Jocelyn, Joy, Jigsaw

I want to dedicate this post to my friend Jocelyn. First off, because

a) she just graduated with her undergrad degree in Psychology! Wooh!!
b) she claims she checks my blogs a million times a day and therefore I don't post enough.

So here's a post especially for her, with a picture of her diligently studying:

It has been fun this last week to celebrate with my friends who are graduating! Last night a few of us went to The Keg to celebrate which was great and then hung out at my place. Was delightful.

In other news, I received my Antarctica photos books yesterday! I am not in love with them.. well they're nice, but I should have ordered them in glossy, not matte finish. So the pictures are nice, but they would look ten times better in glossy. I might order one more copy just for myself in glossy.

But, along with my box of books, I received another box! Upon opening it, I found Melissa and Philip's wedding book. So nice. Okay, random because I have no idea who these people are and apparently they live in Ontario. Their wedding book looked kind of trendy on the outside, but on the inside, it wasn't nice at all. The layout that is. They have all the picture names under them. I'm hoping it was ordered by the photographer, but if not, that's too bad. Haha.. anyway, very random that I have this book and now I have to drop it off to be mailed to the people who are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their book.

And here's a picture of my cool partylite elephants anticipating some tasty veggies. Mmmm.. I had a couple friends come over for a tea party the other day and it was delightful! So great to catch up and just hang out.

And just an update, puzzles are taking over my life.

I got my long awaited for GRE scores back in the mail yesterday! haha.. Upon looking at my scores, I realized I should have studied. Some people prepare an entire year for this exam.. I book it a week beforehand and just got write it! hahaha.. I didn't do horrible and was still above average, but I know I could have done way better had I known what was going on! But the analytical writing part is the section that you can't really prepare for, and I got in the highest score bracket for that one, with 92% of the people who wrote it at the same time scoring lower than me. So yay for writing abilities! :)

Yesterday I had a revelation of something incredibly profound that I was going to blog about. And now I've forgotten it. Hopefully it was indeed profound and will secretly change my life now without me knowing about it.

Oh! I have a new blogging friend. Her name's Laura and she's absolutely hilarious and I love her stories! In fact she's coming over in a couple hours to make french toast. Anyway, check out her blog, and welcome her to the blogging world! http://laurawarkentin.blogspot.com/ (and i figured I would link to her blog a few times in this paragraph. haha)

That's all for today! Leaving on a road trip tomorrow! Woooh! So stay tuned for those adventures! :)

Tulips, Trash, Tub

What a full week last week was! I love them, but at the same time am thankful for a week like this one with a bit more down time and chance to stop and breathe and regroup (and clean the house!)

About every month or so, our sr. high youth at church do a sandwich handout in east vancouver. This time we were incredibly blessed with donations from Wagner Hills- 25 loaves of bread, 2 boxes of bananas, chips, cereal, toothbrushes, and pickles! Oh, and a giant 35 lb. tub of peanut butter!! A few of us often make cookies beforehand to hand out, so we had two days of cookie baking! The first day of course included peanut butter cookies! Never in my life have I seen so much peanut butter, but it was fun. We made 400 cookies total.

Here's a nice shot with the tub of peanut butter..

And the drowning warning for children around the tub of peanut butter. I thought it was funny, because who would have ever thought that peanut butter would be a drowning hazard?

Mmmm.. natural peanut butter...

We took a picture with the tub, but I made Gabriela wear a life jacket, just in case.

And then we had an impromptu and very random photo shoot outside!


Little did we know that Maia was watching us the entire time from the porch! Glad anyone can just walk into my house when I leave it!

After the cookie making adventure, Maia and I head to the mall to commemorate earth day by going to a 'trashion' show. Fashion made from trash-brilliant! We also bought some shoes.

And played with the puppies.


Skirt made out of Archie comics!

Lamp tassles and Christmas lights

Coke cans and tabs (the perfect outfit when you don't want others getting close to you...)
shopping bags!

Trash bags!

Wires and CD's!

Self-portrait :)

We enjoyed a nice dinner at Red Robin's afterwards. We were slightly picture happy and the waitress thought we were slightly weird, but we had fun and some good convos to boot!
It is extremely difficult to put a lens cap in your mouth. I truly am very skilled.


We also drank a lot of water apparently.

Friday was chocolate chip cookie baking day! They turned out great and made the house smell amazing! I may have consumed a bit too much cookie dough though! Oops! Then we headed to church to make sandwiches. We made about 50 loaves of sandwiches and then headed out to Vancouver despite the pouring rain. Nobody would believe me that it was nice and sunny in Vancouver... but when we arrived, the skies were clearing, there were remnants of a purple/pink sunset and all was well! We had SO much stuff to give out-it was great! It was wonderful just to bless people abundantly. My favorite quote from one woman was, "Wow, this is just like Disneyland!!"

Went to visit some piglets after. Oink oink. (random i know.)


On Saturday, Amy and I headed down to Seattle! It was raining upon leaving Canada but was blue sky and brilliantly sunny all day there, so it was great to wander around and enjoy the beautiful day! We went to my favorite bakery and enjoyed amazing sandwiches.
This is a picture of my fave sandwich. My friend Alisha and I discovered these sandwiches a few months ago and we often talk about how incredibly amazing they were. So I took this picture for her. :)

We found an amazing butterfly dress. Figure I'll wear it to church next Sunday.

We reflected a bit.

And then went to see 'On the Town', a musical which was actually quite great! had a bunch of sailors in it and the choreography and singing and the mix of songs were excellent! I love being introduced to new musicals!

On the drive back, we were feeling random and had all the time in the world, so we took a little detour to La Connor and definitely yelled and cheered about tulips on the drive there. When we arrived, most of the fields have already been dead-headed for the season, but we caught glimpses.. and we stopped to take a couple pics since it was late and most of the tulip fields were closed for the day.

But it gave me a great idea for Sunday! After church, I took Brooke down to celebrate her birthday! It was a delightful day and the tulips were incredibly stunning and breathtaking! I had seen numerous tulip pics on people's blogs and facebook profiles, so I decided I wanted to go find some tulips too!

Love the rows upon rows of different colours!

We had fun posing in the tulips too!
Except my flip flops kept suctioning in the mud and when I would go to walk away, I would lose my shoes and step in mud. hahaha



These were my favorites.


We saw a little girl running through the tulips and Brooke suddenly had an urge to do the same (okay, I may have forced her to. haha. but she was a willing tulip runner)

Brooke also took the liberty of taking numerous pics of herself while I was taking a photo for some other people. Whenever people ask me to take their photo, I always take a photo of myself on their camera without them seeing (hopefully). I just think it's quite funny that later when they look at their photos, they will have a random picture of some girl... at least they'll know who took the picture!


This weekend was also spent celebrating the Canucks' win in round one! Although i don't have cable to watch it on, I am lucky enough to invite myself over to my friends' house to enjoy the game there!!
I also celebrated Kristen finishing her undergrad degree! Woohoo!! I tagged along with her and Chris and we went for dinner and to go see 'How to tame a dragon', which I thought was really cute and well done! I enjoyed it a lot! And the new 3d glasses make it much less annoying to watch 3D movies!


This week holds some downtime, as well as the Simon and Garfunkel concert! wooh! So excited for that! And then a roadtrip this weekend which I'm stoked for!
And today, well I'm excited for the mail to come.. because I get my Antarctica photo book AND hopefully I will get my GRE scores!

have a great day!

Turtles, Trying, Transformed

Today I realized that I have a habit of exhibiting turtle-like behavior.

In some ways, I have built myself a shell of protection. I look around and when something upsetting or difficult comes along, I retract into my shell instantly. I hide. I try to ignore what's actually happening around me. I think of any possible way that I can get out of it. When the going gets rough, I run (okay, so turtles don't run, but I guess that's why I'm not 100% turtle).
Or I will respond defensively and irrationally and get fairly upset or angry, making things far worse than they ever were. That's when I allow emotions to take control (kind of like the above angry killer turtle).

Anyway, in the last couple of weeks, I have been faced with 2 situations where I instantly was overcome with my turtle instincts of pulling my head back into my shell. Instead I have risen to the challenge and faced these things head on. What a difference it makes! For my thought processes and for how I feel physically even. I love this, because it shows evidence of the transformation taking place in my life bit by bit. That as I surrender areas of my life to God, He is faithful to change me as I walk in that direction. And it's exciting to see evidence of it. So I'm befriending my inner turtle and letting it know I don't need to stay in my shell. Life is far more beautiful outside the shell anyway.

{side note: writing this post has made me want to go eat chocolate turtles}

This is a picture of the final piece being put in one of the puzzles I was making with a friend. What a great feeling to have the whole thing completed! I love how puzzles are such a great picture of us and our walks with God. But since I have probably already mentioned that numerous times, I will leave it at that. :)

Yesterday while working on my Antarctica photo book, I had both my computers on, because I wanted to be working at my desk, but my photos were on my laptop. So I used the desktop to look up information for the book and the laptop to make the book. My favorite was when I'd grab the mouse and wonder why my cursor wasn't moving on the laptop.

I just started reading Julie & Julia and am loving it so far. I really enjoyed the movie, but from what I can tell, I love the book even more!