14422767/index.html


-em

i do love rain

indeed.



-em

exercise during class?

so a motion was just passed that all the students in wilson county schools will have to have 5 minutes of exercise in each class everyday. don't get me wrong but isn't this what p.e. is for? they say they're doing this because too many americans are overweight and by doing this we will have at least 90 minutes of exercise each week. i heard one teacher is making his class run around the school (and our school is pretty big). why take up class time trying to get us to learn exercising habbits when they could force us to take gym or join a team. the majority of the people in our school are on a team already and some sports require the team to have gym as a class along with daily practice. one of my teachers says she isn't going to do it because we need that class time to get started. another one of my teachers says we are going to do yoga (she teaches trig). we were trying to convince her that our exercise should be dancing. but seriously, is it really necessary for us to stand up during class so we all do jumping jacks or whatever just so we won't be overweight? i don't really think this is going to work. last year everyday we were "required" to write a reflection in each class on what we learned... nobody did that. we start exercising on monday so we'll see how it goes...


-em

it's been a good two years

well it's has been almost two years. jonathon will no longer be the youth pastor at hermitage umc. actually he isn't even going to be a youth pastor. he is going to be like a counsellor for troubled teens. well that's how i understood it. i had a little trouble paying attnetion. i know that what he is doing is the right choice and i think hermitage is ready to get another youth pastor. he will be missed by a lot of the people in our church but hopfully we all understand that what he is doing is good. i know that i will miss him a lot!! i sound like i'm talking about him as if he died... haha. well i know i will still see him but i'm still going to miss having him around like all the time. but God has new plans for him.


-em

post # 101

my last post was post number 100 for me!




today my mom and i went hiking at the stone door. it was really crowded so we figured there must be a church at beersheba. we were right. we ran into some people from west end united methodist and had like a five minute conversation with them. i love going hiking and today was such a great day to do it. the weather was perfect. it was the kind of weather where no matter what you wear you're comfortable. i love days like today. = )


-em

i have more pictures from the trip at flickr.com/photos/emilykm

attack of the squirrel

i was eating lunch today at satco and i was there with toria and two other people. squirrels are fairly popular and social i might add at satco. they do not fear people at all. one squirrel wandered over to where i was sitting and toria reached out wanting to touch it. i do not know why. then the squirrel jumped up on toria and all four of us screamed. the we laughed and everyone around us just stared at us. it was reallllly funny. it might have been one of those things where you had to be there but it was so funny!

by the way i love the way the weather is right now...


-em

the tennesseean must like us

today as i was working the pumpkin patch at my church a guy stopped by who said he was from the tennesseean. he said he had been looking for a good halloween story and as he was driving by he saw our pumpkins and got a story idea. so we talked to him for about 15 or 20 minutes about how we use the money we raise and the kind of people that stop by. he took our picture in front of one of our little scenes and got all of our names to put in the paper. jonathon and abby lemons were quoted and he told us the story will run on halloween!


-em

i'm mad

so i was going to go to fields of faith tonight after i got out of disciple at 8:30. the invitation said it wouldn't be over until midnight. as it turns out, it ended at 8:30. so i didn't get to go and i'm sure a lot of people show up after 8:30 expecting it to still be going on but i guess they will soon find out that it is over. = (


-em

random, pointless thought

could you make cookie dough cookies? i mean like the same way you would make m&m or chocolate chip?


-em

it's pumpkin time!

the pumpkins are here and i am getting ready to go out there in a few hours and unload them! we went to wal-mart today and got stuff to decorate the area with. it is imposible to go to wal-mart and not play with all the stuff. we were first in the kid's area and we found a jesus doll that spoke bible verses! it was... interesting. then we went down the halloween isle and i saw a pirate hat. well in a few weeks our school has homecoming and one of our days is pirate day. so i bought the hat and an eye patch. i found it amusing.

-em

my mom and i went to the crafts fair today. we always go every year but we never buy anything. this year it seemed like everyone brought their dogs. they all had little dogs except for 4 or 5. i love dogs, especially little ones. so it was fun.
wilson county schools are now on fall break! this means two weeks of no school! im excited. we as a family aren't going anywhere so i decided to work the pumpkin patch. i think i'm working everyday over break except 4 days. we don't get the pumpkins until wednesday though. everyone come buy some!


-em

matt and sarah, september 29th, 2007

today the summer intern we had in '06 gets married! we couldn't take a group because the wedding was in west virginia, 11 hours away, but i bet the wedding is nice!




-em

an afternoon of fun

yeah. we jumped, it was fun. (all of this after we made posters for see you at the pole)


-em

so i went to the doctor yesterday....
and that's about as exciting as my week has been. i had to get 2 shots: one for the cervical cancer thing and a tetnous. then i went to get ice cream because i hate shots. actually i was pretty excited to find out that i am now 6 feet tall.
actually im just really procrastinating my homework which i really shouldn't be because i have a lot. i have to do a chem. lab report but first i have to finish my lab analysis. then i have to study for a test in that class that i have tomorrow. i have a project due next week that i have yet to start on for bible class. i also have to finish a worksheet for trig. that is due tomorrow. dang now i just realized how much work i really have. ok that's it.


-em

tennessee-florida

soooo, ut lost. its sad, i know. it was a very disapointing game. with a final score of ut-20 florida-59, i must say tennessee was not playing well at all today. maybe next year...


-em

woah.

yeah it's a lot but it's interesting i promise. = )


lots of stuff has been happening this past week. the exciting stuff started saturday at centerfest.
centerfest is a music festival that's outside in a big field. well i decided not to take my purse with me so i just held my car keys in my hand until i got to the blanket we were all sitting on. i had left them on the blanket until it was time to go. (the crowd wasnt all that bad. kinda small actually). well when i went to pick them up, i was making sure all the stuff was still on there because some of it falls off sometimes.... like it did then. my car key had fallen off. remember we are in a big field and its dark by now. so me and 3 other people start to look for it and we can't find it. so i call my dad to bring me the spare. he does and he brings my mom (and some flashlights) with him. so we all start looking for it. by now 2 complete strangers were helping us. i kept trying to tell my parents that we werent going to find it. and we never did. so we finally gave up and went home and i am now driving the car with the spare key so if i lose this one... well i will let you think up what will happen.

sunday i found out that my godparents are moving in to the house next to us! they used to live next door to us about 11 or 12 years ago but they moved and we moved. so now we will be next door neighbors again! its exciting.

also whats exciting is that my first block class sold the most magezines per person we get two parties, one from the school and one from our teacher. annnnddddd, i was the third highest seller in the entire school so i get $50!
today at school we had that dress down day for the spirit links. yep, basketball shorts and thsirt. i just wish we could go back to the times where we could where that to school everyday. tomorrow we don't have school becuase of parent teacher conferences.

i started my youth diciple class tonight. a few things i didnt know about the class is its a two hour class that doesnt get done til 8:30 and there is a cost for the book of $30. neither of these facts were mentioned to me about it. i probably still would have taken it but its just going to be a tough 34 weeks. my personal opinion is that the class could be cut down to a little over an hour. we watch a 10 minute video from the early 90's that just has this guy talking and i really don't think anyone pays attention to it. also we spend around 30 minutes saying prayer requests. that could be cut down, too. i think a faster way to do it would be to go around the circle but we just kinda popcorn it. i guess once we really start getting into discussions the 2 hours will be good but tonight just seemed really stretched out. oh, and the youth are combined with the adullts who are taking it. we have the youth book but the classes are together. i'm interested in hearing all the different ages' opinions on everything.

friday is a spirit day at school. everybody gets really in to our spirit days. we started doing a new thing at our pep rallies, the "mj shuffle". it's the cupid shuffle but we changed the name. also only juniors and seniors are allowed to come down to do it. so thats a plus. well since we dont have school tomorrow a bunch of people are going to our class president from last year's house to get stuff ready for the pep rally. we are making flags, shakers, and other loud stuff. we are kinda mad because we havent won the spirit stick yet and we deerve it. also our class president for this year resigned and our vp isnt willing to take his place. so we are in a bad situation..

-em

way too busy

i have had so much stuff going on since school started back. have two honors classes gives me a lot of homework. it seems like everyday i have something going on. today is the first day in a while and for a while that i dont have any plans. im still planning for other things when i have free time.

random: sunday night my neighbors has a "pie-pong" tournament. they go to donelson christian acadamy so almost everyone there went there too. actually there were a few people from mt. juliet and i thought it was kind of suprising. anyways, the point of pie-pong is the exact same as ping-pong just... you ate pie before, during, or when you were done. it was really random and the actual game had nothing to do with pie. it was an entertaining night thought. a lot of people there had a nice sense of humor so i stayed amused.

oh yeah! i now have unlimeted texting to anyone in any network. it pretty much rocks!
oh and today is sallie's birthday.


-em

mj/central

well first i have to say that we have a wicked amazing step team this year. they are soooo good! but... we lost our first football game to wilson central, our rivals. its pretty sad. every year when we play them they challenge us to a "spirit link" contest. the school who raises the most money wins. well at the game last night they announced who won and they said central raised like $700 and mj only raised around $400 but then about 30 seconds later they were like oh hold on the actual final count was central $700 mj $1100! so yeah, we won. that means we get a full dress down day. to anyone not in wilson (or davidson) county a full dress down day means absolutly nothing but if you're having to wear polo shirts everyday, a full dress down day is like the most amazing thing ever. so yeahhh.
peace everyone



-em

chemistry

ok so i had a crazy hard chem two test today that i didn't study for. im pretty sure i failed. and this test was just a review test of chem one stuff! its bad. if i did this bad on the first test, i cant imagine how the rest of them are going to be. it took me the entire hour and a half to do it and i still didnt finish it. she said we could finish some of the problems tomorrow. i guess this means i will have to study hard for the tests. i've just been kinda stressed out about some stuff lately. im a member of 8 clubs. i really need extra curriculars concidering the only one i have is playing volleyball freshman year. speaking of volleyball, the hendersonville-mt. juliet game is thursday at mj. everyone should come watch! i know im going seeing that i know people from both sides. we also have our first football game friday against wilson central! not only is it our first game but its against our rivals. all the football games this friday seem to be against rivals. i guess that's enough rambling for now.
= )


-em

church council meeting: funnnnn.... not!!!



-em

ok im back

i just had to take a break from blogging for a while. also i was in a bad mood for like a week so i didnt want to blog while i was in a bad mood.

so i finally got a car! i have been waiting for this car for 2 months. i had been driving either the pickup or my dad's car. im so excited! i cant wait to drive it.

i dont remember if i've already said this but if anyone has comcast cable then watch channel 9 between 11:11am and 1:20pm and you will probably see me on there. (i currently do sports) my school's news station is the only high school news station broadcasted all across the state. so its pretty cool.

oh yeah, summer sizzler was a few weeks ago. it was fun but i had to eat some pretty nasty stuff (jello with vienna sausages, prok rines, kidney beans, and olives all in it. there may have been some other stuff too but i dont really wanna remember..) we got in a little trouble for doing some pranks. the pranks were funny but there was a little incident where something went wrong and we got in a lot of trouble. it was bad.


tonight i went to "5 quarter at the corner" it was good. i saw some people i hadnt seen in a few weeks and got a chance to hang out withmy friends i hadnt hung out with in a while. it was bad though because i went to get on the interstate to get there but got on the wrong one so we got really turned around. so then we decided we didnt have time to go to a real restraunt so we went to wendy's. well then we were going to go over to hhs to the football game buttttttt the football game was at station camp. so we just decided we would go hang out at the church for a while. so that was what we did. it was fun. oh and janie got paid to put on the bear costume. yeahhhh, it was hilarious!


-em

i dont wanna blog anymore. maybe later on. oh yea cara's bday is today.


-em

new school year

so today was our first official day of school. it was only 2 hours but we still had to go. i'm so excited about my classes. in each one i have a lot of cool people. in my electronics media (bnn9) class, i have some of the same people from last years bnn class. so it feels the same. third block i have chem. 2 with cara! i havent had a class with cara since 7th grade! let alone any lunch blocks. and now we have both. its exciting. then in fourth we have 35 students! i think the limit per class is like 32... yeah.

first block: bible history
second: electronic media
third: chem. 2
fourth: advandced alg. and trig.

so my work load might be a little high this semester but im not playing volleyball agian this year so that will free up some time.
random story: this guy in my second class sent in a cartoon idea to nickalodeon because they had a contest. he also sent in one of the cartoons he had already made. well he won the grand prize! so he and his family get to be flown to california and stay in a five star hotel on the beach! nickalodeon is coming to our school to have an assembly in october or so. its so cool!
this semester is gonna be so much fun! i know it


-em

past few days

last night my parents and sister went up to indiana to help my cousin move back here. that means i had the house all to myself. my cousin's house up in indiana was one of the houses on the underground railroad. she says that sometmes her radio would just come on and rap music would be playing and she never listens to rap. she has a closet in her bedroom with another little door in it that when you open it, there's a tunnel that goes all the way down to the basement that the slaves would go in. i think its kinda cool. i also went to the simpsons movie last night and i must say it was the funniest movie i've seen all summer! it was so good. i highly recommend going to see it!
random event of the week: this past wednesday night at youth, linda locke led because jonathon was out of town. we watched a movie about umcor and then all went to sonic and let the church pay for each of us a drink. that's usually what a night with linda leading is like. a video and something free. another time she lead we all got treated by the church to baskin robins!
school starts for wilson county this wednesday!! im half excited as it's my first year as an upperclassman. but the other half is disappointed becuase this means practically no more free time. we finally get our yearbooks that day too!
summer sizzler is next weekend! im excited. it's my favorite conference event.



-em

OMG!!!!!

i just found out that relient k and switchfoot (my two favorite bands ever!!!!!!!!!) are going to be on tour together this fall!!!!!! how awesome is that?!!!
latas






-em

youth 2007

heyyyy! this past sunday i got back from youth 2007 in greensboro, nc. we stayed at the sheraton hotel and it was right next to a 3 story mall! i went to that mall everyday... partially becuase that was practically the only place to get food. well it was fun other than just the mall. our worship feast area turned out great! there were so many people coming through everyday. we had a tight schedule to go by each day so there wasnt really that much free time unless you skipped the "splatshops" aka the workshops. we would get up each morning and go to morning devo. then get out to the convention center for the morning session. right after that would be mid-day prayers then lunch. we either would go to the splatshops or just have free time untill dinner and after dinner we'd go to night session. the night sessions lasted til about 1030 and we would go back for compline (the night-time devo). after that we could stay up as late as we wanted and that was usually about 1. each night we had a different band preform in addition to our house band-fusebox.



-em


there's more pictures on my flickr

heyyyy

this past saturday night i went to our youth group lockin at laser quest all night! yesterday we went to the morning service. we were so tired. we slept in a room during sunday school and the 11 oclock service. we left for nashville shores around 1230 for the conference night. it was so fun. the whole time i got a total of 2 hours of sleep but it was really fun. im leaving in the morning to head up to greensboro, nc for youth 2007! im really excited and i dont really know what to expect. i think its gonna be so much fun though!



-em

good month

my june has been extra busy starting with my birthday then right into fresh. (the evnet formally known as t.y.a.c.) along with annual conference. then our church had our vacation bible school. as soon as vbs was over a good size group left for our mission trip to john's island, sc. that is where i am now. this internet connection sucks so it might be the only post during the week. oh yeah and this is also my first post on my new..... macbook!!!! i got it for my bday. it's incredible! anyway, the houses we are working on here are in need of some major work. we are trying to get them up to code so the government cant take them away. the first house is a habitat home and we are drywalling and building a front and back porch. the other house has had some water and termite damage. the group working on that house has to pull out the ceiling and floor and replace it. im working on the habitat home so i dont really know a lot about the other home's condition. i'll post pictures on flickr and on here when i get a better connection. hope all is well with everyone else. more to come later.



-em

preparing for a packed summer

since i go to a wilson county school, we get exactly 2 months of summer break. well my two months are going to be action packed! first its my sister's 18th birthday then shortly after is my sweet sixteen! my madre is a delegate at the tennessee annual conference and im an alternate for the youth. chances are i'll be going to that at least one of the days. vacation bible school at our church the week after that. i'm volunteering for that and on the last day, we leave to go on our sr. high pilgrimage to john's island, sc. we get back on june 30th so i have a slight break for the first week of july. then its off to youth 2007! i really think that will be a fun trip and im looking forward to that. before you know it, school starts back august 1st. this will be my first school year ever without my sister being in school, too. = ( then summer sizzler is that weekend. (and thats the brief version of my summer...)


even though my summer is busy, i think i'll find myself with a lot of down time. probably not much blogging time though so it might be a while before i post. i'll try to squeeze in some picture here and there but its likely this is it for now. ttyl


-em

end of school

so i finished up with my finals today. i am now a junior! sarah, my sister, finally graduated last night. that was pretty cool. there were a bunch of people graduating that i knew but i must have gotten really distracted because i seemed to have missed seeing them walk across the stage. jonathon got his nose peirced!! we had always joked around about it but he actually did it. who knows what to expect next. im in a pretty mellow mood so i guess i'll talk more later.


-em

coffeehouse numero uno

hey. so a lot has been goin on the past few weeks. a bunch of people have graduated and our youth group had our first coffeehouse. that was a blast! and if you didnt come, you missed out on some great music!

first off, my sister had her ROTC banquet and she got stuff for being on the drill team. this is her with my parents.


wilson central high school graduated last night. my sister's boyfriend and michael clapper where two of the 250 people to graduate.



this past wednesday our youth group had a coffeehouse benefiting darfur. we had a great band-the psalters-and a lot of fun.


we raised about $250. something we had people do was put there red hand prints on a sheet and we will send it to president bush. some people wrote a message to him after they did the hand prints.

over all my last few weeks have been great. i still have to take finals next week though. i cant bfeleive how late we're doing them. mt. juliet's graduation is tuesday of next week and sarah, my sister, is graduating!!! im so excited!

-em

whats up

so recently (last week) my sister had to go to daytona to compete in the national JROTC drill competition. of course, my parents and i went with her. we were down there for 5 days and the last day we went to orlando to go to islands of adventure. it was so much fun! her team placed 4th once and 5th once and in the singles, someone placed 5th. considering there were 50+ schools there, 5th twice and 4th is pretty good. i think there were 3 schools there from tennessee and they were all from middle tn. the day before we left, it started to get crazy windy. it was so windy we literally had to hold on to something so the wind wouldnt blow us back. when we were in orlando, the weather was really nice. it was about 80 with a breeze so it felt great.


also, some of you may have heard about that consignment dress shop that burned down. if not, then a consignment dress shop burned down thursday night in hermitage almost to mt. juliet. the night it burned down, my sister had just gone there and gotten her prom dress. she had 2 there that she was selling and a bunch of girls had their dresses there getting them altered. all of it is gone now and the lady that owned it didnt have insurance. i dont know what she's planning to do about the dresses she lost or if she plans on trying to open another one but its so weird that my mom and sister were just there hours before it happened. we think it started because she had a tanning bed in there and that sparked something. it was so cramped in there because it was so small and was overstocked with dresses so once the fire was started, it wasnt likely it was going to be isolated.




on another note, in about a week our youth group is sponsoring a coffee house benefiting darfur, a region in sudan. we'll have a band-the psalters- and some snacks. come if you can-wednesday, may 23rd




-em

this is how the sr. high spent their youth night...

last night, the junior high youth, along with jonathon, went out and did their own "destination unknown" trip leaving the sr. high behind. we walked over to sonic and when we came back we watched a short video on something (i dont even remember what it was). after that, tyler had found some caution tape and someone else got some saran wrap and we started to wrap jonathon's car. then later someone else went in to get some trash bags and we put them over his tires and exhaust pipe. the pictures are before we finally finished but they're a pretty good visual. when jonathon got back, he was saying he wishes there was a way to keep it on there and still drive it. it was a very fun night and the saran wrap brought back some memories.

destination: unknown

tonight for youth, jonathon didnt tell us where we were going or what we were doing until we got there (i think i've gone on a mission trip like this before...). well we ended up going to opryland hotel and we had to find one of our youth helpers and he gave us something we had to have to get back on the bus. it was just a poker chip and we didnt really use it to get back on the bus but i guess the idea of it was good. then we ate at micky d's.


-em

happy friday the 13th!

funny starburst commercial

sorry if nobody else finds this funny.

happy easter!

haha.





but seriously.

happy easter!

-em

good friday

a year ago today... that was a good friday. = )


a hearty shalom to ya all.

its about 45 minutes away

so the other day(wednesday); heres the story and it may be long but it's entertaining:


jonathon decided we were going to go to picket state park. well we left after we waited a while for MATT BELL to get there and we headed toward cookville. we got off at that exit and started heading down a road that was a little windy. we kept going and going for about 45 minutes and finally we came to a fork in the road. the directions from google didnt tell us which way to go but there was a small convenient store right there so jonathon went in to ask which way the state park was. when he came back out he said they said its about 45 minutes down the left side. so we went that way and about 25 minutes down that road matt started getting kinda car-sick. this road was soooooo windy. we never hit a straight part except for maybe once. we passed about 10 out-houses on this road too. well after 30 more minutes away, we had to stop to let matt out because we were afraid he was going to get sick. his face started turning a greenish shade. i didnt think that really happened to people when they're about to get sick but it really does. thats when we decided to stop for about 5 minutes and matt started to drive from there. no more sickness. right as we were about to start going again, we decided to stop and ask someone who had pulled over for directions. well she said it was about 45 minutes down that road. thats when we figured we should just head back home. we never found picket state park and i think we came to the conclusion that it doesnt exist. we think google just decided no body really goes on those back roads. well some people do. its kinda funny, on the way along that road we passed a lady walking along the road with an ax in her hand... not sure what she was doing. but all together i guess it was kinda fun. i mean, who doesnt want to spend 5 and half hours on the road with no destination?

that may be the highlight of my spring break... kinda sad, i know.


-em

my god-mother's dad died last night. he had been living with her and her husband, michael, for a few years. please keep their family in your prayers.


-em

boredom

this is what an hour of boredom does to the best of us. we make random compilation videos.

sunrise on ski trip

ski trip 07

first off-this year's ski trip was amazing! the slopes were definitely better that where we went last year but nothing can beat staying at lake j. this year i designed the shirts so im glad everyone liked them.
friday night we picked up matt bell, our summer intern, on the way up to higher grounds retreat center. it snowed all day saturday and it was so pretty. sunday was the better of the two days just because the sun was out. coming home monday, i slept pretty much the whole way.
yesterday i went to school late so i could sleep in and i know of some people who just stayed home the whole day. i know that i'm still not fully recovered from the lack of sleep.
i love how it feels outside right now. its supposed to be like this the rest of the week so i'm pretty excited.


-em

lets go skiing!

i'm leaving for perfect north slopes in indiana tomorrow and from what i've heard, they have been having some major snow up there. yesterday they had a level 3 snow storm and the slopes were closed until noon. i just hope all goes well this weekend and we all stay safe, especially on the bus ride up when we have to go across about a 2ft. wide bridge!

s-s-stressed

lately i've been feeling really stressed. warmth in winter had me worried. the chili cook-off had me worried. and now school has me worried.
warmth in winter wasnt as great as i thought it would be this year. maybe i've just been so many times that it's getting old. my committee for design team didnt really have everything we needed so sunday morning, we kinda went with the flow. thats how it seemed to me anyway.
[[random story: so at warmth, after dinner, i was walking out to go find somebody and i ran into my cousins! the thing is i havent seen them in like 5 or 6 years. i knew they what they looked like because im friends with them on myspace, their mom was there too. i've seen her at funerals and once recently my mom and i saw her and her husband at barnes and noble. so when i saw them as i was walking out i was like "hey, yall are my cousins or something, right?" ( i dont really know for sure how i'm related to them. they are so far extended). but yeah, it was random.]]
the chili cook-off was today and why we had it the wednesday right after warmth? i do not know. but we did and i guess it went well. i know we made a lot of money! i have to say i liked it more last year than this year. i wasnt sure if we had everything pulled together for it to run smoothly but it did and it was ok.
this week at school is coming-home week. the coming home rep. for the sophomore class decided he isnt going to go so now we have an even worse rep., in my opinion, going. my grades and school work have kinda been falling behind and we have progress reports going out next week. i just hope my grades arent too far down. (pray for no school tomorrow due to snow!!)
act's are coming up in a week and a half and my mom is making me study for them. i have no idea when im going to do that considering all the other things i have going on.
i know i probably shouldnt be worrying about all these things but i feel like if i dont do something, it wont get done. i really want everything to go the way it needs to and i know there are people there to take care of it, but i just want to make sure that's how it is. maybe after ski trip and easter and a few other things, i'll be a lot more stress-free. if i seem like im really not being myself, and im being really sarcastic (like more than usual), then i apologize in advance. it might be a while before i post again with all i have going on, so ttyl.

warmth in winter

warmth in winter is finally here. our committee still has some work to do. at least we're only sunday worship so we have all day tomorrow to pull everything together. an update on how it all went will be up sunday or monday. hope to see some of you there!

fire!!!!!

yesterday there was this fire in mt. juliet. it was this building behind the nashville star train-station. it was a fiber-glass warehouse. the firemen had a hard time putting out the fire because the mt juliet firedepartment didnt have any ladders. they had to call some of the fire fighters from lebanon to come and help out. those are the facts.

my story is... yesterday i was getting ready for school and my mom was watching the news. i was too busy to sit down and watch but the words "fire, mt. juliet, and wilson county" kept coming up. i finally went to ask what happened. then like 30 minutes later when i got to school, i could smell this stench like something was burning. i had forgot about the building but then i soon remembered. thats all anyone was talking about yesterday. i dont think anyone was killed but i do know that the building is definitely unusable so no one who worked there has their jobs.



keep my mom in your prayers. she's having some problems again but it isnt as bad this time. we havent had to go into the emergency room... yet.

what's been going on

so last week school started and i didnt have any friends in any of my classes. well i got changed out of physical science to go straight to chemistry. now sallie is in that class and cara is still in my first class so i guess having my two best friends in my classes makes up for no one else in the other two.

youth started back up sunday night and we're going back to the whole splitting up jr. high and sr. high. i must say thats the way to do it. we did it like that a while back when we had two youth ministers but then we had none so we were all together and now we have one with adult helpers. so i think it all works out.

we finally got around to taking down our christmas decorations. nobody wanted to do it so it was kind of something we just kept putting off longer and longer.
i cant believe it snowed today! i didnt even know it was supposed to so it was pretty exciting!

well i guess that pretty much sums up my week. hope everyone has a good rest of the week!!

peace

first day

cara = first block
nobody = second block
freshman = third block
all girls = fourth block



this semester = bad

nuf said.

happy new year!

happy double oh seven everyone!!

hope last year was great for ya.