Growing Old/Overview of My Weekend

I always feel like I have to have something REALLY exciting to write about in order to post. Well... sorry to disappoint you all, but I don't have much of anything too exciting to write about. So you can stop reading here if you want.

Anyway, my weekend was a good one. Friday night, I went with the Morton YG and sang at Restmor. The old people there LOVE it. First, we sang out in the open area in the front and after every song, this one lady would clap and whisper over to us at the end, "Now, where are you young kids from?" I think we told her about 6 times that we were from Morton. After a bible reading and prayer, we went through the halls and sang.

We also sing the first of every month at Washington Christian Village with Washington young group. That is always fun, too. I'm not much for old people and I seriously do not know how half of my friends (actually... pretty much ALL of them) at one point or still currently do work at Restmor. It takes a SPECIAL person to do that. I'm so glad that some people are blessed in that area and just have that gift to know how to deal with older people and put them at ease. It's a gift, I tell you. Even though I could never work there, I still enjoy going there and seeing their beautiful, wise, smiling faces as we sing to them.

It kind of makes me sad, though. As I stand there, it's almost like I envision myself in another 70 years sitting there in a wheel chair or curled up on the couch next to another lady who I don't know or won't remember in 30 seconds, gazing up at the glowing, youthful faces of about 20 young kids singing hymns to me. It's sad but also comforting. If there are still young kids willing to come do that on a Friday night, praise God! I guess it's up to me to raise my kids (Lord willing that I have kids, of course) in the way of the Lord so that there WILL be kids there doing that.

Anyway, afterwards we went to Aaron Funk's house in Morton. Kelly Kaiser, my first cousin, and I talked a lot there and then stood outside for awhile and chatted, as well. It was good being with her again... she's been so busy with school (nurses training, yuck) and everything over the past year and a half and our friendship didn't really pick up again this summer, but one thing we will always have is our cousinship :-) Kelly is just one of those friends where it doesn't matter if I haven't seen her for 3 years, I could probably go out to lunch with her and pick up right where we left off. We just "understand" each other on some certain level. It's like this personality thing... we just click. Do you have a friend like that? It's weird, because when we were best friends for awhile in high school, we would seriously be so intuitive about each other that we would say the exact same thing at the same time because we were always thinking the same thing. We also have the same humor... must be that Kaiser humor. We can sit and laugh over certain stuff for hours. WEIRD! But very cool. I will always cherish Kelly and her friendship.

Then, I went home and had a good talk with my mom. It was still pretty early (like 10:30) but I love it when you can just have these randomly GREAT talks because the timing is on and the moods are right. That night, I didn't end up going to bed til like 2 a.m. I am so in sane sometimes. I waste SO much time at night. No, I don't waste, I just cut my precious sleep time out doing things that I can't fit in at any other time. My mom came into my room at like 1:30 and was like, "Why aren't you sleeping yet?" so mad. She informed me she couldn't sleep with the lights on. That will be one thing that is nice about moving out.... I can stay up as LONG as I want and NO ONE will care!!! What can I say? I'm an owl. If I could pick my sleeping hours, they'd be from 1:30 a.m.- 10 a.m. PERFECT. Unfortunately, the rest of the world usually doesn't operate on that time schedule.

Saturday was fun. My mom and I went to Peoria and got all my bedroom stuff at Target for when I move. YEAHHHHHHHHHH! Target. I LOVE Target. Love it. Always have, always will. Well, LOVE it as much as the worldly sense of the word can define. Did that make snese? Basically, what I'm trying to say is that sometimes, I misuse words. Today, Jeff Thames talked about when he hears young kids say, "That pizza is AWESOME!" and he's like, "No, that pizza is NOT awesome," (congregation chuckles), "That pizza is good, but not awesome. GOD is awesome!" Amen to that! I think that only God can truly define that word. And only God can truly define love. So, I really just like Target A LOT. Awhile back, I got on to one of the girls I work with because she said she hated people. Now that's a word that I DO NOT LIKE being misused. Hate is a very strong word. I told her that no, she does NOT hate these people, she just very strongly dislikes them :-) so every time after that, she used my new description instead of hate. This is going to go against everything I just said, but I hate it when people misuse the word "hate."

Ok, so sorry. I kind of get side-tracked sometimes. It's like, I start off talking about my weekend, and I end up going into this huge dissertation about Hate and Like and Love and Awesome and everything in between. Hee hee.

To steer myself back onto the track of the original topic....

Saturday after all that jazz, I drove Gab and Kelly to Bloomington to the Crossings. That is where I am going to be living! TWO weeks! WOOOOWWWW! I can't wait. Anyway, some kids hung out there and that was SUPER fun. I met some girls a couple doors down that were extremely nice and had a big dry erase board with all the apt. #s and who lives where. It looks like lots of people will be down there. It's going to be a party all the time! TP (Tricia Plattner, one of my roomies) and I went to the apt. we will be living at and kindly knocked on the door to see if the boys living there would show us around again. Well, no one answered. After banging on the door, we gave up. Later, we transported this metal shelf thing to our backyard and put a note on it that said, "Please keep for the T's moving in." It'll be interesting to see if it's still there when we move in. I peeked (ok, put my face up against the glass and GAWKED) into the kitchen sliding doors and checked out that arena from the backyard. I have honestly NEVER been in OUR apt. Isn't that sadness? Every time the girls have gone, I haven't been able to go for one reason or another.

You know, that would be a good story. Telling about how I decided to go to ISU instead of Bradley when I was so set on going to Bradley up until like... oh.... THREE months ago. Lol. Maybe another time. This post is looking lengthy enough.

But, while we're on the topic of moving in, I get my apt. the 13th of August. I'm living with "the T's," Tammy Sauder, Tracy Zimmerman, and Tricia Plattner... 3 of the most amazing girls EVER. How did I luck out so much? We are going to have a BLAST! Seriously, though, I could not have asked for nicer girls to be living with.

Sat. night still, we ended up singing. Jeremy Hodel was there (It was SO good to see him... he had spent a month in Leo serving) and he willingly played some worship songs for us. Oh, the sound of sweet worship being plucked from a guitar and getting to sing along... that has to be my favorite and I will never tire of it. Now, that I really do LOVE. Singing praises to our great God! Anyway, after that we had sort-of a focus time where we shared some goals for the next semester, headed up by David Thames. What a great sharing time!

David Wuthrich and Scott Wettstein came to Bloomington, which was awesome. It was great being able to see and talk to them again.

Sunday. Baptisms in Morton that brought the whole Thames family to Morton. What a clan! But, a GREAT clan. I love that family, so loving. Jeff Thames had an AWESOME sermon in the morning. No misuse of that word, either. He was on FIRE. Wow.

After church, a bunch of us met Dave and Scott up at DQ and chatted with them awhile before they left. Tonight, my family minus the Steffens and Melissa had Erica over for supper. Erica is a girl who recently moved to Morton from Atlanta, Georgia away from her family. She works at the AC Counseling Services (Agape Counseling) where Ted Witzig, Jr., works. She goes to Morton and is around my brother's wife's age. It was good getting to know her, and it was fun having her as my 3 sisters and I can continue to form a friendship with her. It must be hard moving from a small church family and away from her family to a bigger church with so many more people and hardly anyone that she knows. She's a very sweet girl and it was fun having her here. We hope to include her in the future.

So now, here I sit. Writing. And I thought I had nothing to write about! Well, nothing exciting, I guess, which is partly true but partly not. I got to share some pretty cool things that happened this weekend.

Time to wrap it up. I have to prepare for bed and do devos (all which will probably take at least an hour and a half, knowing me.) That makes it practically 12 and I have a day tomorrow. Love you all!

T