Happy Birthday!!

Today is my little brother Andrew's fifteenth birthday! :-)




I made him a four-layer chocolate cake. *smiles*

End of summer...

Today I found a sign of the end of summer. The black flip-flops from Old Navy that I have worn almost every day - almost meaning maybe I skipped one or two - have had a heart-attack. The left has a hole in it and the right is so thin that if I wore them again tomorrow it would have a hole too! They have been such a great pair of flip-flops thought. Only costing $2.50, available in tons of different colors and lasting an entire summer of use - I highly recommend them!

Quote of the post:
"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes." - Unknown

Full Swing?

A couple days ago - Saturday the 12th through Wednesday the 16th - I had a real vacation. My Aunt Linda and Uncle Ed, former missionaries to Bulgaria, invited my little sister Jessica and I to come stay at their house in Canton Ohio. I enjoyed it immensely. I got a lot of reading done, was able to actually catch up on sleep, and just relax. Even though I got to go out of town for ECHO and Covie, those were fun, but they weren't very relaxing - if you know what I mean?? ;-)

Thursday the 18th was our first worldview class of the year. We watched a bunch of Schaeffer movies and looked at art. It was fun, though most of it was review and I'm more looking forward to the rest of the year. We have to read the Divine Comedy: Hell this week, and the Divine Comedy: Purgatory the week after, so we'll have a rather fast pace.

August 22, which is tomorrow - my Spanish 2 class starts. I guess I just gotta say it. I'm not looking forward to this class. I did well last year, but it was hard because we didn't have much of a schedule or syllabus, so it was constantly spontaneous. This year we have two teachers, one for the spoken part and one for the written part. I would appreciate prayers!

Overall, I'm going to be busy this school year, but I'm excited to get it started because then it will be over sooner and I'll be closer to graduating!

Quote of the post:

"The future is as bright as the promises of God." -Unknown

Verse of the post:
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." - Hebrews 12:1

Harry Potter???

I don't know how many of you have read the Harry Potter books. I know there is definitely some tension surrounding them because of the whole wizard / witch issue and the magic surrounding them. This summer I decided I was going to read them and I just finished the fifth one. All the books are captivating, as they keep you wondering what's coming next. I became thoroughly engrossed in the fifth one and even got tears in my eyes when one of my favorite characters was killed. According to one person I talked to about the books, "Harry Potter does not have a strong distinction between good and evil, good does not always triumph over evil." I agree with this because obviously God is in control and we don't need magic, which would make the wizards and witches evil, coming at it that way. However I also disagree. In this fictional series there are both good and bad wizards, and even though the evil does win sometimes, good is always victorious at the end of the book. Personally, I found them very agreeable. I would like to know your opinions on this, because its a somewhat touchy subject in Christian circles.

Quote of the post:
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." - Professor Dumbledore