Welcome to The Wild, Wild, West

Before I start my blog, can I just say that I am so incredibly giddy and joyful that today it's raining (like normal Fall/Winter weather) in AZ! :)

Ok, so yesterday, I was kinda a creepster and snapped a shot of this guy with my camera phone. Let me know if you notice anything silly about the fact that he's at Starbucks, in his early 20's, and oh, not a cop... (the bright orange arrow is for those who are "What's Wrong with this Picture" challenged).

Yeah! This guy is packing a glock! Ok, maybe I said that so white and wrong but my point is... This guy is wearing a gun! In daylight! And he's not a cop! And he's not robbing the Starbucks! And he's obviously not in a place to be hunting! In AZ apparently you can have a gun on you as long as it's not concealed. What if this guy was having a bad day, huh? Like Dirty Harry, "Go ahead, make my day!" That's for my Dad. :)

I'm seriously floored.

Women of Faith

Last weekend I went to the Women of Faith conference. I haven't been in like 7 or 8 years - it's been a while since I've done something for me... On a whim I decided to go.

What's kinda funny is that our church has been doing this series called "For Love or Money" on finances, so everyone I asked to go with me was "watching their spending" or "trying to save" or "cutting back". I decided to go anyway. My mom said, "You'll make friends with the ladies around you."

I felt adventurous.

The first night I'm there I took a walk around the arena, found some dinner, found my seat, and began to read my program. Out of the blue an old lady came flying down the stairs (literally) and knocked me over with her purse and arm on the way down the steps. It's so funny to think about now. And sad. Those stairs are steep. She took a dive but caught the railing just past me so she didn't fall all the way down the aisle. "Are you ok?" I asked. No answer. Her friends came and got her and they ended up sitting in the seats right behind me. I had to text my friends and Mom about it --- without laughing. But I seriously couldn't help myself.

The next day I arrived back at the arena. I should have gotten a hotel room out there. It was a 2-hour drive the first night (because of traffic), an hour home, and then about an hour and 1/2 the next morning. I had to get up early. Ugh. I'm so not a morning person.

Same kind of drill. I got to the arena, found my seat, and sat down. The old ladies were behind me again. I had no one to befriend in my row because it was empty about 10 seats down from me. As worship started, I got a tap on my shoulder. "Hey girl, do you want to join us? It can't be fun sitting there alone. Come up to our row." And I joined Dorothy, Laurie, and Mary for the entire day. They even invited me to eat lunch with them. See Mom? I did make friends. :)

I was seriously blessed by them just reaching out. Who would have thought that it all started with a HUGE fall by Dorothy. It was really really sweet, and nice to have someone to chat with there. I'm calling the weekend -- "Sisters Unite". I hope us women can always be like that, reaching out to each other anywhere and everywhere. I'll probably never see Dorothy, Laurie, and Mary again, but they really made my weekend. :)

Jesus and Weiner Poopie

Come on, this is hilarious. For those of you who can't see, click here.

Umm... Scary

So I was looking for a picture of Jennifer Hudson for this post - because I was going to write about how I have this weird tendency to pray for celebrities. I don't know why. It's not like they are my friends or anything. It's just that when I see them on TV struggling through something I feel compelled to pray for them. Does anyone else do this?

Anyway, the whole Jennifer Hudson thing has been weighing heavy on my heart so I thought I'd post about her. I still cannot believe the type of agony she has to be going through right now. I don't know what I would do if I lost my mom, brother, and nephew all in one swoop.

So the scary part about my post is... I of course got distracted searching around in Google Images for a picture of her and my curiosity led me to Google Image my own name. I thought it would be completely innocent being that I've only had my current name for a little over a year. But guess what I found??? The 2nd picture of the search was of me! Ahhhh! The Internet is so scary. Anyone can find anyone.

If any of you experiment and Google Image your name, comment me back. I'd love to know if your pic comes up! It's that whole 7 steps to Kevin Bacon thing but scarier. JK Nothing is private.

I Took Feedburner Off

Bummer in the winter. Feedburner did not work. I think it wasn't working because my blog is private - probably can't access my posts because it's password protected. Thanks so much Becky for working so hard to help me get it to work. You are such a sweet friend. Everyone else, sorry that that didn't work out. Unfortunately, you'll have to sign on to read stuff. I've been thinking about making my blog public, but I'm still not 100% comfortable with it. There are weirdies out there! JK Mostly just want to be able to monitor who can read this and who can't (like students and parents and stuff). And I don't feel so confined to censor everything I want to say when it's private. It's a control thing I'm sure. LOL

For those of you with private blogs (or even not private) who want to send out emails of your blog posts, blogspot offers you 10 email addresses you can enter in yourself. I have my huge family (of parents and step-parents) and some siblings able to get my posts right now. All you have to do is go to "Customize" and "Settings" and then click on "Email". There's a window there where you can enter in 10 addresses so that everytime you post, they get an email of it. I mostly use it for the blog challenged. :)

Is This Working?

As you can see, I'm trying to set up that little box on the right hand side of my blog page for people to subscribe and receive emails everytime I post here instead of having to sign in. But... I signed up and haven't gotten an email each time I've tested it. Hmm... If you end up subscribing can you let me know if it works? Otherwise, I'll just take it off of my page.

Testing again..

Helloooo?

Testing... Testing...

Does the burnfeeder work?

Why I'm In Youth Ministry

This morning I taught on the Parable of the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43). It's seriously one of my favorite stories in the Bible - about good and bad in the world, which makes pain inevitable. Alot of the bad people in the world I would say are people who call themselves "Christians". I shared a story from when I was a teen in youth group and I thought I'd share it with you because it's kinda funny. Talk about blast to the past. Ugh, High School days...



So one Sunday night in High School I went to youth group like normal. We had our crazy game (probably Amazon Woman Warriors or Crazy Relays or something) and then we all went in to hear our youth pastor’s message.


He talked about forgiveness. It's funny how I remember this night and the theme because I couldn't tell you the Scripture he used or even any stories he shared. All I remember is what happened after he preached. By the end of his message, he told us that during worship if we had anyone that we needed to ask forgiveness from in that room, we needed to do it NOW and not wait. I thought about it a little bit and couldn’t think of anyone that I had hurt in the group, so I started singing.



Then all of a sudden 2 girls giggling tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to if they could talk to me. I didn't know them very well because they never tried to hang out with me (I was newer), but I followed them into the hallway. The first girl starts talking…

“So… we wanted to talk to you and ask for your forgiveness tonight.” They both were giggling.

“Because we hate you,” the other girl said.



“Yeah, because you hang out with all of our guys in our group (Jeremy, John, Joe, Kyle, Richard). So we want to ask you to forgive us for hating you.”

I was shocked and didn’t know what to say. “Ok.”

They went off giggling and never spoke to me again. I guess they felt like they had done their “Christian duty”. What jerks! That was seriously mean - and it hurt. What should I have done in that situation? Ran to the rest of my friends and told them about how those girls made me feel so that they hated them too? Started a fight? Got depressed over it? Had thoughts or even plans to hurt them back or make them feel dumb? (Don't you hate those what-if's you get after someone has hurt you?) How do you guys react when people have hurt you? Share at your tables.



Isn't High School sucky? Jk I don't know why I kept coming back to youth group. Sometimes I just hate Christians, or people who call themselves Christians but don't live it. I've seen so much damage happen to my family and friends because of people in their lives who have hurt them and haven't portrayed who God really is - loving, accepting, kind, generous, selfless. I want my teens to be better than that. I want them to look out for others and to love and accept others. I'm sick and tired of "Christians" in the world hurting other people. It is my passion to help turn this around in this new generation. I really think these kids better at it than we were.

Halloween Party at the Johns'!

So I got a little festive and decided to invite all of my friends from work over to hang out and have Halloween treats last night. Check out my set up! I'm so proud of my Martha Stewart-ness. :)

Fountain Hills Picnic

Jake surprised me with a picnic date last weekend in Fountain Hills - a snowbird/golfer community. It was sooo cool. Kinda like having lunch at Newport Bay. There's this HUGE fountain that goes off every hour. Here are some pics. Too bad I didn't think to take any pics of us and our picnic! Woops!