to see, or not to see... that is the question!

well, the question isn't to see or not, but rather how to see. this year, it's my turn in the family rotation to get new glasses. and i'm beginning to think that i would rather wear glasses full time than wear contacts. i've been wearing contacts for several years now but i wore my glasses for a few years before that. contacts can be annoying but then so can glasses. i hate when my eyes are unfocused then i focus them my contacts are all blurry. or when my eyes start to hurt when i'm awake for a really hard time because my contacts are drying out. and the look of contacts isn't really important to me. if anything i don't like it. i would rather be who i am and who i am can't see very well, so she needs glasses. i don't want to make my mom spend a ton of money on a year's worth of contacts if i'm not going to wear them. i'll probably need a few pairs just in case i need them for something. although i don't really know what i'd need them for so maybe not.

feel free to comment and tell me: glasses or contacts, what do you think?

it's the most wonderful time of the year!

hello hello. got a little sidetracked with the whole christmas thing ;) anyways, i'm back. i got some pretty rockin gifts from my pretty rockin mom :) like a kindle, which i am very much enjoying. and a drawing kit with a book that teaches how to draw people (which, previously i was rather bad at, but that's starting to change :). and we all got cute little lutheran chick coffee cups (which you can see here if you want to get one: oldlutheran.com ). and the most wonderful gift of all: GLEE karaoke for wii!!! we played it when my brother and his family came over and it was amazing!!!

we did a big family christmas at my grandmother's house. complete with more food than i should have eaten, a $15 gift exchange my dad and i rigged so i would get a good present (if i don't know what i'm picking i always pick the worst stuff) and a little mechanized laughing, rolling monkey. one of the most coveted presents in the gift exchange was a lighted tip up with a bag of chocolates. if that's not my family in a nutshell, i don't know what is.

so then my brother came over. my mom got him this cool little flip camera thing. it plugs right into the computer and shoots really nice video. he was happy :) we made 48 deviled eggs so that my sister and i could eat how many we wanted and everyone else could have a few too ;)

so that was my christmas. pretty wonderful i'd say. and tonight i'm going out to supper to exchange gifts with very good friend and eat mexican food :D i still have a gift to exchange with one other person but we seem to be having scheduling issues so if said friend is reading this, he should text me :)

things that grow revisited

i witnessed something amazing today. i saw something grow! in early november, i bought a mini grow-your-own-christmas-tree kit thingie. well, a week or so ago, it started growing for real. there had been a shoot before but it quickly died. but this one is a keeper.

this is what it looked like this morning:

but then i looked at it tonight. and here is what i saw...

it was amazing! and awesome! i couldn't believe it. normally i don't have much of a green thumb, but it's actually working this time :D this is wonderful and i thought i'd share it :)

the reason for the season

Luke 2:1-20  ¹ In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. ^2[a](This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) ³ And everyone went to their own town to register.  ⁴ So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. ⁵ He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, ⁷ and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
 ⁸ And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰¹¹ Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.
 ¹³ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
 ¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
   and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
 ¹⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
 ¹⁶ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. 

growing up in a lutheran school, i have heard these words every year. and instead of seeming repetitive and  boring, every year they become more and more special to me. :)

3...2...1...Blastoff!!...er...i mean...Christmas!!!

it's here! well, almost. 5 days until Christmas. the stockings are hung, the tree is lighted and covered with all the embarrassing school art project ornaments my siblings and i have ever made, and we have enough snow for 3 white christmases. but what really makes it feel like christmas is finally here: the eggnog. we didn't buy any before this week because it's ridiculously high in calories and anything else that could make me fat. but i love it anyway.

last night i started on christmas gifts. i make the ones for my friends and this year, they're gorgeous! i have no idea how i'm going to transport them, but hopefully gift bags will do the trick :)

tonight is the choir christmas concert at my school. i'm in the top choir, so we sing 6 songs plus a mass piece with all the choirs. it's a good night. the christmas concert is always packed. as opposed to our other concerts which have minimal attendance of parents. everyone loves this concert though. i know that after i graduate, i'll still want to come and hear the music. it's a beautiful service because they read Bible verses and sing hymns and stuff between choirs. my favorite songs this year are a cool arrangement of go tell it on the mountain and our mass piece, peace peace. peace peace is cool because the sopranos and altos break into 2 part harmony while the basses and tenors sing silent night underneath us. as we sing they dim the lights little by little so that by the end the only lights still on full blast are the crosses on either side of the stage. it's a wonderful way to end a beautiful concert :)

christmas is getting so close. it came up so fast. will my whole life go by this fast? when you're little, everything feels like it goes so slow and takes forever to grow up. but now, as i get older, life is a speeding bullet and it's all i can do to hang on. i'm not saying that i don't enjoy my life, because i do, but i look back at this semester and it feels like last weekend i was getting ready for homecoming with my friends but that was like 3 months ago.

that's life

so after my relatively huge accomplishment recently, today i was brought back to reality. as usual. whenever things are going good, something inevitably goes bad. all good things must come to an end and such. anyways. today i sang for my choir director so he could approve me to sing the national anthem at a basketball game. but there was a slight problem...he didn't approve me. even though i can do it perfect in practice the first try, i did it three times and kept switching keys :( so i won't be showcasing my not so awesome skills anytime soon. maybe it's for the best. i'm going to develop a heart condition if i keep up all this live performing!

in other news, it's only 8 days til christmas!!! that is insane! and awesome! (if you haven't guessed, i love christmas) it feels like just yesterday i was walking the halls of my high school for the first time in three months, wondering at the fact that my class is top dog now. and here we are with only 13 days left in the semester. next thing i know, we'll be lining up in the gym before graduation, then in the car on the way to college. it's exciting, but the more i think about it, the more strongly i feel that i don't want to have regrets. i don't want to feel like i wanted to say something but didn't. better late than never, huh? i try to live my life like that, but the older i get the more it hits home.

so merry christmas til we meet again :)

mission accomplished

i don't have cool theme music, but i definitely accomplished something this evening. i sang in front of over a hundred people without choking or doing anything horribly bad. i chalk this up to a success.

i have been a singer all my life. i take weekly voice lessons and i'm a member of my school's "good" choir and show choir. but there's one accomplishment i had not reached. solo performance. i'm trying to tackle that this year. see, the thing is, i get this almost paralyzing stage fright to the point where i can't even breathe. i tried out for a solo in choir last week and this happened. needless to say, i didn't get the solo. so when i perform i have to breathe, relax and tell myself it doesn't matter it's just high school. that definitely helps. that's what i did tonight.

i sang "wishing you were somehow here again" from phantom of the opera. i got several compliments afterwords but then when i got home, i listened to it. i am a victim of that terrible phenomenon where it sounds absolutely wonderful from inside my head when i'm singing it, but then when i hear it played back it sounds like the worst thing ever. i hate that. i guess i'll have to work at it more until i like the way it sounds from both angles. but that could take some time. oh well, what are voice teachers for?

blizzard anyone?

i'm not talking about going to DQ... i'm talking about most of my state is under a blizzard warning. every hour or so we hear sirens and firetrucks going who knows where. the wind is blowing like the big bad wolf and according to weather bug it's 19 degrees out (farenheit). unfortunately for me i have to go shovel the (literally) 10-12 inches of snow that has fallen in the last 24 hours. well it's my own fault really. not the snow, the shoveling. i didn't put gas in the snowblower because i wanted to force myself to get some exercise. i'll probably regret that later when i'm out there, but when it's done i'll feel good :)

i live about 6 minutes away from one of the largest malls in the state of wisconsin. the DOT says for everyone to stay off the roads unless they absolutely need to go out. so someone decided they should open the mall today anyway. my mom's job is right next to the mall. so when the mall opens, my mom's work opens too. so now i have to shovel because of the stupid mall :P

days like today are why i plan on moving to a warm weather state after college...

oh the weather outside is frightful!

here it is, here at last: the first snowfall. sure we've flirted with the snow a bit in the past few weeks, some flurries here, freezing rain there, but nothing stuck. until about 2 pm this afternoon. since then we have maybe 4ish inches on the ground (and counting).

i have never lived through a year where i did not have to deal with snow and bitter cold. living in wisconsin, it's just life. i can tell if it's below zero just by breathing the air. i know to some people this much cold must be unfathomable but here it is the norm.

snow and i have a love hate relationship. we have some good memories: snowmen, snow angels and the like. one time my family was in the lifetime section of the local newspaper because our neighbor (who happened to write for said newspaper) thought we looked like a norman rockwell painting all out in the snow as a family building a huge snowman.

then as i got older, snow removal became my chore. i have severe allergies so my sister mows the lawn and i take care of the snow. this works alright for us, but i wouldn't say its my favorite job. somehow after all these years of the vicious cold, i never get used to it. at least i don't have to do it early in the morning. well today. tomorrow i will. although it's dark out so i guess it's a horse a piece.

i must admit, it is beautiful. the first day after a big snowfall when it's all still on the trees and everything looks like a christmas card, no matter what it looks like normally, that's the best. by the time january rolls around the side of the road snow will be gray and nasty and all the parking lots will be ankle deep in brown slush that gets in my socks and makes me ten times colder. but i don't want to think about that right now. i just want to think about how pretty it looks :) and about how i'm going to get my first decent exercise in a while shoveling.

i'm off to brave the tundra armed only with my shovel and my ipod! wish me luck :)

employee of the month

so i've been working at the same retail job for two years. whenever i'm scheduled to work on a weeknight, it's until 10 pm. i've never enjoyed this, but have always dealt with it because that's just the way things are. but tonight i'm scheduled to work until 10:30 (because i'm not a minor anymore they can make me work super late). but that is so not ok. i know it's the busiest season of the year, but they already hired a ton of seasonal help.

i've already decided where i'm going to apply (where i hope to be working soon!). it's a bakery :) not like a cookies and cake kind of bakery, but a bread bakery. i am personally in love with the smell of bread so i think i'll enjoy it. and it's not like fast food where i'd come home smelling like grease. i'll come home smelling like fresh bread :) i know someone who works there, and apparently their uniform is jeans and a tshirt w/ their logo. that'd be a relief after 2 years of tan pants and ugly polo shirts :P

so wish me luck and send some prayers my way that i get this job :D

Frightening Forest of Fashion Faux paus!

yes you read that right. welcome to the world of retail. i've seen some pretty terrible stuff working as a cashier these past two years. tonight i think i'll share with you some of the scariest of all...

just tonight i saw a man in my peripheral vision. i judged him to be about 17 from the clothes he was wearing. i looked up. he was at least 45.

a mother and daughter (the fashion of one obviously influenced the other) who were a tad round. but they thought that if their shirt and pants were touching at least some of the time, their clothes fit.

a woman in her early fifties wearing a straw hat with a strap under her chin. a white t shirt tucked into blue ice cream cone pants (you know, cinches your waist, makes your bum look astronomical and tapers to nice little point at your feet) and those horrible velcro sandals that 5 year old boys wear. i would like to point out: no wedding ring and buying cat food.

all hairy men in tank tops. just sayin.

hispanic woman who was wearing jeans. they were at least three sizes too tight. i know this because she had three inches of stomach fat sticking out all the way around the waistband.

jersey shore wannabe: i think the waistband of his jeans was at least halfway down his thigh. he must have been wearing like five sweatshirts (getting progressively larger). or he was wearing football pads underneath just 2 sweatshirts.

that's all i can think of right now and i don't want to frighten you out of leaving your house ever again.

creator

today is the end of a rather long week. it had its ups and downs but wasn't too terrible. i'm dead tired as usual. that's pretty much a constant state for me during the school year. which stinks for someone who finds it utterly impossible to sleep during daylight hours :(unless it's in the morning and i was already asleep).

i've been thinking about something in sculpture lately. it gives me a whole new appreciation for creation. the Bible tells me that God made me and he knows me inside and out. of course i have always known this, but now i feel it in a much more personal way. right now our project is animals, so i (of course) am making a pig (i love pigs and collect them). what started out as a chunk of clay is now a pretty realistic pig. i can see every little flaw. i know exactly where every dent is, i know how it feels when i add a little bit, i know where i need to work on and which parts are just the way i want them. i have plans for how to fix the bits that need work. i know that little piggie inside and out just the way that God knows me. that's an amazing feeling. i thank God for giving me the artistic abilities i have so that i can feel that feeling and know it's all because of him :)

it's the most wonderful time of the year

holy. cramole. today is december 2, 2010. it snowed yesterday. i think it's time for a reality check: it's winter now, and my senior year is nearly half over. december is a good month.

a month where we get to go to advent church every wednesday. that in itself makes this an excellent time of year. i love going to the suppers before church and eating with our church family.

it's a month where i either hunt down (or make) gifts for my friends. and my favorite part of gift giving: i handwrite each of them an individual letter telling them how special they are to me. my favorite part of christmas is giving things to people. i usually only do something small for my friends because i know it's not the actual gift that matters, but the letter. now that it's december i can get started on those. :)

december is a month filled to the brim with christmas music! choral music, church music, music on the radio, music at work...it's everywhere! and i love it! more than any other time of the year, this christmas music brings people together, and it's a wonderful thing.

and last of all, december is a month of snow! snow days hopefully but definitely snow. it snowed all day yesterday but we only have barely an inch to show for it. but that's alright because i'm the one in my family responsible for snow blowing the driveway :/ so the longer we can put that off the better :)

these are my favorite things about the christmas season :)