Pink and white

 Next year I will be a senior. Some ladies in our church make lovely quilts for each of the seniors in the church every year, so I have been trying to think of what color combination I want mine to be. As I was pondering, I came up with a lot of different ideas, but wasn't sure which one to choose because I want one that I will like all of my life. I thought of pink and brown, but realized that it might go out of style. I considered choosing something neutral that I could use in my home someday, like blue, but I decided that I want to get one that I really like, not just whatever is most practical. I also contemplated choosing purple, since that has been the color of my bedroom for quite some time. But, I'm ready for a change. Finally, I got the perfect idea: pink and white!

 There is something so timeless and elegant about pink and white.

It doesn't go out of style, and you're never too old for it.

It's graceful and lovely,

 It's cute and sweet looking,

 

It's captivating and breathtaking,

 It's gentle and feminine,

 It's relaxing and refreshing.

All in all, I think it will be the perfect choice for my quilt. Since Cody moved away, I am going to move into his bedroom because it has some advantages over mine. For my birthday this year Mom and I are going to work redecorating it this summer with garage sale finds, renovated old decorations, and lovely sale items. I will really enjoy having a new bedroom and being able to spend time working on it with mom. :) Hope you all enjoyed these lovely pictures as much as I did!

My, oh my!

My goodness! Life has been good but very busy lately. I turned 15! So now I'm all old and wise and mature and all that - NOT! :-) God's been doing such amazing stuff in my life!

For my fifteenth birthday, I had 4 of my very close freinds over - Kyla, Emily, Kara, and Kelsea. Great girls! We stayed up til 5:00 AM (or later ;) ). We atched 4 episodes of my very favorite show ever - Sue Thomas F.B.Eye. It's about a deaf woman who's an F.B.I. agent and it's really awesome (minus a couple of moments in a couple of episodes, which I do not give my approval to.) Also, we did our nails, talked laughed, sat around the fire, and took a walk out to the beautiful field with the windmills, which I do believe I have mentioned before. It was asuch a wonderful time!

Cody is back from Circle C! I missed him SOSOSOSO much, as you know! He's such an amazingly awesome brother. :)

Erik is moving to Kentucky in less than a month!!! Wow... it seems so crazy. He will be 6 miles away from the Creation Museum, which is why he's moving there. That way, he will be able to work at the office. He's bought a little 2-bedroom house, and we're going down in a couple weeks to help him get it fixed up and ready to live in!

Our youth group went on a camping tip this past weekend. It was really neat! We stayed at the home of one of the guys in our youth group - they have a big yard and were very generous to let us all camp out there! We went rafting on the Genesee river at Letchworth, and we also went hiking and swimming there to. It's SUCH a beautiful place! For those of you who are reading this and are not from New York: Letchworth is a state park with a huge gorge and some spectacular views! God's creation truly is amazing. I grew a lot closer to God this weekend, too!

Today is my dad's birthday! We didn't do much for it though. :( We wanted to, but life's been so crazy that we didn't end up getting anything ready in time. So we will probably celebrate it more another day.

Cody, Erik and I went to my wonderful friend Abby's presentation about her missions trip to Mexico this evening. She went on a missions trip to Chiapas, Mexico this summer and tonight she told us all about it. Afterward we all stayer around for a while and had a TON of fun!!

All in all, God had been really, really amazing lately, and has been teaching me a lot about standing up for my faith - especially when it costs me something! I need Him so much... may He get all the glory in my life!

Update

Well, I have not posted as much as I should lately. I've been, busy, and life has been so up and down that I just didn't want to post. So I will simply say that God has been so good to me, and has really been lifting me up the last few days from a very discouraging week last week. I might not post for a while, or a might post a lot. I don't know.

And a prayer request - my Dad, Mom, and oldest brother are down in Kentucky now looking at a house Erik is considering buying. Please pray that God will give them direction and wisdom about the house, and safety as they will be driving a lot. Thanks!


And... I will be 15 in 6 days. Yipes! :)

God bless.

Time flies!

So, I was looking through pictures last night on my computer of me a few years ago, and thinking how much has changed.

This is me (left) and my best friend (right) about 6 years ago - when I was 9. Can you believe that chubby face is mine? :) Emily and I have been good friends through the years, and I am SO thankful for her. Our friendship strengthens through time, and she is still my closest friend! We've been through a lot together.

I think I was 10 in this picture. This picture was taken at one of the lovely tea parties I used to have with my mom. :) Life sure was simpler back then! I mostly did was I was told because I wanted to make people happy, and because it was easy. It wasn't until later that I actually had make a hard, but wonderful decision to serve Christ, no matter what.

This is me at almost 11. When I was that age, I always did my hair by pushing it back with a headband. The day this picture was taken is memorable because it was a Sunday afternoon, and Erik and I were taking a long walk together. What a wonderful day! When I was 11, some things started to change. It wasn't always easy. One of the best things that changed was that Christ started becoming truly real in my life.

12 was an interesting year. I somehow went completely nuts. In some ways, it was a really fun year. But I was not living for Christ like I should have been, and I started out on a downhill path. I couldn't find any *nice* pictures of my at 12, so I made a collage of the crazy ones.

Thirteen, at first, was a really great and really awful year. For a while, I started to walk back uphill again. But it was in my own strength, not Christ's. About halfway through the year, I started to run downhill again, hard and fast.

Near the end of my 13th year, God started to wake me up. He used some pretty awesome things... one of them was my mom! My mom was a huge help to me. I didn't always appreciate it at the time, but I sure do now! Then starts this past year - 14. God has really taken hold of my hands and started teaching me dance with Him. I am every bit as sinful, and every bit as unworthy as I ever was, but he has shown me that it's not about me! I don't have to earn his grace. I am falling more in love with him every day. There have been times, this year, when I have stooped so far, and my heart has left my True Love, Jesus Christ. But He has never left me. He keeps bringing me back, and teaching me more about who He is. Wow, He is SO awesome!!

And now, I am almost fifteen. My birthday is August 1st - wow, time sure flies!

LIfe is good, eternal life is better! :D

Hey everyone! God has been teaching me soooo much lately! I have been learning about being truly set-apart for God, and really having joy in my Christian walk! I have been reading the book "Set-Apart Femininity" By Leslie Ludy, and it is an AWESOME book! All of the books by Eric and/or Leslie Ludy are really good! Something I have learned is that we often spend way too much time feeling depressed that our relationship with God doesn't seem close and vibrant and personal, and too little time actually SEEKING him and striving to become closer to him. In Sunday School we have been talking about holiness, and it is SOO good! The only way for us to become holy is to be daily in God's word. Doing a a short little morning "devo" every day doesn't cut it, either. We really have to seek Him, and let Him search our hearts, and ask Him for His wisdom. We really need to be living out His word, too. It doesn't matter how much we read it and think about it and memorize it if we don't obey it! So I have been really striving toward holiness and joy in my walk with Christ.

I also have found that I love hymns!! A lot of songs these days basically say "Life stinks, everything is hard, you're all alone..... but God is good so don't give up." If you ask me, that's a pretty depressing outlook on life! Yes, life is hard. Yes, the world will be full of heartache and disappointment. But that can't be our focus. We need to let nothing get in the way of our joy. If we are walking with Christ, there will be joy. Even when Paul the Apostle was imprisoned and hated by many people he was full of joy! The more I seek God, the more joy He brings. I have really been seeking Him a lot lately, and let me tell you, it is so worth it! :)

Now to write about the events of the past week... my brothers came home from Lamoka on Saturday for GOOD! They have been at Lamoka most of the summer and now the camp year is over. I'm really happy to have them back. Saturday was also my dad's 47th birthday! I baked him a German Chocolate cake with coconut-walnut frosting, which is tradition in out house. He loooves that kind of cake and frosting, so we always make it for his birthday. That evening was our church's annual Sunday School picnic, so we went to that for a few hours and it was fun. This Saturday is a youth event called the Gathering, and I am SO excited! That's about all I have to say now. Thanks for reading, fellow bloggers! :)

My birthday! :)

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't written in so long. It's been busy! Let's see... on Friday we headed to my Grandparents' house, and we spent the day with them. We watched TV for a long time and talked. Then we had supper and they made me a cake for my birthday! :) It was nice. I got a present which was jewelry, nail polish, and lip gloss. AND GUMMY BEARS!! I love those things - lol :).

On Saturday it was my birthday!!! YAY! We headed toward home at 8 AM and Mom said she was planning something special but wouldn't tell me what. After about 2 hours of driving, we showed up at Camp Lamoka, where my brothers work! See, I worked there for one week on a Ministry Team last year and I LOVED it, and my brothers always tell me how much fun they have working there, so I wanted to go there again and meet all their new friends! I met some friends, and enjoyed a couple of hours there, and I found out I was going to my brothers' friends' house with them to spend the afternoon there! I was nervous at first, but it turned out to be an AWESOME day!!

On Sunday, I had 2 friends over and we did a photo-shoot in a beautiful field. It was so pretty! We all wore coordinating colored dresses and the pictures turned out so nicely! Later, I opened my presents from my parents. I got: an AMAZING black hat with studs on it. (That sounds punk-ish but it's actually really cute) and I got very pretty earrings, and a big purple plaid pillow, and an awesome little purple plush doggy. The 2 friends I had over, Danna and Glory, gave me $14 and one cent! The one cent was because it was a day late. :) All in all, I had an awesome birthday and awesome weekend!

I have also been learning a lot about sin. I often feel like I'm a slave to sins that I keep doing over and over, but then I realized, I am NOT a slave! I have been freed by the blood of the Lamb! I don't EVER have to sin again!! I won't be perfect, of course, but it is very relieving to know that sin has no grip on me, and I never have to sin again. It's a battle though, and it has to be fought! It's guerrilla warfare. The enemy has been defeated, but refuses to give up, so he sneaks in and tries to cause as much trouble as possible. Therefore, we must watch and pray!! God has taught me so much. Please pray for me, that I will fight the battle and not give up.

That's all I have to say now, so toodles! :) :)

Surprise Party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Disclaimer: This was actually written on Wednesday, July 29, but I couldn't post it then. So, pretend it's the 29th as you're reading this! Sorry about that.

Wow! So, I really have a lot to say! So way back on Sunday I went to church and was able to put in the final details for a surprise birthday party for my friend, Brittney.

Then, on Monday, I went shopping all afternoon/evening for the party. Well, that's not all I shopped for, but a lot of it. We (my mom and I) went to Wal-mart and shopped for food for the party and also got Brittney a present and got most of the decorations at Dollar Tree. Now, Dollar Tree has some nice things and I really was able to do some good decorating with their stuff, but their balloons are TERRIBLE! They pop for no reason at all!! Anyway, we got all the things for the surprise birthday party, and we also went to salvation army, and I got 2 nice skirts for $5!! I love second-hand stores. My mom also went birthday shopping for me (I waited on a bench by the entrance =]) because my birthday is this Saturday! We got home at almost 9 PM, exhausted, but it was a good day.

On Tuesday, I cleaned the whole house. I cleaned the bathrooms, washed dishes, folded laundry, vacuumed, and everything! Whenever we do something big in our home I get all OCD and everything has to just PERFECT. So I did that, and baked cupcakes, and did some stuff like that in preparation.

Today was a CRAZY day! I got up at 7:40, which was later than I had planned, so then I rushed like crazy. I took a shower and got dressed quickly, then tidied up the house again quickly, and went straight to decorating. I did banners, posters, streamers, balloons, and SO many fun things!! It looked absolutely awesome. We left around 12:10 to get everyone rounded up. The people who came were: Brittney, Emily, Kyla, Ally, Becca, and I. We went to pick up Emily first, then headed towards Brittney's house. We had a couple stops to make along the way, including picking up Kyla, and then we met Ally and Becca at the end of Brittney's road. Then we all got into our vehicle and my mom drove us to her house. We got party noisemakers, jumped out of the vehicle, and ran and barged into the house without knocking (yes, Brittney's mom knew we were coming =]) and blew all the noisemaker horns as loud as we could and RAN into Brittney's bedroom and shocked her out of her mind!!! She was so confused as to what was going on. See, her birthday was actually 9 days ago, so she totally wasn't expecting this. When we started singing Happy Birthday she understood it was a belated birthday surprise, and she was stunned enough at that! Then we told her that there was a totally decked out party planned and that she was coming to my house to party all day, she was TOTALLY surprised!! It was the most hilarious thing ever. Her face was priceless! She looked stunned, surprised, excited, and even scared! When we came in she was absolutely speechless! So once she got her wits together, we headed back in our van to our home where the party was set up, and played awesome fun games like Mad Gab, Catch Phrase, and Apples to Apples, and we opened presents, ate, laughed, and had an AMAZING time!! Then all but Emily (who wasn't able to come) headed out for prayer meeting. So we were sad we had to leave Emily. :( But that was the official end of the party and then we went to prayer meeting and that was good too. So all in all, today was one of the BEST days I've had in a long time!!! I LOVE MY AWESOME FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!!!!! :D :D :D <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 !!!!!!!!!!!