Compared to last year, thus far this semester has been super chill. I'm busy during the week, but with only having two classes, my weekends have been pretty free. This past weekend was chock full of activity, and really fun.
Friday started out with sailing with the young adults group at Braille Institute. I hadn't done anything with Braille since the summer after my senior year of high school, so it was kind of an interesting flashback experience. It was me, Lindsay, Daniel, Krishna, and Kelvin (who I also kinda know from church at Mission, lol). We went with a group off of Shelter Island. They paired us each up with an instructor and had us do the steering. It was a lot of fun. We had a beautiful day to be on the water - not too hot, not too windy.
After sailing, I had enough time at home to change and feed Valencia before heading with Raelene downtown for the Padres/Giatns game at Petco Park. We had seats in the row in front of Nate and his brother-in-law Ben. HOLY COW were these good seats, we were RIGHT behind the Giants' dug out. Yeah, about that, Raelene and the boys were rooting for the Giatns, boooooo. haha it wasn't so bad, considering there was no score until inning 7 when the Giants got a run. Raelene and I had fun chatting and chowing down on some awesome nachos.
Saturday evening I got to go to a place I'd never been before: Mt Laguna. Steve's department was holding an event out there for students, families, and faculties. We picked Tad up on our way out there and enjoyed seeing parts of San Diego that were very unfamiliar to all of us, lol. It's beautiful up on the mountain, pine trees and mountain air and a gorgeous sunset. They had a potluck dinner, and then gave a tour of the observatories that State owns up there. I was very excited to get to be up in the dome of one of them! Once the stars came out, we had a telescope set up to look at the moon and Venus.
Saturday also happened to be my dad's birthday. He was at a work "retreat" (aka conference) all day, so we celebrated on Sunday. We went out for dinner at Pei Wei's and had German Chocolate birthday cake. It was an awesome weekend spending time with family and getting to do some things in San Diego that I don't get to do every day :)
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Washington Trip Part 2
Sunday morning Tad introduced me to his church's "postmodern" or "emergent" church service. He has disapproved of the service from the beginning, but wanted me to see it for myself. His disapprovals lie in the fact that there have been multiple occasions of denial of the complete authority of scripture by leadership. Definitely not ok.
As a whole I thought the general idea of the service was fine, but as an outreach. It was very seeker friendly and very informal. The problem is that the majority of the people who attend the service, are not new from the community. They're people who have been attending his church for some time, and just like the service better. A couple main things that bothered me about it were 1) prior to the offering the pastor described it as something we do if we feel led to. Hmm, I believe scripture says (in several places) to always offer a portion of what God gives us back to Him. Personally, if faith were about doing things I felt like, I wouldn't be living the Christian life.
Second thing was that there were young children running around for the entirety of the service. Besides being loud and disruptive, Tad told me that there was a program for them, going on at the same time. I can understand parents wanting their children to be used to going to "big church" as my family called it, but kids aren't going to get anything out of a service by running around screaming for an hour. They could have been up in Sunday School learning.
Hence I agree with Tad and his family on the matter. I also disapprove of the general movement being called "postmodern", but that's a whole different soap box for me.
We did go to the regular service afterward, which I was grateful for. After church we had lunch at a place called Chico's Tacos, which reminded me quite a bit of Rubio's here at home. I had a very delicious, very large California burrito.
Justine was able to drive down from Yakima that afternoon to hang out with us. I got to show her my Romania pictures and such and we spent several hours playing Mario Party. All I can say is, shake the can is a very interesting mini game. Tad's mom ordered in pizza for us, and then Justine had to drive home. I was so fortunate on this trip to get to see all the people I love in Washington.
Tad and I decided to take Valencia to a nearby park to play. She got to run around, sniff, and even go down the slide once. Once we tuckered her out, Tad and I sat on the swings and talked.
Monday we met Tad's dad at Jack in the Box for lunch and then went to Tad's doctor appointment. It was good for me to hear some of the stuff straight from Tad's doctor, gave me a bit more perspective. On our way home, Tad gave me my first Sonic experience. Supposedly we're finally getting one of those in SD in the near future, which I am now very excited about. Tad is a big fan of the limeaides, so I tried a cherry one and he got a mango one. He also insisted that I had to get a Route 44 one, which means it's 44 oz, oh goodness did that take me forever to finish. It was indeed quite tasty though. :)
I am very excited, as you can tell :D
Tad got a call to go fix a computer in the evening, so after he left, his mom and I went to go help a family friend pack to move. We had some good one on one bonding time, which was much appreciated at least on my part. Their friend Nita is amazing, such a sweet, giving lady. She has college age kids, which makes it even easier to get along with her and her husband, cuz they're like our parents right now, haha
Mrs. Tilden and I helped her by putting together some boxes and keeping her company as she sorted out her garage. We got a little tag team action going on when Tad came by and his mom headed home. Tad's been helping Nita with some picture stuff on the computer. We went inside to do a bit more of that, and then Nita did a spur of the moment photo shoot for the two of us, haha. That was really fun. Since I don't always get to see him, I cherish every picture we have of us, and I can never have enough (a bit to his dismay, lol) You can check out my favorites on facebook, but here are a couple of 'em.
Tuesday was leisurely around the house. I worked on things here and there while Tad worked on his computer jobs. Since we had been around the house all day, Tad suggested we do our just us date night that evening. I used the excuse to dress up a bit (cuz girls can't get enough of those, right?). My boyfriend is the sweetest guy ever! He was basically flat out broke the week I was there, but I had asked for a date night, so he took me out to Applebee's.
We shared an order of honey bbq wings and an order of spinach artichoke dip. Date nights are so great. Even spending all day at the house together is a different kind of quality time than spending time out together. After dinner we went for a walk in a park along the Columbia River. We went down to the water and I stuck my feet in and we watched people in their motorboats. It was fun, but still quite hot out, so we went to walk around the mall to cool down.
Tad takes beautiful pictures :)
I didn't have anywhere specific in mind to shop, so we stopped in Game Stop for Tad first. We walked through a souvenir/gift shop place and then shared an Auntie Anne's pretzel. I can't tell you how good itfelt to spend a couple hours just hanging out at the mall with my boyfriend. I almost felt like we had a "normal" relationship.
After the mall we stopped by Paul and Jessica's to pick up something Tad needed to fix the computer he'd been working on. I actually got to chat some with Jessica, which was really nice.
Wednesday we grabbed lunch from McDonald's and then did some errands. While his mom took Jeana to get her senior pictures taken, Tad and I went and got his oil changed and some other things on his car fixed. On our way home we stopped at Dairy Queen and shared an Orange Julius. Dinner with his family was at a Teriyaki place his family had taken me to the last time I was in town. From there we went once more to youth group, which was interesting thanks to some bad attitudes that night.
The remainder of the evening was spent once again at Paul and Jessica's. We watched the last disc of Tsubasa (that I had brought with me from home) and then played Tripoly. And when I say we played Tripoly, I mean we played until 3 am. We were having fun, and I was in no rush to go to bed considering I had to leave in the morning.
Thursday morning I got up at 8 and Tad helped me pack my stuff up. I hate packing, I'm awful at it and I don't enjoy it. I've told Tad that when we're married, he can do all the packing for us, lol. His mom made me a lunch and thne he dropped me off in Pasco. My flights went just fine, I happened to see one of the same airport workers in Salt Lake as I did the week before. She asked if I needed help and then said "Ma'am, weren't you here yesterday?" hahaha I was like "no, but I was last week!" hahahaha, good times.
I had such a great time with Tad and his family, and getting to see Emily and Justine and my aunt. This is definitely up there with my top favorite visits Tad and I have had. And maybe next time it won't just be a visit :)
As a whole I thought the general idea of the service was fine, but as an outreach. It was very seeker friendly and very informal. The problem is that the majority of the people who attend the service, are not new from the community. They're people who have been attending his church for some time, and just like the service better. A couple main things that bothered me about it were 1) prior to the offering the pastor described it as something we do if we feel led to. Hmm, I believe scripture says (in several places) to always offer a portion of what God gives us back to Him. Personally, if faith were about doing things I felt like, I wouldn't be living the Christian life.
Second thing was that there were young children running around for the entirety of the service. Besides being loud and disruptive, Tad told me that there was a program for them, going on at the same time. I can understand parents wanting their children to be used to going to "big church" as my family called it, but kids aren't going to get anything out of a service by running around screaming for an hour. They could have been up in Sunday School learning.
Hence I agree with Tad and his family on the matter. I also disapprove of the general movement being called "postmodern", but that's a whole different soap box for me.
We did go to the regular service afterward, which I was grateful for. After church we had lunch at a place called Chico's Tacos, which reminded me quite a bit of Rubio's here at home. I had a very delicious, very large California burrito.
Justine was able to drive down from Yakima that afternoon to hang out with us. I got to show her my Romania pictures and such and we spent several hours playing Mario Party. All I can say is, shake the can is a very interesting mini game. Tad's mom ordered in pizza for us, and then Justine had to drive home. I was so fortunate on this trip to get to see all the people I love in Washington.
Tad and I decided to take Valencia to a nearby park to play. She got to run around, sniff, and even go down the slide once. Once we tuckered her out, Tad and I sat on the swings and talked.
Monday we met Tad's dad at Jack in the Box for lunch and then went to Tad's doctor appointment. It was good for me to hear some of the stuff straight from Tad's doctor, gave me a bit more perspective. On our way home, Tad gave me my first Sonic experience. Supposedly we're finally getting one of those in SD in the near future, which I am now very excited about. Tad is a big fan of the limeaides, so I tried a cherry one and he got a mango one. He also insisted that I had to get a Route 44 one, which means it's 44 oz, oh goodness did that take me forever to finish. It was indeed quite tasty though. :)
I am very excited, as you can tell :D
Tad got a call to go fix a computer in the evening, so after he left, his mom and I went to go help a family friend pack to move. We had some good one on one bonding time, which was much appreciated at least on my part. Their friend Nita is amazing, such a sweet, giving lady. She has college age kids, which makes it even easier to get along with her and her husband, cuz they're like our parents right now, haha
Mrs. Tilden and I helped her by putting together some boxes and keeping her company as she sorted out her garage. We got a little tag team action going on when Tad came by and his mom headed home. Tad's been helping Nita with some picture stuff on the computer. We went inside to do a bit more of that, and then Nita did a spur of the moment photo shoot for the two of us, haha. That was really fun. Since I don't always get to see him, I cherish every picture we have of us, and I can never have enough (a bit to his dismay, lol) You can check out my favorites on facebook, but here are a couple of 'em.
Tuesday was leisurely around the house. I worked on things here and there while Tad worked on his computer jobs. Since we had been around the house all day, Tad suggested we do our just us date night that evening. I used the excuse to dress up a bit (cuz girls can't get enough of those, right?). My boyfriend is the sweetest guy ever! He was basically flat out broke the week I was there, but I had asked for a date night, so he took me out to Applebee's.
We shared an order of honey bbq wings and an order of spinach artichoke dip. Date nights are so great. Even spending all day at the house together is a different kind of quality time than spending time out together. After dinner we went for a walk in a park along the Columbia River. We went down to the water and I stuck my feet in and we watched people in their motorboats. It was fun, but still quite hot out, so we went to walk around the mall to cool down.
Tad takes beautiful pictures :)
I didn't have anywhere specific in mind to shop, so we stopped in Game Stop for Tad first. We walked through a souvenir/gift shop place and then shared an Auntie Anne's pretzel. I can't tell you how good itfelt to spend a couple hours just hanging out at the mall with my boyfriend. I almost felt like we had a "normal" relationship.
After the mall we stopped by Paul and Jessica's to pick up something Tad needed to fix the computer he'd been working on. I actually got to chat some with Jessica, which was really nice.
Wednesday we grabbed lunch from McDonald's and then did some errands. While his mom took Jeana to get her senior pictures taken, Tad and I went and got his oil changed and some other things on his car fixed. On our way home we stopped at Dairy Queen and shared an Orange Julius. Dinner with his family was at a Teriyaki place his family had taken me to the last time I was in town. From there we went once more to youth group, which was interesting thanks to some bad attitudes that night.
The remainder of the evening was spent once again at Paul and Jessica's. We watched the last disc of Tsubasa (that I had brought with me from home) and then played Tripoly. And when I say we played Tripoly, I mean we played until 3 am. We were having fun, and I was in no rush to go to bed considering I had to leave in the morning.
Thursday morning I got up at 8 and Tad helped me pack my stuff up. I hate packing, I'm awful at it and I don't enjoy it. I've told Tad that when we're married, he can do all the packing for us, lol. His mom made me a lunch and thne he dropped me off in Pasco. My flights went just fine, I happened to see one of the same airport workers in Salt Lake as I did the week before. She asked if I needed help and then said "Ma'am, weren't you here yesterday?" hahaha I was like "no, but I was last week!" hahahaha, good times.
I had such a great time with Tad and his family, and getting to see Emily and Justine and my aunt. This is definitely up there with my top favorite visits Tad and I have had. And maybe next time it won't just be a visit :)
Monday, April 13, 2009
Beautiful
I love the days when I look in the mirror, or see a picture of myself, and the first thing that comes to mind is "wow, I am beautiful." Not in a conceited way, just a "oh, hey, that's pretty, and that's me." It's one thing to have others tell you you're beautiful, but it's quite a necessary thing to be able to look at yourself and see the beauty that God has created in you.
It allows you to see God's beauty elsewhere.
For example the peach and pink roses that are in bloom on our "Mr. Lincoln" bush out front, just in time for Easter.
Easter and flowers always go hand in hand for me. My mom brought home one of the lilies from the altar yesterday and it smells amazing. As did the flower cross that the children made at the Easter program Saturday.
I am growing to believe that Easter is my favorite holiday. It is, of course, the key of the Christian salvation. Our Lord suffered and died, atoning for the sins of all people, and then was raised from the dead, conquering death. What more could we have to celebrate that that!
Yesterday held some wonderful family time. Grandparents and aunt and uncle came. Food was eaten, games were played, and the day was enjoyed.
Opportunities seem to be opening for Tad to move to California soon, something we are both very anxious for, and perhaps to pursue a career in youth ministry. In the meantime, it looks as if he will be able to come for my graduation, and we'll go from there.
All this to say that God is good. Life truly is beautiful
the kids put all the colored flowers in :)
It allows you to see God's beauty elsewhere.
For example the peach and pink roses that are in bloom on our "Mr. Lincoln" bush out front, just in time for Easter.
Easter and flowers always go hand in hand for me. My mom brought home one of the lilies from the altar yesterday and it smells amazing. As did the flower cross that the children made at the Easter program Saturday.
I am growing to believe that Easter is my favorite holiday. It is, of course, the key of the Christian salvation. Our Lord suffered and died, atoning for the sins of all people, and then was raised from the dead, conquering death. What more could we have to celebrate that that!
Yesterday held some wonderful family time. Grandparents and aunt and uncle came. Food was eaten, games were played, and the day was enjoyed.
Opportunities seem to be opening for Tad to move to California soon, something we are both very anxious for, and perhaps to pursue a career in youth ministry. In the meantime, it looks as if he will be able to come for my graduation, and we'll go from there.
All this to say that God is good. Life truly is beautiful
the kids put all the colored flowers in :)
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