Lots of Posts

Sorry about the mass pile up of posts. I did a ton in one night because there was a lot I wanted to say/show and time is quickly running out before school starts this Monday. So I just got it all over with. Lets hope I don't get excited about anything between now and Monday. :)

Encouragement

I've said it once and I'll say it again, probably many more times, actually, that C.S. Lewis is my very favorite author. I'm reading The Screwtape Letters right now and would like to share a part of a chapter that I found VERY encouraging. Keep in mind that the letters are written from one devil to a kind of "junior devil," so any references to "the Enemy" are references to God, etc. Its a lengthy passage, but the juiciest parts are from the middle on, but I don't think they're as juicy if you skip the first part. So I'd say, if you don't feel like reading this right now, don't, and just wait until you do. Or better yet, I'd say read the whole book. I'm just really jazzed about this.

"You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little over-riding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles....Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Pan Cake Breakfast

One morning before I left for Missouri, my little brother made us a pancake breakfast! He's the best one in the family at making pancakes. Yes, he's wearing a paper chef hat that says "The Pan Cake Man." He told me his dream is to own a pan cake house IN Disneyland. Doesn't that sound magical? I told him go for it.




This is the plate of pancakes he made for me. I had casually mentioned that I would probably slice up some bananas and put them on my pancakes when he gave them to me. I went upstairs to get ready for the day or something, and when I came back down this was waiting for me. Isn't my brother the best?


This is his stack of pan cakes.

My Trip to Missouri

During my lay-over in Denver I walked around the airport and was very pleased to find a memorial to NASA Astronaut Jack Swiggert, one of the heroes of Apollo 13. I hope I'm not too much of a dork to get excited over this.


And when I arrived in Missouri, this is what was waiting to greet me (besides my sister, her husband and their baby-along-the-way). An ice storm! It was really cool to see that some trees had totally split and fallen over on account of the weight of the ice that had built up on the branches.

The St Louis Cardinals Stadium!





Nice views of the arch. It was SPECTACULAR in person.

This is inside the crazy/clausterphobia-producing/disneylandish/five-seating compartment that climbs up to the top of the Arch from its inside. Pretty cool.





Beautiful views of St. Louis from the top of the Arch.

My sister and I saw this obscure object in the river below the Arch. We could NOT figure out what it was. Any guesses?



Fun in the museum at the base of the Arch!


I don't know if you can see them but behind us in these two pictures are tons of geese. It was pleasant to watch them relaxing in the frigid water, but we quickly made an exit when we discovered we were standing on tons of goose poop. Sidenote: Who ever knew that geese poop like cats? You'd think since they're birds they would poop more like birds. But no. You couldn't tell the difference between cat poop and goose poop.

We ate at PF Changs before making the two hour drive to Waynesville, MO, where Heather and Matt live (Waynesville is close to Matt's base, Fort Leonardwood). We finished off our delicious meal with the most wonderful banana spring rolls. OOOOHHHH, those were good.


Heather had the guest bed all set up nice and cozy even with a gift pack! The gift pack held a movie, perfume, lip balm I had been wanting, a cute journal, etc. Such a good sister. Oh yeah, also on the foot of the bed were some clothes that she didn't want, including some underwear, so she decided to leave them on my bed for me to decide whether I wanted them. When Heather and I were on our way to the hotel the night before, she got a call from Matt back in Waynesville. He asked in a very "oooh I caught you in a big silly mistake" tone of voice why in the world there was UNDERWEAR on the guest bed. Pretty funny. Heather just simply explained to him why. When I finally got to the guest bedroom myself the next day, I said "Why is there UNDERWEAR on the bed?" just to tease Matt, and he looked at me and emphatically said "I know! Isn't that WEIRD?"


My pregnant sister!
We went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant a few days later. Heather ordered bijou cheese chicken without knowing what "bijou cheese" was. We decided that since it was an Italian restaurant in WAYNESVILLE, MO, it was probably going to be chicken with cheese-wiz. When she actually got her food and it really was covered in this orange cheese it made us laugh so hard. But I have to include the fact that she loved it. And it was NOT cheese-wiz. :)

Me in front of a YUMMY bar-b-que place called Bandana's!

The last event of the trip, and the most exciting! That's Heather with the hospital behind her, where she was going to get an ultrasound and find out the sex of the baby! They let me come into the ultrasound room with her, so I got to see her little baby GIRL moving around and everything. I thought it was really cool how you can SEE the heartbeat with the ultra-sound. I shed a few tears. My little niece.

And now I'm back home...and discovering that I think I'd rather be in Waynesville, Missouri. At least until the 30th when they move to Seattle!

Rose Parade

This post is a number of weeks overdue!!

Anyways, at about 1:45 in the morning on January 1st, 2007, Scott Mallon and Sara Borntrager (to be married on February 10th...yay!), Ryan Secor, Charis Simmons and I arrived on Colorado Blvd in Pasadena. We quickly found a suitable "campsite" near the curb where we would have good viewing of the Rose Parade and we laid out our sleeping bags. Scott went right to work setting up his little portable stove, and when it was all ready Sara and Scott made us all hot chocolate. I was quite impressed when Scott and Ryan pulled out raw meat from their coolers and cooked it, right there on the street! Scott had brought steak and Ryan brought lamb. Man alive, Ryan knows how to cook lamb. Or, I guess it was very early in the morning (or very late at night, whichever way you want to look at it), so perhaps my tastebuds didn't have their BEST discernment going on, but anyways, it seemed to taste like heaven.

It was a very fun night to spend together. After cooking and having several theological discussions, we turned slap-happy. Suddenly everything Scott said gave Sara and me blue faces. Our giddyness wore us out, and we all ended up napping from 4 am to 7am.

At 7 am I don't think any of us felt as happy to be alive as we had felt before we all slept, but when the parade finally started it was nice to take our minds off how much we just wanted a shower. I have to admit, I did not stay out all night for the Rose Parade. I stayed out all night simply to stay out all night with friends. It was WAY worth it. The parade was nothing to shout about, I thought, but I did like the Star Wars march.

Scott and Sara as we were just beginning to get slap-happy.

Ryan and Charis were pooped from the started, but once Ryan had downed
his lamb, they were both out of it.

And here's me looking pretty much how I felt. :)
Happy but unkempt.

Sara and I loved Scott's wake-up hair at 7 am.

Self-portrait. After 3 hours of sleep on concrete.

Don't they look simply marvelous?

Ok, so here's how the first float looked from our viewing point.



And, just as I thought, I didn't capture the Star Wars presentation very well.
Darth Vader led the way, then a BUNCH of storm troopers, then Darth Mal, I
think, and then the float was supposed to be Nabu I think with Queen Amidalla.
I sure hope I have all my Star War's personal pronouns down. And spelled
correctly.

It was SO fun!

My Little White Prince: Winston, or P-Dub (for short)

There he is as he looks today: my little white prince. Here begins the story of my silly, cuddly, brain-damaged (or so we believe) cat.

He was discovered in the wheel-well of my dad's car in the early summer of 2005. My dad was forced to drive to a mechanic to get him out because my soon-to-be prince would NOT let himself be seen by the light. While the hood of the car was up the furry and dirty cat made the mistake of darting through the engine compartment, at which point my dad laid a firm grip on him. He decided to bring the dirty and frantic bundle home in a tightly bound box with the logic that because the cat had hitched a ride from our apartment complex, his owner must live in our complex.

When my dad brought him home, he released him in the seclusion of our little bathroom with my brother and I present. Immediately when the box was opened, the cat jumped onto and off of all four walls of the bathroom in the period of a millisecond and ended his search for an escape by climbing up my dad's leg like a tree. When he met eyes with my dad and realized his leg WASN'T a tree, he froze, trembled slightly, and slid down his leg again. Poor guy.

Shortly after that I put the kitty in a cat-carrier and took him around the complex, asking if anyone had lost him. No one claimed ownership, and I don't blame them. Look at this ugly mutt of a thing:


Later that night, when it was apparent we would be keeping the cat for at least a few days while we searched for his owner (or at least a taker), Hunter and I decided to give the grey mutt a bath.






When the wet soapy wash cloth proved too feeble to make a dent in his filthiness, we opted for dunking him.




Our discovery the next morning was that he was a white cat! But we had to give him another bath because all his filth didn't come off the night before.


And from then on it was just a matter of becoming endeared to him! When we realized how much we had fallen in love with him.... actually, when my dad realized how much I had fallen in love with him and him with me (he really believed I was his real mom, because I was the one who bathed him (on more than two occasions), brushed him, stroked him, played with him, etc.), my dad decided to let me keep him because my birthday was coming up! So he became Prince Winston, more commonly known as P-Dub.

(Sorry these two are side-ways. Don't feel like fixing them. Isn't he cute, thought?)




Now, we kind of knew from the beginning that he was brain-damaged. 1) What kind of a cat would stay in the wheel-well of a car while the car is moving? At high speeds? 2) He calmly submitted to baths. 3) When we let him loose in our court yard, he unsuccessfully tried to jump into our home through our closed French doors three times in a row. He just couldn't understand why the clear air in between the outside and inside of our home was so hard and head-bonkish.

Sidenote: That Christmas my sister, Heather, got Mario Party (a game-cube game). All four of my siblings loved to play it together, and one of the characters that one of us would always end up with was Wa-Luigi. We noticed that this character was the clumsiest and most brain-damaged of them all, so we began calling my cat "Wa-Luh-P-Dub."

Over a year later, he still believes I'm his mom. He usually follows me around the house when I'm home, LOVES to cuddle when I'm on my bed, and if I'm studying at my desk and not paying attention to him then he will leap onto my back from behind and try to hold on piggy-back style. When he realizes he can't hold on for long, then he contents himself with laying down next to my textbook and darting his tail across the page I'm reading...over and over and over again.

He's also still very clumsy. If he's feeling really needy of me, then while he's following me around the house he will walk so close to my feet that my legs often get tangled around his body. We often have collisions, but he usually realizes that its his fault and therefore likes to act like they don't happen.

He's the only boy cat of the house (we have three female cats here), and one of his favorite pasttimes is to wrestle with them. Therefore, the other cats HATE him and growl if he walks too close.

He meticulously cleans himself
because every so often I threaten to give him a bath myself (and I actually do still give him baths...probably once every four months...white cats get dirty!)

He's silly:


He's adorable:

And he loves to interact with me by playing with wadded up pieces of paper. I tried to take a couple of videos of him INTERACTING, but just like a cat, when you want them to do something, they don't do it. The videos are still pretty cute, though. But besides the fact that he didn't really do what I want him to do, I don't really know how to post them on my blog..yet. Maybe I'll try to figure it out later. At least the videos are ON the computer. If any of you want to tell me how to do it in three concise sentences or less (if that's possible), I'd love it, because I don't feel like experimenting on the computer right now.

Anyways, that's the brief synopsis of my little cat. Hope you enjoyed!