Christmas Time

I have not posted in a while…. so I decided I need to :) The only problem is I do not know exactly what to write about. I suppose I’ll write about a bunch of different things.

     First I’ll talk about basketball. Basketball season has started, and it is pretty cool. I like to play basketball, but I have not really played in so long that I could definitely be a lot better in areas like….. well….. everything :P We had our first games last weekend, and the first one went pretty well. I think it ended with a final score of 24-11, we didn't win, but did pretty great based on the amount of practice we have had. The second game…… well that was just beyond embarrassing :P We scored zero points the entire game and the other team had I think somewhere in the 20’s. At one point one of the girls on their team smacked me. At this point I felt like knocking her to the ground, but instead I just ran into her so she would not get a foul :P Soon after that was when the cheerleaders came out, and I have nothing against cheerleaders….. except for the ones that just repeat themselves a gazillion times and do not do anything more impressive that jump :P So yeah, basically I was annoyed times a million. Oh well, it made it better that the guys team won both of their games, and the first game they played they pretty much massacred the other team.

Now for an “interesting” topic, how often I get sick. I think I have been sick a gazillion times this school year missing a total of I think 2 weeks of school from being sick. Two weeks ago on Friday I went to the doctor because the throat was in severe pain. He told me I had a really bad throat infection, and that I was not allowed to go back to school until the following Wednesday. This was…. craziness. It hurt my throat when I breathed, coughed, swallowed, yeah…. pretty much did anything :P I was relieved when I got medicine from the doctor though, because we went on Friday and it had been hurting since Wednesday. It was beginning to get unbearable.

  On a happier note, CHRISTMAS!!!! yay!~ I’m dreaming of a whiiiiiiiiiite Christmaaaaaaaaaas! Snow! Snow! Snow! It snowed to Sunday and Monday night, like a lot!! I really thought we’d get a snow day. Sadly enough they did not cancel school on Monday. And even more sadly, after it snowed hard on Monday night, Tuesday morning it rained, washing away a large percentage of the snow on the ground :( It was too sad, and not it isn’t even as cold as it was; it is no longer below 0 degrees!! :( Oh well. But Christmas, it is coming soon!! Only 10 days left until Christmas Day!~ Excitement!~ xD But yeah, I love Christmas time. I love our decorations, Christmas Spirit, the warm feeling of being inside when it is cold spending time with your family, and most of all I love the celebration of MY Savior’s birth!! Glory to the newborn King :) This Christmas Season I feel overly blessed with gifts, mostly not tangible, but that makes them all the better :) Thank you Lord for this time of year, and thank you for the birth of your Son Jesus Christ, my Savior <3

Confusion

I am so confused as to what emotion(s) I am experiencing right now. Maybe annoyance, happiness, anger, peace, sorrow, hopefulness, loneliness, or all of them, or more. I cannot decide, actually I just don’t know, which is the real problem. Actually I might be feeling all of them for different reasons and/or motivations. Now I’m just confusing myself now.

I guess I’ll explain a few.

My first is a mix of hope and peace. I was reading my Bible, and I came across this verse in Jeremiah that I have been looking for, for quite a while now, because I kind of had forgotten what it was about. But I am so happy I found it, especially right now.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Says Jeremiah 29:11. It is a great verse. It words I cannot explain it gives me peace.

Ok, so my next set of emotions: sorrow and anger. I had a sort of fight with my parents. I was not thinking straight and therefore even though I thought before I spoke it did not go over well. Also it did not help that both my parents misunderstood me and I misunderstood my parents. I hope it is all ok now though. I do not like fighting with my parents.

And lastly, happiness. I am a female, a reflection of certain character traits of God. God purposely formed me, cared for me, and made me the way I am, beautiful and perfect in His eyes. God has blessed me and loved me, helped me and held me. What more could I ask for?? What not to be happy about??

The Joys of Life

So I have kind of been ill this past week or so, so I have had a lot of time to just think and do nothing else. For busy people like me who do not get much time to do this, I would actually recommend getting sick just to have thinking time, because if you are truly busy then there is really no other way for thinking time to happen :P True story, lol :)

So basically my mind has been racing about two different things:

1) Joy (specifically related to God)

AND

2) Soccer

Ok, so after that second one anyone reading this is gonna think I’m half crazy to actually spend my valuable time giving a lot of thought into the subject of soccer. But then again, I guess it could be the same for the first thing, depending on who you are and what your personal beliefs are. So basically I am not bothered how you judge be based on what I spend my time thinking about :P :)

So I’ll start off with my first topic. Joy is a very interesting thing. I have observed that teenagers in particular are very specific in what they find joy in. For the majority of all teenagers they either find joy in many, many little and big things, or they find joy in barely anything. I have also observed that adults are not the same as teenagers when it comes to finding joy in things. Of course I am being very stereotypical here; however, in general, adults to not find joy in as many things as that joy filled teenager, but they also find more joy than the teenager that finds joy in practically nothing. I think this is because adults have lived a longer life and had more experiences than teenagers in general. And also, new thing are often the things that bring us the most joy. I may be sounding very confusing, but this is a confusing topic which is why I have spent so much time thinking about it in the first place.

So basically everyone has at least one joy in their life that they literally could not live without. After a lot of though, I have come to realize that God is the number one joy in my life, and I definitely could not live without Him. I mean I do have many other joys in my life, like my cat Mutlu, my books, soccer, running, other sports, music, writing, my amazing best friend :) and my pretty cool boyfriend :) and lots of other things. But honestly I would not have a single one of those things if it were not for God. I mean I may still have them, but either they would be different or for different reasons, and it would not be the same joy. And it makes me so happy that no matter what my situation is, I can find joy in God :)

So my second topic, soccer :D So basically I have been totally psyched about soccer recently. Soccer season is not until spring, but I am so anxious to play soccer, plus I get to play soccer on the AYSL league at the base in about a month, but sadly it might be my last season on the AYSL league cuz I’m getting to old xP But either way I totally cannot wait to play soccer!!! :D The only things I am really worried about are: who are goalie is going to be, and also I am more anxious about who is gonna take Nani’s place as striker, cuz she is awesome but it totally stinks that she’s not going to OIS this year :( We need someone with good aim and that is super fast……. I can’t think of anyone :P Oh well, it’ll all work out and I totally cannot wait to play GCM & IGA this year and hopefully win at least a few games!! :D

Olive Grove

So Olive Grove has actually been over for quite a long while now. I saved this post as a draft a while ago, and even after I finished it I kinda forgot to post it :P So here it is:

We came back on July 4th at 7am. So now I will explain about my OG experience with several pictures:

FIRST WEEK:

^^Serra is extremely happy that I kept her ‘Official Camper’s Photographer’ sign :D

^^Our group for the first week, the Wild Women :)

  ^^Bible Study at the beach

^^Naomi & Konnar – so sweet :) <3

^^Serra’s Drum Set (Carissa, Naomi, and Mason)

^^Tye-Dye

^^Molly is taller!!!!! hahahahaha xD

^^Are Jamie and Jamie cute, or what??

^^At the Eternal Flames

^^Dance Elective

^^Serra’s doing :P :)

^^Cassidy & Me

^^What happens when you give a bunch of highschoolers markers

^^I love my brother very much :) <3

^^Um, Tommy? Is there something you would like to share with us?? lol xD

^^Station during Bonkers

^^The Bonkers!!

  

^^We took pictures of each other taking pictures :)

^^I have noticed that people seem to go a little crazy on the last day of camp (*cough cough* *Josh* *cough*)

^^(Left to Right) Josh, Ashley, Troy, Carissa, Aaron, Naomi, Ben, and Alexis.

^^Those crazy High School Girls!! lol :)

SECOND WEEK:

^^Carissa & Suzan

^^Cassidy & Natalie (my awesome roomies :D) 

^^Leila the Dinosaur, scary, isn’t she?? scary awesome!

^^lol xD Leila and Serra

  ^^Ashley & Cassidy

^^Boat Trip!

 

^^(Left to Right) Leila, Caroline, Lizi, and Tori.

^^Carissa & Molly

^^Luke & Me :)

   ^^Cassidy, Luke, and Me :)

^^Luke falling off the boat….. lol :)

^^Luke and Me again :)

^^And again :)

^^Luke, Me, and Cassidy

^^My Rockin’ Roomies from the First Week :) <3

(Me, Carissa, Allison, Molly)

^^Freshman and Sophomores!! :)

Ownage :)

^^The People Getting Baptised (Left to Right) Ashley, Katie, Suzan, Talya, Anna-Kate, Paulus, and Joe.

^^The Amazing View

^^Roman the Gnarly Narwhal

^^The Drama Group :)

 

^^Leila’s Frog – George

^^Joe “the Nerd,” attempting to hide from Josh, Konnar and Noah

^^My Coolio Roomies Ready for the Par-tey :)

^^Molly in all her Cuteness  :)

^^A Bunch of highschoolers that stayed up all night on the last day of camp (I did it but I’m not in this picture)

And that concludes my two weeks of camp :) It was fun, have lot of memories, and have great friends :) My Favorite Quote of the Week:

“I wonder what altitude we are at…."

-Cassidy Stecklein

(Note: This was stated when we were on the boat trip, on the boat.)