Memorial Day Weekend Adventure

This past Memorial Day weekend, I took a road trip with one of my friends from Carrollton to go and visit another friend who is doing Teach for America in Helena, AR.  This seems to be my new way of …

Las Vegas

Last week I got to travel to Las Vegas for a trade show with work.  Now this was my first time going to Las Vegas and I was nervous but at the same time excited. To start with, the flight …

Mother’s Day

I absolutely love my mother.  I love that she is usually the life of the party and so much fun to be around.  When we were kids, half the time my friends wanted to come to my house because my …

Flat Tire

Last weekend, I took a trip with two of my friends from Georgia Tech to Moultrie, GA.  Now I am sure you are wondering where Moultrie is and why in the world three girls would decide to take a weekend …

Laughter

So… I didn’t quite get a post out last week, but this one will make up for it.  Sometimes life is just crazy and everything that can go wrong does.  Well last week was just one of those crazy weeks …

What to Do in the Middle of a Mess

I had the best intentions in the world of starting to write this post earlier in the week, but I have had a lot on my mind.  I was planning on sharing with you the step stool that I built a few months ago, but you will have to wait until next week. (I promise will get it done eventually.)

One of the main reasons that I have a lot on my mind is that my church is going through a really tough time right now.  I don’t want to go into details of all that is happening, but I can say that right now we are broken.  Our pastor resigned a few weeks back due to church politics.  This situation has brought to light a lot of things about the church that I did not know two years ago when I joined.

Now, I do understand that no church is ever perfect because we are a group of people made up of sinners and we are human.  We usually think about only ourselves and our own desires even when this hurts others; it is just our nature.  As much as we try to change this, we cannot do it on our own.  We need the saving grace of God.  All this to say that I don’t expect any church to be exactly the way God would have it, but I do expect the church to be continually striving towards that goal.  In the same way, we do this in our lives.  We strive, as Christians, to grow in our faith and become more and more like Christ.

Right now I am in a predicament.  I love my church and the people in it, but at the same time there are some things that we need to get straightened out.  The predicament is whether to stay at this church and figure things out and work to improve them or to jump ship and find a new church completely.  There are of course pros and cons to both.  I guess I am at that fight or flight moment.  Do I stay and fight the battle we are in or do I declare it a losing one and leave?  Neither is an easy choice.

At this point, I have no clue what to do.  I feel like the only thing I can do is pray.  I need guidance on where to go from here.  Truthfully, I am not writing this to get advice on what to do.  I just needed to get it off my chest.  This is definitely one of those times in life that I have been thrown some lemons and right now I am in the process of making the lemonade.  This is a tough place to be and I need prayer.  I have faith that one of these days, I will be able to look back and enjoy the sweet lemonade.  Today is just not that day.

National Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

Today is National Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, so I figured I would tell you my story of how I came to be an engineer.  Now I am not one of those people that have wanted to be an …

Snow Day!

This was not the post I was planning on writing this week, but as in all things in life, sometimes your plans change.  If you have not heard yet, we had a huge winter storm come through Georgia yesterday.  I …

New Year’s Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions, those things we all make yet hardly ever keep.  If you ask me, my strategy is usually to make several resolutions and hopefully I am able to at least keep one of them.  This way I can say I kept a New Year’s resolution.

Last year I decided my New Year’s resolution would be to run a 5K, a 10 K, and a half marathon.  And I did it.  You can read about it here.

Well, this year my resolution is a little bit different.  My resolution is to write one blog post a week for the entire year.  Yep that is at least 52 blog post that I will be writing this year.  I have noticed this year that I have been very sporadic with my blogging and sometimes I can go a whole month without posting anything.  Well, that is about to change and you are going to help keep me accountable.  They say that telling someone your goals increases the chances that you will accomplish them.  Plus I have a ton of new DIY projects planned for this year now that I have gotten somewhat settled in my new house and want to share them with y’all.

So I guess this is my blog post for this week.  1 done; 51 more to go.

Christmas Traditions

Christmas is a time of tradition. Christmas trees, Santa Clause, and opening gifts are some that we all have, but I wanted to share with you some of my favorite Christmas traditions that my family has.

Since I was a little kid, we would go to my dad’s side of the family Christmas Eve and my mom’s side on Christmas Day. We would eat dinner together and then exchange gifts. I remember my grandmother always making white trash, which is Chex mix and M&Ms mixed in white chocolate, and she would have wassail. In the past few years as the grand kids have grown older, this tradition has changed a bit. Instead of going to my grandmother’s house on Christmas, we now go and spend the night at my aunt’s house the weekend before Christmas. Plus instead of everyone exchanging gifts, we play white elephant. Pretty much everyone brings things from their house that they don’t want or funny gifts and we play a game where we go around and open the gifts. The best rule of the game is that when it is your turn you have the option to steal a gift. Although it sounds kind of mean, it is a ton of fun. You never know what gift you are going to open or if it will get taken from you. For example, this year my grandmother wrapped up random knick-knacks from her house. She even wrapped up some of the grand kids old school photos. We all got a kick out of it. Plus there are always enough gifts to go around several times (see below). It is the best way to get rid of that unwanted Christmas gift you got last year, that is if the person who gave it to you, is not there.

Another Christmas tradition that I love is one that my immediate family started a few years back. Recently we have decided that we would rather open gifts of Christmas Eve so then we can sleep in on Christmas Day and then get up and enjoy Christmas brunch with the family that comes over. The other part of this tradition is that we order Chinese food to eat on Christmas Eve before opening presents. You are probably wondering why Chinese food. This one was my brother’s idea. He loves the movie A Christmas Story, which we also watch every Christmas, and at the end if the movie the family’s turkey gets eaten by the neighbor’s dogs and they are forced to eat Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

As time goes on Christmas traditions grow and change, but there is one tradition that remains true. It is the tradition of giving. This tradition last because it is the tradition that started Christmas. 2000 years ago God gave us the gift of His son. He sent him as a sacrifice to save us from our sins. This is why we celebrate Christmas. This is why we give at Christmas. We do this because God did it for us. Though this gift, God showed us love and through our gifts we show love to others. So as traditions change, remember the one tradition that remains and that is the love God shows for us.