Twenty ten? Two thousand ten? Oh ten? Whatever its going to be called, its a new year! Can't believe its 2010! So much has happened the past
decade its crazy to think about. Getting older, gaining wisdom, developing maturity.. I must be becoming an adult or something! In the past ten years I have completed elementary school, middle school, and graduated high school, I have dated and broke up with my first boyfriend, had my first kiss, fell in love for the first time, had a hard breakup for the first time, gotten in a few car accidents, been to a few dances, worked 3 summers at Soundview, moved to a new town, settled into a new church, gotten several haircuts and dye jobs, gone through many pairs of jeans, learned to play guitar, started college classes, survived my first college midterms and finals, celebrated new years in seattle under the space needle, been to many the family reunion, tried octupus, traveled to texas, oregon, california, montana, idaho, roadtripped by myself, I think most everything that has been of much significance fpr me has happened in the past ten years. This is an important decade of my life! Going from kid to teenager to young adult is a huge transition and I feel as if it has gone well!
Growing up isn't easy of course, there's bumps and curves and potholes along the way, but I can say that I am doing good, and I'm happy. I have friends that support me, wonderful family, great opportunities, good relationships, and a healthy body. What's to complain about? Life is good!
More specifically, since the last posting, a lot has happened! Christmas and New Years have come and gone, I have ended one quarter of school and begun a fresh one, and I've ended a long relationship. First, Christmas was spent modestly at home in Lacey with all the siblings together plus Amy and Lofa. It was a simple holiday with the expected breakfast of cracker eggs and cinnamon rolls, and eventually we did open presents all of us together. It was great having everyone together if only for a short time. As us kids get older its better and better to be together seeing that our maturities and the like sort of level out to be similar. As compared to previous years where everyone was very aware of the age gaps. But we're all getting older and all have our own lives and soon we'll be having our own Christmases with our own families and it'll be a special occurance to have us all home together.
In chronological order, Ron and I ended our relationship on tuesday, December 29th 2009. We dated for week or so over fourteen months. Ron was and IS a great guy with so much potential and so much passion and I'll always love him but our two selves were not meant to be together forever. We have differences that for me made it hard sometimes and I knew I needed to break things off. We had a lot of good times together, just hanging out going bowling, hiking, watching movies, go-karting, coloring, eating lots, traveling to Texas. I enjoyed the time we spent together, but in the end, it had to end. Some of our differences were too different to be ignored. I will always care and support Ron in whatever he chooses to do and I believe he will do some great things. I'll never forget our relationship and hopefully we'll continue to stay connected.
That weekend was New Years! Ron and I had planned to spend New Years Eve with his family and some friends that live in Seattle and have a great view of the skyline, but those plans simply fell through because of our still hot off the press break up so I ended up in Lacey at my parents house. I got a hold of a couple friends from high school and we decided to make an adventure out of driving up to Seattle anyway to watch the fireworks off the Space Needle. It was a great time just wandering around seeing the sights and people watching until we got to the countdown and saw the fireworks show. It's something everyone watches on TV every year but to see the show right in front of you is something else! Something to check off the list of things to experience in your lifetime. I had a good time with some fresh (but familiar) faces and it was nice to just get out and relax.
After a late late night, we headed down to Oregon New Years Day for our annual family reunion at Fireside. The numbers are dwindling but its still nice to see extended family every year and simply enjoy each others company for a few days as an ending to the holiday season and break. We did a number of puzzles and played ping pong all weekend and said our goodbyes until next year.
Since then I have developed a cold, and started the new quarter out at Highline with new classes. This quarter i'm taking Math 111 on tuesdays and thursdays 5:15-7:25PM, English 101 on mondays 7:15-9:45PM and Furniture History I on thursdays 12:30-2:00PM. So far its been alright although i'm experiencing things through the haze of being sick so we'll find out how I really feel about the classes when I'm healthy again! The furniture history class is apparently part of the Interior Design program at Highline, so it was a little awkward to come into a class full of people who've been in the program for multiple quarters and all know each other, I definitely felt the stares. But the class is going to be interesting I think, lots of work, but lots of knowledge! That's the theme for me this quarter.. lots of work, lots of knowledge. English and math are both not very interesting compared to the other classes I've taken but so far have been good. The english teacher is a young woman who's focus was the Victorian period of literature, so she talks a lot and tends to be wordy, and writes even more, but she's friendly and seems to be a good teacher, passionate about what she does. The math teacher is hilarious! He's older, has been teaching math for 40 years, but still has the spirit of a young boy! I can't place who he reminds me of, mostly I think its because its a few people mashed together, but the way he teaches, his mannerisms, the jokes he has, his sense of humor, its all very amusing without him actually trying to be humorous. One of those teachers you either find dreadfully wierd and annoying, or simply entertaining. Over all, the schedule and work load will take some adjusting but I believe it will turn out to be a good quarter.
About a month ago I stumbled upon a program at Bate's Technical College in Tacoma that I'm going to enroll in. Its something like a year and a half program for carpentry that looked very interesting. I've been wondering and searching and thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life, what career I'd like to start, anything that I can look into doing for a while to support myself but enjoy at the same time. Its been fairly unsuccessful, mostly wanting to do things like photography which is way to competive and rough a market to really support yourself or a family on, art which is about the same problem, music maybe, all things that I enjoy doing, but wouldn't necessarily want as a career. I thought about being an art teacher for elementary ages, my uncle still wants me to look into working on wind turbines, my mom and aunt decided I should be a.. sonomographer? The people who do sleep stuudies. But nothing really ever struck my fancy as something I'd really be interested in until I thought about carpentry. I can work with my hands, I can be creative but also simply follow guidelines, I can build things, re-model things, restore things, all things that I like to do. There's quite a few different careers and jobs that can spawn off from carpentry training like working for big commercial construction companies building houses, or working for small private businesses working on remodeling and home repairs and projects. I'd love to get into the small private side of it and I'm excited to get into the program and start learning. I think it'll be a good fit and hopefully something I can enjoy doing for a long time to come.
Until then, i'll be chugging along in my classes, continuing to lead the youth band at Mission Woods, hopefully get in a number of fun adventures, most likely be a counselor at Soundview this summer, and continue to get older and wiser! So a toast to a new year, a new decade! A fresh start, a new outlook, clean slate. Here's to hoping that the year treats you better than any years past and that you find nothing but happiness, warmth, joy and love. Happy 2010!
Until then, i'll be chugging along in my classes, continuing to lead the youth band at Mission Woods, hopefully get in a number of fun adventures, most likely be a counselor at Soundview this summer, and continue to get older and wiser! So a toast to a new year, a new decade! A fresh start, a new outlook, clean slate. Here's to hoping that the year treats you better than any years past and that you find nothing but happiness, warmth, joy and love. Happy 2010!
Ron and myself spent halloween weekend in texas this year, visiting family and attending the Notre Dame vs. WSU football game. It was awesome! We stayed in San Antonio, which is beautiful! It was a nice change of scenery from washington. Ron and I pretty much won the lottery with this trip.. especially me! The main reason we went was the EIGHT FREE tickets we got from family friends of the Pingels, who are Notre Dame alumni, and didn't want to make the trip down just for the game. Ron's cousin Cindy hooked us up with a FREE hotel room at the Fairmont Hotel right in the smack center of downtown San Antonio, and she also provided us a FREE rental car! We ate 3 or 4 bigger meals out, with relatives that generously took care of the bill. I don't think I spent a cent the entire trip, thanks to Ron and his extended family! So we flew into houston early in the morning, and took another flight into San Antonio (which was hot! :) ) where Cindy, Cindy's mom, Cindy's daughter and nephew, all met us in the rental car and they took us to eat at El Tipico (first experience of great texas food), and then to our hotel room at the Fairmont. We settled into our room for a bit until Ron's cousin Adolf (aka Duffy) came and picked us up to go to a small club to watch his sister Jessica (Ron's cousin) perform flamenco! That was so cool to experience, and authentically to! The next day, (saturday, halloween) we spent sight-seeing. We woke up and headed across the street (literally) into Hemisfair Park, where the Tower of the Americas is located, which we proceeded to ride the elevator up and see San Antonio from above. We went across the street to experience the River Walk! This was probably my favorite part of the trip. The River Walk is a long stretch of man made canals that are bordered by restaurants and shops and a mall on one end. Tour boats travel the waters constantly and you hear the guides schpealing their schpeal. This particular day the river walk was flooded with fans in town for the football game, or people out for halloween, so it was crowded, but made people watching too easy!
This past weekend was the annual Taking Back Halloween retreat at Soundview that everyone looks forward to after every summer. A good number of people came this year, with a few youth groups and various stragglers. We spend the weekend hanging out at the camp, usually with a few planned activities to provide a little order, but the weekend is knowingly hosted so that people can catch up. One thing that IS an event to anticipate is the carnival that is organized (by Tink most regularly) where there are lots of carnival type games set up around the activity shelter offering candy as prizes. There's a crazy hair station (with spray on hair color) and this year it was combined with a face paint table that myself and Ck ran quite successfully! One masterpiece I was particularly excited about was the orange pumpkin "sniffapotamos", a beast that was the mascot for a group of kids going around the carnival that was part elephant, part giraffe, and part hippo!
Most years that I have been at the retreat, the costumes are usually lacking.. The kids mostly just put on random things from the camp costume box that we use for skits during the summer and it is always a little disappointing. But this year things were great! Not only were more people wearing costumes they brought from home, but the people that did dress up did good! There was a Madeline, a flamingo, an ancient Roman (?) soldier, Cleopatra, cowboy, mermaid, one of the village people (with a blended chai painted on his face thanks to the face paint station), a carnival queen, a mental institution escapee, a few nerds, and "Tranji"(my favorite), among other things. I was proud! I myself attempted to be Max, from "Where the Wild Things Are" and it seemed to work, most people got it eventually. If nothing else it was run to run around and be wild!
Jason Asher, the staffer that was in charge of the retreat actually used the movie "Where the Wild Things Are" as a theme for the talks he did. He did an awesome job relating all sorts of God stuff to the movie and it made me want to go see the movie again just to remember what he was talking about! He mentioned that his talks were recorded and he'll be getting them up on the Soundview website (www.soundviewcamp.com) if you're interested in listening to them, which you should be. Jason is a great guy with a lot of awesome ideas and wise things to say if you ever get the chance to be around him, you won't be disappointed. He has such a spirit!
After learning guitar by playing songs at camp, I've been made the go-to girl for any camp activity that involves a campfire or gathering with camp music involved, so, as expected, I played quite a bit at the retreat. Allie Jo and I played for "campfire" both nights and morning gatherings as well. Also one of the youth leaders that brought his group to the retreat had changed up the lyrics to the Jason Mraz song "I'm Yours" and made it a christian song, so he showed me that and taught me to play it. 
The retreat was awesome and the weather/ scenery was beautiful but cold! Soundview is such a gorgeous location any time of year, but the fall with all the huge maple trees in the array of color is a sight to see! I'd say it was a success and Allie and I even had the chance to duel each other for a powdered doughnut (leftover from one of the booths at the carnival). Everyone went home happy and exhausted from such a "wild rumpus" and the typical "hangover" that comes with spending time at Soundview.. over all a great weekend!
After the pumpkin patch we all came back to the Moore's house for pizza and cake and presents for Ck and Allie Jo. Their birthdays were on Thursday and Friday so it was a small celebration. Tink and Allie each made respective cakes for the girls and afterward we watched Elf all cuddled up on the couch. I took Rachel home with me because her sister and parents were busy with Homecoming shenanigans and we stayed up way to late talking while I was working on homework, so this morning getting to church early to set up was pretty rough! :) 
