Monday, November 16, 2009

Flat Stanley runs a 5k!?

Who is Flat Stanley you ask? Well I (with the help of wikipedia) will tell you.
The Flat Stanley project stems from a book about a little boy named Stanley who accidentally gets flattened when a bulletin board falls off his bedroom wall and squishes him. Stanley discovers that he can sneak into locked rooms, fly like a kite, and do all sorts of fun things in his newly flattened state. His favorite thing to do is be mailed to friends and go on trips!

So the premise of the project is that each student creates a "stanley" and a journal for stanley. They then send Stanley to various addresses that were collected and the people who receive Stanley journal about the adventures that they have and then mail Stanley back to the sender. Stanley's done lots of cool things like:
meeting "Dubya"

Hang out with Condi
And coolest of all: Ride a Motorcycle!!


So the kids at my favorite elementary school are participating in their very own Flat Stanley project and I can't wait to see what kind of adventures Stanley goes on!! My Special Ed chair recruited me for some more addresses/places for Stanley to go, so some of my favorite people will get to meet Stanley, and hopefully one day You will meet Stanley too!!


In other news, I had dinner with my friend Kathleen "Funky" Funk yesterday at an amazing Thai restaurant in Montrose. While dining on delectable Asian cuisine, Funky and I decided to become running buddies just in time to register for the EP5K associated with the Chevron Houston Marathon!!


That means that for the next 8 weeks I will be doing my darndest to become a runner so that I can successfully complete the race! Major props to Nicki for taking the lead on this admirable task! I am so excited to have someone to do this with and to share it with you all so that I can have accountability too!! I'll do my best to keep you guys posted on my progress. I'm using the "couch potato to 5k" application I put on my iPhone and so far so good...but we'll see how I do at the end of the program :)

Here's to adventures, friends, accountability partners, random 5K races, and most of all Flat Stanley!

Blessings to you today!


Tuesday, November 10, 2009

I'm still here...I promise

When people ask you if you're still blogging, I guess that means you haven't blogged in a while right?

I find myself reluctant to blog lately, and I'm not quite sure why.

Perhaps I haven't had the motivation to express myself, because I'm sure I've had the inspiration. I frequently have moments in my day where I think "hm...I could blog about this later" but for some reason those thoughts never go from my brain to my homunculus to my fingers to my keyboard and finally to you.

I think sometimes I feel like my life isn't super interesting so I have to have these profound and thought-filled blog entries, but I realize that that is not the case.

My life is becoming more than the "tales of a disgruntled student". To borrow a phrase from my childhood: I've gotten a life...an adult life...holy cow ya'll I'm grown up...

I'm still in the process of finding my first grown up church home. I don't have my parents to place me somewhere, I don't have friends to go with, and I don't have a significant other to guide my decisions. It's a completely on-my-own grown up decision. Maybe that's why I'm having such a hard time settling on a church.
I've found a couple that I like, one is close to my house here in Cypress, the pastor is engaging and I'm sure there are ways I could get involved, but I don't feel that call to be involved in that church. The other is in Houston and is a ginormous church, but they have 20-30yr old bible studies which would provide a great place to plug in and meet people. The pastor is engaging, I feel like the message is pure but the Sunday I planned to go back to visit a bible study and go to service again I found myself not wanting to drive the 25 minutes into town to go. This church-seeking goldilocks(sorta) needs to find a church that fits just right...hopefully sooner rather than later.

In other news...Jeremy, Joy and my favorite nephew Dan-o are coming to Houston next week!! I can't wait to see them for our early thanksgiving celebration. Why celebrate early you ask? well I'll tell you:
1) My younger brother has a football game with SMU the Saturday after thanksgiving, ergo it's silly for him to drive 7 hours for a day and drive 7 hours back.
2) My dear friend (and blog reader) Peyton is FINALLY getting married the day after thanksgiving. Peytong, I know my finally is miniscule to the finally you'll be feeling as soon as you guys say your vows :) So it would be silly for me to drive home to corpus, then to mcallen (where Joy's family hosts thanksgiving) and then back to houston.

The logical choice of course was to have turkey day at my house :) i'm super excited about it, I've got my list of things to buy, my cleaning list and I'm ready to play Betty Crocker for a day.

Completely un-related topic and just cause I love my sister-in-law and brother for putting my nephew in this for halloween: I give you Danny's first halloween costume:
Genius no?

So here's to growing up, getting a life, all things thanksgiving, and family visits!

Blessings to you!