Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I hope each and every one of you are having a fabulous thanksgiving! My thanksgiving would be even better if I were home, but I offered to work thanksgiving so I could have Christmas off. It's really not been so bad either. I'm on a 40 hour straight and I'm incredibly thankful for the 6 hours of sleep I had last night. A perfect way to start thanksgiving day. :) I am missing all the food that we have on Thanksgiving, but my boss (who's working today too) brought in a turkey and his wife is bringing food when she comes this afternoon. So, I don't think I'll be lacking on the food side of things. ;) 

I'm looking forward to being off work tomorrow morning and heading home. Again! :) I was home from Friday to Wednesday and only came up to Columbia to work my shifts and then head back home. Nathan is home for the whole week and it was great to see him again. He's such a grown-up, college boy. ;) I am so very thankful to have such wonderful siblings and parents! We always have such good times and it makes me wish for when we were all younger and still living at home. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with where my life is at the moment, but I still miss those younger years. Those of you still living at home, don't be too quick to grow up. It will happen fast enough and the best thing for you to do, is to enjoy every moment and to serve your family in a way that would be glorifying to God. :) 

On a different note..... =) I finally signed up for classes! Some of you may be thinking, "It's about time!" But, it's better that I waited and I'm more excited now than I would've been if I had started at 18. I had no interest in college at 18. There was never a subject in high school that I enjoyed and so college seemed to be a waste. As I look back I realize that if I had gone to college, I would've been almost done by now. But instead, I went to EMT class, became certified, and have been working for 2 years that I would not give up. God works in different ways in different peoples lives and I don't regret anything He has done in my life. :) I will admit to being a little nervous about classes, just because I will be a full time student plus working 40 hours each week. So, I hope and pray that I will be able to stick with it and to not give up. :)

And another little bit of news.... I'm waiting to hear whether or not I got accepted to go to Africa. Unfortunately, I have to wait until January to find out. I'm so hoping I get accepted though! =) If I did go, I would be working in a medical clinic in Maasai, Kenya from May 31st to August 4th. Doesn't that  sound awesome?! =D Oh, and I was warned that it would be in the bush and so there may be times that I wouldn't have electricity and wouldn't be able to go out at night due to prowling animals. And guess what? That made me want to go even more! So you can imagine how difficult it is to wait till January to hear if I'm even going. :) Patience....I need more of it.

Well, I hope you all have had  a wonderful day so far! Between eating lunch and running calls it's taken me almost all day to write this post. ;-P

OH, and what do you think of the new look? I've not decided yet if I like it or not, so we'll see if it lasts. Adalie, I know without asking that you love the green. ;-D

Funny videos

Woah....I'm really, really dumb! Ok, so remember in my earlier post and I said I was trying to post up some videos? Well, it turns out that the videos were downloading on the blog, but because the picture wasn't clear on the video and I couldn't click on it, I just assumed it wasn't working. Turns out it was working the whole time. Sometimes I amaze myself at how completely and totally dumb I am. lol

Anyway, these three videos are of Bethany and Abigail. I'm sure you'll recognize the song their singing. They crack me up every time I watch them. So, have a good laugh! =D

More pictures :)

Walking downtown Indianapolis

This monument was pretty cool. :) I wanted a group picture with it in the background, but everyone was too cold. Maybe next time. :)

I tweaked this one a bit and I love the purple sky! =D

Inside our hotel

 The view from our window...not really that great, but still cool since we were on the 13 floor. :)

Yes, Kayla actually did take a picture of herself. ;) Kay, you need to do it more often and show your face. :)

         Kayla is very creative. :) She'll probably hate that I put this picture up, but I think it's pretty awesome.

 Such pretty girls!

While in Indy we were able to visit some good friends. :)

And I think I can honestly say, we all had a great time!

And the beautiful moms had a good time too. :)

Indianapolis Half Marathon!

Well, sorry about the delay in getting pictures up from the race. I was working on getting video's up the other day and failed so many times that I just gave up. I'll maybe work on it later today. :) Ok, well now it's evening and I haven't even gotten the pictures up. What a failure. ;-P I'm working though, so I have an excuse.

 

Walking to the start. It was really cold and dark... it was after seven when these pictures were taken. Crazy, right?

At the starting line! Races are so exciting! I was nervous the night before, but once I got started I felt good. :)

 Do we look cold?

 Adalie brought a blanket down to the race and we kinda stole it from her. It's amazing what a little blanket can do!

Standing in line for the porta-pots  ;)

I just thought this picture looked cool. I believe Kayla took all these. :)

 

Mom coming in to the finish line!

 

My mom is amazing and I love her so much! She beat me again this time, but I really don't mind.  :)

Why do I always look like I'm dying in my pictures?! Even the professional pictures that the race got, I still look awful!

Uh....I think I maybe saw the kids and I'm yelling....it could be I just always look like that. ;-P hehe

A great feeling is when you see that finish line and you know that you made it! I do a lot of praying though when I race. :) I honestly never know if I'll make it or not and He always gets me through. This race was definitely easier than the summer ones, but I still got pretty worn out and ready to be done. Mile 9 my ankles started hurting and I felt if I stopped running I would never be able to start again. 

Racing isn't easy for me and may never be. It's almost like running the race for Christ. We all have our hard times, we may hurt at times, but if we keep pressing on we will cross that finish line. And at the end we'll have a crown of glory and we'll know it was worth all that pain. You don't really get a crown of glory when you run a half marathon, but it's definitely worth all the pain. At least in my opinion. :)  Keep running the race for Christ!

Finished! I was only behind mom by 45 seconds. :) I kept her in my sights almost the whole race. I couldn't let her get too far ahead. ;)

 lol, my hair is pretty strange looking.... ;)

Taking our water belts off.

So, I bent over to set my water belt on the ground and all my muscles ached so bad that I could barely lean over! My crazy body....it hates all this running. ;)

 

I love my mom <3

Our last picture before leaving the hotel. :) I have a beautiful mom and two beautiful sisters. <3

Well folks, I'm officially exhausted! I've had maybe 3 hours of sleep in over 30 hours and it's really beating me up. I'm starting to greatly dislike these long shifts that I have.... I worked an 8 hour shift on Sunday and was up part of the night so I slept most of the morning after getting off. I then went back to work at 11 on Monday night and I'm here till tomorrow morning at 7. An hour after being at work, we got called to do a transport to Barnes. Talk about a bad dream! We left the hospital at 12:30 and finally made it back to Columbia at 4:30. The nice thing about late transports is, nobody's on the road. :) Bad thing is that you're so tired that it's hard to stay awake. I ended up getting some coffee in hopes that it would keep me awake for the drive home....it worked for the first hour. The caffeine made me sick for the rest of the morning though, so I think it's probably best if I stay away from it. :-/ I did get two hours of sleep that morning which helped quite a bit! I was able to lay down later that day and got maybe another hour of sleep. Some of you are probably wondering why I'm not sleeping now. Well, I laid down at seven in hopes of sleeping till morning and got up an hour later not having slept at all. So, guess what?! I'm wide awake!

Ok, so that was awhile ago...now I'm tired. ;) I had more to write, but that's all gonna have to wait. I may not write till next week since I have my race this weekend. :) Woohoo! I'm actually kinda worried since I don't feel ready... I'll try to write next week though and let you know if I lived! ;-) hehe

Sleep well, everyone! :)