Entertaining Myself

Wow, no blog post for a whole week!? I'm pathetic.

And you know what else is pathetic? It is my goal to finish this post in the eight minutes I have left in the massage chair. This is important to me because I am a tired girl tonight.

Random happenings in our household:

- My dad just went out to get the mail (at 10:30 at night in the pouring rain, I might add), and discovered that someone shot our house with an orange paintball. Don't be alarmed. We got it off with a paper towel. Except for the part my dad couldn't reach. We're saving that one for Jeremy :-)

- Speaking of Jeremy, I spent 3 hours Christmas shopping with him today. Neither one of us are super thrilled about shopping, but we're happy to be together and getting the Christmas gifts picked out is like an added bonus.

- I have also enjoyed time with "the other brother" too! On Saturday, Wesley and I built this amazingly nifty Lincoln Log structure. He wanted to make the White House. So we did. Haha, you can totally see it, right? :-)

- I had lunch at Chic-fa-lae today (I have no idea how to spell that). It was a wonderful time getting to hang out with my so-sweet cousin, Dixie. She had alot of great insights into teaching. One of the most profound ones being, "Set your students up for success, not failure. It will make them want to learn if they know they can get it right." I thought that was a valuable nugget of truth, because think of the flip-side. Any teacher you have had where you know right off the bat that you are not going to meet his/her standards, doesn't it just obliterate all your motivation for trying?
Things to keep in mind while I embark on this teacher journey.

- One of my goals for this break was to dive back into reading missionary biographies again. Right now, I'm reading about the life of Mary Slessor, missionary to Africa. Her approach to the drunken and godless natives has totally captivated me. Seeing them in their front yards on the first day of being in the "Old Town" she marched right up to them and asked if they were ashamed. While of course, in our culture today, this would be unheard of, there is something to be said for Christians possessing the boldness to obey Christ even if it brings about discomfort. It is okay for the guilty to feel guilt. Because that is what will point them to the Savior. This fiery-haired Scottish woman is continuing to give me things to mull over as I read about her life of serving God - in one adventure after another!

- It's great to be playing guitar again. Recently I have been discouraged with my stagnate progress. I hadn't realized that I pushed it to the side until I picked up again today. Everything else I had planned for the next hour went out the window as I sang and got back into the rythms of the playing. My fingers are also now happily working on re-callousing. I can feel them tingling overtop the keys right now as I type. :-)

- My latest new favorite thing to do at night is to have that as my "quiet-time" to myself. My goal is to work on my to-do list and actually accomplish things during the day, and then at night I sit at my desk and put together a scrapbook page while watching old episodes of Psych via Netflix. I love that time! It's so good to be on break.
And recently I came across the boatload of pictures I printed from the last time I went to Africa. Since that is what is close to my heart as of late, it has been the most easy thing for me to focus on in my scrapbook pages. Here's the latest one, describing a game the class was playing when my friend and I sat in on the second grade....

It's been longer than eight minutes.
I hope you've enjoyed this obscure update of break. It will be over all too soon :-)