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