Ada Soldier Killed by Roadside Bomb in Iraq

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It's not that because the closer something happens to you that the more real it is...but sometimes it just can't help but feel that way. I was sitting outside with the paper in hand thinking about something, when I glanced at the front page. The title was "Ada Soldier Killed..." I knew it wasn't anyone I knew cause I don't know anyone over there right now, but Ada, I've always thought of as this small, 'hometown.' Then it said he lived in the new development right across the street from us. The part explaining where his wife was, and how she found out...all that was less than a half mile from my house, a house me and McKenne take walks by all the time. Man, that just really hit me. Being able to picture that, and his family. Wars are sad, especially when there is so much controversy here over should we have troups there still? Or should we bring them all home and let that country fix itself. Ya know? I guess maybe if I were a soldier or a member of my family was, hopefully I'd see more clearly the impact we are having upon that country. Death...that's just something that you can't really get used to.

Alias

Just thought I'd get you all phsyced (can't figure out how to spell that one) about season 5! Click on the pix to read what to expect the end of September!

Social Butterfly:)

I know there's always a ton of things I need to do better at in my life. Lately the big ones have been learning to eat/like new, healthier foods and to be more sociable:) Actually now that I think about it, I've ALWAYS been bad at those. I moved to a different Sunday School class in church partly to be around more adults and hopefully branch out and talk to them. Obviously I wasn't going at the root of the problem because now I just go in there and sit by my friends who I already know well. The food thing...well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens with that one;)

A while ago I saw a sign in front of a local church building that advertised KinderMusik. That's just these classes (seperated by age group) meant for kids under school age, to come and be taught by a trained teacher. It's meant for kids and their parents/caregivers to go and work together on developing age appropriate skills. I printed off more info. on it and talked to her mom about it. In the meantime a couple opportunities came up at our church for us to be involved with playing with other kids her age like one day a week. Her mom said we could chose which one we wanted to do. My main reason for wanting to do the ones at church would be that I would know people and be in a comfortable setting, as opposed to going to some unfamiliar church and being around a bunch of parents I don't know...quite the dillema, I know;) So anyways, I told her mom we'd do the KinderMusik. I'm branching out! haha. I just always feel so intimidated when I'm around a bunch of mom's with kids. Hoping McKenna isn't a brat in the class!!

On-line Christian University

"The Lord has created these tools (internet, video, audio capabilities, multiconferencing, and multicasting) to be used for the advancement of His kingdom, and MCU is in the vanguard of this move of God."

I was looking through some search results on Google this morning and found a school called Miami Christian University. Out of curiosity I clicked on it, and (along with it's teribbly tacky webpage) found out it was a completely on-line Christian University. That quote is from their page explaining the school...ya. Didn't really know what to think of that one. They even have a "virtual campus" with rooms and buildings for students and profs to interact!

shoot 'dem guns

Hi. It's me again. Tonight was fun, doing something a little out of the ordinary. My dad took my brother and me to a gun club to shoot some "trap." We were just going to check it out see if we wanted to be members but they were so stinkin nice there and they let us shoot. We had us three and then two other guys in our line. It's set up in stations where you move around a little and just shoot from different angles, taking turns of course. We each shot a total of 25 shots. I ended up hitting 13/25, my dad was like 15/25 and my brother was 16/25. I was surprised at how I well I was doing! I don't think I've shot since last fall. It kinda boosted my pride a little, cause the other kid who was with us was about my age and he kinda looked the part...like he totally knew what he was doing but he only ended up being 9/25! It's kinda nerve racking because you don't want to do anything wrong with the gun or anything cause you'll get yelled at, but they were really nice there with giving me pointers and stuff and we weren't even members or anything. So I enjoyed it! Anyone want to come shooting with us next week!!??;) Next week we advance to shooting "skeet":)

Another little one...

Well it looks like in 9 months I may have another little Erickson to play with! I'm so excited for them. They didn't start their family till later in life so they are a little bit older now. Unfortunatly they lost the last baby so we are hoping God will allow this new one to stick it out and hang around a while! Be praying for them, will ya?

Sweet Children:)

Isn't that cute? I have that on my bullitian board above my computer from a couple days ago. This is Robyn(left) and Aryn(right) VanDyke. They are the cutest girls. I started babysitting for their family about 8 or 9 years ago when Aryn was only 3 or 4, her younger brother, Gabe, was only 1 and before they adopted Robyn and Graham. Their parents are the ones who got me the nanny job I have right now so once I started that I couldn't watch them anymore. I hardly ever see them so I take them out for fun sometimes just to hang out. This past weekend I took them to Chuck e. Cheeses and icecream before they had to go back to school. Isn't that a cool photo though! If you want one it's only a token at Chuck e Cheeses! haha, we took a ton of them. I used up all my tokens on these and that ski ball game(the coolest game in the world!) I'm planning on taking my engagement pictures there someday, it's not copyrighted so you only pay a token and then make as many copies as you want! Plus it doesn't matter if you are tan or not, they are all black and white! How does that sound?;) Sounds like a good idea to me.

TOMORROW I AM 21 1/2, HORRAY!!

kiss dating good-bye (haha j/k)

I've often wondered what it would be like to be dating someone. I see my friends who are dating and I wonder if I'll be just like them. Will I want to hang out with just other couples all the time? Will my single friends start avoiding me because they feel 'left-out?' Will my friends feel like they can never call me to hang out because I'll always be wanting to hang out with 'him?' I realize there is a medium in there somewhere. If I am dating someone, it will be with the intention of getting married someday. So of course I'd want to spend quite a bit of my time with him (hopefully!) because I'd enjoy his company and obviously time is a big factor in building a relationship. The thing is...I can't put my other friends off to the side.

I guess I am just trying to put myself into someone elses shoes for a bit. It's been hard lately with some of my good friends beginning to date eachother. You used to be the one they'd call when they were bored, you used to be the first one they'd invite to something...I suspose some of that has to do with jealosy/selfishness (not wanting someone else "taking your place") and some of it is just obviously going to happen. I've found it to be a whole lot easier to start becoming friends with someone once they are in a relationship, because then you kind of start out knowing and understanding their priorities.

One of the hardest things of the whole situation is when friends start gossiping. I can't say that I've never done it either, but it hurts to hear friends gossip about friends. If I were dating someone, I wouldn't want my other friends to starting pulling away because they feel uncomfortable and then start talking about how I never hang out with them anymore, or how annoyed they are at how I can't take my eyes off 'him.' I guess that's all for now, I don't know what the solution for this dilema is right now. I'll probably just have to say what I think. That we shouldn't be talking about them, what would we feel like if we were in their situation? It seems like such a little problem that I turn into a huge one because I can't figure out who's right and who's wrong and what my place in the whole thing should be.

Personal Ad

Pretty creative Personal ad...if you're trying to attract a female PILOT:)

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WAHOO!

I just paid off my computer tonight! I went on-line to check what my balence was and it was only $120 so I just paid it off:) The funny thing is that I signed up for a Best Buy credit card so I'd have 12 months interest free financing and so I figured out how much I'd have to pay on it each month in order for it to be paid off by 12 months but it was such a small payment each month and months take so long to go by and get to the next month so it took me less than 2 months:)

AND... another cool thing is that the APY on my savings account just went up again too! It's a variable rate so it really can change at anytime but when I signed up for the account it was at 3% yield and it's only gone up so far! God is good, I pray that if God allows me to live "comfortably" the rest of my life, that I will never forget Him and why I needed to lean on Him in the first place...it wasn't because I was poor or in physical need, it was because He showed me I had a much much greater need than money could ever care for. Baruk Hashem, bless the Name.

Tiffany is home! She survived her summer of scary horses falling on top of her!
Jeff Jaggers is a VERY neat guy. I am SO happy and thankful for the part he has in my friends' life.
REMINDER to all that we can't give up when times are tough.

One more random thing that probably won't be as funny in the morning as it is right now... I was reading through someone's (who I do not know at all) blog and they were talking about cleaning a bathtub or something and the product they used worked so well this person says "I swear, all I did was gently wipe, and the soap scum ring around the bottom of the tub packed its bags yelling, 'I'm packing my bags and yelling!'" HAHA I laughed... I guess I just wasn't expecting the scum to say THAT:)

Tip for the day

Don't take lightly the power of a new shaver:( I forgot I put a new razor head on my shaver this morning and totally sliced open the skin on my leg...ouch!

Besides all that nonsence, college starts back up again soon. You know what that means, more homework...wait a sec. I don't go to school! haha just kidding, it means my friends go back to school! Everyone's leaving this weekend already. This year is easier than last cause I have some more friends at home here now than I did last fall. We sure will miss all you outta state schoolers though!! Enjoy your time and make sure you call all us non-schoolers and teach us your mad skills you get to learn in class every day!

Israel Begins Withdrawal From Gaza Strip

Israel Begins Withdrawal From Gaza Strip

Check it out - I was in this exact same area 2 months ago! Check out the link to the video in the left pane, under the picture. This all happened about an hour ago. We were on those exact streets walking from Israel through the checkpoint, past that big wall, by the gaurds and barbwire and into the Gaza Strip. Yikes! Somehow that still makes me miss Israel, that's strange but it does.

Good 'ol Chuck-E-Cheeses

Today was so much fun. My friend, Becky, called me this morning asking if McKenna and I wanted to go with her and Jabin (the little boy she nanny's for) to Chuck e Cheeses. I hadn't been there since I was a kid but it sounded like so much fun, plus we love any excuse to keep McKenna busy and happy! We planned to meet there at like 11-11:30ish but once we told them they were both so excited we went early:) McKenna has the cutest little excited face, I love it so much. She had such a blast playing with all the new toys! What was really nice is she was wide awake and happy the whole time and fell asleep on the way home and slept for 3 1/2 hours. That was a nice break for me to clean up the house for them for the weekend and get a few other things done. I wanted to put these picture up here cause she is so adorable:)




Kids are fun...you just have to have the energy to keep them busy, train them not to whine at you and have ideas of what to keep them busy with! Some days I am thankful for my job:)

woops!

I made a big mistake by not thinking and deleted a video file off my computer. I don't remember doing it but it's gone so I must have thought it was too big and I was finished with it so I could delete it off. The problem lies in that I hadn't yet finished the video I was using the clip in and in Pinnacle Studio 9 (the software I use to edit videos) if the program can't find a clip from your project, it won't let you open ANY of it. So I lost those many hours of video work. Stink. I've tried all I could to get it back but I guess I'll just have to learn from this mistake...and I'm going to quit talking about this because the more I think about it the more seriously depressed I become cause it's just a stupid graduation video that noone is going to watch again anyways...oh well. Hopefully something good will happen in the next couple days to lift the spirits a little again.

I am going shopping tomorrow night with Jen and Nancy...something I haven't done in a long time. Right now, it just sounds good. Then Thursday night we are planning on going cannoeing down the Rogue River. I'm excited about that, it is so relaxing. Although I'll wish I didn't have to work again the next day...oh well. No plans for the weekend yet, but 5 weeks till I'm in Jackson Hole again.

hm...happy thoughts...happy thoughts...happy thoughts...happy thoughts...

YIPPEE!

Well, I'm really stinkin' excited because I just got a flight out to Jackson Hole! I'll be gone for a week in September, my friend said I could stay with her and her husband in their house!! One of our old roommates is getting married on the weekend that I am there so I get to go to that as well! I can't wait, it is SO pretty out there. I just wish flights were faster (I know, that is such an american way of thinking) cause they scare me...but oh well I guess!

The majority of my family that was here visiting, left this morning. It was so much fun to see them again. Two of my cousins are getting married in the next year and one of them brought her fiance. He was so fun to meet, he was hilarious. They asked me to put together a slideshow/video for their wedding which is in January. I'm really excited because I love doing those, but for some reason they always make me nervous too. I must just really worry about if they are going to like it or not. But I'm excited still!

Yesterday was beach day for the family because it was everyone's last full day here. McKenna's parents said it would be fine if I took her out there too so we all went to Holland State Park for a few hours! McKenna had just gotten to go to the beach this past weekend up by her grandparents house so she was SO excited to go to the "beachy" again! She loved every part of it:) All I have to say though is if you plan on having kids someday...enjoy your beachtime NOW!

YIPPEE! I get to go back to Jackson Hole!!
Just incase you are one of those who picture Wyoming as prarie land:)