Pinky

I can't go to school today. I have pink eye. They sent me home at 1:00 yesterday. Awesome.

GOOD LUCK LIZZY!

Go wish LIZ good luck on her job interview today!!!!

Knock them dead girl!

Here she is on the day she became Lizzy B., Esq!

my life needs to be made into a movie

I dropped my cell phone in a pitcher of Kool-Aid.
No, not the 6 year old, 2 year old or 10 month old I was with. ME. I did it. and it's sticky and gross and keeps leaking Kool-Aid.
It's also very tempermental. So if I dont call you back, I REALLY DO have an excuse!!!

Does it ever stop!??

Can life get better?

The Office and JT - this might be the best thing ever!

i miss you

When are you moving back?

i feel sick.

I've been sitting here for the last 2 hours reading every article on MSN and CNN and VT.edu and I can't really handle this.
I don't really know what to blog about this but I just dont get it. I dont get what goes so wrong in someone's brain that causes this stuff to happen. I dont get how our brains shut down so much that we can remain calm through this. Every piece I've listened to, even by students that were in the room with gunmen seem like they are talking about the weather - and not because they are heartless but because they are in such shock.
This is sick. My heart just hurts

10 things I LOVE about PA

1. Steelers fans everywhere. Everywhere. It's just so nice to see that some people have good taste.
2. Sheetz Shmuffins and St. Drogo coffee shop's parfaits
3. Whatever that new mall area is called with a Barnes and Noble (of course it opened the weekend after I moved to ohio)
4. Puppy dogs that get excited to see you even if it's been 7 months
5. Conversations over really good organic breakfast that Tiff makes :)
6. My friends having BABIES!!!!
7. Having GREAT conversations about life and love and everything in between with some of my favorite people on this earth.
8. High school girls who really dont know how much I love them :)
9. Seeing that God does stuff without me and despite all that I think, he really doesn't need me - although he still let me be a part of some really cool stuff.
10. The fact that it still hurts my heart to pull away and that I love OH, but will always have a place to go in La Toona!

A Severe Mercy

Reason #1998 I love being a teacher: I get to read books on my spring break that I have been wanting to read for years :)

This little part is from A Severe Mercy - if you haven't read it - do it. Guys too. You'll love it.

On emotions...
He had been one to despise emotions: girls were emotional, girls were weak, emotions-tears-were weakness. But this morning he was thinking tha being a great brain in a tower, nothing but a brain, wouldn't be that much fun. No excitement, no dog to love, no joy in the blue sky-no feelings at all. But feelings-feelings are emotions! He was suddenly overwhelmed by the revelation that what makes life worth living is, precisely, the emotions. But, then-this was awful!-maybe girls with their tears and laughter were getting more out of life. Shattering! He checked himself: showing one's emotions was not the thing: having them was. Still he was dizzy with the revelation. What is beauty that something that is responded to with emotion? Courage, at least partly, is emotional. All the splendour of life. But if the best of life is, in fact, emotional, then one wanted the highest, purest emotions: and that meant joy. Joy was the highest. How did one find joy? In books it seemed to be found in love - a great love...
But in the books again, great joy through love seemed to always go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain - if indeed, they went together. If there were a choice-and he suspected there was-a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and depths.

I just can't help but think that reading this is not coincidental with what's happening in my life and in some of my friends lives right now. I choose the heights and depths, but what a heavy and scary as crap choice.

Dom's Day - A Stop Motion Adventure

This is SO fun! It's like 18,000 pics, put together for a movie...
it's worth the watch :)

ps. Go watch The Holiday if you haven't seen it. Love it.

love this.

Romans 6:8-11
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus

(Thanks Ashy:)

this might get long and make no sense.

My friend Sean, gave my friend Dan a car when we were in college. On the windshield was this stuff called Rain-X. You put it on your windshield and supposedly it repels the rain and you don't need to use your wipers. I think I messed it up because I used the wipers when I was driving that non-power steering car. But you get the idea - Rain-X repels rain. The rain hits the windshield and bounces right off.

so, I think I have RainX on.

I'm not sure what it looks like, and I'm not sure how it got there, but it's there. I've had some pretty significant experiences in the last 8 months, specifically in the last 4. I've heard some amazing sermons. I've had some amazing conversations. I've went to some amazing conferences. I've been a part of a few meetings that just make me come alive. I've cried about a bunch of different things - some ligit and some because of the OnStar commercial on the radio in the morning.

But none of that has mattered. These experiences last with me for a day, a few days at most, and then I'm done with them. It's like I forget they even happened.

I surround my life with chaos. Chaos because my car insurance is tripling in a month. Chaos because I stress myself out continuously with the lives of my kids at school. Chaos because the way I handle money is ridiculous. Chaos because the way that I live allows "only jana" things to happen.
It's like I am in self-destruct mode. My life forces me to deal with all the here and now instead of the heart of the matter.

I hear something or talk with someone about things that make my heart ache. I feel a little bit of something that I used to feel, and then it's gone again. I turn off my radio and really think through what I just heard, but I don't allow it to permeate my soul.

I don't think it's coincidental that the quote "The glory of God is man fully alive" keeps coming in my brain. It's like God is whispering it to me every second of every day. But I keep drowning it out with the chaos of life. I keep everything so noisy, so I dont really have to deal.

The RainX comes out in full force.

I need some windshield wipers to come and start messing up the RainX. It needs to get off me. I want to experience life the way that it was meant to be experienced. I want be fully alive and glorify God with everything that's in me.

I'm just crazy scared to see what that looks like. I feel like the implications of that are huge and its going to cause me to work through things that I've worked so hard at avoiding. And the thing that is crazy is I dont even really know what those things are!

God, show me you, show me myself...but only give it to me in bite size pieces that I can handle.

I hate today because of what our sin and crap did to Jesus. I love today because of the freedom that we get to have in our lives. I love Sunday because it represents new life and defeating something that is so much bigger than me. The power that raised Jesus is exciting and scary as crap.

But that power is real and we get to see it. We get to experience it.

i love ohio

GO BUCKS!!!!!

GO REDS!!!!

Sanjaya - Weekend Update

This is courtesy of Annie Murphy!