camping in southwest va

so late thursday night i was talkin to my friend kaiti from the forge who goes to school in nashville, and we decided to go campin this weekend in southwest va. after about a day of deciding if we were actually going to go, late fri night we decided to go for it! so another girl from the forge who lives in charlottesville (emily) and i left on sat to meet kaiti and her roommate jane. it turned out to be an awesome weekend, and i'd say we did a pretty good job of pullin off the "campin experience" with little knowledge of what we were doing. we managed to build fires (well with some help from neighbors), put up the tent, go boating at "hungry mother state park" and not get attacked by any wild animals. although this morning i did see a black bear walking on the road as we were driving out! here are pictures of emily and i putting up the tent

kaiti crafting a roasting stick with a giant knife

and jane posing by a tree for her future "woodland ranger"

all in all it was a fabulous labor day weekend

first day of subbing update

today went well! i was assigned to one girl that i spent the day with, along with giving another aid a break for a while and working with her student. i think subbing will definitely be challenging, but i enjoyed it! and the teachers i worked with were really nice, and also liked me so said they'd call again, which is excellent. anyways, hopefully ill keep gettin calls!

first subbing job!

i just got my first subbing call tonight! ill be subbing for a teacher's assistant in an elementary special-ed classroom tomorrow from 8:30-1:30. so sounds like a good introductory day for my first time out. anyways, i hope it goes well!

the scary world of matt's room

so matt leaves for vancouver on tuesday, so yesterday my mom and i spent much of the day helping him clean out his room and pack, which was at times fun and also at times quite frightening. you never knew what you'd find in the next drawer, including tons of overseas garb (he's pictured here with the whip he used to attack me with), my older bro jon's high school diploma, a whole set of used plates (grosse) and even an entire unopened sheets set that my mom bought for him probably 4 years ago. we also found the dart board jon and i got him for christmas, which we promptly set up and then cleaning was over. i did manage to snag some goods out of the deal, including an old looking blank notebook/journal thing from india, a swedish flag, and a pair of my socks!

back into bloggin action

so i am renewing my blogging dedication with this post. so i will now try to post more often...

i just got back this afternoon from a fantastic weekend up in northern virginia. it was so great to see everyone and be able to celebrate stina's bday and see allison get married! i cant wait to come up again. on a completely different note, about 2 weeks ago i bought a new calendar to keep my life organized (you all know my calendar system) well right after i transferred all the important dates onto the new one (bdays, etc) the old and new disappeared together! i searched for several days and could not find them. i was getting worried b/c ya'll know how terrible i am esp at remembering bdays, and with everyday that passed i could be forgetting important stuff! anyways, today when i got home i spent the first hour or so on a calendar hunt. and thankfully i finally found them! they had been put in this obscure really hard to open drawer under the coffee table. anyways, phew, i can rest easy about that now.

also today i sat down to do some work for my dad, and decided to do it on the back porch. well it was gettin to dusk so you know what that means...mosquito feeding time (do they seem esp bad this summer to anyone else?) anyways, i bug-sprayed TWICE with "deep woods". well apparently deep woods doesnt work on the porch, cause i got like 20 bug bites. anyways, me and deep woods are no longer on speaking terms. but lets be honest ill prob do the same thing tomm night. i like sittin outside.

virginia safari park

so today we went to this place called 'virginia safari park' where you drive through and feed big animals from your car. it was awesome. as we entered the park louisa started feeding this big cow lookin thing with huge horns. it got real aggressive towards the food, spilled it all over our car, and stole the feed bucket. then it stuck its head in dad's window and snotted on him. it was hilarious. we then read in our guide that it was a 'watusi' cattle and that was one of the animals you werent supposed to feed. oops. but there were llamas, camels, zebras, bison, deer, elk, ostriches, and lots of other animals i cant remember. one animal also sneezed on me later. that was kinda grosse. and an ostriche took a little nibble out of jake's finger, but he was alright. it was like being in jurassic park! but sweet!

so i havent posted in forever, but im gonna try to get back into it. the forge ended on sunday and louisa and the kids are here for about another week and a half. the forge was (as you all know) an incredibly hard time, but also a time where the Lord was so near. coming out of it as well i am again reminded of the immense blessing you all are in my life and i cant wait to see each of you again at some point soon. anyways, i am definitely tired, still processing many things, but all around good. i am definitely a bit anxious to see what the next part of my life holds, but at this point only time will tell. this post is a bit intense, and i promise the ones to follow will be more entertaining as im able to get back to everyday life. here are a few pictures of the kids. they have grown so much and are so much fun! i am currently trying to mold little sophia to be as much like me as possible, as scary as that may be :)

on a more light-hearted note- yesterday i went swimming with ben and jake. ben walks up to the edge, cries out "belly-flop bonanza" and then does the biggest belly-flop ive ever seen. arms spread wide, knees locked, it was beautiful. he insisted it didnt hurt, and then proceeded to do about 100 more. it was so funny. at one point jake did a pencil dive, then ben went to do it, put his arms above his head in a triangle shape, and then laid out flat horizontal above the water. wow. that was some pencil dive. i dont think he quite got the concept, but it was awesome

miss you all