Poker night

Tonight was poker night! I learned how to play this summer and played off and on with friends until school started in August. I didn't find the time to do it during the fall semester, so it became one of my goals for Christmas break to have a Poker Night. It was a lot of fun. Megan and her husband Dave came, as did Love. Kyle from church came and brought along his friend - Lindsay who used to live in my residence hall back when I first started at GC. It was a nice mix of people and a pretty relaxed game. I was the second one to lose all my chips, but that was ok with me. I realize that I'm still not very good at the game, so I don't expect to win. We, as always, did not play for money - just bragging rights. Love walked away with the bragging rights this time! People brought yummy snacks and were here for about 5 hours. Overall it was a success! I'm looking forward to when school is out and I can host these games more often.

p.s. I love you

Today I cried and cried and cried...over a movie! The Rissers, Cara (home from Texas), and I went to see the new movie "p.s. I love you" starring Hilary Swank. It was such a good movie. It made me laugh and made me cry. It dealt with a woman's grief over the death of her husband. It had flashbacks of their relationship and promises of hope for her future. She didn't deal with her grief in entirely healthy ways (or moral ways at times - this was made by Hollywood afterall), but I don't think any of us deal with grief in accordance with the "5 stages of grief", instead we sort it out as we go along with the help of those around us.

Much of the movie rang true to me and offered something I could relate to. Of course I haven't dealt with the loss of a spouse, but I do face the uncertainly and scariness of a future alone. I think it hit me in a poignant way with this being the Christmas season with its focus on families and "that special someone" in your life. I appreciated how the movie didn't end all neatly wrapped up in a predictable "chick flick" ending, but instead left the viewer with a sense of hope for the future amidst the uncertainty of the present.

It is my prayer that during this holiday season and into the new year that I am able to carry that same sense of hope for my own life - that while not entirely sure what is next or if I'll have another person by my side, I am able to continue to hold on to the hope that whatever it looks like I will be ok - more than ok in fact...I will be great!

Snow!

I LOVE snow! The world looks lovely with a nice thick blanket of powdery snow covering it. I was delighted this weekend when we received a generous amount of the pretty white stuff while the family was down at Camp Mack. Here are a few photos of it...

The Wampler Lodge sign covered in snow.

Our cars during the night.

The bushes covered in snow.

Camp Mack

This past weekend was my family's annual Christmas get together down at Camp Mack in Milford, IN. Here are a few photos from the weekend...

Gary and Daisy

Mom with Gavin & Lily

Kathy & Chris...newly engaged!

Santa...aka my brother Mike

Today is a day of great accomplishment!

About 2 years ago I found myself in a heap of financial trouble. I was at the point of despair and didn't know where to look for help and was pretty certain there was no way to ever get out of the pit I was in. Two very loving people stepped up to the plate and talked straight to me...laying out the consequences for continuing along the path I was on and offering a life preserver for me to grab if I chose. I chose and it's made all the difference! They helped me secure a loan that would consolidate all my credit card/car debt and have helped keep me on the right path. Today I paid off that loan. I have never been prouder of myself than I am today! It has not been an easy journey and I know I still have a ways to go until I am "debt-free" but this first hurdle has been crossed and the others don't look nearly as tough!

Chocolate!

Here's a photo from an event that I held a couple of weeks ago. Each fall I host a girl's movie night. We watch a chick flick and eat chocolate. As the photo shows we had a large amount of chocolate goodies to choose from. I'm sure the woman that checked me out at Meijer when I bought all of it must have thought I was going through some sort of life crisis to need that much chocolate! :)

Thanksgiving

Today was Thanksgiving. It was a very nice Thanksgiving overall. Most of the family had other plans, so I hosted Mom, Johnny, Jake, and Mike for lunch at my place. Mom is always talking about how tired she is and how much work doing stuff like this is, so I wanted to let the day be restful for her. The only real task I had for her was to cook the sweet potatoes....she does that MUCH better than I do! I was pleased with how the food turned out, but found that it was more work to make Mom sit down than it was to do all the cooking! She wouldn't stop doing stuff. I found that slightly amusing, but kept sending her back to the living room!

After lunch Jacob left, but Brenda and her kids dropped by in shifts. It was really good to see the twins again. I've been keeping in touch with them more during the past year thanks to the wonders of text messaging and Facebook. It was good to see them face to face for the first time in a while.

We also planned the menu and talked about gifts and exchanges and such for Camp Mack while Brenda was there. For those of you who don't know about the Camp Mack experience...our family rents a lodge for a weekend around Christmas and all go hang out together. It's the one time a year when most of us are there. I think that this year there will be about 18-19 there. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm sure we'll get on each other's nerves, but I think overall it will be a good time.

Well, back to studying for Hermeneutics....

Final class of the semester

Today is my final class of the semester. I wish this meant my work for the semester was over...it is not.

I will be finished with Principles & Theories of Counseling in about 5 hours. We met this morning for lecture/discussion and then spent the afternoon recording ourselves working with a classmate in a counseling session. We each took turns doing and being counseled. I was SO nervous about it! I left the house this morning feeling fine about it, but as the time got closer I was trembling inside. It was crazy because I thought I felt OK about it, but here my body was shaking inside something fierce! Once we started the session I calmed down and actually think I did a pretty good job of counseling the woman I was working with. Myself and about half of the class will meet tonight and go over the tapes of us counseling one another - critiquing our counseling skills. I think I did an OK job, so that part doesn't worry me. I will turn in my workbook and then all that is left to do is email my final paper to my professor! I will then have one grad school class completed! :)

I still have 300 or so pages of outside reading and a final project due in my Hermeneutics class. I have until the 30th to complete that work. I then have a month off of school. This sounds great, except that I already have my syllabus for the winter term and have 38 chapters that need to be read by the 3rd of January! The books are big, but look interesting, so it's all good!

A wonderful weekend!

This weekend was wonderful! It was my weekend off and I did so much great stuff that it felt like more than just a weekend. Awesome!

Avalon sings
Greg, Melissa, Janna, and Jeremi

Friday night the Rissers and I went to Spring Arbor, Michigan for an Avalon concert. It was in an area that is not the Christian music mecca that our county is, so we were some of the few people in the crowd that had been to an Avalon concert before. Denise is a member of the Avalon fan club, so we were able to go to a private "meet & greet" after the show. It turns out that she was the only person at the concert who was from the fan club, so it was just the Rissers, me and Avalon. We got to visit with them for about 15 minutes or so. They are very down to earth people and we had fun chatting with them for a bit.

Avalon and their fans!
Denise, Greg, Melissa, Deanna, me, Janna, and Jeremi

After the concert we went to a hotel about 30 minutes from Spring Arbor for the night. We stayed up late eating junk food, watching stupid tv and talking. It was a lot of fun! I absolutely LOVE staying in hotels, so that would have been fun enough, but to have such great traveling companions was icing on the cake!

Saturday we spent several hours at the outlet malls in Fremont, IN. I did some Christmas shopping at the Bath & Body outlet store and some shopping for me at Dress Barn. It was a successful shopping day!

In the evening we ended up in Van Wert, Ohio at our friend Jill Fast's place. Jill went to college with us and is married with two little adorable boys - Zane and Jace. We watched the Ohio State game, ate, caught up on each other's lives, and played with the boys. We had to leave long before we were ready, but the two hour drive back to Goshen couldn't be avoided.

Jill's husband Mike and their youngest- Jace

Deanna, me, Jill, and Denise

Sunday was pretty much business as usual...Living Room, church, lunch with the college students, shopping, and dinner & meeting with the RAs. I've been working on homework and baking cookies for a floor meeting that is happening at 10:30 tonight. Until later...

A weekend off!

I am SO looking forward to the weekend! It is my weekend off! It's kinda my first weekend off of the year. I had one in September, but stayed at my mom's one night, got up at the butt crack of dawn to work at the relief sale and spent the rest of Saturday shopping and cooking for church stuff...like I normally do on Saturday. In October I didn't take one because I knew I wanted a night off in December, so I decided to forgo a weekend in exchange for that night. So, this is my first real weekend off work and out of Goshen! The Rissers and I are going away. We'll be back late Saturday night and I'll hopefully have some good photos to post of our adventure. I'm not going to say where we are going so that you check my blog next week to find out! I will tell you that we will be in 3 different states! :)

In the meantime I've been busy working on my paper that is due Friday, participating in discipline meetings, and having late night floor meetings to discuss housing for spring term & RA evaluations. It's been a hectic week.

On a super exciting note...the residence halls close for Christmas break one month from tomorrow! Then I'll have a month off just for relaxation...and catering, celebrating the holidays, working in ITSMedia, doing reading for next semester's class and sleep!