cold day, not nearly so bitter

today with the windchill it is best for us to round it off to 40 degrees below zero.... and i find myself on a 'cold day' off of school in the middle of the week. Last week, it was about -20's with windchill, and we still had school, over the weekend it got up to 45 degrees, and now here i am staying home from school because it's -40 with windchill. i'm perfectly fine with the cold weather today, because i slept in for an extra 3 hours, and am looking forward to eating lunch with a couple of other teacher friends.

so to those of you that are working today, because you live in warmer climates, i hope you understand that every once in a while there is a silver lining to living in unbelievably cold, crazy wisconsin.

I read this the other day, it made me think...

A story is told of a king who went to his garden one morning, only to find everything withered and dying. He asked the oak tree that stood near the gate what the trouble was.

The oak said it was tired of life and determined to die because it was not tall and beautiful like the pine tree.

The pine was troubled because it could not bear grapes like the grapevine.

The grapevine was determined to throw it's life away because it could not stand erect and produce fruit as large as peaches.

The geranium was fretting because it was not tall and fragrant like the lilac.

And so it went thoughout the garden. Yet coming to a violet, the king found it's face as bright and happy as ever and said, "Well, violet, I'm glad to find one brave little flower in the midst of this discouragement. You don't seem to be the least disheartened."

The violet responded, "No, I'm not. I know I'm small, yet I thought if you wanted an oak or a pine or a peach tree or even a lilac, you would have planted one. Since I knew you wanted a violet, I'm determined to be the best little violet I can be."


I think this story illustrates a beautiful point. And upon discussing it with a friend today I realized once again, that self-esteem should come from nowhere else than above, in the knowledge of our God we find the assurance of our purpose. Since I know that He wanted me, I'm determined to be the best me I can be.

NYE - 2008

So this year my roommate Summer, friend Kerstin, & I decided to take matters into our own hands, and we hosted a party for New Years Eve. We often host game nights at our house, so we began searching for a way to throw the ultimately fun new years eve game night.

Well when ordinary games did not amount to enough, we ended up deciding on designing a fabulous new years eve, middle of winter, photo scavenger hunt. After much discussion we had a plan. We decided to have people separate themselves into groups of 3-5, each group would pick a mascot (that must appear in every photo) and a team name. Then we came up with the list of things people needed to take pictures of. We picked 5 must-have pictures that each team had to get before they could move on to the rest of the list. 'The rest of the list' included about 38 items that took the teams all over town and into all sorts of different situations. Of course, because it was new years eve, we made sure to mention several times that our participants should be smart about things, not drive like crazy people, and not get arrested.

The event itself turned out to be as fabulous as it possibly could be. We had 6 teams and a total of 27 people. What really made it great for me was that summer, kerstin, and I got to participate as well, we didn't have to sit home and wait for people to get back. Here are some pics to help you see how much fun we had without you... perhaps you could come next year. As you'll see my teams mascot was a bright blue cat house, & one of the other groups mascots was my teddy bear.

List Item: Hulahooping

List Item: The Shell Dinosaur in GB

List Item: A Human Pyramid

List Item: A Nativity Scene

List Item: Someone Getting Patted Down

List Item: Someone In Uniform

List Item: Goal Posts

And of course - List Item: A pair of 2008 glasses


Everyone had to be back to the house by 10:30 pm, and once back, we took a look at everyone's pictures on the tv. It was great to hear all of the wonderful stories, including one team that made it on the local nightly news. After we had seen all the pics, summer, kerstin and i picked the winners and then handed out all of the trophies to the winners. By the time that we were done with all of that, it was 10 minutes to midnight, and we all brought in the new year together! Here's a pic of the whole group with all of the trophies...


And here are the organizers, me, kerstin, & summer.