This Day

It's six [eight] a.m., I'm so tired. The alarm sounds, a new day begins. But before I go and disturb this peaceful moment, I look to you. I want to say a prayer before my feet can hit the ground. Lord I give this day to you. I'm amazed, how you forgive me. Yesterday seems so far behind. It's a brand new day and every day's a new beginning. Lord I give this day to you. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in and watch the day begin.

- Audio Adrenaline

Ha hah!

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
--Mother Teresa

Steph and Ali

Guess who called me yesterday: Miss Ali Neibling! I was very suprised and excited to hear that she and Steph were in Des Moines for the weekend. They invited us along to dinner at Cheesecake Factory (mmm, Godiva chocolate cheesecake). We got to meet their friends Ryan, Loyal, and Bethany. The 'small world' aspect of this was JJ went to school with those three in Missouri before coming to New Life. And, Ryan became friends w/Ali at SWMS University - and Bethany is Ali's new roommate. It was a very fun evening, we tried to pair up personalities from our New Life class to their's. It was so nice to see Steph and Ali again! I love you girls!

We're Twins!

Okay - this is very funny. Last night, Steph and Ali were in town with some of their friends and had called us up to go to dinner. I went over to Laura's dorm to wait for them and we realized we were wearing the exact same color shirt. Granted mine was a light pink button down, and hers was a light pink sweater, but we looked very matchy. We didn't feel so bad when we found out Ali and Steph had both worn light blue shirts. Okay, so that was last night. Then this morning Laura comes over to pick me up for church and we both wore the exact same navy zip up sweater. People noticed too, it was so funny. Laura could hardly keep from laughing in church.

February 24th: 9am - 11am 

It's a Liger, bred for its skills in magic

A few days ago someone had told me that the Siberian Zoo had successfully mated a female tiger and a male lion, a liger. (not to be confused with a tigon, a male tiger and female lion - they are incredibly stupid). So, I was online reading about that when I happened to come across this article about Two Russian Women Set World Record of Blimp Speed. Now maybe I should rethink my career choice and do that instead. I could be a captionist by day and work on my blimping at night. By the way, Russia is weird, another article on that site said that one of the cities banned St. Valentine's Day.

Us (Drake B - across the net) playing Drake A during the Tournament. 

Volleyball Girls

Yea for Drake B team!! Here's us at our home tournament on Feb 5th.
Laura, Kelly, Rachel, Lucy, Megan, Natalie, Jenny, and Ali

Drums, how I've missed thee

Tonight at Intervarsity I played drums for the worship part. Betsy had recently gotten ahold of a set for us to use (I was actually supposed to play last week, but due to illness I had to skip). Very exciting - way to go Lord! It's really fun just to play again, and the fact that we do really awesome songs doesn't hurt either. I've also been enlisted to play at the Women's Conference this weekend - at which, I just learned, we will truely be having a girl's weekend complete with sleepover :) Put another way, we are all going to sleep on the floor in one of the rooms at the church :) I really like going to Intervarsity - I've made some very tight friends (many who live off campus, so they are bit hard to come by except for Wednesday nights).

Things I'm Learning Pt 2

Well, I guess it's time for another installment of Things I'm Learning.

1. Taking showers in the afternoon or early evening is quite pleasant because the water temperature is normal and the 'good' shower is usually unoccupied.
2. I love keeping my room clean. I knew that I was a fairly neat person while at home, and I like to have things organized, but I have entered a new dimension of neat. For example, when I change my sheets on the bed, it takes me a good, enjoyable, 1/2 hour. I can let the room get messy for a day or so, and then I like to straighten it all up.
3. Calc 3 is hard. Enough said.
4. When a plant that you left over winter break has dried up (even if you watered it before you left) - trying to revive it is a lost cause.
5. Michael Derrick and my roommate have the same beanbag.
6. I think I sleep, on average, 2 more hours than the normal college student

Well - wasn't that fun.

Valentine's Day Eve

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. What a silly man made holiday. I don't have much to say about the day because there is no special someone to share it with - but it does mark the almost halfway point to Spring Break. Laura and I plan to watch a chick-flick and eat icecream tomorrow night - so I'm looking forward to that :) Okay, I'm off to studying for math and possibly watch a movie, bye.

Volleyball at University of Iowa

Today we had a volleyball tournament at the University of Iowa (about 2 hrs away). It was fun - but difficult. Our team could only bring 6 players (2 couldn't come for one reason or another) and that made rotations difficult, Rachel and I played front row - which was a first for us. But, the day was fun nonetheless. It was much better than being here in the dorm room.
Oh, and I came up with a good way to summarize difficulties w/roommates. Where do you draw the line between living your life and letting your roommate control your life? (In regards to sleeping schedules, study times, etc.) I'm off to bed.

Concessions Duty :(

Yesterday I had concessions duty at the men's basketball game for club volleyball fundraising. It started out good - we had music from the pep band to listen to even. However, our coordinator was part slave-driver, part clueless. She would make a big deal about how to fill nacho trays (for those of you who don't know, you put chips in the big compartment and cheese in the little compartment) but neglected to inform us of the more impertinent details: where more nacho cheese was; what to serve the pizza in; etc. So, that was a bit frustrating. And the night only got better. We tallied up money and inventory. Laura, poor thing, was swept out of the room by our crazy helper lady to go get the money counted. And it turned out we were off by $60 or so. So we recounted everything, trying to figure out what went wrong. Now it's like 10:00pm (games been over for an hour or so) and we can't really do anything different. But she makes us stand around until she decides that we can't do anything else about it, deducts our profit by like $24 and says we can go. Whew, what a night.

Quote

"A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives into temptation after five mintues simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in."

- C.S. Lewis



Quote actually stolen from Ali's profile a while back :) so thanks Ali.

Winter's Back!

I woke this morning to someone shoveling outside my window and a beautiful blanket of snow on the ground. Walking to my first class it was lightly snowing - so pretty! I am so happy winter is back - spring can wait for a couple more weeks :)

Drake Volleyball Tounament

We hosted our first club volleyball tournament on Saturday. It was very fun - aside from the run-around we got about using the Knapp Center. We had 12 teams compete, a great turnout, so we can't complain too much! We convinced Drake that we needed to use the school's varsity gym :) so we probably had the best facility of any of the other tournaments we play in. Speaking of which, we have another tournament at Iowa down in Iowa City next weekend. We even made the TD (Times Delphic) student newspaper - with a big picture of Laura ~ yea!
And, to make things even more exciting, our team (Drake B) won a few matches, and in the first round of the tournament, was seeded to play Drake A. Which we had no idea how we'd do against the 'A' team, we thought we'd be crushed. But no! Drake B played great and we won the first game of the match! Granted they then beat us the next to games winning the match, but I think it was for the best, so we don't crush any egos :)

Sunshine

Sunny days are blessings.

"The day is Yours, and Yours also the night; You established the sun and moon." Psalm 74:16

It's amazing how a beautiful day can lift your spirits.

Groundhog's Day

Today was Groundhog's Day. Yes, P. Phil saw his shadow and predicts that we'll have 6 more weeks of winter. Which will be nice because so far we've only had like 2 weeks of it. But, 6 weeks lands us right on Spring Break - 43 days or so, and I'm really looking forward to that.

In Economics class yesterday I drew a beautiful picture to celebrate, only to be shot down and told that it didn't count because it wasn't actually the right day yet. Preparation is what I'd rather call it. It was positively scrumtralescent.

At Intervarsity large group we sang "In the Sanctuary"!! I love that song.
We raise our hands in the sanctuary
We raise our hands to give you the glory
We raise our hands to give you the praise
And we will praise you for the rest of our days
Yes, we will praise you for the rest of our days

(We clap our hands...)
(We sing our song...)

Jesus, we give you the praise
Immanuel, we lift up your name
Heavenly Father, Coming Messiah
And we will praise you for the rest of our days
Yes, we will praise you for the rest of our days

Hallejuah in the sanctuary
Hallejuah we give you the glory
Hallejuah we give you the praise
And we will praise you for the rest of our days
Yes, We will praise you for the rest of our days

Yes! Yes, Lord! For the rest of our days
(repeat)
And we will praise you for the rest of our days!