Life Lessons..part 1

When i decided about three years ago to learn how to crochet, i never thought that i would learn so many things about life. That wasnt my goal. My only goal was to learn a new hobby that i could do during all this "free time" i have since being on disability.

The first major lesson i learned was to never give up but always keep trying. If you are determined to do something and you keep trying inspite your mistakes and failures...you will eventually accomplish it. I know that this isn't something profound, and we probably all already know it. When i first started learning how to crochet i was so excited abotu my new found hobby. I actually thought it would be a piece of cake and i would have no trouble learning. Well after a month, my excitement quickly turned into confusion and frustration. I felt like i would never figure it out. Then i stopped for awhile and picked it up again later. This time i was determined to learn and so eventually i did.

There are times in life when we're faced with a challenging situation. Maybe at first we're encouraged and feel strong enough to face it and fight through it. But then nothing seems to be happening or maybe our attempts don't work..or maybe the situation just drags on. And that's when we eget so frustated that we want to give up. Sometimes we just need a break from it ...a chance to catch our breath or get a second wind. Maybe we need sometime to step back and get a different view of it, and refocus. Once we're refocused, we can take it on again...and this time we can accomplish it.

Stay tuned for part 2

Youth Last night

Last night i got to help with worship at youth. This is something that i've been wanting to do for a long time. I've been praying that God would give me opportunities to play keyboard and it's fianlly happening. So i was really excited when our youth pastor asked me to help with worship. We were only going to do a few songs, but i ended up playing for over an hour. Halfway through we ended up breaking the youth up in groups to pray for one another. And they spent a lot of time going after God. It was awesome to see God moving through them.

Beautiful day to walk through a garden

Yesterday after a fun filled Nemo bday party for my nephew Scotty, My mom and me went to the daniel stowe botantical gardens. It was such a lovely day that we didnt' want to go home. So here are a few pics from the gardens....

Talent Night

Last night we had a talent night at youth. I'm so amazed at how much talent there is in our youth group. We had everything from playing instruments, skits, singing songs to balancing a soccer ball, painting and cooking. I even played the keyboard and sang a few songs myself last night. The youth were awesome. And we had a lot of people come out to support them...it was great. So here are a few pics i took from it. one the youth took some really great pictures last night so i might be posting more after i see hers.

This is Brett playing with his band The Paper Cities...


The Paper Cities did 3 songs ..Evie plays the bass and sang the first song, Brett plays electric guitar and sang the second one, and Benj is on the drums



And this is Dylan playing an amazing guitar solo


Paige did sing language to the song "Give Me Your Eyes" by Brandon Heath. She's studying to be a Deaf Interpreter.


Here's Jana doing a violin solo


And Haley and Stephanie sung a duet

Snow Day!!!

Last night it finally snowed here and got a real snow day. I say "real" because usually here in charlotte they close the schools even if it's only an inch or less of snow. And everyone acts likes it a blizzard. It's actually quite funny to me. Especially since i found myself soo happy that we got a whole 4inches of snow over night. Where i grew up that's not consider major snow, i used to blizzards, but here it is. So some of my roommates had their friend over and we stayed up past 2 in the morning.

We were all so excited about the snow last night and spent alot of time taking pictures of everything when it first started. The snowflakes were soooo big at times...it was really cool.


Here's a bunch of paw prints from the dogs...i think it's so cute. They were really funny when they went outside...they couldnt figure out why this white stuff kept falling on them.


This is the side of our house. Early we had a small pond and river running through the side of the yard because of all the rain we had over the last few days. And now it's all frozen and covered with snow.


I just thought this tree looked really cool in the snow, with the big snowflakes falling


Whenever we get a decent snowfall, Crystal likes to make snowcream. She used to do this when she was a kid. So it's a tradition. Basically it's just snow mixed with milk, sugar, and vanilla...and you used the very top part of the snow. We used the snow from our table. It's taste pretty good but is very sweet.


And as part of our snow celebration...we played Dutch Blitz. I was really excited cause i hadn't played in awhile. This game ended up being the longest game i think i've ever played. It took us almost 2 hours to finish, i think it was around 1 am when adrienne finally reached 100. You win when someone reaches 100...well i actually broke a record last night. Instead of reaching 100....i scored -202. As my roomies said last night, i won twice in "opposite land". I'm not that good at the game cause it's really fast, and it hard for me to go through my cards that quick, but i have fun anyway cause usually the games gets really crazy.

So like i said before we didn't go to bed till after 2 this morning. And then i slept till about 9 this morning. We were all awake by 10. And Adrienne made us chocolate chip pancakes, and i made us plenty of peppermint coffee. So we had a yummy roomie breakfast. And now i'm laying in bed, watching the snow melt outside of my window.

Cruise highlights part 2

Here are some more cruise highlights.. when we stopped in Port Cavnaveral, Fl the Disney Wonder ship was docked next to our ship. It was neat to see them get the ship ready to sail. And we finally got to see it leave at sunset.


That night we decided to get dressed up. And it just happened to be when the water got really choppy..which made it hard to stand and even harder to walk around the ship. So in this picture i'm holding onto the piano cause i didn't i would of fallen over. By the way this is my dream piano...it's so beautiful.



Our last night they had the chocolaholics chocolate lovers chocolate buffet..where there was every kind of chocolate you could dream of..and chocolate sculptures. here is my little plate..i coudln't even finish most of it but i did manage to finish the big chocolate covered strawberry

Cruise Highlights part 1

I'm finally getting around to posting something about my cruise.It's probably going to be one of the top vacations i've ever been on. here are some pics...

We left on saturday evening and spent Sunday at sea cruiseing to our first stop Great Stirrup Cay..NCL's private island. So in the afternoon while my mom was taking a nap i explored our ship. And i was so blessed to watch an amazing sunset.






Our first stop was Great Stirrup Cay...which was a small but pretty island where my mom and i had massages on the beach (one of my favorite things of the whole cruise) The water was crystal clear and freezing but i managed to get all the way in even though it took me 20 minutes...but i did it.





This the massage hut where we had 25 minute massages..


Our second stop was Nassau, Bahamas...where we went to the Atlantis Resort for the day. We spent the day going through the lazy river (which is so big it takes 30 mins to get through), i went down a few water slides, swam in some of their many pools, saw their aquariums, and walked around the grounds.

$25,000 a night suite



This manta ray reminds me of the one from "Finding Nemo"..

Me with my fishy friends..

What a start to the new year

I have had quite an interesting start to the new year. The first week i was enjoying a wonderful cruise to the Bahamas with my mom (which i'll write another post with picture later). It was probably one of the most amazing vacations i've been on yet. And then i came home, i was exhausted from the trip but other then things were getting back to normal.

But last week i ended up spending most of my week either in a dr's office, urgent care, and ended up in the ER. It was mostly because i was having this severe pain in my left ribcage for several days and it was going on away but getting worst. Now it's been 10 days since it started. So monday i was at an appointmnet with my cardiologist for my heart conditon and because of all that was going on with that, i forgot to mention the pain i've been having.

So i went another few days without doing anything about it. Tuesday night the pain got real bad to the point that i couldn't sit up or be up for that matter without the pain being bad. And even when i laid down it still hurt. So after not sleeping much because of it i decided to see my dr. And to make a long story a little bit shorter, my sister ended up taking me to the ugrent care.

Which by the way i have the most amazing sister in the whole wide world. Despite of her being sick with mono and haveing to deal with alot of other things right now, she dropped everything and came to help me out. She brought me to the urgent care, then took me home with her so i would have someone there if i needed someone, and took me to the Er and stay with me the whole time. She is simply amazing!!

So back to what happened...urgent care said it was chest wall pain and gave me pain medicine then sent me home. So we were on our way home and they called me telling me to come back. They said that something showed up on the lab tests that could mean i had a kidney stone. I was thinking...what in the world you've got to be kidding me. So they did another xray to look for kidney stones, and found none. So they sent me home again

That night the pain started to be really sharp and felt like it was shooting up into my chest. So after talking to my dr's in the morning, we went to the Er. Which is where i spent most of the afternoon. I had a bunch of cat scans done, ekg, and blood work. They had a hard time trying to get the iv in, so now my arm is severely bruised and looks horrible but it's getting better. All the tests came back ok.

So they said that i somehow managed to injure my rib. Funny thing is i don't remember what i did to cause so much pain. So i'm back home trying to take it easy and praying my rib gets better soon.

Snowy Day

Today it finally snowed!!! I think it started snowing sometime in the middle of the night. When i woke up there was beautiful white snow on the ground. It didn't snowed as much as they said it would....we only got an inch so it barely covered our lawn but it was still pretty. And I sat in my recliner this morning...sipping on my coffee and watching the snow flakes dance around...at least that's what it looked like they were doing. And it was fun watching the dogs run around in the snow. I wish i took a picture of their little paw prints all over the deck...looked so cute. I didn't spend the day at home instead we went over to a friends house and played Wii and had pizza. it was nice to get out of the house for something other then a dr's appointment or church. Hope that doesn't sound bad cause i really love church..but for the most part the only time i'm out of the house is usually to go to the dr's or church. So it's nice to go somewhere else sometimes.

Cruising

Well bright and early tomorrow morning...i will be headed to Charleston,Sc to go on a cruise. I'm going with my mom to the Bahamas for a whole week. I'm really excited but i am a bit nervous cause i've never been on a cruise before. I'm not sure about the whole idea of being on a boat in the middle of the ocean for days. So this should defiantely be exciteing.

Magic Kingdom

So my last day in Disney world (well at least in the parks) we went to Magic Kingdom. This is one of my favorite parks of all. I got to do alot of things that i've never done before like.... ride the magic carpets of Aladdin...Mickey's Philharmagic (loved this one)...meet some of the Disney Princesses...ride Pirates of the Carribbean....Buzzlightyear's Space Commander ride... eat at Tony's ( the resturant's theme is Lady and the Tramp. And plus i got to do the teacups and the other rides that i can't remember right now.

Ready to hit the Magic Kingdom...


Me with Daisy..


My favorite Chipmunks...


Aliens...


Magic Carpets..


Spending some time with the Princesses