And it seems like forever since I talked to you...

Yes, it has been 13 years since I posted anything. But seriously, nothing is going on lately! Or rather, too much to type about. I have some great pictures though, so I've gotta post now!! This weekend was a crazyhectic one, but really fun. Friday night we had a pumpkin carving party with our youth group.

Some of us were really into it...

And some weren't that into it...

We have a lot of talented kids!!

They look so great!!

Of course, what would a party be without Twister?

Saturday night was our Fall Festival at church. Stephen went as Rambo III, and I was wearing a white dress and just asking people what they thought I was supposed to be. I was a princess, angel, Rambo's wife, prom queen, and damsel in distress!! I won cutest adult costume. I'll try to scan our picture on here, it's really funny.

Lots of the little girls were cats. So cute!!

Our pastor and his wife were Abraham and Sarah...

We even had Moses show up!!

So that was a ton of fun. We won three cakes in all, so if you want some cake, give me a call and take it off our hands! Sunday we had a singing service for Pastor Appreciation Day. Our service lasted over 2 hours (with no complaints - incredible!) and when it was all over, fourteen people got saved!! That's totally amazing for a church our size. I'm so glad that we're back home so we aren't missing out on things like this. This was just absolutely the most fun weekend, although I was stressed at the time, yes, but now it was all worth it. And now I'll have a reprieve for about two weeks, which will be nice.

Stephen started his new job, which means new hours. His new hours are 6:30am to 3:00pm. How wonderful for him!! He'll have so much free time in the afternoon - that's so great! Methinks I'll have to rearrange my hours every so often to see him in the afternoons...

JDK

Follow this to see how talented my beautiful sister is. I'm so proud of you!!

Let's give 'em the old pizazz!!

That quote is from Funny Face, which will make perfect sense after you read this blog. Jenn came over Monday night to hang out with me, and we just went to town. We had such a great time with wine, crescent rolls, and a camera!! We found out that neither of us are good at taking the classic arm-length picture. Here are some of our worst and best:

First of all, for some reason, I really thought it would be funny to take pictures of us laying on the floor:

As it turned out, it was really funny!!! But neither of us could get our aim right, as shown here by Jenn's attempt to take a picture (turns out she pointed the camera in the wrong direction!)

So then we tried just standing together taking cool pictures. That didn't work out so well either:

And no, I cannot explain why I felt I had to open my mouth so wide in half the pictures.

Finally, we put our foot down and took some cute ones with better aim.

By this time, we were so tired of smiling, we were pretty much just cheesing.

Anyway, we had such a fun time. My sister is so cool! I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. My abs haven't had such a workout in forever. Thanks for coming over Jenn! I love you!!

It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black. - Spinal Tap

Well, I spent my weekend in sunny Charleston and I am offically back in "Missing Charleston" mode!! Don't give me that look - there's just too many good things about it! Stephen and I went to Mellow Mushroom on a date Friday night which was nice because it forced us to walk around downtown, and it was a gorgeous night. Probably no one really cares what we did on Saturday (let's just say it involved a lot of thrift stores and used book stores) but that night we went to a party in honor of stephen for him leaving Charleston for good. His supervisor presented him with an extremely nice Study Bible for his going away present. We had about 20 of our friends show up, and we had a BLAST. We went to Wild Wings where they have the best wings and martinis. Stephen and I got a platter of 25 wings to share - Italian, Garlic, and Honey Mustard, and I'm tellin' you, mmmm, I'm starting to drool just thinking about it again. Moving on.

Jenn just wrote a post about a letter she'd write to her 17-year-old self. Well, wouldn't that be just peachy if we could do that? I think I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and wasted time. But alas, that is what learning is all about. But my point of this is, you CAN write to your FUTURE self. FutureMe is a website where you can write yourself and send the letter whenever you want to. Right now you can send it to tomorrow, or up to 30 years from now. I prefer smaller timeframes, like one year. If you can't think of anything cool to say, you can at least check out the letters other people write. Well, I thought it would be kind of cool to post a letter I once wrote myself using this system. I wrote the letter on September 26, 2004, and received it on August 15, 2005. Yes, I had totally forgotten about it at that point. This is what it said:

Dear Future and hopefully Improved Amanda,

Well, by the time you read this you will be getting ready for your wedding! *shriek!* I know you are super excited. Don't stress out, everything will be awesome.

Right now I am 21. I am working harder in school than ever. I am doing daily devotions which has made my life the best it could possibly be. I want to be a counselor someday. I have the best sister ever, Jenn. I hope you are still close to her. If not, KICK YOURSELF RIGHT NOW and then call her.

This summer I came to realize which people care the most about me. Don't treat mom and dad like they're worthless. They were your best friends over the summer, and you have attempted to treat them like a king and queen ever since. If you aren't still doing that, tell them every day how wonderful they are.

Go right now and call Mary and Keely and tell them that you love them. If you are lucky enough to be near them, give them a hug. They have kept you sane these past 4 years. Let them know how lucky you are to have found them.

Are you still doing your devotions? I hope you are getting closer and closer to the Lord. He has blessed you so much lately and helped you when no one else was around.

Do you still splash in puddles? If not, do it the next time it rains! Don't be afraid to grow up, but you'll go crazy if you don't act your shoe size every once in a while. I love you so much. I know that you are trying to be your best. With the help of God, and your close friends, and strength from yourself, you can do it. You are talented, pretty, smart, and funny, just remember that. Love, The Old Amanda

Well, it's funny looking at this now, 3 years later, how relevant so much of it still is. I still want to be a counselor, but that Master's degree is just sort of roaming around in the back of my head at this point. I'm closer to Jenn now than 3 years ago, especially physically! I spend more time with mom and dad than I have probably since I moved to Boone. Keely knows how much I love her, and we are still in close contact. Mary and I talk less, but I'm sure she knows the effect she had on my life (I played pool over the weekend, and visions of Murphy's ran through my head...) I don't go to bed without doing a daily devotion, and I'm definitely constantly trying to get closer to God. I don't really splash in puddles anymore, mainly because I hate being cold, but I have a feeling that's okay. I still act immature in plenty of other ways. My favorite part in reading this letter again is that I complimented myself and told myself that I loved me. I know the situation I was in when I wrote this letter, and it's amazing to me that I was in a place where I could say that to myself. Anyway, I highly recommend this website, and it will be well worth it to take a few minutes to write something to FutureYou.

Kudos to anyone who read this whole post.

My dog is a delinquent.

It is so pathetic that my dog causes so much drama in my life. I got home last night, came inside, changed my clothes, and walked back out. Before I even got out, our motion light went off in the garage. Then I heard all this rummaging around. My first thought was that someone was in our garage, so of course I walked over to where the noise was. But no, it was my precious little Cassie! Precious little Cassie who is supposed to be anchored into the ground with no way to get off of her steel wire cable. Well, as it turns out, if you really want to get off of that steel cable, you can certainly chew your way through. That's right.

The offending cable, after the gruesome attack.

The punishment for such said attack. That's right, you get NO room to run around while I go to PetSmart, show them the murdered cable, and then find that you are too big even for a chain, and just buy the exact same type of cable you have just chewed through.

The retaliation for being tied up.

Still chewing.

Muahaha, you'll never chew through this new cable that's exactly like the one you are laying on that you just finished chewing through!

If my children are anything like my dog, I'm in big trouble.

poor Cassie McNasty

We almost had a tragedy befall us last night!!

It was a dark, not stormy night. The time - 8:30 pm. I had just gotten home from a wild and crazy extravaganza called "Dinner Date with Granny and Granddaddy." It was the first time in over 13 hours I had been home, and I was berating myself for being a bad mother and leaving my dogther (dog/daughter) home alone for so long. I went out to feed her, and was almost to her place in the yard, when I realized I could hardly see because I didn't have the outside lights on. So I trudged back inside. I had to flip the light switch, and then follow the light, to see which ones were closest to where Cassie is. So I turned on one light and looked out to follow it. Sitting in the middle of our yard is something hot pink. As soon as I realized that it was my spray bottle (for spritzing Cassie when she gets sassy), I knew something was wrong, because that spray bottle sits on our front porch, which Cassie can't reach thanks to the chain she's anchored down on. I ran outside, only to screech to a halt when I saw that she was gone. The yard was completely empty except for her empty chain, and the spray bottle. Of course, I start freaking out - cause who knows how long she's been gone at this point? I called Stephen (not that he can do anything from 3 hours away) and I'm all crying and everything, mainly because I'm scared that that dumb dog may have run after a car for fun and ended up being creamed dog soup. Also because I thought she was dognapped. She is gorgeous, after all.

I called Jenn because I actually wanted to talk to her about the antique fair this weekend, but of course I had to become overly dramatic and we ended up just worrying about Cassie, and then Jenn made me very nervous about the potential dognapper. Anyway, I decided to drive through the neighborhood and talk to everyone standing around (there was a fire or something at our neighbor's house, so the whole neighborhood was outside with the fire. I thought maybe someone had seen Cassie or the alleged dognapper.

So I'm backing out of the garage, and I keep looking behind me, because I thought, "How awful would it be if I ran over her and then I worried and worried and ended up being the cause of her death??" Also, looking back, I have no clue where I'd take her if she was hurt. Anyone know where I'd go in that situation? And don't even tell me something like a dog ER cause you KNOW we don't have anything like that. Although I could take her to Henry's Gelato because I saw last night it's open now - someone wanna try it with me?

But I digress.

I'm still backing out of the garage, really slowly so that if I hit her it would just bump her, when I suddenly look out my window, and she's standing there. Just standing there, with this look on her face like, "You just got home! Where are you going now!?" Woooo! I ran over to her and didn't even scold her for jumping on me.

I won't tell the rest of the story cause it's boring. It goes something like this - water, food, playplayplay, thank God, make sure she's not hurt, call Jenn, check on Cassie, call Stephen, check on Cassie, make dinner, check on Cassie, you get the picture.

Mom just called and got me marked down blueberry muffins and scones from Harris Teeter! Score!! Mom rocks!!!

Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.

This weekend was so much fun!! Friday we had a UFC party and everyone actually got to come - yay! Usually I prefer watching the fights over the social aspect but this night the company was fun and the fights were not as good as usual, so it balanced out.

Saturday morning Stephen and I went to Pittsboro with mom and dad to the big book sale at the Kiwanis Club. Yes, we drove an hour to buy bags of books for $5 a bag. Stephen and I got two bags, which was only 10 bucks, and we smushed about 40 or 50 books in there. Awesome!! I got a new Stephen King hardcover that I didn't even know about, and a TON of unedited books that aren't made public. I also got a few autographed books which is worthless but still pretty cool. We then went to two more thrift shops where we got (what else?) more books and CDs. We are addicted, I admit it. Then we ate a great lunch at this remodeled General Store. Yum!

Saturday night we took our youth group to Grace for their outreach party. It was absolutely one of the most fun things we've done in a long time. We started off by doing the American Gladiator thing - knocking each other off of pedestals with big Q-tip things. Then we climbed the rock wall. I was proud of my kids for kicking butt because they love rock climbing! One of our kids who is scared of heights even made it all the way to the top! Then we did Sumo Wrestling, where you actually get in those huge padded suits and bounce off of each other. I fought Stephen and lost 2-1. Boo. But I definitely held my own! Then we rode the mechanical bull, which I did for only 8 seconds but it felt like forever. Then we did the Ironman Competition which one of my kids unwittingly challenged me to. I KILLED him, and after we finished, I went over to congratulate me, and the first thing he said was, "I cheated twice and you STILL won!" Haha. We played games from 5-7 and then went inside for worship until about 9. It was such a great night. About 60 kids got saved which is really awesome. I'm so glad our youth group went. It's the exact thing I imagined when we took over the youth group.

Stephen's gone for now. I was fine all day yesterday because I had lunch with him and then didn't get home from work until after 6. Then, of course, I had to walk Cassie and play with her some. On that note, it IS okay that I walk her mainly for the benefit of eating muscadine grapes that we found on a grapevine the other day.. right? Sure. She starts sniffing them out about 100 yards away. It's so cute! She's looking out for her mommy. Anyway, then I ate dinner, watched a movie, and just chilled. It didn't hit me that I was alone until I got into bed and his half of the bed was made up. Too weird. I actually don't mind any of it like I thought I would. I guess I'm just too busy, and we don't see each other that much anyway. Now let's see if I can handle the youth group alone tomorrow night...