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.