The Loganberry!!

While surfing the World Wide Web, I stumbled across this amazing discovery. I can only share this webpage with you. I hope you get a laugh out of it just like I did. It almost felt like I was reading my life horoscope!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loganberry

Pearls of Wisdom

A few weeks ago, Scot McKnight spoke at a Kairos event at Brentwood Baptist. He is an authority on the New Testament, Christianity, and the historical Jesus. That night at Kairos, Scot spoke about the Jesus Creed. He began with this story:

As a professor at North Park University (Chicago), he challenged his students to recite the Jesus Creed every morning, every evening, and anytime in between - whenever they felt the need to do so. After a 2 month period, he had several students come to him with some pretty amazing stories. One of those stories involved a male student, who walked past homeless people on his way to school every day. One day he decided to speak to the homeless people instead of just walking by. This became a ritual and he formed relationships with the homeless people on that block. One day, he and several other students decided to host a "sleep out"- for 24 hours they lived like homeless people. This event raised awareness of the homeless situation in that area. That male student was later asked to fill a position in Washington, D.C. to help raise awareness and look for solutions to the homeless situation in the U.S. It all began with the challenge of reciting the Jesus Creed and trying to live it out in practice.

Dr. McKnight had many more stories just like the one above. Makes me wonder what would happen if everyone began to recite the Jesus Creed morning, noon, and night. I want to accept Scot McKnight's challenge and I encourage you to as well.

The Jesus Creed

"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." The second is this; "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." There is no other commandment greater than these.

Where has the time gone?

Well alot's happened since the last time I was here. Another July 4th spent at Eagle Lake, a new roommate/new apartment, and a beach trip and D.C. trip somewhere in the middle. I find that this blogging thing is much like any other hobby we pick up. It's something we look forward to in the beginning, thinking to ourselves throughout the week- "Hey, that would make for a great story to blog about"- but as usual, our life gets busy (when is it ever not?) and we find ourselves choosing to do something else instead of blogging. Once you skip something for the first time, it just gets easier to skip it again. Next thing you know, you've "skipped" through 4 months! I have received comments from a few of you loyal readers that I need to start blogging again. It seems so much harder to pick it back up- knowing so much time has past/things have changed...I feel as though I would be blogging till sun up to cover everything in the detail I love so much. Obviously, I can't/won't stay up til sunrise to finish this post, so I've decided to just cover the highlights mentioned above and be done with it.

D.C. Trip
For Memorial Weekend, my group of friends from High School went to our nation's capital to crash our friend Valera's apartment for the weekend. We had the BEST time. We toured the White House (and shamelessly flirted with the Secret Service), got a private tour of the Capitol from Valera, toured the First Ladies' Dress Exhibit at the Smithsonian, attended the Memorial Concert on the Capitol Lawn (and were escorted out by Capitol police when it was over- we overstayed our welcome), enjoyed the nightlife of Georgetown (maybe a bit too much), and of course, made the rounds at Dupont Circle (see "The American President" with Michael Douglas and Annette Bening). I have to say it again, we had the BEST time. Looking forward to our next trip, girls!

Beach Trip/Moving/Fourth of July

I am an idiot. Who else would plan a beach vacation one weekend, move the following Friday, and drive 7 hours on that same Friday for a holiday spent with family? Me, apparently. Ok, so towards the end of June, I headed to St. Simons for a beach trip with some of my Phi Mu girls- Maggie, Nicole, Leslie, and Morgan. We had a blast just relaxing by the pool/ocean and we even spent an afternoon at a water park. (It was great being a kid again- blue sno cones and all!) When I returned from the beach, I had exactly 4 nights to pack everything up for the move.

I hired professional movers to move my furniture on Friday morning. Thursday after work, my friend Megen helped me take loads over to my new apartment. My new roommate is a girl I met in Sunday School at Brentwood Baptist and her name is Britney. I will give more detail on her and the new apartment later. Friday morning, Two Men and a Truck showed up at my door to move my stuff 3 streets over. As luck would have it, one of those men was CUTE! Naturally, I ended up paying for an extra hour because we frequently chatted. Even Britney got in on the flirting- she offered them cookies! It was a great moving experience and I would recommend Two Men and a Truck to anyone!

So, the movers showed up at 8am and by 1pm I was on the road headed to Eagle Lake! I basically dumped all my stuff in the new place and hit the road. Everyone was at the lake house for the weekend- Dad, Mom, Ryan and Lacey, Liza, Nicholas, and the entire Strong family came up on Saturday. This was the first time our family was all together since Christmas!!! We did several family poses over the weekend (thanks mom) and enjoyed some faves of mine: boat riding, sitting on the dock, naps, and one word - DIPS.

Meeting lots of new people. Enjoying life. Missing family and friends.

Life is all about timing...the unreachable becomes reachable, the unavailable becomes available, the unattainable...attainable. Have the patience, wait it out. It's all about timing. -Stacey Charter