Best Birthday Ever!!

Ultimately, it was a good day. Right from the very moment I woke up! Mom wished me "happy birthday" when I came into the room and then, she gave me jamba juice for breakfast! My favorite!

Then I opened all the lovely letters and cards and a present from my parents! I got lots of little goodies like chocolate and flaming hot Cheetos! Yum-o!

Since we hosted college group, we didn't get to go out to dinner as a family (birthday dinner is a tradition.) but we have plans to go to Macaroni Grill sometime this week. Macaroni Grill is a really upscale Italian restaurant. In previous years, we've gone to My Big Fat Greek Restaurant and Sweet Tomatoes. Instead, Mom took Cam and me to JoAnns and we went out to Chick fillet for lunch.

I got lots of happy birthday well wishes from the college group and they sang happy birthday to me in "their BEST choir voices"! Dad videotaped the amazing-ness. They probably earned a 10 on the scale of horrible-ness so if it's not too late, be prepared before you watch the video. It can be very grating on the ears; especially if you play it over and over again.

All in all, it has been a wonderful birthday and the lack of pictures should prove what a good time I had! No worries though, my party is this friday and we shall be taking a LOT of pictures so I'll make up for it, just not right now. ;)

Youth Worship

At our church, we have a thing, for lack of a better word, (Serious lack of a better word.) called Youth Worship. One Sunday a month, some of the youth lead our church in worship. They do an awesome job and now I'm one of them!! I sing on the youth worship team now. We had a practice-run this evening and we'll play on Sunday. This is my second time singing with them and it's really fun. I am getting much better with the mike. At first, I was rather tentative behind the mike but I'm a fast learner. Now, I can take the mike out of its stand!! (I feel so accomplished.)

Ben leads on guitar and Jake co-leads on the keyboard but this week, he's playing the drums (And he is a very good drummer.) so that Christian can play the keyboard (He is really good too.) Joe will be playing his Bass guitar for the first time and Sarah will be singing too. Joe was going to play his Bass the last time youth led worship but then he went and sprained his wrist that Saturday. sprained wrist=no Bass. ☺

I am so excited and I love worshipping with my friends! It really ministers to the hearts of the people in the church. Ben picked beautiful songs for us and we're trying out a new song called "Always Forever" by Phil Wickhan and it is a great song. The melody sings almost like a harmony-but in a good way. I sing the harmonies if I know them but usually I just stick to the melodies. Sometimes Sarah and I will switch back and forth. Singing with her is fun! I'm so excited about Sunday.

Valentime's Cookies!

 

Every Valentine's day, my grandma makes delicious valentines cookies with little red candies and distributes them by the plateful to each individual family.

So, last night, I was missing the old tradition a little bit and I made some valentime's cookies of my own! I even used the same recipe as Grandma, and look how beautiful they turned out!! 

I asked my mom about the little red candies and she said, "They're red hots, honey."

"Red hots? Just red hots? That's all?" I replied, shocked that they were not extremely special valentine's day only type of candy. I didn't put red hots on mine since it was such a spur-of-the-moment project but I frosted all of them AND put sprinkles on them. 

After a while, I got kind of tired of standing there frosting and sprinkling so I stopped the originality and just sprinkled them plain. I did have some pretty cool ones! There were a couple of faces and pretty patterns... I got really creative with the sprinkles—until I stopped. And I made a big big mess but it was fun so I have no qualms about it.

The sheet of paper in the background is my Awana notes which I tried to study but it didn't work out too well. Instead, I hummed Barlowgirl songs to myself. Yeah not a lot of studying got done. Oh well.

Happy Mail Day!

I've been a busy girl today!

I got all my valentime's finished and addressed, ready to be mailed out tomorrow! Yippee! I say, I'm sending 15 this year. Of course, the design I picked was utterly complicated and painful and long and whatever adjectives that mean long and hard. I hope my family appreciates them! (jk)

This year, they have lions on them and say, "I'd be 'lion' if I said I didn't like you!" It's kinda cheesy, but you know what? I don't care! Last year, My valentines had duct-tape on the card back and then there was a heart in the middle. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. My valentines this year were set up to be postcards but I decided I didn't want them to get mangled in the post office's evil sorting machines! (nothing against the mail people. I LOVE them. But I don't like their machines when they put all their marks and wrinkle my pretty mail.)

I also filled out all of my invitations for my birthday party! Hooray! It really hurt my hand. This is only three of them.

  

This is the lovely front! I made it myself! I'm so excited! I am actually going to have a real birthday party this year! I haven't had a "real" birthday party in ages! It's going to be a scrapbooking sleepover the weekend after my birthday. I am looking forward to it very much. 

Most likely, I'll blog about it in a couple of weeks. You'll know we had fun if there is a definite lack in pictures. We'll try to be on top of the pictures.

The pictures are dark because the flash washed out the white and it looked bad so they're dark. What can I say?

Saturday Morning Waffles!

Dad got a waffle iron for Christmas and he busted it out again this morning for a wonderful tasty batch of waffles! Yum! Cam helped him a lot with the batter. I macerated the blueberries (it really is possible.) and I made the whipped topping. They were SO delicious! Mmm. Mmm.

 This is what I couldn't eat. I would've liked to show you an empty plate but those waffles are big! Mom ate one of my leftover pieces even though I scraped off the whipped cream and blueberries. =) yay Mom!

Cameron Eats Wasabi!!!

Me: C'mon. Just do it. I'm not gonna keep the video.
Cam:*eats sushi* *long pause*

holy crap.

Mom: Eat it. Don't spit it out. Just eat it.
Me: *laughing*
Cam: That's the worst thing I've ever eaten.
Mom: *laughing* oh nice.
Me: okay, nevermind. I'm keeping this!
Cam: *running out of the kitchen* Lemonade!!

haha. It was hilarious! We all had a good chuckle. And the funny thing is: Cam was tasting the wasabi before he slathered a bunch on the sushi! He totally brought it on himself. But the rest of us definitely got a good kick out of it.

The Joys(!) of Editing

Guess who was a good little girl and edited ten pages today?!? Me! =D

Yep, yep, yep! I edited a whopping 10 pages today!

Here is the pic of the manuscript before I attacked it with my pens and highlighters! and my flashdrive is on top.

 

And here are some of the pages that have given me the nightmares!

As you can see, it is very VERY marked up. And this is only three pages! Can you say "scary"? This is why it is taking me so long for all y'all to read it! But I'm over halfway through page-wise and I'm at halfway regarding chapters. Once I finish though, I'll be sure to send it out to everyone who wants it.

 Naturally, I've come across a lot of hilarious errors and mistakes, playfully called "nano-isms" Some of the best:

• "sighing, Jason briefly briefed him."
• "everyone has their own personal preferences"
• "he had a very reputable reputation"

Department of Redundancy Department please?

 

Redundancies aside,

As of now, I have edited 57 pages! Yay! 61%! I did the math the other day and if I edit a minimum of 2 pages per day, I will finish by February 20th! However, I fell behind during the weekend (I didn't edit a thing!) so I'm caught up as of today. I am that much closer to being done! Then comes the type in. Joy(!)