CW

I had an excellent weekend in Champaign. I think it's more fun to be an alumna at these things. I'm told it was the 40th anniversary of CW... started by U of I...which is cool. Anyway, I love it how much U of I pride always comes out when we host stuff. Blue and orange napkins, decorations, programs, pens, blue shirts and orange ties, the "greetings my name is:" name tags. It makes me smile a lot.

All the current U of I girls had to lead discussions groups so I got to hang out with Kaleigh, and Callie, and Kim, and Nic in the kitchen and help get food ready for supper. When I say 'help' I mean make lemonade and fill water glasses and get in the way. And I didn't have to be very social...

We sang in the architecture building afterwards- that was pretty cool. And got to see more of Ern than I wanted to. :) O well. I did get to talk to Dona and some other cool girls that I never ever see anymore.

I stayed at Hessel house, always a pleasure! I miss those girls mucho. But I might see them tomorrow. and go to NC with them- yay!

observing both sides of a prank war is good stuff.

blessings.

10

emails in my inbox. the high this week was 40. it was a long week.

i baked pies yesterday and they were really good.

kendra's dress is close to being done. it needs a final fitting and hemming and all that good stuff. then i just need to make a cummerbund and it'll be ready for the stage. :)

life is crazy. God is good. I'm tired.

blessings.

um...yeah...

I think the warm weather has scrambled our brains. :D

if you were at my house today you might have overheard some interesting conversations- for the record, none of these came from me.

unnamed to protect the innocent #1: "do you think I could get a tan from the toaster?"
unnamed to protect the innocent #2: "no, I don't think the toaster gives off UV rays."
(I was cracking up from the other room)

walking out of good friday services: "you know, if it wasn't cloudy, the stars would be really pretty tonight."

talking about the "April showers bring May flowers, what do Mayflowers bring? (pilgrims, duh) and it was mentioned that the original ending to the rhyme is "happy hours." Which makes it sound much more Irish. we laughed a lot.

Happy Good Friday- Hallelujah for the Blood!!

green things

my plants are growing!
I'm pretty excited to try out my new cold frame. :D


I might be a little bit ready for spring...
Blessings.

pi day

• my plants are growing! hopefully they won't die between now and when I put them outside in my new cold frame that my super cool dad made for me. :)
• my car is in the shop again... this time it's the alternator. woot. anybody have a car they want to sell? it has to be blue, and 4-door, and automatic (I can't drive stick), not foreign, be pretty sporty and have a fairly accessible engine. but I'm not picky.
• i went to the menno relief sale tonight to work and they didn't need me. so I walked around... and said hi to all my old menno friends. and decided that it might be the second biggest AC crowd outside of the leo sale.
  
• somehow I agreed to make my cousin's costume for her musical. the smallest available pattern is a size six... she's a size zero. um... um.... I don't know how to do that! thank goodness for mom. it's a medieval dress, so i have 8 yards of lavender satin to play with- woot!
  
• in case you forgot, today is pi day. I didn't have time to make any pie.... so sad.
  

Blessings.

blue was just a kansas summer sky

Or March sky.
Somehow I made it all day on 4.5 hours of sleep...

Kansas was really fun. I kind of procrastinated on finding a ride until Friday afternoon. But it was all good, because I ended up going with BDY, J-nell, and Natedog. It was an uneventful drive out, and we made it in time for the supper and singing. It was really good to see Kansas people and U of I people, although I barely got to talk to any of them for very long.

I got to spend the night with Marie, Kristi, and Brit at Stefani's house- good times. Kristi set her cell phone alarm for 7 on Sunday morning and I set mine for 8 and they both went off at the same time; we were kind of confused as to which was correct. But... we figured it out and we weren't late for church. :)

The wedding was beautiful, Caleb and Bethany are both so cute. And they managed to have the shortest wait in a reception line ever! Props to them for that.

We took the scenic route back to the interstate... our fearless driver and navigator were busy reminiscing so we got to experience some real Kansas roads. :) The ride home was slightly disappointing (side note- I'm using hyperbole here)- we didn't stop for Jackstack and Bandanna's was "shut" so I have yet to experience that place; but there was lots of good music and conversation. I didn't get home until 1 (St. Louis is definitely not on the way to Bern) so I've been pretty much in a fog all day. O well, I'll survive and it was worth it to be there. At least I wasn't crazy like some people who drove out in the middle of the night. :)

Blessings.

Bookends

Sometimes I go for weeks with 'nothing' to do and then I get crazy busy all of the sudden.

Tuesday evening Elise had "the girls who were in bible class together + Heather" (we need a name or something) over for supper and games. It was good to be with them again. I don't know what my problem was though, I was soooo tired and I ended up going home really early because I could barely keep my eyes open enough to play moods.

Last night Gab and I went to Champaign to hang out with Karen K. It was a great time. I had to drop some stuff off at the Shaker for Matt so we said hi to all the Shakerites and Ern. Some things never change- the smell of the Shake and the smell of Ern. We stopped at Walmart for old times sake. I didn't wear my whale p.j.'s because Gab didn't wear hers... We ate supper at Za's on Green street- so good. We've been talking about going to a ballet or something similar for a while... so we checked out a "studio dance" at Krannert. It was... um.. interesting. I liked parts of it. Parts of it were just plain weird. But, my horizons were definitely broadened, so it was not a bad experience. Plus I can say that I've watched five people push a grand piano around a stage for no particular reason and then 'dance' around it. yeah. interesting really isn't a very good way to describe it. Then we ate Coldstone and came home.

I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night... and I had to sit through five hours of safety training today. So boring.

I'm going to KS tomorrow!
Blessings.

...Old friends, Old friends Sat on their park bench Like bookends...

Snow and Mud

This has been an excellent week. I went skiing and mudding and my old roomie Meg announced her engagement to Dale!!!! Two total allstars! I'm super excited for them!

Kaleigh and Kendra B and I got up really, really early yesterday and drove to Chestnut Mt. to go skiing. I had such a good time with those girls. They're lots and lots of fun! It was Kendra's first time skiing, always kind of nerve wracking because I would have felt awful if she didn't have a good day. But she did really great! The weather was pretty much perfect and they got snow the day before... so I got to ski on the most powder/real snow that I've ever been on. I was really glad for Curves... because I felt halfway in shape/in control of my skis... which I love. And I even went down a few more slopes than normal. I'm not usually very adventurous. It was really great. We had good times in the car, we never did see a post office, although they made me take a picture next to a deserted "Tradin Post." Haha. Kendra and I were a little bit late to testimonies... but you'll have that. I'm not even very sore today! Pretty much an amazing day.


There were four baptisms today, so church was very full. Abby came over after and we went for a pretty long walk. It was so nice outside! We were going to go look at my plants in the shed and the barnyard is a soupy mess since everything melted. So... we decided to drive my car rather than get all muddy. Um... my car is heavier than it looks because we definitely got stuck in front of the shed. And dug some really deep ruts trying to get it out. Ab and I had to give up and get Dad and Shelly to get it out. The one good thing was that I ended up in my bare feet stomping through mud puddles and almost falling face first in the mud. :D The ground is a lot colder than the air.... but once your feet go numb the gravel doesn't hurt as much. It was quite the experience...

Blessings.