First day of Lent

I mentioned in my post earlier this week that I would be sharing about the 40 things I am giving away during Lent. I'm actually going to give away 40 "things" each of the 7 weeks of Lent. Each week will have a theme. This week my theme is the "Food Pantry." Goshen is in Elkhart County, which has been hard hit by unemployment in the past year or two. And while experts say that things are getting better, there are still a great number of families that are struggling. I decided to donate 40 items to the food pantry this week.


Today I was at Wal Mart buying food for a student dessert party that I am hosting this evening. While I was there I picked up 10 cans of Mandarin Oranges (my favorite canned fruit) to put in my box of items to take to the food pantry.

Baby shower

On Monday evening we had a baby shower for my friends Rob & Sandy. Rob is my friend from waaaay back and Sandy is his lovely wife that he married 3 1/2 years ago. They are adopting a baby boy from Kazakhstan and just received their invitation to go to Kazakhstan to finalize the adoption! While the process has been going on for over a year, this invite to go to Kazakhstan has happened pretty quickly and their home group rapidly planned a lovely shower for them. I was only able to stay for half of it due to a commitment back on campus, but here are a few photos of the fun evening...

Jeremy really enjoyed the chocolate diaper game...is he TASTING that?!

Pretty sure Brian has his tongue out there to get a little lick. Ewww!

Amanda looks pretty disturbed by what she sees.

And here's Jeremy with the cutest member of our church family
...his daughter Talia.
Isn't she just too cute?! :)

Plans for Lent 2010

This year for Lent I've decided to do two things.

Before I tell you what I'm doing, I want to share something I learned this year...Lent is commonly know to be 40 days long, while the period of time between Ash Wednesday and Easter is actually 46 days. The six Sundays in Lent are not counted among the forty days because each Sunday represents a "mini-Easter", a celebration of Jesus' victory over sin and death.

The first thing I am doing for Lent is giving up Diet Coke (all soda really, but Diet Coke is what I drink 95% of the time.) Please note that I will give up Diet Coke for the full 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. I think this is a good thing for me to give up for Lent, since I will miss it a great deal and it will affect my day to day life - as I'm predicting I'll be much more tired at the end of my day without the generous caffeine infusion I get from my regular 3-5 glasses of pop a day.

I found this photo online and thought the added "completely addicted" was a fairly honest representation of my current relationship with Diet Coke!

The other thing that I am doing for Lent is giving something away each of the official 40 days of Lent. I will try to blog each day to let you know what I give away that day and any observations that I have about the experience. I look forward to sharing this journey with you all.

My pretty flowers

My niece gave me a pretty bouquet of flowers for Valentine's Day! It's a mixed arrangement, so it looks different from every side...

Pretty orchids and pink roses.

Carnations, Daises, and more pink roses.

My favorite view...with the brightly colored gerber daisy!

And here's me posing with the flowers.

At lunch my friends mentioned that my neck had yellow on it. I had to explain that I was posing with my flowers and must have gotten pollen on my neck!

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day can be a real bummer when you are a single gal. I made sure my day was filled with fun plans so that I didn't start to feel sorry for myself. I had the college students from church over for lunch today and then planned to go see "Valentine's Day" the movie with the women in my building. Unfortunately the movie was sold out by the time we got there, so I ended up back at home for the afternoon. I thought the idea of a nap sounded pretty good, so I was ok with that. Then my niece called and asked if I'd like to watch her kids for a couple of hours. I adore my little niece & nephew, so I was happy to oblige!

Here are Lily and Gavin posing with the box cake mix that we used to make cupcakes for my RA dinner tonight. They LOVE putting on the aprons and baking with Aunt Susie! :)

Here they are with the cupcakes ready to go into the oven.
Such proud happy smiles! :)

My RAs surprised me with a BIG Valentine's Day card when they came down for dinner. It was so sweet of them and was extra special because one of the boys thought the idea up and actually made the card...quite thoughtful for a 20 year old guy! :)

At 9:00 I opened my home to any students that were interested in decorating (and eating) Valentine's Day cookies. I baked about 120 heart shaped cookies, bought lots of fun heart shaped sprinkles, and put out two colors of frosting. Lots of girls came down and decorated cookies. We watched the Olympics on tv (figure skating) while we decorated and chatted. It was a fun evening!

Some of the gals with their cookies.

Ashley and Laura with the cookies they decorated for each other. Aren't they a couple of cuties?! And they are super sweet good girls on top of being adorable!

All in all it was a lovely Valentine's Day. I also got flowers from my niece. I will take photos of them soon and post those as well.

Happy Valentine's Day to you! :)

I'm a tad kooky!

Those of you who know me know that I'm a tad kooky..well, maybe more than a tad! I have waaaay too many photos of me doing silly things. Here's one that Kev took at home group last night. I was in the Beck's kitchen impersonating the Statue of Liberty with my leftover lettuce and cookbook.

Notice the yummy pizza in the front corner...I made it and it was delish! :)

Super Bowl Party '10

Each year I try to keep the programming that I do for students fresh - not just a repeat of the exact same activites we did the year before. (That would actually be easier, but not the most interesting or fun way to do things!) This year my Assistant Resident Director really wanted to throw a Super Bowl party...so we did!

We started the party with a wing cooking competition - judging occurred just before kick off.
Here are our celebrity judges - the men's soccer coach, our head chef at the cafeteria, and the president - posing with the students that were involved in the competition.

Here's a nice shot to show you how full the room was.
We placed the couches on top of tables of various height to make "stadium seating."

Here's a shot of our halftime spread...
Papa John's pizza and wings from the cafeteria!
Yummm!

I love being an aunt!

The older I get the more I realize how unlikely it is that I will have children of my own. This makes me a bit sad, but I choose (most days) to focus on the amazing children God has placed in my life. I have 12 nieces and nephews and probably another dozen or so of "honorary nieces & nephews." I treasure the opportunity I have to be a part of shaping the people that they are becoming, to shower them with love (and hugs & kisses), to share special moments with them, and to watch them grow up.

Two of my favorite little ones are my niece Megan's children. My little great niece and great nephew - Lily & Gavin. I had the opportunity to spend the evening with them on Friday. When I picked them up at daycare, when asked by her teacher who I was, Lily said, "That's my Susie!" I felt SO special...is there anything more wonderful than being loved by a child?!

I decided that this time we wouldn't just hang out at my place and bake cookies (like we usually do), but instead would go to Chuck E. Cheese and Build-a-Bear!

Chuck E. Cheese was a thrill for them! This was their first trip there and they were SOOOO excited when we pulled into the parking lot! They immediately began singing the "where a kid can be a kid" jingle from the ads. We ordered our pizza, got some tokens and spent about 45 minutes trying each of the rides in the toddler area. I then coaxed them back to the table to eat some pizza before we went and blew the rest of our tokens!

Here is Lily showing off the proof that we were actually at Chuck E. Cheese and Gavin is chewing on the plastic-ware (don't ask me why?!)

Here's Lily acting like a ham with her pizza and Gavin is probably pondering how he's going to eat Lily's olives off her pizza without her noticing. :)

And the kids with the star of the joint...Chuck E. Cheese!
Gavin was VERY excited to meet him!

After dinner at games were over we piled back in the car and went to the mall to Build-a-Bear. Each of the kids made a bear and chose an outfit for it - Lily chose a ballerina outfit for her bear named "Fluffy Kaluffy 8" and Gavin chose a police officer outfit for his bear named "Officer Edward." (They thought the names up, not me!)

I had never been a part of the Build-a-Bear process. It's really creative and fun! The woman who helped the kids was very kind, funny, and made them feel special. Lily even mentioned in the car on the way home that she thought the lady at the store was a very nice lady. :)

Watching the bear get his stuffing put in!

Needless to say, my niece said that the kids fell asleep very quickly that night and so did Aunt Susie! :)

My head hurts.

I did my taxes last week and it was a breeze - one W-2 form and the 1040 EZ form this year. I had my refund in just over a week!

Today I am doing my friend's taxes...multiple W-2s, rental property, educational expenses, side business, etc... Thankfully my dear friend, Diet Coke, is here to help me through the hours of crunching numbers. Part of me really enjoys grappling with tax laws - doing the research, figuring it out, etc. And a bigger part of me is reminded of how thankful I am to no longer be in the accounting field! :)

A side note...these are my newest discovery in the snack world...

Delish AND fairly healthy!
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

February 1!

And I'm back!!!

I had to finish watching "The Bachelor" before I could get in here and start blogging. I was hoping something exciting would happen today so that I could come back with a splash...no such luck, so here's what my day was like...

8:15...crawled out of bed and sat on couch in my pjs checking my email and facebook on my iPod touch (this is how I begin every day!) I then threw on my workout clothes and headed over to the fitness center on campus to meet my friend Tracy for some excercise/catching up time. We walked two miles today. I guess I should say that I walked two miles and then went home. She did the two miles and then continued to work out. She's amazing! :)

Quick note about my walking...I set a goal on January 20th that I would walk 100 miles by my birthday (March 27th). That's 66 days or 1.5 miles a day. I know that I'll need a few days off here and there, so my aim is to walk 2 miles a day and that will allow me 16 days off between n ow and then. So far (13 days into it) have walked 23 miles! I'm pretty excited to meet this goal!

After walking I came back to my place, showered, did some work on the computer and then headed out to lunch. I met one of my former students for lunch at Subway. She transferred to IUSB last year and is getting married next month. It was fun to hear what she's been up to, catch up on wedding plans, and fill her in on life here at GC.

After lunch I met Amanda and we did some shopping. If you are my FB friend, you might of noticed my status today was lamenting how tired I am of my wardrobe. So, Amanda and I went to Kohl's where I bought 2 new shirts and a necklace. They were all on sale (which everything always is at Kohl's, right?!) and I am looking forward to having a little new variety in my wardrobe.

After I got home I did some more work until it was time to go and meet the other RDs and their families for dinner at the dining hall, as we do each Monday. As I was walking out the door a friend who works at Hesston College showed up! He's an admissions counselor for HC and was in town visiting students. He just had a few minutes to spare and dropped by to see me. So we walked across campus together and caught up. It was so good to see him! Dinner at the dining hall was fun as we shared stories about what's been going on in our lives the past week and played with Shawn & Rachel's kids!

After dinner I headed back here to watch "The Bachelor" with one of my former RAs. I will do a little more work on the computer and then will start working on my friend's taxes. He's got some new things on his return this year, so I look forward to learning some new tax stuff!

Anyway, that was my day. I'll talk to you again soon!