Holding on

When everything falls apart, Your arms hold me together
When everything falls apart, You're the only hope for this heart
When everything falls apart and my strength is gone
I find You mighty and strong, You keep holding on

President's Day

I'm loving the History Channel's presidential programming today:) I started commenting about it on Facebook but then I just had too much to say. Here are my thoughts after watching several hours of a documentary about the presidents starting with our first:

-George Washington was a smart man!

-It seems like no one truly loves being President...

-No wonder we only really talk about James Madison's non-presidential achievements. Poor guy. He was the first president to declare war and it was against England. It doesn't seem to have gone very well as we were so tiny and they were so huge.

-The Monroe Doctrine was actually written by John Q Adams....so interesting.

-J. Q. Adams and A. Jackson seem to have had the first really dirty political election(s).

-Andrew Jackson- not my favorite president!
-Trivia: When Andrew Jackson ran for president in 1828, his opponents called him a "Jackass." Jackson liked the image so much it became the mascot of the new democratic party.
- Also, the US was debt-free for the first and only time ever under Jackson.

-John Tyler had no vice president because he refused to name one. This was after he became president when William Henry Harrison died from pneumonia, that he got from giving a 2 hour inauguration address to prove how smart and not simple he was.

-Polk was much more influential than I remembered.

The series stopped showing and they started a drama about Jefferson. Maybe I'll catch more later. It has been such an interesting history refresher lesson.

So, Hello Again :)

In order to not change my status on Facebook every 4 minutes all day, I decided I should just write my thoughts in my blog! I'm sure no one checks it anymore, since I haven't written in about a year, but oh well. :)




















My Life:
It has been a long time. I got married. I taught Kindergarten for a year. I survived that and now it's summer. I love being married. It is the best thing ever and I realized more and more every day why David is so perfect for me and how amazingly blessed I am to have him as my husband. God is awesome. I know He loves giving his children good gifts, but David is seriously the best gift He has ever given me, besides his gift of Himself to pay for my sins and allow me to have a relationship with Him. He also gave me an awesome family who helped make me who I am today and they were certainly a good gift as well. :)



David and I dancing.

Happy couple



























Karen, Suzanne, Me, Jennifer, Meghan


My current thoughts:
Shawn Johnson is awesome! She was definitely my favorite gymnast at the Olympics. Now I love her even more. Not only did she win lots of gold medals, she danced her behind off and won Dancing With the Stars! She's only 17, too. Way to go Shawn. :)

I LOVE Anna Demidova! She is the new professional dancer on Dancing with the Stars. When she dances it actually gives me chills. She is the most beautiful dancer and she makes all her partners look good. Every time she dances I think, "this is what I love about ballroom dancing!" On DWTS, I do love watching the dances with the stars, but when two professionals dance together, it's so awesome.

I definitely like DWTS better than So You Think You Can Dance. I will expand on that more in a minute. Staying on the "ballroom" train of thought, every time a couple has to do ballroom dancing on SYTYCD, the judges go so easy on them with their expectations and critiques. It's so annoying! Anytime they do Hip Hop, Contemporary, crazy whatever style Mia Micheals choreographs, etc, the judges are so critical. I definitely like ballroom better than contemporary, and have a more critical eye, but I am not totally oblivious when it comes to other styles. [I actually love hip hop, ballet, jazz, broadway, and some others. Contemporary is probably my least favorite but it depends on the piece. Sometimes I thoroughly enjoy it.] I can be totally impressed with a (non-ballroom) number and the judges basically tell the dancers they were horrible and then someone does a really sub par ballroom number and the judges are all praise. One judge is even the "ballroom expert" and she gives totally positive critique. It makes me want to scream. To clarify, when I say sub par, I mean totally boring, not technically impressive (ie. no good basic technique of that dance), and not beautiful/firey/whatever is called for in that style of dance.


I hate Windows Media Player. It doesn't work right. It ruins our TV viewing and just drives us nuts. What is wrong with M-soft? Why can't they make things that work?!

David is home. That means I have to go now.

That Dream Within A Dream...

I'm getting married in 3 weeks!!! AAAHHH!!!!!


I can not believe it.
































* photography by Blessed Union Photography (www.blessedunionportraits.com)

Happiness

This is right after the proposal. We were kind of pleased.

WOOHOO

I'm engaged to the most amazing guy in the world!



And I just discovered that gmail is blocked at school but apparently blogger is not....hmm.

Me

How interesting that Africa has always made my heart so happy and yet that is not where I spent a year with Crusade and I have several friends who actually did go to Africa for extended periods of time. God does interesting things.

As I sit here, stomach hurting because I ate food, my parents are downstairs having a Christmas party. A bunch of church people who live in Powhatan make up the guest list. I like them, I just don't feel good and don't feel like making adult conversation.

David is in Stafford trying to install a system he was never taught how to install and Robbie is at JMU doing who knows what. I want them to come home.

I went shopping with Jen today, and that was actually really fun. I really don't mind Christmas shopping, unlike many people. It's also always nice to see Jen.

My stomach feels like it might explode:( I went to the doctor and she took 3 viles of blood to test for different things. I go back Dec. 20th to get results. She also gave me a medicine to try for when my stomach feels sick. So far it's not working.

Life in pictures

David bought me beautiful flowers for no reason




































I saw Adam and Suzy

















David moved into a new place and we had a hard time adequately photo-documenting


















My beautiful friend Heather got married




































Heather and her bridesmaids...all 12 of them












































So Happy!




























Marie wasn't looking but this is the only non-blurry one of us:(

























It was so much fun:)
I also went to the fair with Lee, Katie, and David but then my computer complained of having too little space and I had to remove those pictures. Maybe I'll get them up soon.

Let downs

I think it's almost worse for me to do something that lets someone else down and have them not get mad at me. When someone gets mad at me for letting them down I can feel a little bit less bad almost, because they're blaming me for something that was an accident and so forth. When someone reacts like they are saddened but calmly not reprimanding it makes me feel even deeper sorrow to hurting them/ letting them down. I just want to cry and cry and ultimately go back in time and change it. I'm sorry.

So in Love

I am so lucky and God is so amazing. It's so crazy when you doubt God and the things He has given you and He just lovingly reminds you what is true and shows you what you need to see. I feel so overwhelmed by how amazing and loving He is. Why do I doubt Him?