Love our visits!

Ok, second post of the day..woo hoo! Today my friend Cynthia from college came down from Fontana with her 8 month old son Jeremiah. He is so cute! Cynthia and I went to Azusa Pacific University together in 1990. We sang in choir together and lived in the same dorm wing and became good friends. We also share birthdays (kind of)- Mine is Sept. 19 and hers is Sept. 26. She and I have some of the best times, just laughing and being silly. She definitely brings out the lighter side of me. We calculated that we have known each other for 17 years now-that makes us pretty darn old! So, we usually try to get together a couple of times a year and today was one of those days! Her little boy Jeremiah is the cutest little slice of cuteness you'll ever see-the kids just loved him! He's in the bouncy, rolly baby stage, so it was really fun trying to get him to be still for pictures-but they turned out alright! We had a great time and I was reminded of how blessed I am to have a few close friends in this world-friends that really know me, laugh with me, cry with me, and bear burdens with me-she is one of them! Love you girl!

We're all alright...

Ok, so the first few days back weren't all that bad...I think I just built up a lot of little frustrations into one giant ball of "AAARRGGGHHHHHH!". Somewhere deep down, I knew that once I got back to school, walked in my classroom, and started prepping, I would be fine. And I was, for several reasons...I think, as with most things, the anticipation level was much too high..meaning, I was thinking about way too much, worrying about way too much, and not praying enough! Once I figured that out, I sat in my classroom Wednesday morning, looked around, and began to pray. And, wouldn't you know...it worked? I took a deep breath, handed it over to God, and my day was awesome! The second reason that I know everything is going to be alright is that my BFF Catherine is going to be my monitor this year! YEAH! In case you don't know, a monitor is like a teacher's aide-they help us grade and file, they sub for us, and they help with the kids on the playground. I was really stressing about this because my monitor from last year was so awesome-we bonded instantly and had a great year..and I didn't really want to total stranger working with me. So, Catherine applied and we waited all summer to hear is she was going to be with me....got the news on Thursday and have already started getting sick of each other! :) J/K Cath! We are so excited and I think God has wonderful plans for our year in the Fantastic Fourth!! :) Thanks to those of you who have been praying for me...please continue to pray as I just got my class list and I have 14 boys and 7 girls-YIKES!!!! Lots of prayer needed there.....
Oh, yeah, I also still have alot of posting to do about the last couple of weeks of summer....they're coming! :)

The last day....

well, I have so much to blog about..we've done so much in the last week and a half and I have pics of everything to post, but for now, I'm wanting to share a little of my feelings with everyone. Usually I'm a pretty happy person, unaffected, easy-going (I like to think), but today I'm bothered. In fact, I think I'm downright blue today. My summer has ended. Today was my last day of freedom as I have to report back to school tomorrow. School actually starts on the 30th, but we have to report starting tomorrow. While I am so grateful to have a job and I do love my job, I have very mixed feelings right now. The summer has passed so quickly. Most of you know that this was my first summer home with the kids and I had great plans for us. I had a list a mile long of things to accomplish and goals to meet, as well as work for school that I intended to do over the summer. Alas, very little of it got done. And I'm feeling like a bit of a failure. I know I'm not a COMPLETE failure, because we did do some fun things this summer, and we loved being home, but I had really high hopes and goals for myself and came nowhere near meeting them. It's frustrating! On top of that, I'm really not ready to go back to school. My kids don't start school for 2 weeks, so now I'm back to scrambling for day care and the busy-ness is going to set in and I don't think I'm going to like it! I was working on some things for Donald earlier today and just got overwhelmed with stress, worry, anxiety-so I threw myself on my bed and had a good cry for awhile. It felt somewhat good-only now I'm exhausted on top of everything else! I know everything will be just fine, I know the Lord is in control, and I know that none of this is earth shattering or anything, but I can't fight the feelings that are overtaking me today-which is unusual because I'm usually a fighter. Right now I really just want to curl up in a little ball and cry some more and pray for one more day! Please say a little prayer for me tonight!

Project Playlist

I have a MySpace and my BFF Cathie showed me how to create a playlist of all my favorite songs-so I thought I'd share. You go to http://www.projectplaylist.com/, sign up for free, and start searching for music you like! It's super easy. It basically takes the links from itunes and other websites and creates a media player that stores and plays your favorite songs for you-for free! They have every genre of music you can imagine and tons you've never dreamed of! I'm going to try to paste my playlist here, but if it doesn't work you can go to my myspace or to project playlist and look me up-it's under "hmac5". I'm so excited. Be warned though-I went a little crazy on my playlist-I went all the way back to the 80's rock and rap, threw in some country, some current rock, and tons of Christian music. I call my list "My Eclectica"-take a look and you'll see why....it's there, you just have to click on the "launch standalone player" button and my player will open in a new window....(or you can go to my myspace)....
Enjoy!

We love baseball!

Ok, DJ and I love baseball. Taylor only loves it because she loves the stadium peanuts. Ben only likes it because he gets ice cream. Donald is really only a fan to see who's hot and who's not for his card business. So, that leaves DJ and I as true-blue baseball fans. I was raised on the Angels-my parents had seats behind 1st base for years (until the strike when my dad got sick of the greed and vowed never to support it again-he goes to very few games since then-usually only when someone else has tickets so he's not supporting the greed, I guess!). Some of my favorite memories are of Angel games-my dad used to buy us the program and he taught me how to keep score and stats of the game-I used to love that! We always had binoculars and I loved zooming in on all the action. It's funny, because he always had an "Angel game bag" ready to go for the game and I am that way also! Of course, my Angel bag is an extremely cute homemade bag made of Angel fabric and his was not as cute, but I think it's funny that we both did that! I loved learning all the players names, watching their stats, and hearing my dad tell me stories of all of them. My dad used to sell insurance to a lot of the players-so he had some great stories! Now, that tradition is being passed on to DJ. He LOVES baseball-when he was younger he would actually sleep with his glove! He is a true stat-guy-he can tell you almost anything you want to know about almost every player! So, last week, I took him to a game. We bought tickets from my friend and they were pretty good. We were out in left field, about 12 rows back, and got a great view of Garret Anderson (one of DJ's favorites). It's funny because he's not really fan friendly and later in the game, the fans were kind of heckling him trying to get him to look our way or smile-and he wouldn't break! It got pretty funny-we are all having a great time. The Angels played the Detroit Tigers and KILLED 'EM! The final score was 13-4! Woo-hoo! Another fun thing was that DJ got to run around the bases after the game-that's a pretty cool that the Angels do. It takes a while to get through the line, but it goes pretty fast and DJ loves it! DJ was in heaven and we had a great day! Here are some pics.....











DJ in front of the stadium, me and DJ on the field after he ran the bases, DJ by the field (that's Garret Anderson in the background), DJ in front of the dugout (that was pretty cool), and a self-shot we took. We had a great time and hope to go back soon! :)

Awesome beer girls take 2

On Saturday, we got to work quite possibly our favorite concert , the FishFest.

This is an all-day Christian music concert. Some of our favorite music acts were

there- Chris Tomlin, MercyMe, Third Day, and our new fav Aaron Shust. We

worked all day, made a measly $6, but were blown away by the kindness,

positive attitudes, and general feel-goodness of the day. I think our favorite thing was looking out at the crowd from our stand and watching people, especially grown men, raise their hands and worship the Lord full out without shame. We couldn't stop taking pictures, because we wanted to remember that feeling-totally, unabashed, worship of the Lord. This is a picture of one of those guys-never met him, but couldn't take our eyes off of him (and others).


At one point, we were able to step out of the booth andworship with Chris Tomlin. We were sitting with my sister, Shannon, and got caught up in the moment. Before we knew it, we were praising and crying-it was breathtaking. The Lord was truly present that day (He is every day, but you know how sometimes you can actually feel it?) and we were wrapped up in His glory. It was amazing. Almost the whole family was there- Dad, Mom, Shannon, the twins, Tay, Mandy, and DJ. DJ got to work his first concert that day-he actually made more money than me! He had a great time. Taylor worked, too, and had fun with her BFF Nicole in their food stand. Here are some pics of that wonderful day....

Totally awesome beer girls!

Ok, so since I haven't posted in a week, I thought

I'd share some super fun pics of me and Cath servin'

up the beer. For those of you that don't know, we

moonlight as Beer girls at Irvine Meadows (oops...

Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre-which will always be Irvine Meadows). We work almost every concert that blows through there and have a dang good time doin' it. Last week started out with a "super-fun" beer training that

lasted about one and 1/2 hours too long and actually made me feel dumber when I was done. Cath and I got bored and started snapping photos at our table in the back. Here are some of them....

The day after this meeting, we had a Rush concert to work. That was a great time, we made lots of money and laughed a lot. Especially at the drunk boys (ok, 40 year old, but still boys) who couldn't find their way around the corner to the bathroom and saw it fit to pee right in front of us. Yes, we actually took pictures of them and they didn't even care. In fact, I think they left us a rather large tip when they bought their next round! So, we get to wear these ultra-cool shirts, black pants, and tennies-man, do we look awesome when we work!Later in the night, my mom joins us. That makes it really fun-three of us working around each other in a space about 20 sq. ft. Here are some more really neat pics of us working...

Here are the boys relieving themselves right outside our stand. Nice......

More to come in a bit...have to download some more pics.