Aleluya a nuestro Dios!

This weekend I was privileged to sing hymns in Spanish that were recorded for the church in Mexico. It was lots of fun, even though I've never taken any Spanish and everybody else there was extremely talented musically... eh, oh well. :)

Definitely a good time hanging out with Meg's family, and Mary, and Lys, and Nic and Markus. And I met new people which is good.

I've had Spanish in my head ever since. I think I was annoying my family.

So Aleluya a nuestro Dios is my new favorite hymn, but its not in any of our books. I finally found it in English, Hallelujah for the Blood, in a really old book called "The Glorious Gospel Hymns" that my mom randomly has.

It's a perfect Easter song.

Aleluya! aleluya! Alabanzas cantad, Aleluya! Exaltad, el Cordero de Dios!

Note to self:

Next year don't sit next to Shelly at communion.

We got the giggles twice. It was bad.

It was raining and windy outside and she asked me, "is that rain?" To which I replied, "no it's a bunch of little men in hobnailed boots running across the roof." It makes me laugh just thinking about it.

Then as we were singing the last song I cracked a high note pretty bad and we started laughing again. *sigh* So much for communion being a solemn, thought provoking event.

What a day!

Today was a crazy day in lab.... we were working with sodium hydride which is highly flammable. Some of it ended up in the solid waste can in the hood with all of the solvent and chemical waste containers. It caught on fire and blew the top off of the can. Thankfully the TA's put it out before the other solvent waste containers went up in flames.

So then I was paranoid and practically wiped down my entire hood with Isopropal alcohol just in case. :) My reaction went well, it turned lots of pretty colors! It started out green and then turned dark purple and then lavender (I thought of Heidi). After I added sodium hydride it turned orange and then it finally went back to a lovely blue-green color. The one color I didn't want to see today was light blue in my solvent trap.

We keep air out of the reaction by performing it under vacuum, which pulls the solvent off of the sample. It's hard on the vacuum pumps to have solvent running through them, so we collect it by freezing it with liquid nitrogen in a trap. Liquid nitrogen is capable of condensing oxygen (light blue) if you let air get into you vacuum lines. Well, the vacuum seal on my trap must not have been working right because when I went to clean up I saw light blue in my trap.

O man, so scary. They had to go get a blast shield. Ahhh. Our poor TA's. So then when I got home I kept hearing sirens; every time I thought that they must be headed to Noyes. One of my TA's is in one of my other classes... tomorrow... eeeshh. That'll be fun.

We had CW singing practice/ singing at our house tonight. It was fun. At one point some of us went over to 711 and duct taped Blake to his chair because he didn't come over. They were waiting with buckets of water when we came back, but I escaped the wetness. :)

Last night Washington people came to visit and go to church at the Union. It was a great time! So good to have visitors- and I was amazed at the W-ton turnout. Most of them don't branch out much, and by much I mean ever. We went to the Shaker afterwards for singing and snack and random fun after our guests left. :)

I'm going home tomorrow to get measured and to sing and for communion. It's going to be a crazy weekend. But I'm excited.

Mexico

Some highlights:

• seeing Brent and Janelle and Carissa
• singing in church in Spanish
• 'sneaking' into Mexico
• seeing the kids again
• spending quality time with U of I people
• having my brother along
• the warm weather
• driving from Tucson to Albuquerque; it was cloudy and not windy- I love the open road!
• the quote book
• teasing Joanna
• being sick
• the beautiful stars

Some not so highlights:

• feeling old ;)
• seeing my chicken salad sandwich twice
• the spiders
• not getting to go to town
• feeling like we were missing a few people... such is life
• getting an entire backhoe loader bucket full of water dumped on me *grin* o wait, that was fun? too bad it wasn't even sunny out!
• all my smelly wet laundry

For the record, my dad always told us not to stand under raised loader buckets or grain trucks when their lifts were all the way up- it's dangerous and they could fall. So I was disobedient and I guess it's my own fault. :) When I heard the bucket start to move I thought the whole thing was coming down so I ran and tripped and the rest is history I guess. It was a beautiful prank, props to the rock crew for that!

I'm back

It was a good trip. Too short though of course. So now I'm back to the real world.

I have a lot of dirty smelly things in my room. I did my nastiest laundry at the Shaker with Matt last night after I got back, but my shoes are still wet and muddy. How they got wet and muddy is a story and a half. :) I'll post video of that eventually. So I finally got my cordless drill and stud finder back (since it wasn't working out so well at the Shaker *grin*)... and the next RJ... and made matt's bed and folded his laundry and watched a movie because their dryer takes forever. O well. Good bonding time or something like that.

After church Meg and Jer and I went to singing at the nursing home. For supper the handful of people who were in town had a very random picnic of fried chicken, leftover church lunch sandwiches, quesadillas, deviled eggs, grapes, leftover Mexico snacks... it was good times. Then we went to Custard cup.

I should be studying for my vocab test tomorrow... but I don't want to.

My Roomies

Are pretty much amazing. :) Some of the coolest girls you will ever meet. There are ten of us, we have two *small* bathrooms, and we still get along!


Meg is our resident chef and dietitian. She keeps herself very busy- most of the time when I see her she's off to work/class/study/random food club. :) The coolest thing about Meg is the way she lets her light shine-you can see Christ in her smile.












Ashley and Jenny are sisters, probably why they look alike. :) I don't see Jenny much at all, which is too bad. Ash is engaged to Chris, who lives next door and is our eleventh room mate. They're lots of fun to be around, especially when they're cooking dinner together at our house. (It's huh-larious)













Kristen just moved in with us in January. When our tenth roommate fell through at the beginning of the school year we didn't know why.... now we do! I love listening to her wonderful piano playing abilities and singing along to the Phantom of the Opera with her. I love it that she's always ready for crazy fun stuff like building snow sisters in the yard at midnight. Or just hanging out into the wee hours of the night. :)












Then there's Amber. Amber is one of those indispensable farm girl types. She can do just about anything, even though she is an AC girl and we all know that they can't throw a ball. ;) She has lots of plants and flowers in our house which is so great. Amber's always up for doing something fun, which sadly enough doesn't usually involve organic chem or falling through the floor with the shower.












Alyssa's engaged.... Ryan's getting an amazing girl! My favorite quote from Lys is, "You like lemon!? Ryan, that is so great! I LOVE lemon!" *Grin* She works so hard and does such a good job as yg secretary... and always with such a sweet smile. I love it how her face lights up when she talks about Jesus.... and Ryan. :)













When I'm in the mood for crazy random fun I go to Sarah. She's great at movie sound effects and talking about everything from current events to how hilarious it would be if the leaky shower suddenly plunged through the basement floor with somebody in it. :D I love it that she likes the names of my classes, ie solid state structural analysis. We almost had a class together but then of course she changed her schedule. :)













Amanda is lots of fun. She always has interesting stories from working at a nursing home... (they quite often end with me saying, "reason number 629 why I am not going to be a nurse."). I love it how she always tells it like it is and doesn't mince any words. I'm so glad I got the chance to live with her this year, it just wouldn't have been quite so much fun.













Gabrielle.... I used to be so innocent. *Grin* Actually, I think that I have surprised her more in the last two years than she has me. Gab is great. She's always up for hashing things out and going for walks at CIRCE and talking on IM from across the hall. And making me open my iTunes so she can listen to Johnny Cash. Gab keeps me accountable... I'm so blessed to have had her as a roomie.












So there you have it... I really can't do justice to these girls- they're the BEST!
Proverbs 27:17

I'm leaving for Mexico in a few hours... I'm a little excited!!!

3.14159

Yesterday was pi day. At our house we celebrated by baking a bunch of pie and having the yg over after church. I love pie. It was really good. And, we have lots of leftovers which makes me very happy.

Spring break starts tomorrow! I'm excited.

My life is pretty uneventful right now

We had a singing at 709 last Thursday and then I went to Merry Ann's until 2 with some of my roomies.

I babysat for a non- family member for the first time in my life Friday. Trevor slept for an hour and then he bawled for his mom for an hour and a half. And Gab and Karen laughed at me.

Bright and early Saturday morning I went to package soap in Indiana with the Washington yg. I wasn't looking forward to it, but it ended up being tons of fun. It helped that Laura was as wound up as I was. :) We came up with some fun stuff to do at Luke and Heidi's wedding...too bad I'm too chicken to try any of them.

My car needs an oil change so I left it at home. It was kind of tight in Matt's truck since Fred came too. We're leaving for Mexico on Friday!! I'm so excited! I'm looking forward to the sun and the food the most I think. :)

I have a midterm tomorrow that I should be studying for. Hooray for Solid State Structural Analysis.

Spring Ice Out

Or in. :)

So I had a lazy weekend. Nothing too exciting happened. Joanna got announced to some guy from Ohio and she'll move away and I'll never see her again, but I'm really, really happy for her. :D

O, I did go canoeing with my dad and my sister. On the same ditch/field that we go ice skating on. It was really fun, even with the wind and the snow. I stole Jakey's work boots just in case I had to bail out into the not very deep water. Hooray for crazy fun times on the farm. :)

Dad and Shelly.

The canoe is still broke, but it wasn't taking on water.

Dad and I in the snow.

Shelly and I fighting the wind.

If you're not part of the solution

You must be the precipitate.


*GRIN*

Is your refrigerator running?

It was a good weekend. Lots of stuff happened, so here are some of the highlights.

-I made chocolate chip cookies... yum. But they all got eaten already.
-Amy and Audrey came to stay with me Friday night. :)
-The IBNO conference on Saturday was really good, and Scott came so that was exciting.
-Ate at Za's twice in one day.
-Played Rook, It was a really close game but Scott and Matt pulled ahead the last hand and pretty much trounced Ryan and I.
-Got to listen to "The Unicorn Song" and some other great folk songs
-Spent some quality time with U of I people and Alumni playing our version of 20 questions.
-Got our beautiful snow sister stolen only to find out that she just wanted to go to church. Crazy boys.
-Meg hosted potluck at our house, the food was excellent, the kids were hilarious.
- Had a paper wad fight with Nelson, Grant, and Leah at the table. :)
-Played Candy Land with Kedron and Addy.
-Used Lyssa's exercise/stretch band thingy as a slingshot for tennis shoes.
- Laughed hysterically while the kids prank called the Shaker. Kedron: "Hewo, I love you, will you mawwy me?, bwing me candy, I want fwowers." Addy: "I want to Cook you." Nelson: "Hi do you want to buy candy canes? They're 5cents for red stripes, 5 cents for the white stripes, that's 10cents all together."
Sarah described it perfectly, it totally felt like the beautiful chaos of playing with all of your cousins in your grandma's basement- including the 'Oh no, we're caught' feeling when their parents were ready to leave and came upstairs to get them.


The conference audio should be available eventually at
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/hknobloc/www/index.htm

Snow ball fights and Sister Ada Lou

So Gab and I just got back from getting polar pops. Yeah, I know it's kind of late for caffeine, but I figure since college is almost over I might as well live a little. Or something. Plus Dr. Pepper is just sooo good. :)

Wednesday night after church the yg went to the Shaker for some wonderful pie provided by Darl and Janelle. We were all sitting around after partaking of the goodness and I guess B.J. thought we needed to liven things up a bit... because he went outside for a while and then started handing out snow balls. (You know, "one for you, one you, one for me," kind of thing.) Obviously you can't just hold a snowball, they must be thrown; so in pretty short order we had a full blown snow/ice fight in the house. In our church clothes. It was beautiful. There were some minor skirmishes involving water and a leftover piece of pie before it was all over. They had to break out the mops to clean up the floor. I did witness a first- Matt with a mop. Which he used on the coffee table. And the piano.

When us girls got back home we decided that since the snow was so nice that we needed to make a snowman. Well... he ended up as Sister Ada Lou. She's so cute. She's wearing a laundry detergent blue jean skirt (there's no food coloring in our house!), and a green tissue paper sweater. Her hair is up in a very nice bun and she was wearing a designer grass head covering. Did I mention she's on her knees praying? Hehe. There were some broken candy canes in our yard that Kristen and Sarah tried very hard to use for her mouth; it kind of worked. Amber took some pretty funny pictures but they are still on her camera, sorry. :)

Four of us U of I girls went to ISU bible study tonight and had supper at Kaleigh and Joanna's. It was really good...they're pretty much the coolest. So we got back relatively early...but I'm tired and I do have class in the morning...
Blessings.

Polar Pops and Ping Pong

Yesterday we had our annual parent appreciation dinner... it was a success even though my parents couldn't come. Matt's couldn't either, ironically. :) The food was good, the desert tasted um, grilled, and the slide show was a hit.

I was craving a polar pop by the end of the night and said something to Gab... come to find out so was everybody else. So after we cleaned up at church a bunch of us got polar pops and went over to the Castle to hang out. We played a few rounds of 'gentile style' ping pong which was made even more difficult because of the spiral staircase in the middle of the room. There are more marks on the wall now. Then we sat around and threw tennis balls and a frisbee around the room. The later it got the more wound up we got and the stranger the conversation got. :) Good times. And then Gab and I had 'confession time' in the car on the way home.... o dear.... I definitely did not get enough sleep.

This morning the young group served lunch in Champaign so I had to get up way too early and go help at church. It all went really smoothly and once again it was just really great to work together with the yg. My hands are very dry now from all the dishes I washed this weekend. O well, it was worth it. :)

After church I tried to take a nap... and woke up feeling nauseated. I never learn! But then Meg's parents took us girls out to eat at Kennedy's for supper- the food was really really good.

I don't want to go to school tomorrow.
Blessings.

I wish I had room for a grand piano

Hm.. so the week is over. It was a good week. The two snow days in the middle were pretty glorious. :) Props to Dan for bringing the skid steer over and clearing our drive!

Us girls went out to eat Wednesday night at olive garden for valentine's day. It was soooo good. It's probably a good thing that it is so expensive (for a college kid) or I would eat there way too much.

Thursday in lab we were playing with liquid nitrogen- using it to condense evaporated solvent from our reaction. We get a lecture every time about how our vacuum lines need to be clear and not open to the atmosphere while you have liquid nitrogen cooling the trap. If you do have your lines open to the air you run the risk of condensing oxygen. Not a good thing. Pretty much you have rocket fuel in a small glass tube. :D Anyway, one of my classmates accidentally did that. He had to get a blast shield in his hood. It was pretty funny.

The young group recorded Easter program songs at Neil and June's Thursday evening. It's always fun to sing holiday songs out of season. Afterward us girls- Sarah, Gab, Amber, Kristen, and I- had a great discussion with Neil and June about a lot of things. :)

Meg is putting together a slide show of pictures for parent appreciation this weekend and she asked Amber, Kristen, and I to record some piano music to go with it. Since they have the talent and I have the key to the university school of music practice rooms it worked out really well! It was so great. We found a Steinway grand piano and spent about an hour recording. And messing around. :) They are both so good already and the "real" piano made it sound phenomenal.

Tonight we had bible study and then we helped make food for tomorrow night. So now I'm really tired. Maybe because I haven't had Dr. Pepper all day! Yikes. :)
Blessings.

Snow Day!

Yesterday the U of I cancelled classes for the third time in its history (so I'm told). Woot! It was beautiful. I had decided that I wasn't going to my first class because it looked really cold and snowy so I was asleep again when my roommates awoke me with their celebrating. :) So I got to sleep in and was pretty much lazy and unproductive all day long.

Gab, Amber and I tried to run some errands but we only got about 20 ft. down our driveway. So instead we had roommate bonding time with some Sweet Home Alabama. :) We were invited to Brown House for chili by Martin-shoveling our driveway out of nowhere-all star. We walked to Brown House down the middle of the streets; the sidewalks are nonexistent. They had such a good turnout! Pretty much everyone was there, plus a few extra. We celebrated BAM's unbirthday, played some games, had a rubber band war, and just had an all around good time.

I got shoved in a snowbank when we got back to the house because Gab said I kept hitting her with rubber bands. I maintain that it wasn't me! Ben just has really bad aim. :) Sarah decided to make cookies and we called the Shaker to see if any of them were bored so some of the guys ended up coming over.

We played some group games...they all seemed to involve stretching and bending so I'm kind of sore today. :) It was lots of fun though, a great way to start singles awareness day, I mean, Valentine's Day. Classes are cancelled again today!! But today I really need to actually do my homework.

Happy Valentine's Day!
Blessings.

What a weekend

Friday night I spent an enjoyable evening at Famous Dave's with the wonderful fun ladies of the Champaign church. It was such a good time and I can't wait until next months get together.

Afterwards I gave Fred a ride home. It wasn't as quiet of a ride as it normally is. Maybe I'm getting better at the making conversation thing... or maybe not. :)

I got a phone call at 11 from Heidi, she said she "had a gift for me" and asked if I was home so she could drop it off. She parked all the way at the end of the driveway so I couldn't see her car.... and then she handed me a dozen chocolate chip cookies. I didn't get it right away, but we had this bet that if she was married before Christmas that she had to bake me cookies. I think I said something like, O no, before she said that he was out in the car. I was soooo glad when Luke walked in. :) So they stayed and talked for a while... it's still really weird and I'm not sure I like losing two dear friends at once, but I guess it's worth it for the cookies and the purple bridesmaid dress. :) It's too bad that they forgot the Mrs. Knapp duck, that would have been perfect!

The funniest part was that my mom had no idea that they were over and Shelly was eavesdropping the whole time.

Saturday I did my taxes and didn't get (very) stressed or emotional. (Last year was bad... near tears bad) Shelly had her friends over for a valentine's day dinner. They all dressed up and I did Shelly's hair really foofy. It was pretty great.

Church was good today. Luke and Heidi got announced. And my roommate Alyssa. And a bunch of other people from random places. So now I'm back at school and tired. Gab and I walked at CIRCE and rehashed the weekend and stuff and then I went grocery shopping with Amber for 711 supper tomorrow night. And now I'm going to bed.
Blessings.

I did say I wanted to go winter camping...

Just not in our house. :)

So the gas regulator froze yesterday evening... we realized we didn't have any gas coming into the house when the stoves didn't work and we couldn't get the pilot lights lit. And then the house started to get cold(er than it already is). Our landlord finally came and we had heat by 11 so we didn't all have to have a big slumber party with space heaters in the attic.

Some of us went to CV to sing where it was warm- that was lots of fun. Ben made invisible koolaid and red water. It was thoroughly confusing. We almost had brownies. :)

I'm actually going home this weekend... eventually anyway. :)
Blessings.

We got iced

Last night the Shaker made taffy... and a few of the girls from 709 decided that they wanted some. So they went over and grabbed a few handfuls off of the porch where it was cooling and left because they were all busy and didn't have time to be social.

Around midnight Amber and Sarah called up the stairs, "girls, we have visitors." The entire Saltshaker was in our front yard with shovels and garbage cans. They proceeded to move all of the snow from the yard and piled it in front of the front door, the back door, Ash's door, and the basement door. We managed to get one bucket of water thrown before resistance became futile. All we could do was watch out the windows as more and more snow got dumped at our doors. Then they brought out buckets of water and poured it on the piles.

So after they had finished and our yard was a mess and we were completely snowed in; they gave three cheers (hip, hip- hooray) and drove off into the sunset singing "Goodnight Ladies." Ok, maybe not the sunset part- it was after midnight. Then we had to find our shovels and dig ourselves out. It was a late night and really cold to be shoveling snow at 1am.

Our poor neighbors.

It gets funnier the more I think about it. All that for a few handfuls of taffy.

Minnesota

I like that state a lot. Even though it is sooo cold. It was a really great trip and I had such a good time. There were six of us that braved the cold of the twin cities; Meg and I, Jeremy, B.J., Dale, and Loren. The trip out was uneventful, we played 20 (or so) questions, and made it there without freezing to death even thought the heat wasn't really working.

Saturday we checked out the St. Paul Winter Carnival. They had some really cool ice and snow sculptures and dog sled races. We watched the Jamaican dogsled team race (no, it was not cool runnings) on snow for the first time. It was a rather chilly day (high of -5 F, low -13 F) to be out doors, but after we warmed up a little and ate some lunch we went ice skating behind Meg's house. We didn't have any hockey sticks so we devised our own game. It was a cross between soccer, broomball, and basketball. The goalies had brooms but everybody else just had to kick the basketball with their skates. It was quite interesting, but very fun.

Saturday evening B.J., J-Hod, and Dalestyle fixed the temp gauge in the van- go guys- so we would have heat on the way home. Then we sang around the piano, played some games, and had a "jam session." Meg's little brother Joe was disappointed that he missed it until he discovered that jam didn't mean to slam into each other and knock people over. *grin*

We spent Sunday with the Minneapolis church- it was so good to be there. They don't get many visitors in the winter (imagine that) so they were glad to see us. We left right after church, and had a good ride home. Somebody decided that it would be fun to play 20-let's grill Jenny-questions on the way back. They know way too much about me now. Questions ranged from "what five things would you take if you were stranded on a desert island," to "what's your favorite farm memory," to "if you could change your last name to any AC last name what would you change it too?" The last one was from Jer and I took the fifth. *grin* So then we grilled him for a while.

So now I'm back at school and I'm tired and not very excited for Monday.

Does anybody want to go winter camping in the Boundary Waters?? I'm up for it.

Blessings.

Cold

My parents came down Wednesday night and took Matt and I out to eat, and then after church Mom and Dad and I went out for bubble tea. It was good times. Plus they brought my ice skates down which are a necessity in this weather.

Last night I went to ISU... kind of last minute. There were six of us in Sarah's car and somehow most of the conversation was directed at seeing how embarrassed they (*cough* Mike) could make me. :) And we went to Steak and Shake for milkshakes afterwards...

I got a text message from my brother in the middle of bible study asking to borrow my cordless drill. What's wrong with this picture? (yes, I know Denver was gone... but still!)

I'm going to Minnesota with Meg for the weekend. :)