I have been back at work for 2 days and I am already getting some extra hours so that is nice.  I am also coaching jr. high girl’s volleyball and the first game of our season is on Thursday.  I am looking forward to it… I am also hoping for a winning season, but I don’t know if I will get that.  Yesterday was James’ 24th birthday.  One of his students brought him a cake and we went out to dinner with my parents, Tim, and Ruth.  TGI Friday’s has good food and after we had stuffed ourselves we got our dessert to go and headed to our house to play some Wii and hang out.  It was a great ending to my vacation.

I am back to being busy.  I have volleyball practice Mon, Tues, Thurs, and Fri from 3:45-5:00.  The extra time is nice for James since it gives him time to work on stuff at school and church.  I am also able to volunteer in the school office and I really enjoy that.

I hope you all had a great vacation.

Beside the exiting afternoon, this week has been fairly normal.  On Saturday we went to a wonderful wedding for some close friends of ours. On Sunday morning I wasn’t feeling the greatest but made it through church, that afternoon and evening I stayed in bed.  We had Monday off to celebrate Veteran’s Day, James and I slept in and had a relaxing day at home.  Tim came and visited us that evening, which was nice since he hadn’t visited us in a while and we hadn’t seen him since Oct 1.

Tomorrow I am working all day, I am subbing in Spanish in the afternoon. The reason: our friends that got married on Saturday, well the bride is the Spanish Teacher at Bethel. So she is on her honeymoon. I didn’t take Spanish in high school but I am hoping that she has a  very carefully laid out lesson plan.  I am actually not really worried about it I enjoy subbing every now and then.

I got 5 shirts, 2 pairs of pants (black & khaki), and 2 skirts.  I also got a shirt from Aeropostale!  Jireh made me oragami flowers and Tim got me an iPod arm band!  

All the presents I have gotten

The flowers Jireh made

So let me start with the disclaimer that I am not trying to embarrass Tim.  He really was a great kid, just a little mischievous at times.  So one of the things that I remember is Tim collecting things in his pockets.  One time he had a whole orange, peeled and sectioned, in his pocket and at his leisure he would pull out a piece and eat it.  Another time I remember him collecting rolly-pollies in his pocket.  He must have had like 100 in there.  ONe of the other things that Tim liked to do was climb trees.  He usually feel out of them also and that meant a trip to the emergency room.  One other thing Tim liked to do was throw things in the Duck Pond.  He threw in a whole box of salt and pepper shakers, a chalk board and chalk, a play phone, rocks, a pair of brand new shoes (his own), and probably lots of other things that I can’t remember.  He also liked to hang out with the guys on the maintenance crew and the college guys.  I love my little brother.

Now onto some other stories.  I remember tying a little tykes plastic wagon to the back of a bike and pulling people over the speed bumps.  We ruined that little wagon.  I remember Brenna Nepomuceno  cutting my hair and the hair of the college guys in the ping pong room.  One of my favorite places to play was in the rock house.  Man, did things come to life there.  We had such imaginations!  

I saw an opossum this morning and it made me think about the one that got stuck in the dumpster.  That thing was vicious.  It took like 2 days for it to crawl out and the dumpster was on its side.  When ever some one would approach the thing would hiss like crazy.  I stayed far away.  Ummm Does anyone remember when one of the guys backed the truck into the dumpster?  

I remember hanging out with the Reasoner kids and the Keck kids.  We meet so many awesome people up there.  We spent a lot of time with the Gray girls.  Becka, do you remember the slugs on our flowers that we picked that one time in the rain?  We had so much freedom and fun.  Everyday held a new adventure or imaginative game.  

Who remembers the firecrackers in front of Vorhis?  I can see Bro. Rushing laughing at the reactions, and Bro. Perryman running out of his trailer with his hair all wild.  

I have more I could write but I will stop here for now.  More to come soon!  Hope you enjoy!

My family lived on the campus of Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College for four years!  I was 6 years old when we moved to California from Michigan and this move brought a life of adventure and fun and pretty much a huge wonderful backyard that could beat any other!  My parents were the deans of at the college and us kids had the whole campus to play on!  We rode bikes all over the place, and if our bikes were broken we roller skated, and if we didn’t feel like doing that we walked, ran, or hitched rides with one of the numerous maintenance vehicles that were forever going from one point to another!  :)  This brings me to one of my first really great memories!  I will never forget my dad was driving a golf cart and the whole family was taking a ride together!  Dad in the drivers seat, mom right next to him, Tim sitting on the other side of mom and Rebekah and I standing on the back!  Well, Tim was leaning over the handle by the seat and dad went over a speed bump, since Tim had more weight outside the golf cart he kind of did a flip over the edge and landed on the pavement!  Dad ran over his arm on accident!  Surprisingly enough, Tim was fine except for the tire marks on his arm!  :)  

Another one of my favorite memories is when we were going to have a roller derby for school!  A certain person, who’s name I will not reveal, told my sister that he hoped she feel and got a rock in her head!  This was after she had said something to his bragging in the effect of I skate down this hill all the time!  Guess who ended up with a rock in his head?  :)  Hmmm I also seem to remember Rebekah, Jen, and Lizzy always ditching me!   Everytime they all got together they must have looked at each other and said “Let’s Go!”  and I was left in the dust and in tears.  There were sometimes that they would let me stay with them, but more often then not I ended up in the dorm with the college girls!  :)  

One of the things I loved about living on campus was the nature and all the time we spent outside!  I think we thought it was torture and punishment when it rained because we were told to stay inside!  Like we did!  Do you know how much fun it is to ride your bike in the rain.  I also remember my dad giving Rebekah and I a ride to school on the days that it rained!  Since we lived on the campus and school was on the campus we usually walked!  

During the summer we would get up and play all day long!  I think it was during one of those summers that my mom told Rebekah and I we couldn’t go play until our room was clean!  Well, Lizzy came looking for us and when told about our room (which was quite messy at the time) she decided to help us!  Only my mom didn’t like Lizzy’s idea of helping!  I don’t think we ever could have come up with that many hiding places for clothes!  One of our favorite summer activities was to run a hose to one of those pools that had the pard plastic sides but sat on the ground!  We would leave the hose running because we wouldn’t all sit in the pool and have fun we would line up and do flips into the pool and because we were so small we would basically crash through the side and a lot of the water would drain out hence the running hose!  We even had a college guy do a few flips one time!  

One thing I really miss is the Canyon Road!  Yep, that rode that seemed like it took forever to drive up!  I loved it!  I loved all the trails and the wildlife!  I remember waling home from church with my dad one night and watching 5 raccoons climb out of a tree and walk right into Baskin!  They guys had left the door open and the raccoons took that as an open invitation!  I also remember one morning walking to school and have a pack of coyotes run across the Bombsite in front of us!  One more thing before I close this post!  I loved our family walks every night!  Our cat Patches would follow us like a dog, no leash!  My dad had trained her to come to a snap and a whistle and if she wandered off all he had to do was “call” for her!  She was an indoor and outdoor cat!  She would come and go as she pleased and most of the time took care of her business outdoors!  Amazingly she never got killed by coyotes, sadly thought she got hit by a car after we moved off campus and into a busier neighborhood!  

I really miss the campus, but I love all the memories that I have from there!  Not many kids have the backyard that I had!

Monday morning around 8:00 my mom headed back to the hospital to spend time with dad!  Ruth came over and we headed that direction around 10:00!  James meet us there because we had to run an errand before we went to see them!  Ruth and I were heading out to Ontario Mills to purchase some shoes and James decided to stay at the hospital with my parents!  Around 1:00 James and Tim came and picked me up from the dorm and we went to get food for all of us!  We got back to the hospital and Tim, Mom, and James decided to play Phase 10!  They played until 4:00 when Tim had to leave to go to work!  James and I left around 4:30 to go and get my allergy shots and then we headed back to the house to pack up all our stuff!  We then went to the hospital to gather the stuff we left there!  We left the hospital around 6:00 and headed home!  We got home and went to Matt’s house for a Bible Study and then went home and went to bed.  Around 10:45 I got a text message from Tim telling me that my dad was being discharged!  I asked him to have Mom call me when they got home and so I got a phone call around 12:00!  

This morning I took James to work at 6:30 and went  home to get a little more sleep before I headed up to see my parents!  I got there around 9:30 and have been hanging out ever since!  My dad is doing much better and I have enjoyed being able to spend time with him!  Thanks for all the prayers and thoughts!  We really appreciate them!

On Thursday, I actually got to work my normal hours at work!  My normal hours are 9-10:20 and 11:00-12:35!  I was asked to do nap room from 3:00-3:30 for a k-4 class, but then they didn’t need me!  So on Thursday afternoon I went to Chino Hills to get my allergy shots!  I was heading back to my house when I hit traffic that was dead stopped on the freeway!  I only sat in it for about 20 min and then we started moving again!  I made it back to the school for my Jr High volleyball meeting!  We only had a meeting because it was raining outside and we couldn’t have practice!  After practice James and I came home and spent a quiet evening hanging out!

On Friday, I dropped James off at school at 7:00 and came home to get a little bit more sleep before I had to be at work at 9:00!  I got up at 8:00 and was heading to the bathroom to get ready for the day when I heard my phone ringing!  It was Bethel calling because they needed a sub right away!  I got ready as fast as I could and got to the school at 8:30!  I subbed all day in a k-4 class!  It was a crazy day because it was raining out and I couldn’t take the kids outside to play!  I was tired by 3:30.  After school James and I headed to an educational store to purchase a few things for his classroom!  Then we headed home!  Tim and my mom came to visit us last night and it was great to see them!  They brought the Sue Thomas videos so I can watch them again.  Around 7:00 my mom and I headed over to Carrie Roman’s house to visit her and Tim and James hung out here and played Wii!  Mom and I got home around 9:00 and we hung out and talked for until around 10:45 and the mom and Tim headed home!  Because of the rain my dad had called to get some traffic info because he was stopped on the freeway and so my mom and Tim decided to take a different route home!  All in all it was a very enjoyable evening.

Today Ruth came to visit us and my cousin, Jeremy is supposed to be coming a little later this afternoon!  It has been a relaxing day!  We went to Chino Hills and I got my allergy shots.  We are just planning on hanging out and enjoying the time spent together!  Hope you all have a great weekend!

On Tuesday, I was having problems with allergies and my eyes were itching really bad so I stayed home from work and watched the Inaugural events!  My girls had a volleyball game at 3:30 and it was an away game so We left the school at 2:30!  The girls had convinced themselves that we were playing a really good team and they did awful in the first match!  We lost 6-25 so in between games I gave them a pep talk and told them the other team was playing sloppy and they needed to get their act together!  They did much better in the 2nd match but still lost 21-25!  So our first game was a loss but the girls did have fun.  James and I got home around 5:30 and James made Creamy Ranch Breaded Chicken Pasta (you can find the recipe at James blog)  

Yesterday was Wednesday and I worked in the morning planning on going to the allergist at 2:00.  When I got to work I was asked if I could do a K-5 nap room!  I told them I could stay until 2:00 so instead of leaving at 12:35 I was able to work until 2:00.  At 2:00 I left and headed to the allergist!  I was able to get eye drops and those will hopefully help!  I came back to the church around 4:15 and hung out with James, Spencer, and Rebekah in the auditorium!  We went to church and headed home!  

So now we have come to Thursday and I am subbing in a k-4 class!  I will be working all day and then having volleyball practice after this!  I am thankful for all the extra hours at work!  I am also thankful that we have Monday off!  It is Chinese New Year and almost all of the kids are absent anyways!  Ruth is planning on coming and spending the day with us when she gets out of class!  

This weekend we have a young married activity on Saturday night and I am hopefully going to be spending some time with my cousin, Jeremy!  I am not sure what we will be doing yet but we are working on something!  I hope you are all having a great week!

At 6:00 this morning we loaded up our truck and headed out for San Francisco!  We made the trip in almost exactly 6 hours!  We only made one stop and that was for gas and the bathroom!  It is nice to be out of the car and able to relax for a little bit!  

Merry Christmas

We will be attending the services whenever they are and will be spending time with the family!