I'm so sorry I haven't posted... lol. There. I said it. Even though it was a lie. :P It has been getting very hot here, and we don't have a/c, so I've been spending my time in the basement. However, the computer is in the hotter area of the house, hence, no posts.

     I asked ya'll to pray about Dad's job, so I suppose I ought to give you an update on that. :) Today was actually supposed to be his last day, but that didn't happen. They're now saying another week. The job was supposed to be done in May! Needless to say, we're getting a little impatient. But we're also glad that he has a job.
     We were hoping that he would have next week off so we could go somewhere. We haven't been on a family vacation in over four years, so yeah... that would be nice. But he doesn't get any paid vacation, so he has to be out of work. But when he's out of work, we don't have enough money to do anything like that. So, when we have the money, we don't have the time, and when we have the time, we don't have the money. That's the story from the past four years.
     Anyway, we thought we could go somewhere for the 4th next week 'cause he was supposed to be done today, and they have another job for him starting whenever he's ready to start. So, we could spend the money to go because it's not like we would be in desperate need of it later. So frustrating.....
     Anyway, that is a praise that he has another job as soon as this one ends. :)

     So... I was 'done' with school about two months ago, but I'm finally finishing. Lol... I'm hoping to be done with last year's schoolwork before next year starts. Do ya'll know what mean? Lol...
     I was supposed to take a science test before I went to camp. Well... two weeks after camp, I decided that I better read through the whole section again before I took the test so I wouldn't flop it. I got an A. :) Not unusual for science...
     So, I have one more science module and a paper to write, so I'm almost done. :D

     Well, I believe that's all the news right now. Have a great week (or month... depending on when I post next...lol).

alwaysgivinglory.wordpress.com

   How many times will I find myself staring at a blank page with so much to say, but having no words to write? I have so many things to blog about right now, I’m almost so overwhelmed that I can’t write at all… but I shall atempt to pull myself together and write something sensible. :)

   Bible Quizzing has been going alright, but chapter four is seeming very difficult for me. I don’t know why… I guess I’m just not good at memorizing parables. Lol… I hope that’s not the case, ’cause there’s gonna be several more! We were supposed to quiz on chapter four last week, but didn’t. I’m not sure what happened there.
   My whole team has been showing up, so that’s great. :) Tori and I are the only ones scoring points, though… lol.
   Mom and Dad said that if we’re going to do Sunday Night Quizzing, that they want us to do Friday Quizzing, too. :D I’m really hoping that we can get started with it, ’cause they also said that if we can’t do Friday Quizzing, we can’t do Sunday Quizzing, either. **crosses fingers**

   Dad’s job is supposed to end the last week of June or the first week of July, so that presents a whole other problem. With no income, we won’t be able to afford the gas to go to Friday Quizzing.
   I have so many thoughts about his job ending…
   If he gets another decent-paying job, I’ll finally get violin lessons, which I’ve wanted for several years now. We will most likely be able to do Friday Quizzing, and if the hours are convenient, we’ll be able to go to prayer meeting on Wednesdays.
   If he’s without work… we’ll have to go back to dial-up internet. LOL. I’m soo selfish… but that was the first thought I had.
   So, prayers would be appreciated that he would have a week or two off, and then another job, idealy with the same company. If you want any more details… just ask. :)

   Saturday we have a church BBQ, more specifically, Mom and Dad’s Sunday School class is having a BBQ. (My little brother call’s it ‘Barbie Cube’….lol! Random thing that I thought ya’ll would enjoy…) I’m still not sure who all is in their class, but I hope to find that out. :)

   On a totally different note, I have been trying to re-arange my schedule. :) After school was out, I started staying up way late, and hence, sleeping in way late. So, I am now rolling myself out of bed at 6:20 (actually, probably several minutes after my alarm goes off…). During school I would get up before six, but I don’t think I really want to do that….lol. Anyway, I’m now getting my devotions done in the morning, which I find to be very beneficial.
   I started reading a book called, ‘The Pursuit of Holiness’ by Jerry Bridges. It’s been very good, and has stepped on my toes. I’m not big on reading at all, but this one looked good, so I bought it. :) And since I spent so much money on it, I have to read it. LOL.

   Which brings me to the subject of the library’s summer reading program. I have to read six whole books this summer. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO??? I suppose I shall have to make myself sit down and read something. Grrr. Who wants to read something when there are so many other thing you could be doing that don’t require so much concentration?!? Hehe… when I took my CAT test this year I was sure I flunked the Reading Comprehension section, but I actually didn’t! You see…. at the end of almost every line, my mind just keeps going off the line, and into some other random subject———- I have very bad lack of consentration. Which is another reason I should make it a habit to torture myself with at least ten minutes of reading a day. Enough on this subject… I’m getting bored just thinking about it.

   So, I feel like I have accomplished very little in typing this all up, but hopefully it amused someone….lol. Ya’ll have a great day, and if anybody wants any dandelions, my yard has plenty - come help yourself. :P

alwaysgivinglory.wordpress.com

   Here are some pictures from yesterday at the park:

Emily and Seth

Seth coming down the slide

Emily, Erin, and Seth, all coming down the slide. :)

We took pictures of eachother through the holes in the floor. :) This one is Erin.

Me

Emily

Mom and Dad were at the CHEC (Christian Home Educators of Colorado) Conference, so we took Seth to the park to amuse him. :)

The came home, we ate pizza (!!!), and then we all went to hear the Colorado Wranglers and the Von Trapp Children sing. They came to do a concert at the CHEC Conference, and Mom got tickets for the family to go. It was great, except for the fact that we were sitting so far away that all of my pictures turned out dark. :( Here are the best ones:

Lol... yeah... my best ones. These are the cowboys. (Duh...)

The Von Trapp Children. This one was still really dark and blurry, but it's the best one I got of all of them together.

They are amazing singers! They blend very well, and all have really good voices. I had a great time!

Well, Emily is waiting for the computer, so I need to go.... ya'll have a great day!

alwaysgivinglory.wordpress.com

Okay… I have a surprise for ya’ll (especially Brittany!). I got a camera!!! That’s right - I now have my own camera! It’s a Canon PowerShot A590 IS, in case you wanted to know. This is what it looks like:

Gorgeous, isn’t it? Here’s some random pics I took:

 That’s Emily and I.

There’s me.

My little brother Seth

And Erin. And just to prove that I can be silly every once in a while, too…:

Yeah. That’s me. Don’t I look great? LOL…

   Well, there’s a couple pics from my new amazing camera. I would post more, but I already did this entry once, and the computer crashed (right…) and it lost the post.

   Ya’ll have a great day! In Christ,

   This week has been so great... I don't know where to start....

   Last Monday, everybody (Dad, Mom, Erin, and Seth) dropped Emily and I off at church so we could leave for camp with our youth group. Our youth group. I've gone to really small churches my whole life, and Emily and I have been the teenagers for years, so this is a really big thing that we actually have a youth group.

   Riding up with them was cool... I sat in the front row with Tori, but talked with Mrs. Hannah (youth pastor's wife) most of the time. Jason, Josh, and Marcus were in the row behind us, so they entertained us in various ways... like telling pointless jokes, trying to predict everybody's favorite cereal, what they had for breakfast, etc...

   We finally got to camp, unloaded, and went to the chapel area to get assigned to our cabins. Due to some very bad communication, almost all of us 9-10th grade girls didn't know who we were going to be in a cabin with. Everybody requested somebody different, so we had no clue. Fun... anyway, I got put in a cabin with Tori and Harmony, which worked out really well. :) I didn't really know Harmony that well, but we spent a lot of time together.

   As far as the rest of my cabin.... (no offense to anybody if ya'll happen to read this) but we just weren't ment for eachother. I won't go into detail... 'nuff said.

   I was on the blue team - we were the Bull Moose Party, and the opposing team was the Red Tape Rascals.

   Monday night nobody talked to anybody else, so that was rather awkward....

   Right after dinner we played Big Ball, and the Red Tape Rascals beat us... bad. I don't think my team has ever won Big Ball...

   Evangelist Keven Browfield was the speaker, and he did a good job, although I liked Rich Tozour better last year.

   Monday night he spoke on 'The Power of a Friend.' The only friends I have are in my youth group.... and everybody there in awesome, but the message was still a great reminder.

   Tuesday morning everybody had started to warm up to eachother, so that was cool. I don't remember what the morning service was about... well, that is, it was about Joseph, but I don't remember which one about Joseph it was. :) EDIT: It was titled, 'The Disfunctional Family.'

   We then played.... hmm... Tuesday... we played.... I don't remember what we played. Whatever we played... I think we won. It must have been Tally Rally.

   During free time I played a couple dozen games of fooseball with Harmony, and only won like half of them. Which was acutally pretty cool. I usually have to let the other person win a couple games, so it was fun to play with someone just as good (probably better...) than myself.

   The evening service was great. He spoke on 'You Reap What You Sow'. When he gave the invitation, there was a mass migration to the counseling area. I don't know how many didn't go, 'cause I went to be counseled.

   The point was continuously brought out that if you sow wind, you'll reap a whirlwind. Just like you can plant a little seed, and get hundreds of seeds from that one, the things we sow will come back multiplied. God really spoke to my heart about little things that I have been sowing, and, though small right now, things that will eventually lead me into spiritual destruction.

   Wednesday morning he spoke on Joseph again, more specifically on facing temptation. One point brought out was to avoid the source. I had just made a decision the night before to get rid of one of the sources of temptation in my life, but it was still a very good message.

   I don't remember what we played on Wednesday morning.... but I think we won... no... maybe not... I don't know...

   Wednesday evening we played Still Kill (a.k.a. Kill the Counselor.) That was a lot of fun... and I think we won. I honestly don't remember...

   That night he spoke on something... (duh) ...but I don't remember what. I am so awful at this! I can't remeber anything! I will have to look at my notes. EDIT: I didn't get the title of the message that night, but it was about forgiveness. :)

   Thursday morning he talked about Joseph. (Surprise, surprise...) And, for another surprise, I don't remember which one about Joseph it was. EDIT: It was titled, 'The Prison of Your Past,' and it was on how to get out of it.

   I don't think anything really exciting happened on Thursday...

EDIT: I cannot believe I said that. I am reading through this before I post it, and am now hitting myself on the head for saying that. My favorite hour or two out of the whole week happened on Thursday.

   They call it 'Family Reunion,' and basically what it is is they assign certain areas for each youth group to get together and share testimonies or whatever.

   My **totally awesome** youth group shared testimonies, sang, prayed, and just praised God. I cannot describe it - you would have had to be there. As I said, it was the best part of the whole week.

   That evening he spoke on 'The High Cost of True Christianity.' It was a great message.

   Friday morning he spoke on Joseph (yet another surprise...), more specifically, on 'Finishing Well'. I remember that it was a really good message, but I'm afraid I don't remember any specific points.

   We then played... Feet Ball?? I think... I can't believe I've forgotten so quickly! Anyway... whenever that was that we played Feet Ball, we won. And the wind was against us. Really against us. At least for the last half.

   That evening we had final scoring, in which the red team won... oh well. It was just a competition. But I like to win! But we didn't. So I suppose I shall just have to deal with it.

   Friday night he spoke on desicions - the fact that they are three step processes, not just a one-time choice. It was a good challenge to keep going - to follow through with the choices I had made earlier in the week.

   Saturday morning we cleaned our cabin, ate breakfast, and loaded up into the vans. I rode in Mrs. Hannah's van again, but with Harmony and Taylor this time. I also sat one row farther back, and decided that I the closer to the front of the van the better. I didn't get really sick... I was just rather uncomfortable until we got back to the non-curvey roads. Nothing very exciting happened on the way back....

   We got back to the church at 10:30, and Dad, Erin, and Seth were there to pick Emily and I up. Where was Mom?? That was just a passing thought - she was probably really busy at home and decided that it would only be a half hour longer before she saw us. So, about five minutes down the road, Dad says, 'Well, Mom should be in Michigan by now.' :O

**insert 30 seconds of silence that seemed like 5 minutes**

**insert a thousand thoughts going through your head in that 30 seconds** 

   You see, Mom's parents live in Michigan, and they are getting up in years, so my first thought was that one of them had died. But then, if that had happened, they would have called us home. Maybe one of them got hurt?

   Dad *finally* explained that her former best friend's dad had died suddenly of a heart attack, and that she had gone up for the funeral. **phew!** I'm so selfish, I know, but I'm so glad it was someone else's dad. That sounds down-right nasty, doesn't it?

   Anyway, Mom got home on Monday morning around 10:30.

   So... there was my week at camp in an extremely small nut shell. :-) Have a wonderful day, and now I will go get my notes so I can be more specific on what he preached on when. :-) 

EDIT: Ok, now that this has been sitting in my draft box for nearly a week, I am finally getting it posted. I wanted to add something else to it though.

   Comparing all three years I've gone to camp, which one was the best? Out of the first two, the second was much better. I had the best cabin I could possibly have had, and, not being with a youth group, that was important. However, '07 and '08 cannot be compared. I was with a youth group. How incredible is that? Most people have always had a youth group, so they take it for granted.

   All of my life I have gone to an extremely small church where there were half a dozen teens - at most. For the last three years, my sister and I have been the only regularly attending teens, with one other girl who came some of the time. Nobody will every understand how much my youth group means to me. YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!

   So, in evaluating '07 and '08 camp, I don't think I could say which year was better. What does it really matter? I don't know.... lol.... I tend to start rambling... so I'll change the subject. :)

   Grandpa and Grandma are here with us until Wednesday, so that will be nice. We always have fun with them, but at the same time, it's always stressful, too. I don't want to go into detail on that, but will ya'll pray that everything will go smoothly while they're here? I'm realizing that alot of the problems are with me, and I need to change, but there are a couple other things that I can't change.

   One more quick thing - I did take pictures at camp - about 36. LOL. Yeah... it's all the camera's fault. It is NOT a good camera. I hate taking pictures with a camera that makes them blurry, puts a hazy blue spot in the middle, etc, etc, etc... I promise I really am saving up to buy a better one, but they're really expensive, so it'll be a while before I start taking pics. But, be forewarned - when I have possesion of a good camera, I take too many pictures. I'll try not to post too many...lol.

   On a different note, I have been thinking of switching over to wordpress, 'cause it's easier to manage, you can have more pages, and a couple other various reasons. I am going to keep this blog, and I will probably post the same posts on both blogs, but I thought I'd just let you know that I have another one and http://alwaysgivinglory.wordpress.com If you want to leave your comments there, I'd be perfectly fine with that. :) Just to let you know, I'm not done organizing everything on it, and have not made all my pages, so everything will probably change soon, but you can go check it out anyway. :)

   Ya'll have an excellent day and following weekend! In Christ,

   Hey everybody! Yeah, yeah.... I've been home for awhile, and I still haven't posted about camp. I've actually been working on it, but I'm still not done. So I'll post the longest post I've ever posted sometime later this week. :) So much has happened since I've gotten home that I'm going to have a lot to catch up on. I have to go right now... I'll try to get back on later today and comment on ya'll. :-) 

   So I'm off to camp! I would say that I'm going to miss ya'll, but I'm afraid that would be a lie.... so I won't. :) I'll be back on Saturday morning/afternoon, so until then, goodbye!!