What Is This?

On Sunday morning, my husband found this on our front porch. What is this? Well to answer your question it is a bunch of junk. From what I can see there is a little cowboy hat, some fake flowers, rings, earrings, a spoon, a fork, a wallet, a hair clip, a tin can, etc.

My only question is for whoever did this is, do you want it back or can I throw it away?

On another note, I'm doing pretty well this semester. I'm actually really proud of myself. I've made nothing but A's so far. I'm not trying to jinx it or anything, I'm just really proud of myself. I'm realizing though that I cannot wait to teach to a bunch of kids. Although the practice on my peers is good for me, I'm sick of getting so nervous. Like last night, I helped my husband teaching some 1st - 5th graders and I had no problem. I don't get nervous in front of kids, just my peers. Which I guess is normal but it's getting kind of old. I just don't know what to do about it. I try to not let it get the best of me but sometimes I feel like it does.

I have some really high expectations for myself and I don't want to let me nerves to hold me back.

BIRTHDAY

Yesterday was my husband’s birthday.

He is the big 25 which is surprisingly not as exciting as 16, 18, or 21 even though 25 is somewhat of a landmark birthday. In case you don't know when a male turns 25 their insurance becomes a little cheaper and also at the age of 25 everyone is able to rent a car.

My personal opinion though is when you get married or join the military; all rules regarding age should not apply. If a person is out fighting for my freedom I feel they should be able to have a drink if they so choose, and one problem Darrell and i faced once was renting a car, we were married and on our own but we either couldn't rent a car or had to pay a fee, which i thought was completely stupid at the time because my husband worked for the company.

Anyway, back to his birthday.

For the past two years instead of me giving my husband a gift, he's been giving me a gift on his birthday. Never on purpose, it just happened that way. The first birthday we were together, he got me a dog. My hamster had died that day and i was completely devastated so he got me max. Last year we got ourselves a Wii which was really his present but I ended up playing it more. So now he says he got me the Wii. So this year I was making sure no gift buying for me was happening.

We had fun yesterday though. we went to the science museum which turned out to be really cool. they have a planetarium, an IMAX Dome, a TON of exhibits that were really fun to play and use, but my absolute favorite thing was the Science Live exhibit. This exhibit consisted of a one woman show of her doing explosive experiments with the children. She was so hilarious but the experiments were pretty legit, putting things on fire, one cool thing was she put like hydrogen in a water jug, like the ones from collagen, and then shaked it up to make it a gas, and then put a candle at the opening and it just went flying! It was attached to a swing so no one got hit or anything but it was crazy. Finally she got some really cold liquid hydrogen, something like that, and put it in a regular 2 liter bottle, and threw it in this big container. We covered our ears and BAMB!! IT EXPLODED!

The whole time I was thinking, I really want her job. She was having so much fun, but then I realized that the kind of concept I want to bring to my classroom about science. I want to make it LIVE. I'm going to start a hat collection for my classroom for me to wear during different subjects or topics. When I'm a scientist I may wear a white lab coat with some safety goggles and since I love acting I may just take it a step further and act like different people when I'm in the hats. :-) I want them to be has engaged as possible.

Anyway, my husband had a good time and after we left the museum I told him we could go eat anywhere he wanted. Instead of picking like olive garden or even some place like red lobster, he picked McAlister's Deli, because he wanted some chili in a bread bowl. Then we went over to one of his friends’ house and they played COD and Halo for the rest of the night.

It is funny because I really didn't do anything for his birthday, I didn't get him a present, a card, or even a birthday cake. You know why?

It’s not because I am a horrible wife, but it's because I already got him a HUGE gift. See I gave him the gift of sight. I got him eye surgery so he could see without glasses or contacts. and i bet you can guess that a surgery like that could cost a good arm and leg. You are absolutely correct. So you can see why I am saying that the eye surgery is his birthday, valentine’s day, Christmas, presidents day, you get the picture.

Last year though I threw him a surprise birthday party which was really fun but this year it was nice to just hang out with him and not stress too much. I'll save that for our kids.

Happy Birthday My Love.

Snowboarding with Jesus

Today is such a beautiful day in my neck of the woods.

Speaking of woods, I've been trying to convince my husband we need to move to Colorado when we graduate. My dream place is Breckenridge, Colorado, the capital of snowboarding. Probably not but it is definitely my capital. I've been trying to convenes him that it truly is his dream place to live he just doesn't know it yet. He has never been there and he seems to already know he wouldn't like it.

He is one of those guys who love adventure but is completely unmotivated because well there really isn't any adventure here in Oklahoma. The most exciting thing is the weather and how it changes so randomly. In Colorado there is always something to do. You can go hiking, boating, fishing, hunting, bike riding, jeeping, things he loves to do but does not ever get to do them.

I always talk to God about one day me and him are going to snowboard and go down the half pipe together. That is something I always think about. It started when I first read The Ishbane Conspiracy you'll just have to read it, a really good book. The book gave me a new light of how to look at heaven. That God really views Earth as beautiful and that heaven isn't a bunch of clouds but a more perfect version of Earth. I truly believe that I am going to snowboard with Jesus down a mountain.

I just can't imagine Heaven without Snowboarding. I believe that God loves it just as much as I do because it says in the bible that God places his own passions within us. If I’m wrong then I'm wrong but I really hope I'm not.

I guess it just goes to show that we all have different passions. I like to think about how my life could have been so different.

I've told you a bit about my story, and I promise to continue. I just really want you to get a feel of who I am and the person I have become because I think it will help you understand the story much better. I do not view my father as evil for punching a wall and I don't view my mother as evil for giving me away. I thank God for what they did for me, even if they didn't want to or had no control, I am thankful for my story, my life.

I wonder what kind of soccer player I would have been if my parents had kept me. I have natural athletic talent and I was born to play soccer but never truly did. So I wonder if I would be sitting here now writing this to you if I stayed. I wonder if I had earned a full ride soccer scholarship to some major university, if I would still want to be a teacher. I wonder if I would have ever tried snowboarding if I had stayed with my biological parents.

Would have my three dogs? Would I have a faith in Christ? Would I have ever met my husband? How would the lives of my family and friends have changed if I was never in their life?

A more recent question would be if I had moved to Colorado my jr. year of high school would I be at the Olympics now? I have been snowboarding since I was 13 years old but skiing since I was 3. So I've been on a mountain for almost 20 years of my life. I had the opportunity to move to Colorado my jr. year and I was going to move up there with one of my good friends but he got the opportunity to go live with his father, a chance that would never come again. I should have still gone but my mother was afraid for me to be up there by myself, and really I was too. I then decided that I wanted to go do my first two years of college in Breckenridge and work on the slopes. In Breckenridge they have a community college so I was going to go there for my basics and work the slopes and live at my parents house, but my father didn't want be so far away (he would miss me to much) that he made me promise that I had to go to college in Oklahoma for at least a year. I made the promise with ever intention to move to Colorado for my sophomore year. That didn't happen. My dad knew I would get stuck here and would decide to not go. I actually met my now husband my sophomore year and he changed everything.

So now not only do I wonder what kind of soccer play I would have been but I also wonder what kind of snowboarder I would have been. It's not really too late for me as a snowboarder but really honestly, I don't see myself moving up there and training within the next 5 years and maybe by then it will be to late for me to go to the Olympics. I want to have a family and kids, and I know they wouldn't hold me back but at the same time I wouldn't want to do that to them. I just want to get up in those mountains again. It's been over two years since I have been on a mountain and I miss it so much.

If nothing else I just want to move up there and snowboard with my husband and kids all the time but if that doesn't ever happen either I'll at least get to snowboard for eternity with Jesus.
The Adopted One.

When a Fustration becomes a Blessing

Recently I have been watching some children after school. It's been a really good experience but honestly, no offence to their parents or anything but these kids for awhile were making me rethink my desire to be a teacher or even be a mommy. I almost gave up completely on watching this children or even hope on helping them.

I decided that if I'm going to be the best teacher, I shouldn't give on these kids. I want to help them be the best they can be so I can also become the best I can be. After I picked them up from the bus stop it was again what it normally is arguing and yelling. I was tired of them yelling at each other and me getting frustrated and angry. So when we got to the church I had them remain in the car and I talked to them. I asked them if they like being yelled at by their sibling and if they think it would be fair to say that neither of them should yell at each other if neither of them likes it. Then I told they are responsible for their own actions and that I didn't want to hear they say that what they did was okay because their sibling did it first. After our little chat things were incredibly better. They were much nicer to each other. We still hit some bumps in the road but compared to the day before it was heaven on earth.

I was really encouraged after that. I felt that those kids were a huge frustration to me one day and then the next they were a big blessing in my life.

I wonder if God feels that way sometime. I cannot imagine God getting frustrated with me because all he is love but I know he expects the best of me at the same time. I get really frustrated with myself all the time with my faults but at the same time I know that God loves me and finds me a blessing, much like I found those kids a blessing in mine.

I don't know, but it just goes back that I am the adopted one. I am adopted into Gods love and I am so thankful for that.

The Passion

Ever since I was very young, I have always wanted to know who my mother was. The fact that she told me that she wanted to meet me again someday really intrigued me. I knew she had to be different from just looking at why my brother and sister were put up for adoption. I knew very little about her, I knew she had played soccer and I always found myself asking, "I wonder if she liked horses, or t-ball, or school. I wonder if she had struggled in the same ways I'm struggling." I had a huge desire to know more.

Because of this desire, I started to see a bigger picture. I knew there had to be more out there, I just wasn't sure what. My mother was raise baptist and my father is half Jewish but his family never believed in the faith and went to a variety of churches throughout his life. Unfortunately for my father he never found a church he felt like where he belonged. We went to a variety of churches as well throughout my life but I hated dresses at a young age and didn't like going. We eventually just stopped going. We would go every Easter though, my mother made sure of that and I am very thankful for it. I heard the good news at least once a year, but it was always told in a way I did not understand it or not engaging for my young ears. But God found a way to at least let me hear it and give me a desire to know him.

It wasn't until I was 14 though when I finally heard the story in a way I understood it. I had been going to a local church with my friends for a few months at this point and was learning about Christ but did not have a ear to hear. I did not understand. One week we had an Evangelist come in for a revival and Wednesday it was youth night. I was riding with my friends over to the church and I remember we were almost in a car accident. It may have been nothing but a fender bender if it had occur ed but regardless it got my mind thinking. I knew if if I did not accept Jesus as my savior I wouldn't go to heaven, that much I understood. I just didn't know why I should accept him. I didn't understand why I should. So After the scare of the car accident I remember "Where would you have gone if you had died" went through my mind. I knew the answer, hell. I knew I needed to accept Jesus then because I was afraid of Hell, but even though I knew hell was a bad place, that just did not seem like a good reason to worship someone.

We arrived at the church and the Evangelist was really funny and cool. We ate pizza and played games with each other but then we went over to the sanctuary for him to preach. I wasn't really nervous and the question I asked myself in the car was not forgotten but it wasn't on my mind either. I was too busy caught up in having fun with my friends.

So my friends and I were sitting in the pews and I was right in the middle of all of them. He began to preach of the night of the last hours of Jesus life. He told Jesus came to earth to be a man and to share Gods love with his people. He came to make a new way of life where no one has to go through a priest to talk to God but each of us can have our own relationship with God. He told us the first insult, the first punch, the whipping Jesus went through as a punishment from men. When he came to the part of the Cat of Nine Tails was when I just couldn't understand why anyone would go through all that. I did not understand. I remember asking myself silently, "Why would anyone do this willingly?" and the Evangelist said, "He did all this because he loves you." That is when I knew God was truly speaking to me personally. He had heard my question in my mind and answered it to the world. It was then when I knew Love was a good reason to worship someone. The fact that Jesus died to my sins because he loves me was a great and only reasons for me. I knew that because I gave my life to Christ I would go to heaven, but I did not even care. All I wanted was someone to truly love me, and it reminded me of my biological mother and the sacrifice she did for me so I could have a better life.

My parents are the best and they love me very much, so do not get me wrong on that. I just knew there was so much more out there, that there was a God who knew and controlled the bigger picture of my life and his love means everything to me.

I was adopted again that day. I became the adopted one once more. However I know that God does not refer to me as his adopted child but as his very own. :-)

I was reminded of this journey last night. We had a youth movie night and we watched The Passion of the Christ. The part of the cat of nine tails always gets me and reminds me of the day when God first spoke to me. It is my prayer that God spoke to them last night and a few questions were answered.