I’ve been home since Tuesday and I haven’t even fully unpacked yet! I just started a couple loads of laundry while I got ready this morning. My room is a disaster! It’s been a busy week back home. I plan to spend the day doing laundry, cleaning and getting the pictures of my trip ready to upload. Tonight my friend Turtle’s band “Voting with Bullets” is playing late and I am gong to try to get out there to see him. Tomorrow we’re having a family birthday dinner for my dad. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen him or my sister and her kids since I’ve been back!
Weigh In - 10/21/06Well I haven't been focusing as well as I should but I am glad I've done as well as I have under the circumstances! I've lost 32 pounds! woohoo!
My trip to North Carolina – Well you pretty much have an idea of what the typical day was like for me out there if you’ve read a few of my prior blog entries. The kids were perfect! I had absolutely NO issues and enjoyed spoiling them on Saturday before their parents came back home! It seems that the little one (Gabriel) considered me a threat once his mom got home because he threw a couple attitudes towards me and I wasn’t quite sure where they came from. But all-in-all a GREAT trip!
Moving to North Carolina – That got your attention didn’t it? Well I went to North Carolina with no idea of moving there. It wasn’t until I was there a couple days and had worked with the people at my brothers company that I started to think about it. There was one girl, Crystal, who I had been working with the most on the website project. She flat out asked me to move out there and said I would be a great addition to the team. I kind of laughed it off but my mind was never able to let it go. I continued my trip not letting anyone know that I was even thinking about it. I decided to keep an open mind and keep praying for God’s guidance and confirmation of whether or not I was supposed to move. Things kept coming into my mind. Currently I have no ties to California. My life has been uprooted over the last few months and I’ve always wondered why. This would make sense. A semi-temporary move to North Carolina might be just what I was supposed to do. The thought of moving out of California scares me, but I’ve been praying about it. I still don’t know. By the end of the week I told my brother and a few people and asked them to pray for me. Shawn told me he would not put *any* pressure on me because my parents would kill him but he would love it if I moved out there. I had ran into an old classmates dad at my brothers church and as I mentioned why I was out there I also joked that people wanted me to move there. He said that some people are given options. That there isn’t just one path they can take, that they will still be in God’s will for their lives.
When I was on the plane coming home I wrote in my journal of all the thoughts going through my head. One of them was, is this just a wake up call? Is it that I’m not supposed to move but just realize that I need to push myself for something better? I really have endless possibilities for what my future can be. This has caused me to reevaluate a lot of areas of my life. It’s possible that is all it was intended to do and it’s also possible I need to push myself outside of this comfort box I’ve built around myself or even d.) all of the above. So I’ve decided not to make any immediate decisions and I’m letting the flow of life determine what steps I take. I think the most impacting moment was when my mom picked me up from the airport late Monday night, I opened up about my thoughts on moving and she was calm and said that if that’s what God wanted she would not hold me back but that it would be really hard on her. I really didn’t expect that positive of a response. I had prayed and asked that God would reveal it to my parents so that I could have confirmation. The fact that my mom wasn’t completely against it shocked me. I have asked for them to keep praying about it. And I am asking my friends to keep praying for me as well. The longer I’m home the more I feel I’m settling back into my comfort box. But time will tell…
Some pictures of my trip – Below are some of my favorites from my trip. My friend Ludek recommended a batch resizing program and I was quite surprised I hadn’t thought of it before! I downloaded a couple and noted a big difference in the quality of downsizing and purchased the one that I was more impressed with. I was in shock! I had been going through and resizing my images one by one! What was I thinking!?! Haha I have all the pictures resized and am organizing them in my album and will upload them tonight. My brother Brian is into the new Battlefield 2142 and he plays online and uploading will not work while he’s playing.
Click on the image to enlarge
Me
Me just outside blockbuster
Family Pictures
Gabriel the first night I got there
Amber before church
Amber and Jackson in the car after church
Gabriel waiting for Sierrah to get out of school
Sierrah and Jaylen just out of school
Jackson playing "Cars" on the xbox
Amber
Jackson and Gabriel
Jackson looking adorable
All the kids - Sierrah, Amber, Gabriel and Jackson
A great picture of my brother Shawn
Shawn, Brenda and Gabriel
Shawn
Brenda
Sierrah
Brenda and the kids
Shawn, Brenda and the kids
Shawn, me and Brenda
The Evelys
Scenic Pictures
A crazy huge bee!
It was the size of my thumb down to its nuckle!
The neighborhood as I saw it at 7am walking Sierrah to school
The trees and I liked the clouds
Shawn and Brenda's house,
no matter how I tried to take the picture
it just didn't capture the size!
Artistic view
The houses in the neighborhood
Yes, that is a cement block :)
And have I said how much I love lines?
Lawn ornament
Trees
Random Observations – As was getting ready this morning I was listening to a random selection in my iTunes and was struck by the lyrics of some of the songs, and not in a positive way. There are a lot of people out there that sing about settling for someone who doesn’t want them. It made me want to put in Alanis Morrisette or something to balance it! Haha I guess that’s a little too bitter for my taste at the moment! Ha! But I found it strange that these are songs I like and never really paid a lot of attention to what they represented.
Well if you got all the way down then YAY for you! Congratulations! I know it's a lot of pictures and I have a ton more coming. But I think I'm gonna have to say goodbye for now.
Labels: North Carolina, Pictures, Weigh In
posted by Charity at 10/21/2006 11:36:00 AM 
