Happy Last day of August!!!!

Hello! I've been lax in posting again, but at least I've been trying to notice things and figure out what to blog about.

Didn't really work: I'm going to blog about anything that comes to my mind.

You know, this is really frustrating, because I know I had something, but I forgot it and it's bugging me. Argh.

the season premiere of Doctor Who airs tomorrow.
Funny how you can write something and it sounds like you really couldn't care either way, but inwardly you're screaming in excitement and worry for your poor Doctor.

You know, I'm going to try imbedding a video. Or whatever it's called. *gasp* it worked! No spoilers, for you poor people still on season 3 *cough Hannah and Bekah cough*

 

But it's sad and worrisome: he looks like he's getting darker, and last time this happened--spoilers, but Time Lord Victorious, remember? I'm concerned that this means by the end of the season he might regenerate. Or die--fields of Trenzalore, the First Question, Fall of the Eleventh, and all that. And I don't want to say goodbye to Eleven. And somehow I gather that if we say goodbye to Eleven, we'll also say goodbye to River, which would be sad as well.

 

Anyway. I suppose that's it for now. Trivia: did you know that the Seventh Doctor wore a fez and held a mop first? M-hm, true story. Granted, it wasn't nearly as humorous as our dear Eleven, but he did do it first.

 

Geronimo!!!!!!!!!!!

In Which I Post Because I Can't Think of Anything Else to Do...

So, how do you guys like the new look? I'm liking this one, it's just perfect and all set up and all I had to do was click it and then apply to blog. (yes, this was one of the things I did while I was procrastinating (again) about posting) I love books. Speaking of which, have any of you read the Wormling series by Chris Fabry and Jerry B. Jenkins? They are VERY good, highly recommended.

Anyway. Camp.
*breathes in, breathes out*

Let's see. Some of you might not know about camp. Camp Elohim is situated in the mountains *cough like everything around here cough*, away from all distractions like the Internet and family (yes, dears...you are distractions. I love you anyway) and tv and xbox etc. It is a week-long Bible camp, and thrown in are shooting, rafting, swimming, hiking, crafts, games, GREAT FOOD, etc.

I first went when I was in 4th grade, and I've been going ever since. This was my 9th and final year(I started late) as a camper. Now, with Elohim the focus is on God the whole time. There is chapel and class in the morning, and chapel and campfire in the evening. and singing. I think it's mostly the singing that does it, and the great teaching, but by the end of the week you feel closer to God than ever. I guess the term is "camp high".

So this is my 9th year. for the past...6 of those, probably, I've experienced the camp high. we learn amazing things, and get all ready to go face the world and be the best Christian ever, and by the time school arrives we've forgotten most, if not all, of what we've learned. The last 3 years or so I finally noticed what happened, and each year I'd rededicate my life to Christ and next year I'd come back pretty much the same. For the last year or so God's really been getting on my heart about finding someone, an accountability partner, to do life with. Last year I told myself I'd find someone, but I didn't.

Not this year, I said to myself as I signed the application, not this year. This year, God, I will take whatever You teach me and use it.
You will not believe what we learned that week. Yep, it was all about Paul's life, and how he was never alone. How he always had someone with him, helping him. A Barnabas, an encourager. I had to smile, you know? Just a little extra proof that there's a God, and He has a sense of humor. (See platypus)

So that was cool, and that was just Monday. Then Tuesday our cabin (and two of the boys' cabins) went rafting. Rafting, usually, means gently floating down the Kootenai River and pretending to be scared of the small amount of "big" waves they have. This year, due to the torrential downpour of a winter/spring/early summer we've had, the Kootenai is full and the dam is spilling a lot of water over the top just to keep Lake Koocanusa from overflowing--no floods, though, which is surprising--, and that meant we couldn't float the Kootenai.

Instead, we floated Bull River. Well, we were paddling and splashing each other--lots of fun, even though it doesn't sound like it to a water chicken like myself and I still haven't figured out how to splash with the paddle unlike JACOB MACABEE and most of the boys--and the river was so low we had to drag it across sandbars sometimes. It was fun. And hot. Tuesday was the hottest day we had, and we rafted. Oh, perfection hallelujah. (Hannah rafted on Thursday, which was not the hottest day. Hee)

Wednesday [it was slightly cooler and] we hiked the Trail of Tears. It's about...two miles?...of sheer uphillness, known to strike the most expert hiker to his knees from oxygen loss and dehydration. (I'm not really exaggerating, just kind of) The "first" part is the uphill part, and--oh, info needed. I have low blood sugar, which means I need to eat every meal and I burn off meals very easily. I'm also not very active--for lunch we had little wrap things that, in hindsight, weren't nearly enough for me. I was out of breath after the first five minutes. My counselor and one of the girls in my cabin stayed just ahead of me; they're so very nice. I discovered something: your heart is a muscle, just like your arms and legs. If you want it to be strong, you should exercise it. Suffice it to say I have not exercised my heart (or legs) that often. I burned off all my lunch, too, and had to survive on berries and honey. [I'm not kidding, either. I had to stop and eat a honey stick that I'd brought with me, and that just barely got my strength up and Jacob Macabee came back to check on us--me--and when we started going again I found a couple Oregon grapes and thimbleberries and Jacob found a huckleberry for me, which was very nice since I hadn't actually eaten a wild huckleberry ever before. *braces for shock from fellow Montanians*]

But then I found that we were almost there. Spiritual lesson to be learned: just when it gets the hardest is just when something will come along and you'll find out you were almost done anyway, and you'll feel an immense sense of accomplishment for not giving up. Also, that you can't do anything on your own. Remember how I said God was really pointing out the need for accountability partners? Well, that time they were Lindsey, Becka, honey, Jacob, and berries. In that order. Anyway.

The waterfall.

Oh, yeah: Camp Elohim rite of passage: sitting under the waterfall. The girl doing it now was from my cabin...Rambo. Or Laurabeth. She did it for a grand total of six minutes, which was the record that week until the day afterwards, when someone did it for ten minutes. The biggest record ever is half an hour.

I sat under the little one to the right for about one second.

I hiked up above the main part, which I hadn't ever done before--it's beautiful up there, and it looks like an elfin forest, with all the trees covered in moss and all the straight cedar trees all around--since it was my last year as a camper and I wanted to. I applied the same reasoning to the waterfall, and I almost sat under it (the big one), but I decided not to, convincing myself it was because I couldn't figure out where to sit. Oh well.

So that was Wednesday. Thursday it was even cooler, in fact I think it rained, but ha-HA! We were shooting and doing crafts, both of which were under cover. I did very well in shooting those 22's--the best out of the girl campers, a 77 out of 80--and the craft was fun, a scrapbook thingie. I devoted a whole page to my prize-winning target.
I'm a bit self-centered, aren't I? Shame.

Thursday was also Family Night, in which the cabins introduce their family to their cabin and the cabin to the family and friends. And it is also the night in which the cabins perform skits for the attending family/friends/plus ones*. They were pretty good, with the usual mess-ups that only made it more perfect and voice overs from the plastic cone of awesomeness** and renditions of the Good Samaritan that had the priest owning a mad cow by the name of Angel Shirley Whompus. all good fun. I got to see my bestest friend*** and witness my four year old brother flirting with all the girls. I pity that kid's counselor already. And the camp director, Mr. Warren. And the other girls. I bet he'll have a blast at camp when it's his turn. Four years away, if I count correctly.

That Thursday quite a few people went home, what with sickness and work and other such stuff. It was kind of sad.

But that morning, we all were overjoyed--as in not--to hear what had become the camp theme song:

Way up in the sky, the big birdies fly,

and down in the nest, the little birds rest.

With a wing on the left, and a wing on the right,

the little birds sleep, all through the night.

The bright sun comes up, the dew goes away.

"Good morning! Good morning!" the little birds say.

{Optional ending:}

I jump out of bed, and open my window

and SMASH THAT BIRD'S HEAD!

Oh, that's just not the same unless you hear it. (see, "the dew goes away" is said in this macho voice, which makes the fact that the next line is said in a falsetto particularly funny.) Especially since the boys just loved that song to death. Literally. Coincedentally, I never heard or saw a bird that whole week.

Anyway. Friday. Friday is the sad day, it's when you know you'll have to go home the next day and you've only just now gotten to know your cabin mates and you wish camp lasted a whole 'nother week and Mr. Warren doesn't and you know a lot of you won't be coming back next year cause it's their last year as a camper and it's all very sad.

It's also the day in which we go to the lake. It was fun. Especially just floating around on these tubes we had. There were three little ones, and one big one. I think nine of us were on the three small tubes, and maybe ten or so were on the big one. The big one held those campers who liked to splash people, though. They were the Communists. We were the Allies. But we had a short truce at one point and when we were all grouped together it was a beautiful thing, almost our entire camp on black tubes of wonder. Well, looking back on it it was only half our camp. But hey. Beautiful thing of wonder and camaraderie.

We also got dragged around the lake by a boat. We were on this unsinkable floatable device, though, and Mrs. Cosgriff was under orders to not flip anybody. Except the last ride of the day, in which only the counselors went and she was allowed to try and flip them. But it was fun. I held one hand up in the air during the ride which was quite daredevil of me, if I do say so myself. (Yes, the other hand was holding on for dear life. Your point?)

That campfire, as per usual, was the best. The kids stood up and told what God had been doing in their lives that week. I stood up, too. Spoke about the accountability thing. It was amazing how many of us there were that had all experienced the camp high. Kind of like school, come to think of it. You labor through three years of Biology and Chemistry and Algebra and then they finally explain it the way they should have three years ago, because it finally makes sense. We all realized that our problem had been trying to go about the Christian life in the way it was not supposed to be gone about: alone. We also realized that technology was a beautiful thing and we could get ahold of each other very easily and it was a nice thing altogether.

And then Saturday, which is even sadder than Friday. You exchange addresses and get your shirt signed and hug each other and try not to cry and buy candy at the store and on the way home ease your sadness with chocolate. I love Rolos. Rolos remind me of Camp Elohim.

Anyway. that was a very long post too....Well, I think that's about it. Let me check for asterisks.

* Talking about you, Mitch.

** Seth (one of the guy counselors) is able to do cool things with his voice (like a cool Batman/Joker/evil guy/cool voice), and he was the voice of Jesus in the conversion of Saul. He had a great voice, this deep, drawn out voice like a masculine voice taped and then played back at half speed. It was great. He lost it towards the end (which was far longer than the boys in his cabin lasted and longer by far than the rest of the audience), but we all loved him anyway. Seth was the main perpetrator of the bird song. It's great, hearing the guys doing the falsetto.

*** I love you, Rachel! :)

so, I think that's it.



In Which I Finally Stop Procrastinating...

Sorry, so sorry, for the long delay. I've got quite a bit to tell all y'all, too...*long sigh* Here goes.

When last we left myself, I had just arrived in Denver. Spent some time there with family, which was great! I haven't seen many of them for quite some time. Then we left (on the bus...the bus again) for Ohio to see more family. Well, actually the family responsible for the entire trip. See, as a graduation present*, my grandparents paid for Mom and me to go to Cedar Point, which is a theme park in...Cleveland...Northern Ohio. They also paid for our bus ticket, which was very nice. Cedar Point was fun; I didn't go on many roller coasters [surprise, surprise] but it was big enough that there was still lots to do.

I should interject here that my mother and father (who both grew up in Ohio) remember Cedar Point as being far bigger than it actually is. Part of this is from them going when they were little, and everything seeming huge, and then they grew up and moved to lovely Montana where everything [meaning: actual, real, mountains] is bigger, but the towns and buildings and other such things are smaller, so Cedar Point probably did seem very big in their memory. "Silverwood [a smaller theme park sort of close to our house] could fit in the parking lot", I've been told.

It couldn't. Unless, as Mom thinks, the Cedar Point powers-that-be have expanded the park since she went and they encroached upon the parking lot. From my perspective, it's almost the same size. Sort of. Okay, not really, but it wasn't that big from the Ferris Wheel.

[I'll explain why I don't have any pictures later] **

Anyway, after Cedar Point we spent some more time with family. and since they have cable we sort of got introduced to The Mentalist. I dearly love The Mentalist. He's like the Doctor and Sherlock Holmes and everyone from Criminal Minds and he has a contagious smile. (Which also means he has heartrenching sorrow, like the Doctor, but that isn't important right now)

And you know how they have cable? Well, about a day before we left, I discovered they had BBC America. *facepalm* I want a word to describe the emotion you feel when you're flipping through the channels and suddenly you see Merlin and you look to the left of the show name and see BBCA. What you feel is joy that you've found the channel, horror that you never thought to look, excitement because it's Merlin (he also has a contagious smile, but thankfully that show doesn't quite delve into angst like our dear Doctor), and a sense of disappointment because you realize that you're leaving in two days and it's a weekend and they probably won't be showing reruns of Doctor Who.
What you say is sort of nonverbal, this huge intake of breath immediately followed by a smile and then this little "oh...." and a sinking into the couch.
I'd like to have a name for that emotion.

Anyway, that was a bit off-topic. We left Monday morning, got to eat Denny's with my grandparents before they dropped us off at the bus station, and then sort of sat in the bus station not really crying but not smiling and just then remembering to take pictures and laughing at ourselves because the pictures were going to turn out to be sad. Then the bus came (I think it may have been late, but I'm not sure. We were probably early) and we got on and settled in, having learned where to sit and how to sit to maximize comfort.

Let's see. Here it gets a bit confusing and the middle of the US looks the same and I wasn't quite sure where we were and I was sleeping through most of it. I think in...Indianapolis our bus was late, and in Chicago we had definitely missed our bus in Minneapolis, so we got our tickets switched around in Chicago, and then we arrived in Minneapolis but our bus was late again, so we missed the other bus. They wanted us to (a) reroute through Kansas, which would take a whole other day of on-the-bus misery, or (b) wait in Minneapolis for 12 hours, which is about what the Kansas route would take. We opted for b, and stayed in the bus station pretty much all day.

I was able to sleep for a couple hours, and then we watched the Mentalist all day (Mom and I had bought it before we left...:) ), then we had supper, then we left. I had wanted to be awake the second we crossed into Montana, my dear beloved state, but I fell asleep. I was sort of half awake when the driver announced, "Now stopping in Glendive, Montana, Glendive, Montana." I shot up and looked around. Not my part of the state, no decent mountains or trees, but it was still Montana. I whispered "Yes!" and punched the air. Mom smiled.

I hadn't ever thought of it before, but I'm sure Daniel and his friends missed their home. I could imagine them pointing out the strange new plants in Babylon, how different the humidity was, how they missed that particular hill that used to be on the horizon. I suppose that makes the fact that they still had a good attitude that much more amazing.

Anyway, we traveled on through the day and into the night, and once we passed a construction site, whereupon I spotted the TARDIS. :) That's what I thought, and I was proud of myself for immediately assuming that nice blue rectangle sitting in the middle of the road for no reason was a time machine. I'd like a name for that emotion, too. "It's the TARDIS! Oh, no, it's a--I can't believe I mistook the TARDIS for one of those. I probably just insulted Idris....well, at least I was loyal to my favorite TV show and thought of it first."

Anyway. One thing about Eastern Montana: it has beautiful thunderstorms. Here in the western part, you can see only the lightning right above you, because the trees and the mountains block out the rest of the storm. In the eastern part, you can see for miles [across the flat rocky terrain] and the sky is constantly lit with lightning. The thunder never seems to stop, and you can see the horizontal lightning strikes. Cloud-to-cloud, Dad calls it. It's beautiful.

I still love my mountains though. In Billings, you can just barely, just barely, see the beginnings of the Rocky Mountains. I remembered from when I went with Dad to Ohio and back. I missed the Rockies then too. It got me thinking about David saying in that one Psalm, "I lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth."
I wonder what sort of poems David would have written if he lived here. :)

Anyway, we passed over the Continental Divide, through Bozeman and Butte (and that's pronounced with a long u, to you non-Montanian people) to Missoula, where we stayed the seven hour layover or so with a friend, and then back to Kalispell, where Dad met us.

Then we went shopping and I bought myself the lovely new laptop I'm typing on right now. Entirely coincedentally, it's the same as Hannah's. :) I bought a few other goodies for family and friends, then we came back home and we didn't hit any deer! Didn't even see any, which was sort of odd. I don't think it's hunting season...I guess God kept them off the road.

I remember back in 2003 we went to Ohio, our whole family, and we took the motorhome. I was...younger than I am now [not in the mood for math]...and fell asleep on the way back. I only woke up because we stopped (right outside our house), and it was night. I looked out the window and saw my dear pines and ponderosas and larches and asked Dad, "are we home?" He said yes, how did I know, and I replied, "because of the trees." Looking back on it, I don't think I knew I missed them until I saw them again.

It was like that with the trees around kalispell. They just aren't quite the same, and the distribution is off, and I'd never noticed them like that before. Oh, I left out one part. ;p Mom and Dad had to answer the call of nature, and they pulled off Highway 2, flashing the headlights on a road sign I recognized. 6 miles from home. *insert mental ecstatic cheering and wooting and laughing, but physical fatigue and a vague smile and a simple sitting up straight in the seat* We had to run a couple errands, mainly checking to see if Dad's van had been fixed yet--long story--, and then we pulled in, and *cough the trees were normal again and the horizon had a decent mountain range in it cough* FINALLY I was HOME!

My siblings--wait, let me tell you first that I love making posters for various occasions. Birthdays, holidays, etc.--my siblings had made a huge poster that said Welcome Home Mom and Liz. It made me very happy.

So that was...Wednesday...no, Thursday, because we missed Rebekah's camp skit. Right. So the next Monday, Hannah and I went to camp! I just got back *clears throat* last Saturday. And we had to install stuff on the new laptop, and I was still tired from the bus and camp tires you out quite a bit too and I had to clean my room and I was trying to figure out how to do the new Google email thingie cause I got a new email which I still have to give to people and I was trying to make it work on this blog but I couldn't and ended up just signing in with my old one and those are my excuses for not posting sooner.

It's the bus' fault, basically.
=D

So next time I post I'll tell you guys about what happened at camp, and what I learned, and how different it was since it was my last time, etc. But for now I'm tired and I'm going to bed.
Good night.

* Also for a graduation present, my dad's cousin (not sure what that makes her...) sent me a luggage set which was FANTASTIC and a great idea and blue and etc. Redundancy, ah well. I'm tired.
** Sorry, I never really explained that. The pictures are all on the other laptop that I used to have because I haven't switched them over yet.
I think that's it.