socks and dress shoes

When i was in 6th grade my sister told me an extremely important fashion rule. she said "jen, when you get into 7th grade, dont wear socks with your dress shoes." This seemed easy enough for me...instead of wearing socks with my dress shoes, i wore socks and boat shoes. i can distinctly remember wearing a long flowered skirt, some random solid colored shirt and green socks with my boat shoes. why am i telling you this? well, because today i broke that rule. as i write, i am sitting here in the welcome center (the gateway to maranatha) hiding my feet under the desk.
see, dawn sent me a bunch of useful coupons, and they expire today! i was going to use them this weekend, but i ended up working almost all normal wal-mart shopping hours. so i decided to go on Monday...well on monday i was sick, so i looked at my planner...hmmm...today was free! why not make a who evening out of it and go to the outlets and kohls, etc? so my friends and i get all ready and i was driving down the road and my phone rings. it was one of those "odd" ringers because it was from an unavailable number. sure enough, it was the welcome center employee reminding me that i was scheduled and already 5 minutes late. my heart sank. so much for a night out on the town (oorrr...at wal-mart anyway). acting fast, i rush home and throw on a skirt...and committed the fashion mistake of the year. not only am i currently wearing socks with my dress shoes, they are white socks with pink flowers on them and black shoes. yeah. i look really stylin'. dawn, thanks for the advice. i am sorry i let you down;)

never got the memo...

Someone once said, "you learn something new every day". I dont know who it was, but i agree. this past week, i learned something that i am pretty sure just about everyone else already knows: when typing, you only put ONE space after a period. Well guess what? i am still in the dark ages because i still put 2 spaces! i guess they changed it when i was still in high school, but i never got the memo. allegedly they changed the rule in order to save paper (all those spaces add up!) so, my new goal? try to put only ONE space in between sentences:)

STUCK!

Small town America isn't as unkind as we think it is. This morning Bob and i were leaving for school and got stuck exiting our driveway. yeah. we were real stuck. so, bob gets out to push and i try to to the good ol' reverse/forward (repeat) process. this worked until we were having traffic stop for us because were were sticking way out into the road.
after just a little bit of time, a man that lives on our street pulled over to help bob push. he was so nice, offering advice and getting all snowy while trying to free our car from the result of the plows last evening. with his help, we were able to get almost free, but still stuck. finally another guy pulled over and helped push. he added just enough oomph to help up escape the snow-bank monster! we thanked the nice men and went on our way.
today i learned two things:
1. plan ahead (like mom said, "when you are adults you need to get up early enough to shovel your way out...")
2. there are nice people everywhere (i should be one of them more often!)

SNOW DAY!

yesterday was a fun day... on tuesdays and thursdays i dont have class until 12:20. Sooo, at least one of the two days i open at latte donatte (the best coffee shop in the nation). however, thursday was not my day so i planned on sleeping as long as i could. at 10:15 or so my brother, bob, (one of the best brothers ever) called me and told me classes were cancelled for the rest of the day because of snow! can you believe it? so, i did what my inner child wanted to do: i sat around and flipped through the channels looking for a movie to watch. c'mon - you know you would have done the same thing. it is engrained into our minds to sit and watch tv on a snow day - we've been doing it since kindergarten!
anyway, that didnt last too long because there was nothing decent on the box, but thankfully elisabeth called and invited me to go sledding. sledding? YEAH! so bob and i and a bunch of other people went sledding. in the words of bob, "it was a great family outing".
one more thing: when i was in like jr high i got one of those inflateable snow tubes. yesterday bob and i dug it out and inflated it - thinking we would fly on it! yeah, we flew alright...but not near as fast as when we all crammed into the canoe and went down the hill. yes, you read that right - a canoe! it was the best sled i have ever been in! now, i am the type of person who would be afraid to bring a canoe to a sledding hill for fear that people would realize that i am a little weird. well these canoe-bringers were pretty much the coolest people on the hill!
goal for next year? find an old-school beat up canoe (it can even have holes!)
have a great day in the snow everyone!

Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day. Most single people that you talk to loathe Valentine's Day. Not this single girl! I enjoy watching all the couples celebrate their love for each other. (or...on Maranatha's campus - their "like" for each other, or "close friendship".) Whatever you call it, I don't mind it.

In the past, however, Lisa (my wicked good friend from home who is a PCC grad student) and i used to call February 14th "Celebrate your Singleness" day. we would boast in the fact that we were single...free...STRONG CAPABLE WOMEN! we would strut our independence and fake that we didnt NEED a man, etc. etc. Now, we accept the fact that we are single and i dont know about her, but i am happy that this is where the Lord has me right now. i also enjoy watching things happen all around me. Ashley and Mark are getting married in July. Elisabeth and Pete are dating, and other little "friendships" are popping up all over campus! For instance, if i was dating someone, i may have missed the "pre-artist-series-finishing-touches-before-we-walk-out-the-door" extravaganza this year. i must hand it to the girls though. there was no stressed-out hurry before they left. both girls were very well organized and exited with class. this was a much better experience than the one before the play in december...

anyway. my point with this whole topic is this: for all you single girls out there, don't mope! pick yourself up, smile, and watch life happen!

Gibeon and Prayer

Okay, so i have a new favorite Bible story. Gibeon:) Allegedly I heard this story in high school (or maybe jr high), but i dont remember it. (i must've been absent that day!) Anyways, I love the whole book of Joshua. It is full of war, deception, scandals, death, and broken covenants, but also matched with love, promises, forgiveness, and restoration. Anyway, back to the story. I am sure most of you know this story, but i just want to recap for you.
So Joshua and his army demolish Ai and burn what is left to the ground. Next on the list would probably have been Gibeon. the gibeonites knew this, so they came up with a cool plan. (i think it is Joshua 9?) some of the men of gibeon dressed up in old, tattered clothes and shoes that had seen better days. they also brought moldy, crumbly bread (which i think is a great addition to their credibility). They took the short trip to the Israelites camp and told them that they had come SOO far and had heard about their God (YAHWEH) and asked Joshua to make a league (or pact) with them. the gibeonites even went so far as to say "we brought this bread fresh out of our oven...now it is moldy...". What LIARS! however, their tactic worked, joshua fell for it(because he didnt pray about it) and made a league with them.
Here is the clincher. God commanded that the Israelites destroy allll of the inhabitants of the land. so, should joshua have broken the league with the gibeonites and killed them all (to honor God's covenant), or should he have done what he did and honored the covenant? your input is greatly appreciated (although i have already made up my mind and will post it later:))
I have learned so much from Joshua. he makes mistakes - of enormous proportions - just like we do...all because of a lack of prayer.
Recently I have been reading the book called A Woman's Call to Prayer by Elizabeth George. i just started it and been reading about the 10 reasons we dont pray. i can only say that the reason we dont pray as we should is selfishness. we "dont have time" because we are selfish and would rather sleep or "just chill". we "forget" because we are selfish and thinking about how we can be self-sufficient and so on. prayer is vital to our spiritual walk with God, we cannot afford to be selfish in our pursuit of life...what is life is Christ is not in it?