Where I am from

I’m from God, the One who created everything that I am.
From His love that is always surrounding me, to my surprise.
I’m from family.
From the Grandpa God took before me and the one who forgot who I even was.

I am from fear of bugs and speaking to crowds.
From being four-eyed and having braces over the years.
I am from the faith that tomorrow will be a better day, but yet I am not always promised tomorrow.

I am from dreams that someday I will be a missionary and speak Spanish well.
I am from my future with a devoted husband and loving children.
From the brick house, white picket fence, and fresh apple pie life.

I am from playing tractors with my brother, and together we’d combine the living room carpet, row by row.
I am from sleeping in the back of a tractor, or on the floor of a combine, hating every minute of it
as a little girl.

I am from my grandma Jenny’s kitchen smelling tastefully of her famous spaghetti and mushrooms.
I’m from staying up late watching Spice World with her and my cousin.
I’m from sitting in the snow trying to wrap my mind around the inevitable news.
I am from that January day being forced to say goodbye to her long before I was ready to.
From feeling like everything had come crashing down upon me and there was no way out.

I am from mocha espresso--many times the only thing keeping me awake.
I am from movies, watching them over and over until I can recite every line.
From books, that once I’m drawn in, it’s hard to get me out.
I am from hoping and failing, but one keeps me from doing the other.

I am from the simple moments--the ones that make you laugh until you cry.
I’m from lying on the trampoline watching the millions of glistening starts above me with my friends.
From racing rolling chairs down an ice covered road.
From learning to accept people for who they are.

The best time of the year....

...is when we get to field trip it to cedarville college for TEAMS aka this super hard engineering/physics multiple choice/short answer test. It is the highlight of my year, along with a few others. This past Feb. was my, kels, logan, and amy's third time competing in it.

We bring lots of food and build a tower [pic]. Our food supply was minimal b/c we didn't have very many people on our team. Most of the other schools bring text books to use when they take the test. FM--nah. We don't care that much. It's a day out of school for us to go and see how much we actually do know, or rather don't. I mean, after all, our ENGLISH teacher was our coach this year, lol. She was pretty pumped about receiving a plaque. It's hanging up in her room!

We eat all morning and afternoon, do our school homework during the short answer time left over, laugh a lot, and just have a good 'ol time. TEAMS is a great stress reliever. Usually you have 8 people on a team. Not enough signed up this year to have two full teams, so we were just going to do 6 ppl on each of the 2 teams. But with all the snow days and what not, people backed out. We ended up with 2 teams of 4.

My team (me, Kels, Logan, and Bret [pic]) ended up scoring 26 out of 80.

The other team (Amy, Tyler, Kyle, and Zach) got 21 out of 80 correct.

We may have scored the lowest 2 scores of anyone there, but I do believe we did have the most fun. We can be quite creative when it comes to making up short answer answers.

I will miss TEAMS and all of it's greatness. It was the one and only field trip I looked forward to. Oh well, here's to some great times.

Here's to the simpler days way back when.....

• When the boys were scared of the girls, and ran from us on the playground.
• When you didn't have a cell phone, and it didn't ring constantly.
• When you didn't have to argue about who is going to drive, and our kind parents took us everywhere.
• When you actually got a decent amount of sleep each night.
• When there weren't any dances that you had to find date to and didn't have to drop a TON of money of a dress for one night.
• When we actually had a recess.
• When petty things were the last things to come between friends.
• When drama was foreign and we hadn't yet experienced it.
• When there wasn't so much pressure put on school work
• When sports were played just for fun, and nothing more.
• When we didn't put so much pressure on ourselves.
• When friends understood what was going on with you, and didn't even have to ask.

.....oh, to have those days back again