pictures from day 7!

I forgot to post the pictures from my wedding-weekend adventures! Day 6 is on my camera so I will post it soon, but I have two pictures from day 7...

Day 7: we celebrated Charlee's 11th birthday and Remington's 5th birthday with a family dinner at PAPPASITOS! our favorite restaurant :-) ...

Nikki, Emma, Charlee, Remi, and Parker went shopping for back to school clothes, and Remi was hanging out at Nikki's side for most of the trip. Then Nikki realized that Remi was nowhere to be found and started looking for her...then she found her! HAAA!!!

More pictures from the wedding on Day 6 and an update from this past week's REVOLUTION training at SFA coming soon! :-)

life moves pretty fast...

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once and awhile, you could miss it" - Ferris Bueller.

Story of my life lately. I am beginning the third week of my life in Dallas, and I have been going non-stop since I got here. Between the training for my missionary work, going to Houston for a wedding, preparing for theREVOLUTION training at Stephen F. Austin State University, and beginning graduate school, all of my spare time has been spent sleeping. However, I am back to the blogging world with plenty of entertaining stories to lavish upon my avid readers.

I will begin with some fun picture describing my days here in Dallas. I have a friend who does a picture log of everyday of her life with supporting commentary, and I LOVE the idea! I really wanted to do something of the sort to document all my days in Dallas; I haven't done one for everyday, but I do have a few of the days recorded that I want to share with you.

Also, for a bit of background on my co-workers: there are five interns for TOBET this year: Amanda Hart and Hilary Bollom, both from Texas A&M, and Jason Guenther and Marcos Nino, both from Texas State. Putting five recent college graduates who are used to a college lifestyle in a room from 9am-4pm every day is a recipe for stir-craziness and lots of funny moments.

At a later date, I will post some cool things that I learned in my theology lessons for TOBET and in my graduate classes. For now, though, I want you to get a fun taste of my new life!! :-) Enjoy!!

Day 1: the one with the Braum's ice cream (CHERRY LIMEADE SHERBET) that I put in a cone but promptly licked off the top scoop...good thing my hair caught the fall!

Day 3: The one with the talk by Dr. Louise Cowen: a 94 year-old legend in the education sphere and one of the founders of UD. We also went to Starbucks, and they misheard my order and gave me two drinks, which they messed up, and then gave me two of the correct drink...thus the coffee party :-)

Day 4: the one with family night (all of the interns and our intern mom!) when we played Blokus, and Hilary's alternate personality THE BLOKUS MONSTER came out. Video proof coming soon! Also, I used ALL OF MY BLUE PIECES on this board! sweeeet! ...

...Erik's new favorite phrase is yes-ba and we found a funny word on an appliance that made us think of him!

Day 5: The one when I tried to do a DIY project to put on my blog but messed up the self-lamination, so I couldn't endorse my project. Bummer.

Day 9: The one when I came back from my long weekend and had to remove the confetti from my cute desk decoration. I took a picture of it so you could see my new work-home!

Day 10: The one with the swanky necklace that I bought with my mom over the weekend and Amanda picked out an outfit to match the loud accessory!

Day 11: The one when we threw Jason a graduation party! He graduated from Texas State on Friday, August 12 (yay!!), and Amanda and I were in charge of buying his party supplies. The balloons attacked her in the car...

...we bought him a dinosaur pet that bounces at your feet!!! We named him Lionel! :-) yesss!...

...we decorated the board for him with a bobcat paw drawn personally by Amanda...

...we HID BEHIND THE COUCH to pop out and yell surprise!!!

Day 12: The one when I started graduate school and bought some epic age-appropriate folders with my new favorite animal on them! OWLS!!!

Day 14: The one when we celebrated Stephanie's JOB OFFER and GORGEOUS NEW CAR with a dinner at Carinos. We got plenty of bread and garlic dip and Italian cream sodas! yummm :-) ...

...and played with Steph's grandpas roly-poly dachshund named Max (who did not reciprocate my joy at our new friendship)!

YAY picture project!!! I'll post the four videos that I have when I figure out how to upload them onto my new MAC (which I got on day 6 from my PERFECT PARENTS)!!! :-)

Please pray for all of the interns this weekend and all of those that God will touch this weekend! Amanda, Jason, and I are going to Nacogdoches to train SFA for theREVOLUTION, and Hilary and Marcos are putting on a TOB retreat for seniors in high school in Louisiana! I'll let you know how it goes! :-) 

God bless you!!!

the end of an era.

Sooo I'm moving out of College Station for good today. I've pretty much put this moment off for as long as possible...I don't do transition well. I packed up most of my things at the end of June and moved a bunch of it home slowly in small trips. Then I moved myself to my sister's apartment for the last two weeks of my summer so I could spend more time with her. It really helped to ease the transition because I moved out of my house but not out of town. Then on Monday, I moved my things up to Dallas but drove back here that night, and I will be moving up there for good on Sunday afternoon just in time to start bright and early on Monday morning (nothing like waiting until the last minute!). Yet despite all of my best efforts to prevent myself having to reach this point before it was necessary, the time has finally arrived. Today is my last day here in the grand ole' town of College Station, and I am having quite the difficult time with it.

In order to make this slightly easier on myself, I am going to post about one of my favorite memories of being in College Station...our Harry Potter premier extravaganzas!!! Two weeks ago, when the last installment in the Harry Potter series came out, my friends and I joined the massive crowds of HP enthusiasts dressed as the characters to celebrate the end of an era. I love the timing of everything Harry Potter: our class of youth (2007 from HS, 2011 from college) actually grew up with Harry. I know I sound cheesy here, but check this out: we were 11 when the books came out, the last book came out when we graduated high school, and now the last half of the last movie came out right after we graduated college. As if we needed one more reminder that our childhood is, in fact, technically over, Hollywood drove that point into the ground by perfectly aligning the movie release with our last summer before the real world hits. To commemorate this special occasion, I would like to bring to your attention some pictures of my very hard-core friends!!! :-) Enjoy this reminiscence of the lazy days of childhood! :-)

James and Lily Potter! ((yes, I did dye my hair RED for the occasion! more on that later...))

Lily Potter (and baby Harry!) and Goyle :-)

XENOPHILIUS LOVEGOOD!

a reinactment of Harry's reception of the infamous scar!!! ha! :-)

McGonagall, Hermoine, Lily Potter, and Narcissa Malfoy

Narcissa and Lily

THE HOUSE OF BLACK!!!

(Bellatrix, Regulus, Narcissa, Sirius, and Kreacher)

this is my favorite picture! Everyone at the theater was so hard-core, and we pulled people who weren't with our group to make epic group pictures!

Quittach Players: Goyle, Crabbe, Oliver Wood, and Viktor Krum!

THE MALFOY FAMILY!

(Lucius, Draco, Narcissa)

Lucius and Draco weren't with our group...they were just PERFECT fits for the Malfoy family photo!

Hermoine, McGonagall's animagus - the cat!, Luna Lovegood, Lily, and Hedwig!

(the Castle girls!)

Doloros Umbridge!!!

HAGRID! yes, he is on stilts, and yes we stood in line to take a picture with him :-)

epic movie theater decorations! ahhhh!!!

So there you have it, folks! Our epic adventures into the land of Hogwarts! The end of an era of children's literature masterpieces and fairy tale magical worlds has come and gone, and in a few days time I will be embarking on my journey into the grown-up world! oh my, how times flies!

With all my heart!

Hello blogging world! Welcome to my first blog :-) I decided to begin a blog a couple of months ago, but I delayed the start of this process in an attempt to find an un-awkward way to introduce myself to the blogging sphere. I have yet to find one, so I woke up this morning and was filled the certainty that today I must proceed forward, awkward or not!! So here I am! I just graduated from Texas A&M, and I will be moving to Dallas in T-minus 12 days to begin working for a non-profit organization spreading the THEOLOGY OF THE BODY! More about this later, but suffice it to say that I stand in awe of our God who is so gracious and merciful to choose this little one to be His hands and feet in spreading this powerful and life-changing message. That's where I got my blog title: I so desire to LOVE God and others with everything that I have...with all my heart :-) and I put my whole heart into everything that I do. I would love it if you would come on this journey with me! I'm quite a mess, and the passion with which I do everything in my life typically requires that I backtrack and proceed with a little more discipline and focus in developing opinions and spreading truth...but I hope that you would be patient with me as I search for truth and love and joy in this craaazy world! I want to begin my blog with the lyrics to the song from which I took my blog title. These lyrics give you a peek into who I am! God bless you! :-)

Search My Heart

-Hillsong United

Search my heart and search my soul
There's nothing else that I want more

Shine Your light and show Your face
In my life, Lord have Your way

With all my heart and all my soul
With all I am, Lord, I will follow You.

You took the cross, you took my shame,

restored my life, now I live to worship You!

Hear my cry and hear my prayer
Draw me close, I know you're near.

So with all my heart and all my soul
With all I am, Lord, I will follow You
You took the cross, You took my shame
Restored my life, Lord I will follow You.

Without You I am nothing.

Search my heart
And search my soul.

:-)