His Purpose, Not My Plans

First before you start reading this you should know that this blog post is compiled of completely random thoughts and just some different things that have been on my mind and heart lately… However there's a connection, I promise. Moving on. First I want to speak of someone else's story. If you're from Florence, you probably know about it, but I'm gonna share it anyways. Last year, to this week actually, there was a situation with some dear friends of mine that forever changed their life, and influenced mine an incredible amount. For purposes of keeping this blog short I'm not gonna go into details, but basically there was a medical situation that caused one of my sweet friends to be very, very near to death. There was not much to do but to pray and pray and pray and that is what happened for two very long days. He was basically put into an induced coma and slowly brought out of it… in the hopes that his mind would be unaltered after this serious medical situation....

What an absolutely crazy busy week. Every year homecoming week is fun, exciting, and hectic. And it goes by soooo fast. This year was no different. But, since it is Senior year, homecoming is a little bit more fun. At West we have a pretty big homecoming "court" consisting of senior football players and their "sponsors" or escorts, senior cheerleaders and their escorts, and the top ten girls who were in the running for homecoming queen. Some of these overlap but overall there were (I think) 28 football players, 10 cheerleaders, and then the top ten plus all of their escorts so it was a lot of people! I was a sponsor for a friend who plays football, and I was really excited to get the chance to walk out during the morning assemblies and then on the field at the game Friday night. Also getting to dress up and wear heels and nice dresses was fun too. But it wasn't just Friday, Monday-Thursday were pretty good too. Okay I'm just gonna stop my rambling and put u...

Trying to hit the highlights of the past few weeks and of course no better way to do that than with pictures! A lot has happened. So first of all, 3 weeks ago FSD1 had our "fall break" pretty much, with an early dismissal day Thursday and no school on Friday. Dad, Austin, and I headed to the beach Thursday and just had a nice one night stay. I loved it. It was awesome. The only picture I have from that is a really nice selfie… I had a nice lazy day Friday, but then that night we had a home game. It was a Green Out and so we all wore our WF green. Me and Anna Kooper Silly pics after the game Also that weekend I had COLLEGE FRIENDS HOME YAY! I love it when they come home. Taylor's snapchat. It made me smile so I screenshotted it!  So of course, Taylor and I had to take our usual after-church pic.  So that was a fun weekend. The next week was full of school and regular things, which I suppose weren't picture worthy as I don't have...

So we're four weeks into East Florence Mission, and in case you haven't noticed from my other blog posts, it's a pretty important piece of my life! These past few weeks have been so good at EFM. My kids.. I'm so proud of them! It is amazing to me how much of a difference having our own classroom has made. I have their drawings on the wall, their names on the board.. They love it, and I love it. My heart is just sooo full! We have been studying Moses these past few weeks and they really seem to understand and enjoy it. I love when at the beginning of the lesson, we review last week and they REMEMBER what we learned from last week. They can answer all my review questions, and they are all so eager to answer.  I love that. I finally took some pictures of my classroom to share!! I didn't get any pictures of eating dinner but I got all of our other aspects. I'll try to caption each picture as it goes. Okay sooo first lemme show some pictures of my classroom… And yes...

So I’m supposed to be doing an intro to theatre writing assignment right now. But I can’t focus, I really can’t and so I’m going to write a blog post instead. I have always struggled with control. I like being in charge. I have a type-A personality and I like to be the leader, always. Ask any of my friends, they know. Why am I like this? No clue. Maybe it’s because when I lost my mom at the age of ten I had to learn how to take care of myself. Not because daddy didn’t help or anything. Oh he is absolutely amazing. I can’t begin to write of how much he does for me and Austin. But, he can’t be mom to a teenage girl. And I have been so blessed with many, many relatives and sweet friends who are older who help me. I love them. I also love doing things by myself. I rarely ask for help with things. I know that sometimes I need to but I don’t always want to.  L et’s take shopping for clothes. My mom naturally picked out the majority of my clothes until she passed away because I was, li...

So it's the 18th of September, and I'm comfortably sitting on my nice new SWING eating ice-cream on the back porch of the beach house. It's a mini-vacay. And I am so blissfully happy. I could cry. I don't know if anyone understands my obsession with the beach. With salt air. With the ocean. It makes me happy. It completely fills my heart and it clears my head. I love it. And so I take any chance I can to get down here. I think maybe it's awe. Of this great huge powerful body of water that could easily take me away.. but it doesn't it stays on its rthyms. It's tides. That are determined by the moon. Which all takes place because our God is incredible. I think thats what it is. I just love it so much. It also has a lot to do with the fact that I have always considered the beach my other home, and I have grown up just as much here as Florence, in my opinion at least. But enough rambling. I have pictures!!! I love pictures.   SO first, last Wednesday...

I probably won't do this every week, but I wanted to give an update to anyone who cares about how the first week of EFM went. Let me start out by saying CHAOS. It is crazy, it is chaotic, and it is AMAZING. I got there way earlier than usual, around 4. I put together a bulletin board, made some copies, and wrote some things on *OUR* board. I don't know if you understand the meanings behind the *OUR*. The first meaning is that our board as in, OUR room, as in WE DON'T HAVE TO SHARE. I have been teaching at EFM for 3 solid years, this is my fourth, and I have never had my own room. While there used to be a school, it was closed for some different reasons last May, and so now I have my own classroom to use as I want. Before I would have to bring everything I'd need for my lesson every week, I couldn't write on the boards for fear of erasing something the teachers had written, and I had to make sure the room was perfectly neat and like we had never been there when we l...