Thanksgiving

Here is quite a collage of pictures from our Thanksgiving Dinner! I missed you guys! Hope you had a great holiday :)


Steve reading to Cassandra




Natashia sporting her cool hat!

Jordan and Evan




Playing Hoss in the living room. (No table space available!)

Gloria, Audrey, and Doris

Jordan and Monica Georgia and Channle (sp?)


Jannah and Savannah





Little Miss Channle
)

Elizabeth, Jannah, and Kari




Channle, Natashia, Evan, and Savannah drawing on the marker board.





Happy Thanksgiving!

Ben and Sam have officially moved out of the house!! Sunday it will be three weeks. Ben recently bought a house that he and sam have fixed up. They are really enjoying being on there own. It was a slight adjustment at first here at home not having them around. Currently I'm really enjoying not having to run the dish washer every night, and having small loads of laundry to do now (we throw all our laundry together), less food to cook....and the list goes on. I believe Rochelle is feeling a little bit like an only child these days, when I'm at school late or just out with friends. But she's a good sport about it. If anything it's made me appreciate my siblings all the more!
Last night a friend and I went to Messiah to spend the night with monica. It was good to see here again! She really has a full load this semester with two part time jobs and 18 credits!! We only stayed to 12 this afternoon so that she could finish up her projects that are due monday. It was a great time though. We found a recipe for chocolate cream cheese cupcakes, so we took a trip to the grocery store to pick up some ingredients, came back and borrowed a friends move Pride and Prejudice...made our cupcakes and watched the movie. Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite movies! After tossing an turning most of the night, as we were sleeping on the floor, we were, at least I was, wide eyed and aching all over by the early hours of the morning. Renee (my friend) and I made a big breakfast for everyone (Monica's got two roommates). It was nice and relaxing. We spend the rest of the morning lounging around. Very nice!

Us girls and Dad :)

This past weekend our chruch celebrated it's 30th anniversary. Saturday night we had a formal banquet at the Lancaster Host Resort. We celebrated by playing games, recalling memories from the past, and eating a wonderful meal together. Below are a few pictures of us girls before we left.

Monica and Rochelle

Tootsie

Rochelle, Monica, and I

Us 3 and Mom!

A weekend away :)

A weekend at the mountains is always a time I look forward to. I can always imagine the smell of the campfire blazing, and the cool wind at my back as I rost my marshmellows, knowing that I've got the rest of the weekend to do nothing...I don't know if there's a better feeling then that!
We had a great time together. Played some card games which inluded Dutch Blitz, and Hoss. We also spent time hitting the volleyball around out side. The one thing that took away from my mountain experience this year was the HOT weather!! It was in the 80"s durring the day. I could have kicked myself for not packing any shorts. I was so hot...we ended up turning on the AC in the cabin! Just not my idea of mountain weather. As you can see below, we still did cook hot dogs and marshmellows, it's just that it was in the comfort of our ACed cabin!!

Below are some pictures from the weekend:

Sam and Ben getting their fill of hot dogs.
(Yes there is a fire there, it's just hard to see)



Rochelle and Monica relaxing while they wait for hotdog
sticks....we only had two, and no one wanted to cut any
more.


Dad and Sam


Time for back rubs!! (Rochelle's smile just crackes me up in this picture!) What great brothers we have!!!!!


A sideways view out the back of the cabin.


Sunset



Sam planing out his next move.



A walk down the lane...



The leaves were just starting to change color.

The Buck

Saturday night a few of my friends decided they wanted to go to the Buck for the last show this season. The Buck is this track down on the southern end of the county, not far from the Maryland line, where all the rednecks hang out and race their trucks. I have never been there before, so this was a new experience for me.

The night started out with some little beater cars competing in an obstacle course. They started out driving up a mud ramp and flying off it, they then had to drive around two large tires in a figure eight pattern, before driving off another ramp. Some of theses cars did pretty well, others had engine problems, and had to be towed off the course. One driver got a little carried away and rolled his vehicle!

Later in the night they brought out the trucks and had a competition to see who could drive the farthest through a large mud pit. It became more of a competition between the makes of the trucks (ford, chevy, dodge) than the actual people themselves :) I had to laugh.

It was fun, not something I'd do right away again though. They do have monster trucks come out and jump cars, and that I think would be fun to see sometime. Maybe next year.

Here are a few pictures from the night.

Erica and I

Bethany and Cindy sported their cowboy hats!

One of the cars doing the figure eight...

The weekend

As I am writing this blog, the first essay i have written since graduating high school is printing out. What a job...writing does not come easily for me, and I find I am quickly distracted on the Internet when I become frustrated!! This is a very bad habit as the minuets fly by with out me being aware of it.

This past weekend was great. A friend and I got together Friday night and had taken a walk around her neighborhood. It's defiantly getting cool outside. This weekend I had to pull out the long sleeves!! We watched a movie called Facing the Giants...the acting isn't real great, but the movie has very strong christian morals in it, and we were both in tears at the end of the move, just in aww of Gods goodness. I guess I really enjoyed it a lot because it spoke to me and what I've been going through lately! I'd defiantly recommend the movie if you haven't already seen it :)
I am not working on a regular work schedule because of going to school full time. So Friday night was my first night back at work, working third shift (11-7). Things went really smoothly, and I didn't have any trouble staying awake!!

After sleeping most of my Saturday away, I met up with a girlfriend and we went bike riding. It felt so good to get some physical exercises, and it was a beautiful night. The air was crisp, sun setting, and we even saw quite a few deer. We could hear a speed way near buy that we decided to check out. I had never been to a speed way before, plus we weren't planing to stay long. So when we found out it was $20 to get in we decided to just watch from the gate. Well that didn't last long as we were soon asked to leave. Not ready to admit defeat, we walked around the back of the track and decided to climb the hill to the fence where maybe we could get a good view. Well we were able to see the track, but what we weren't aware of was just how fast these mini sprint cars come flying around those turns. We were soon sprayed with rocks and dust. We realized quite quickly this was not a good idea!! I was afraid I was about to loose and eye, or have stones embedded in my forehead!! Ha ha ha.....it was an adventure, something we'll laugh about for days to come. :)

Over the past month, every Sunday after Church a group of friends meet up to play some competitive volleyball. It has been so much fun. Some weeks only 6 people show up and we play 3 on 3. Other weeks there is enough people who come out to have two v-ball games going simultaneously. It's great :)

So today is Monday, and it's back to "work". I dropped my Anatomy and Physiology class....it was too intense, and I couldn't handle that along with my other classes. Unfortunately now I am only a part time student. This means I need to pick up more hours at work again. But for now I have my Mondays off, and because of the busy weekend, I have pushed off the homework for today. Bah humbug!

Labor day weeknd

So 6 of us girls decided to go to Ocean City, MD for the weekend. We had beautiful weather, and a great time hang out and catching up. Some of the girls I knew, but then they got married and our lives kinda went their separate ways. So it was nice to catch up. Honestly we spent the whole weekend sleeping in, then sat out all day on the beach and went out for supper in the evening. I like the beach...but one weekend was enough beach for me for a while. :) Sorry I really don't have any pictures for ya. The one below is of Rochell and I....I became sidetracked as I was unpacking my belonging from the weekend and was taking pictures of the two of us. LOL





We hit traffic coming home from the beach monday afternoon. It took us and extra hour an a half to get back. :( I was home in time to still be able to make it to a friends cookout that evening. I really needed to hit the books, but knew I wouldn't be able to focus on them anyway. So I did the responsible thing, and rationalized hanging out one last time before the holiday weekend was over.

White water rafting!

This weekend my small group went camping at Ohiopyle state park in south western PA. It really was a great get away. I typically only like to go camping about once a year, and that's plenty. But this past weekend was really very enjoyable. I'm convinced that if I'd get myself a small single air mattress, I'd love camping :) I think that's my biggest draw back to camping, is the sleepless nights and sore bones the next morning.
We spend a large part of saturday white water rafting! This was a first for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! We paddled our way through class 2 and 3 rapids...which were plenty big for me :) Between the 12 of us we had three rafts....only one of the groups flipped their rafts. They have a completely different take on rafting because of it, and plenty of bruises to show for it. Between rapids, we stopped to do some cliff jumping and swimming.
The rest of sat. we took pretty easy, as everyone was sore, and some of us brusied. It didn't rain much last weekend. (that's a surprise in it's self, The last 3 years I've gone camping it has rained, and was miserable.) We packed up camp sunday morning and then hiked a trail that led us behind a huge water fall. It was absolutely beautiful. I don't have any pics. to show, they are all on a friends camera :( So the weekend was a much needed break from life. Then monday it was back to the Books....Bio has proven to be a challenge. I know I can handle it, its just going to require a lot of sacrificed time studying away....trying to memorize, and memorize, and memorize some more!
The parts I can understand have proven to be very interesting :) haha.

Hit'n the books

So, as of monday I am officially a collage student! First time back to school since I graduated 6 years ago. I'm going for my RN, taking my gen. eds. at HACC; our local community college. It's been so much fun getting back into the class room and learning again!!

We'll give this a whirl....

Ok Michawn, I just want you to know I'm doing this all for you!! I hope that makes you feel important. I'm not going to make any promises, but I'll try to keep this as up to date as possible. :)
A funny thing happened to me just a few days ago. A friend of mine told me about this book she really thought I should read. So the other day I finally decided to buy the book. I went online and ordered it, and days later I received it in the mail, only to find out I ordered a miniature version!! What a shock. The book could almost be attached to my key chain! Haha. I couldn't believe it. Wait just a minuit, I'll get my camera and show you just how small this book is. It's ridiculous.









Tell me that's not crazy! I have a hard time really reading the book and taking it seriously. Oh well, next time I'll be sure to read the fine print!
Ok, I need to be going. I just got off work and my body's telling me it's time to be in bed.
Have a great day. Oh and congratulations on your pregency!!