Happy Valentines Day!
I had a wonderful bout with the 24-hour flu bug on Saturday, and so spent Sunday and the first part of yesterday recuperating at my friend's the Reeves house. Amber came over and made some amazing chocolate dipped strawberries for a bake sale at her church for Sunday.

I was very proud of myself for not snitching, but it was TEMPTING!


Kyle drove up on Monday and took me to Waterfront where we exchanged gifts. His was amazingly arranged and wrapped and presented with a flourish and a story.

Mine was, 'quick, close your eyes honey!" while I put it in his outstretched hands; no wrap. Ok lame but I had been sick all weekend!
I had been working on a cross-stitch for him since before Christmas: it was supposed to be his Christmas gift but I hadn't finished it in time, then it was going to be his birthday gift but it still wasn't done. I was determined to have it ready by Valentines day and got it finished literally an hour before he showed up. lol.


His gift for me was a gift basket: A Celtic grooves CD I had been wanting for some time (years, actually. I could have gotten it for myself however whenever I had spending money I never thought to actually get it), homemade goat-milk soap, lotion, and a sugar scrub (no he didn't make it himself. There is a quaint little shop in his hometown where he was able to buy it) And then there were of course chocolates, all inside a heart-shaped cardboard box with sparkly red tissue paper.


Then we went to get our very good friend Amber (read about her here). We weren't sure what her schedule was going to be, but when we picked her up we all decided that we were in the mood for lunch. Olive Garden was/is having a sweet deal of appetizer, entree and desert for $12 so we decided to go there for lunch.


Our waitress was a hoot and a half. I just snacked off of both of their actual meals as I wasn't quite ready to enter into the world of full meals yet. I did have their chicken and gnocci soup and it was A.W.E.S.O.M.E!!!
Amber had to go babysit for a few hours, so Kyle and I were able to hang out and catch up for a while :) Then Amber came back and Kyle asked if we wanted some dairy queen. While he was picking up the ice cream he picked up a bouquet of flowers and some of my favorite chocolates for the morning :-)




Amber was able to show him how to arrange them before I noticed what was up, and the next morning when he delivered breakfast for Amber and I from Panera, he also delivered the flowers, chocolate, and the cute eskimo card I posted a picture of above. :-)

So then he had breakfast with us and pumped up Amber's tire to her car which has a leak in it before seeing us on our way to class. :-)
It was his first time giving a girl Valentines day (although we did hang out last Valentine's day but weren't dating yet) and he seemed to start out nervous but he did AWESOME. As a result, he got himself one happy girlfriend... and a very happy best-friend-of-the-girlfriend as well :-)

Christmas break sum up so far

I've been really bad this year. Last year, I was blogging regularly during the break, had even changed the music on my blog to fit the season. This is... what, the first time I've updated my blog in over a month? And how many posts this year?
Oh well. I'm sure my faithful few followers will survive. :-)

To sum up my break: Moved out of my apartment on campus and put all my stuff in storage. Am staying at a friend's house until February, and then I will move into a house with five other girls. *eek!* I'll admit I have a little apprehension about my new living situations, but the old place simply wasn't working any more for several reasons. So I moved out. I had packed up a bookshelf's worth, but my boyfriend and his dad came up one saturday and we blitzed the apartment and got the whole thing packed, loaded, moved, and unloaded. God bless men!
Visited Ohio for Thanksgiving, finished situating things around Louisville and beyond as far as storage, and somehow didn't drive Amber (my friend I'm staying with) Kyle or his parents crazy. Or if I did, they graciously kept it to themselves. Kyle took Amber and I to Nashville to meet his grandparents, (Pap worked building Ford car's engines for several decades, and likes to play with whoever's car is acting funny. Mine was IT, so he got it for the break) for lunch, see the new Muppet Movie (which was SOOOO good! And funny!) and then go to the Opryland Hotel Christmas Light display. Fun. Fun. Fun.


Then I flew to South Dakota to visit family. The weather was mercifully, gloriously, and amazingly not the frigid arctic blast that I've come to expect, but rather quite mild! Its been in the high 30's to 50's the entire time I've been here. The wind has blasted on occasion, but not as often as usual. Everyone is surprised and I am not complaining one whit. :-) Kendra and Derek are working at a farm close by where the farmer raises 200 culled bull calves to sell for meat once they've grown. So I've been getting up with them to help so they can get done faster. They do get paid by the hour, but they had to work Christmas day and on the day we thought Ethan had a birthday party, so I went to help them get done earlier.

Apart from working and getting sore and too tired, Christmas was really fun. It was one of our more frugal Christmases (as in there weren't piles and piles of packages under the tree this year) but it was still really nice. Mom cooked an AMAZING meal (again) and she and Dad bought me the "John Adams" mini-series and we started watching that together. Well acted, well written, amazing soundtrack, etc. Happy happy happy.

My dear boyfriend was supposed to arrive on the 28th but he got a nassssty 24-hour flu that kept him from flying out that day. Thanks to heroic effort to his dad and no thanks to the airlines or travelocity who charged them another arm and a leg, he was able to fly out the next day. He was smiling but a little drained. Despite all setbacks, we had a nice visit. I've never 'brought a boy home' before, so there was absolutely NO precedent for anyone to follow. Add to that he had been sick and in a part of the country that was as foreign to him as another country, I'd say he did pretty well. He even let Hannah decorate him, as you can see ;-)

He and Ethan bonded over lego's, history, and similar personalities. So the little's vote is very favorable towards him, and Ethan keeps telling me how much he misses Kyle and how fun he was. He DID however inform me that I was 'sappy' with my boyfriend. He determined this to be neither good nor bad, but familiar. I think that's okay... seeing as we've been dating for eight months now!
Many a comment and hopeful question was voiced by friends back at school as to whether or not I would return to school with an engagement ring. I knew I wasn't, but nobody believed me. I turned out to be right and am fine with that. I've enough stuff to figure out this final semester without having to plan a wedding and remain sane and pleasurable company to anyone within a ten-mile radius or phone-conversation with me :-)

Mom and Dad have done an amazing job in rebuilding the house. The contractor is no longer in the picture and they are doing all of the second floor, basement, (attic?) and final touches of the first floor by themselves. The house looks amazing but very very different from when I lived there. Its still the same house, just completely different while still similar.
In the same way, the family has changed. Still the same people and same family, but different. Figuring out how dynamics are supposed to work now that I'm an adult but still their child has been challenging. I don't live at home yet while I'm at home I ought to contribute to the family but at the same time things are completely different. Its been an internal war with myself of not knowing how to jump in or not thinking of ways to jump in soon enough or simply not wanting to jump in as once I go back to Louisville I'll have to hit the ground running again.
Oh well. Sanctification is never a bad thing. I will confess, however, that once I graduate my goal is to be able to get my own place with absolutely. no. room -mates. Selfish? Maybe. Ambitious? Probably, as I just haven't been able to work enough hours to afford it while still taking five classes. But we'll see what God does and where He takes me. I'll also confess I really need to work on some New Year's resolutions: like praying and seeking God more, getting much more disciplined about managing things better, scheduling my time more wisely, etc.
Alright I'm lapsing into musing and therefore rambling. Sorry :-)
I'm flying into Chicago on the 12th and staying with my dear Great-Grandma for a few days before Kyle drives up and gets me. We're still trying to decide how visited-out we will be, and if we want to try and bum around Chicago for a while and then stop in Ohio to see relatives there, or simply zip back to Kentucky. My preference would be to bum and visitate a little more, but will see. :-) Logistics aren't always conducive to idealism. ;-)


~Princess Ouch~

Happy.... er... Resurrepascalster..?

"So Happy East- Resurrection Sunday! I mean, well, Pascal.. I mean... well, what is today, anyway? Happy Jesus Day! Are you doing an Easter Egg hunt? Wait..."
I tell you, Church on Sunday was confusing. What on earth do we call it? I mean its been Easter for the last 1500 years, yet suddenly we've all been hit with the revelation that it isn't really EASTER; that's a pagan holiday. No, it is Resurrection Sunday! But wait... are we going to include our roots and Jewish Bretheren? Well then it's Pascal. Wait, wait... Pascal doesn't recognize Jesus. So it's Resurrepascalster... whew is THAT a mouthful.

Hey, just to throw this out there. How about we consider something that seems totally arbitrary and yet at the same time might be related (and I know I'm gonna step on some toes here, so brace yourself. Maybe grab a chocolate Easter - I mean Resurrepascalster Bunny to chew on to defuse the stress)

a) " Construction of meaning. Postmodernists don’t care about talks about whether truth is out there, they are not like the X-files. They are opposite, they don’t CARE if the Truth is out there. What they say is that when they construct meaning, they construct meaning through language. Language is how we make ourselves out to be what we are. Language only makes something true for the person using that particular language. So for example, ‘Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life,’ is only true for Christians because that is the language we choose to use about Christ. ‘That rose is beautiful’ is beautiful to us because that’s what we choose to call it but it may be ‘ugly’ to someone else."

a) Wait, you say. What on earth do your class notes have to do with this whole Easter.... Resurrepascalster controversy?

The whole deal with Postmodernism is 'what does this term do for you." There's no centralized term for anything, there's no truth out there that is solidified that we can all reference. If it irritates you or doesn't work for you, just redefine it. Now as Christians, we would NEVER do something like that... right?

Well, I'm not sure thats true anymore. We're so focused in our special little branches of 'redefining' stuff. We've got the 'carnal Christian' with the John Piper-ites, the 'Resurrection Sunday' with the intellectuals, or 'Redeemed Pascal' or whatever with the hard-core intellectuals. Dude, whatever happened to just saying 'Easter'? Yeah okay its based off of a pagan holiday. Most of our songs are based off of songs or tunes or styles that originated in a pagan way. Hate to break it to you, but if you look at the Tabernacle waaaaay back in the Old Testament, the styles of their worship followed the trends of their days as well. Those Cherubim guarding the Ark of the Lord on the Lid are fashioned in a style common on most religious artifacts from Canaan.

Yeah, we need to be distinct from the pagan world around us. We also need to be centralized. Its been Easter for at least 1500 years if not longer. Redefining all the terms right now out of reaction to something isn't helpful, it's causing confusion. I mean, whats next, a secret handshake to get in through the Church doors?

Okay I'm exaggerating a little bit and probably sounding like I'm over-reacting. Yes we need to 'take back' the Christian holidays for the Lord. But we aren't going to do that if we don't start with what is in our hearts. Leave the Easter Bunny alone for a minute while you examine your own heart: when was the last time you told an unbeliever what the Easter Story IS? Stop trying to fight for appearances to suit your preferences! Trust me, if you actually DO what the New Testament says, you won't have time to worry if they call it Easter or Pascal or Jimmy John's Cheap Sandwich Day (I made that up, btw. I don't know if JJ's had cheap sandwiches yesterday). If you are honestly doing what Christ Commanded, you will be tired, hungry, and frustrated as you pray through trying to make His message more understandable to a lost and dying world.

Traditions are good. I love traditions, really I do. But not when they become distracting. Not when changing them to suit our latest fad in theology or inter-church-and-doctrine-controversy. And yes people, we do have 'fads' in our doctrine and theology. Its okay, just accept it. But what is the POINT of them? Are you growing in maturity in Christ? Is your love for Him overflowing so that it is visible? Are people inspired when they see you to read the Bible and find out what it is that you have? Are you making people jealous that they don't have the Holy Spirit in their life like you do?

I'm not saying that I'm doing it perfectly or, 'Quick! Reject what THEY are saying and come over here and do what I am saying!'

All I'm saying is, 'What is your point? Because so far its just causing confusion and knocking off the center that has united us on this particular Sunday every year for the past one and a half millennium. There's been thousands of Christians before you who have the Holy Spirit and are thoughtful people. Why do you think you are so special to have figured it out where they couldn't?"

Harsh, yes. Brutal? Probably. Needed? Well, I don't believe in going along with what someone says just because they threw a bunch of syllables together that sounded pretty and are confident about how they sound. I've been around intellectuals too long.

Now if you excuse me, I need to go grab something out of my EASTER BASKET before I go prepare for my apologetics class paper. And yes, this paper is being utilized to share the gospel with Muslims on Thursday. The point of us being Christian academics and theologians is to better prepare us to engage a fallen world and irritating lost people. Are you engaging lost people? Or are you snarling about the inconvenience when they shock you with their depravity?

N Not really the Happy Easter post I was planning on, but I didn't know before this weekend that I wasn't allowed to post a Happy Easter post, I was supposed to write a Happy.... Resurrepascalster post.

~Princess Ouch~

Christmas greetings from the tundra

Back home again, jiggety jig. Well, that is to say, back with family. We are currently residing in a rather new rental home that is gorgeous, but entirely not what we are used to here in the Great Plains. There is a dishwasher, for pete's sake!!! I actually had to ask my 6-year old sister how to run it when Mom and Dad were out having dinner. She didn't know either, so we spent about a minute looking at the machine full of dishes, and finally one of the two of us suggested putting the newly-discovered dishwasher solution in the designated compartment in the door. Miraculously I pushed the right buttons in the right sequence, and the thing produced automatically sterilized dishes in about an hour.
Now the thing about dishwashers is that they don't ever actually WASH the dishes, they simply squirt water and soap suds at the dishes and then rinse it. Therefore we have to make sure the dishes are mostly clean before we put them in, which in my mind is half the job so why not do the other half while we're at it? However since there are now 7 people living here, 'just doing the other half' would take the hour that the dishwasher covers. Okay then.
Anyhoo. Am done with Christmas shopping and did about two thirds of my wrapping last night with my sister. She brought down two mugs full of egg-nog topped with some gourmet cinnamon purchased at the World Market and a bowl full of peppermints and we listened to christmas music on the computer whilst sharing war stories of how this or that was purchased. half the fun of Christmas is not neccesarily the GIFT but the story that goes WITH the gift. We don't do huge gifts here, like i-pods or what have you, but a small collection of tiny gifts that we put lots of thought and hopefully less money into. It drags the time gathered around the Christmas tree out longer, more laughts, more time to eat whatever ambrosia my Mom has concocted for that year, more stories shared.
Looks like we'll get a white Christmas, which is awesome, and the temperatures have stayed above 0 for two days. Happiness!
It's wierd living in this new house (the farmhouse was almost 100 years old) with mocha-colored walls and new kitchen appliances. But its been fun, also helping mom pick out new furniture and hear amazing stories about how so many people around the country even have chipped in to bless the socks off my family.
Now I have to go finish reading a book for class (two more chapters left!!) write a report on it, figure out what reading reports I have left on it, and then that class will be DONE. Which will be 3 out of 4. Whahooo!!

~Princess Ouch~

Thanksgiving retrospect

I really ought to be writing a book report right now.

However, I've been responsible for the last hour addressing homework-related issues, and so I'm gonna sneak in a few moments of fluff before going back to attempting this whole 'responsible adult' growing-up nightmare that I keep trying to wake up from. :-)

Thanksgiving week was the week after Finals. I didn't have any tests, but I did have a group project the week before that I somehow got through even though I had given myself a minor concussion, and had a church-plant-proposal-presentation the next week as well as worked 20 hours at my job. And tried coordinating with my excellent professors of different classes how to manage finishing the homework that slipped in October and the beginning of November. Bleh.
So Thanksgiving week I was burned out. I worked on homework for my Great Books class, which I am officially DONE with (hallelujah!), planned Thanksgiving dinner with my 8-month-pregnant-friend Samantha, ate, felt guilty for not getting more homework done, tried to figure out which place to get the windshield of my car fixed (and did a lot more relying on Robbie than I needed to but he was able to get a great deal at a decent place after haggling for about a week, so in the end it was good, but it was interesting getting to that point. Mechanics and their ilk are scary. Having girls handle car problems is like sending your wife to Home Depo or some other work-tool-infested warehouse. Double the time, money, and energy is spent, usually the wrong thing is purchased, the salesman and the customer is frazzled and frustrated at the end of it, and the end result is a lecture on gender roles, the degradation of our society, something about day timers, and a second trip by the husband to get the right tool commences. All that to say, I'm glad Robbie was there to figure stuff out 'cause I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I don't know that he did either, but he looked a lot more confident and his voice is deeper than mine so carries more weight with the burly mechanics and glass-replacement dudes), and tried to get my room somewhat clean.
Thanksgiving day I went to Sam and Andrei's at 10. We ate breakfast and then started cooking at about 11. Our menu was:
Refrigerator Rolls
Corn Casserole
Green Bean Casserole
Mashed Potatoes
Canned yams with marshmallows and brown sugar
Stuffing
Chicken

Dutch Baby/German Apple Pancake for desert

We decided to cook a chicken instead of a Turkey because there were only going to be five of us, and we figured we wouldn't eat an entire turkey before it went bad. The birds at Wal-Mart were humongous.
So Sam started getting the ingredients for the stuffing together and I started on the refrigerator rolls. I had never made them without mom watching over my shoulder, and so over-heated the milk, the yeast didn't get creamy like the recipe said it would and then once everything was mixed I put the dough straight into the fridge instead of letting it rise first.
So Sam and I giggled about how we were bound to mess SOMETHING up on our first thanksgiving cooking away from Mom's (it was her first Thanksgiving as a married woman) and I put the cloth-covered bowl in the semi-warm, turned-off oven to let the dough rise and began making the green bean casserole.

A little bit later Sam opened the oven and was greeted by cheerily crackling flames.

Apparently I hadn't told her I put the dough in the oven, or she had forgotten, and I hadn't heard her when she said she was going to preheat the oven for the stuffing.

Woops.

So she reacted by shutting the oven door and calmly calling her Romanian husband, and I reacted by opening the door and trying to beat the flames to death with another dishtowel.
Andrei walked in, threw us both out of the kitchen, and began filling a pan full of water and dousing the flames, dough, and oven whilst asking what on earth we were thinking by putting cloth and a plastic bowl in an oven of all things. I meekly tried to explain that that's how you let dough rise, and received a lecture on how his mother is a chef and she puts her dough on top of the fridge to rise, not in an oven!!!
Mihai, Andrei's father, was visiting from Romania and chuckled heartily while helping Samantha open windows to let the smoke out.
"You are not the first to do such a thing, Rachel. Do not fear, for you will not be the last as well." he said reassuringly at my flaming-red cheeks.

So back Samantha and I went into the kitchen and Samantha wiped out the oven and the floor while I tried to salvage the dough.
We both laughed that most people were experiencing trauma with the Turkey, but we decided to be non-conformist and have flame-broiled rolls instead.

Robbie came over at 2:45 and found Andrei and Mihai carving little holders in some decorative miniature gourds and pumpkins to hold tea-candles so that Samantha could make a fall centerpiece. The men talked while Sam and I finished a few things and about 3:30 we took some pictures before digging into our feast.

After dinner and desert Andrei read some out of Deuteronomy and the New Testament, and then we prayed in a circle, thanking God for the blessings He had given us and praying for friends and family members who didn't know Him.

The guys then fell into talking about linguistic properties of Mandarin, Romanian geography and evangelistic opportunities at seminary and the general city-wide area while Samantha and I collapsed in the living room, hoping that the guys would notice our prostrate state and give us foot massages. They, being guys, God love 'em, were dense, and kept discussing theology. But they did migrate to the living room and sat with us during their discussion.

Robbie drove me home soon after that and we laughed and talked for a while and I tried to get him to see the profound benefit of listening to Gaelic music before I headed up to bed. I'm not sure he learned his lesson about the tunes very well, but that's okay. He still hasn't quite accepted the value of Veggie Tales yet either, but guys are sometimes slow learners. Can't move too quickly with these deep, profound life lessons. ;-)

Anyway it was a good thanksgiving. Now I am off to write a book report.

~Princess Ouch~

Happy Single's Awareness Day

Yeah I know. It's actually Valentine's day, but I like that nick-name better. Single's awareness day. :-) At a college that promotes matrimony and re-populating the world with conservative Southern Baptist Children like there's no tomorrow, Valentine's day is a rather interesting day. I'm a little scared to venture out of my dorm. ;-) Just kidding.
The girls on my floor have nick-named me "Lottie Moon". We've nick-named another girl Martha Stewart as she's so craft-talented and always making fun little thingy's to make people feel better. We nicknamed another girl Florence Nightengale, (sp?) as if there's any ailment - physical, emotional, mental, or otherwise - she knows what to do. Or at least she presents herself as cool calm and collected and as if she knows what to do, which a lot of times is all that's needed. Funny thing is that she complained that her character was too 'feminist' and 'out there'. We asked her what she would describe Martha and Lottie as.
Lottie is probably the most conservative out of the three, although in her time and church setting she was seen as very feminist, liberal, post-modern, and slightly heretical on a few issues. She was courting a fine gentleman who felt called to the mission field (during the 1800's I believe) but he became very interested in Evolution. She felt she could not submit herself or work on the mission field with a man who believed such 'an unbiblical doctorine.'
She ended up going to China as a single woman working as a missionary, but as she was a single woman, the man in charge of Southern Baptist missions in China restricted her ministry to simply teaching children in an already well-reached area. Frustrated, she sent a rather opinionated letter to the officials of the SBC Missions and moved herself into a more unreached interior area of China that was far more dangerous and began teaching and training others to teach.
I can't remember if she eventually resigned from the SBC or if they threatened to 'fire' her if she didn't move back to where they stationed her - orders which she refused and sent long replies of apologetics on her viewpoint to. She did not understand why if the men did not 'step up to the plate' in missions -which was often the case - why women who were willing and able to fill those needs couldn't do it. Of course the women couldn't always do it as well as the men could, and Biblically shouldn't have to of filled those needs. However the men were not responding to the call to missions and the women were.
Lottie was also passionate in her work towards raising money for missions. She spent many hours writing letters and traveling back and forth between the States asking for more workers and more money.
The Southern Baptists now have a Lottie Moon missions offering every Christmas in memory of her, and all the proceeds go towards supporting missions.
I don't know if I got all the details of Mz. Moon correct, but anyway there's my reader's digest version of Lottie Moon history.
I personally would prefer to be an Ann Judson instead of Lottie Moon, but Ann Judson isn't nearly as well known as Lottie Moon apparently, hence their first thought was to nickname me 'lottie' instead of "ann." Now if Ann spelt her name with an 'e', then we could kill two birds with one stone and I could be nick-named after BOTH Ann(e) Judson AND Anne Shirley. :-)

Anyway. Yesterday was kind of wierd. I overslept and didn't get hardly any studying done. Maitenence came unexpectedly to mess with the bunk-beds in my room-mate's and my room. She ordered lofting kits so we could experiment with rearranging our room, but apparently by "lofting kits'' they meant "Three burly men with tools and a tight schedual who had no intention spending the day playing around with different room scenario's to see where stuff would fit for the pleasure of college girls". So... that was adventuresome. Then I had to work. That was uneventful but long, although we were able to get all the closing stuff done a half-hour earlier than we usually do. (10:30 instead of 11 pm. Wootwoot!) Before we closed Florence Nightengale stopped by with her fiance and then when his back was turned, Flo asked if I could help her with assembling her fiance's valentine present. As I wasn't doing anything fun for Valentine's day I figured if I helped her my holiday spirit would feel repleat and I could then go to bed.
Well, when I got back to the dorms, she was in the middle of one of those CSI-type murder-science-psychological tv shows. I needed some down-time of just not going 90 miles per hour so watched it with her. It was interesting although I don't think I'll watch it on a regular basis.
So we then went to go assemble her valentine's present. Apparently she just really needed me to sit there and tell her the chocolate-dipped strawberries she made tasted good and looked nice the way she was arranging them. Then I helped her cut out pink hearts to put on the top of the plastic bucket. Well, the next step was to drive over to her fiance's apartment, have his one room-mate let us in quickly before their other Japanese room-mate discovered us (he doesn't like girls visiting the apartment, fiance and platonic friend or otherwise) sneak downstairs, and stick dark chocolate squares all over his bed and tape Ninja-turtle's all over the walls next to his bed - which is a bunk-bed stuck in a closet. Cool set up but you have to do gymnastics to get up into it, under the ceiling-duct, and around the fan, textbooks, and pictures of his fiance all over the place. I also watched and oohed and ahhhed as she dry-earased all over his bathroom mirror gushy valentines messages. We then heard the Japanese guy upstairs and booked it out of there, and by that time it was 12:45 am.
So I figured I had got my "college life spree'' of the month in, and can go back to being responsible and trying to get to bed by 11:30 on days I work and 10:30 on days I don't work. Not that I ever MAKE those bed-times, but I try to anyway. :-)
Okay now I have to go catch up on reading for my Ancient-Near-Eastern-History, Spiritual-Warfare, Cross-Cultural-Evangelism, and Psychology classes. And make it to a suprise party, and possibly talk to a 'friend' I've had problems with since last semester, but we'll see if all that makes it into the mix with homework.

Happy Singles Awareness/Valentines day!!

~Princess Ouch~