My 17th Birthday!!

I am officially 17 beautiful years old!!! It's very exciting. My birthday was last Saturday (March 22) and I had to go and do community service for Beta Club at school for 4 hours that morning. We cleaned a dog park, like the pavillions and stuff. It was really gross and hot and boring, and not a good start to my birthday. But then I went home, took a shower and got ready and went with my family and 4 of my friends to Kobe Steakhouse for dinner. It's a Japanese steakhouse where they cook right in front of you and it's freaking awesome. And when it's your birthday, they come in playing a gong, they sing you a song, and they give you a cake. If you've never been, I highly reccommend it. Then, everyone came back to my house and we watched home videos of me. I hate to sound conceited, but I was soooo adorable. Seriously. I don't know what happened cause I'm not that cute anymore, but when I was little, oh man, I was too cute. Ask Robbie, he saw the videos, he was there. And then, one of my birthday presents was the movie Enchanted. If you've never seen it, once again, I highly reccommend it. I don't think Robbie liked it, but then again, he was the only guy there, so he had to maintain some sense of masculinity lol. But it's really cute. And then everyone went home, and I went to sleep. Overall, it was a wonderful day. I am so fortunate that God has blessed me with 17 years of life.

My Sister's Wedding!

Okay, so first of all, I need to apologize because I told Daniel that I would post on New Year's and I never did. But I am now, so you should all be extremely happy! lol Okay, as you can see, the title of this blog is My Sister's Wedding. My sister Courtney got married on December 29, 2007 to Andrew Poppell. I was fortunate enough to be a bridesmaid and sing in their wedding. It was the most picture perfect wedding I have ever been to. Just ask Robbie or Mrs. Alderman. I think the most exciting part of this wonderful occasion was that I gained a brother. I come from a family of all girls (and then there's my dad). So if you do the math, that's a 4:1 ratio! So my dad is like super excited that there's another guy around the house. Andrew is great. I grew up with him and he's always been like a brother to me. It's just official now lol.

Okay, well I don't relly know what else to say. But I promise I'm gonna try and post at least once or twice a month. I finally remembered my password today and I didn't have any homework, so I figured it would be the perfect time to post. Have a wonderful rest of the week!!

I didn't die...

Hey guys, I'm sorry I haven't posted lately. You don't even understand how busy I've been. (Not that that is a good enough excuse to you people though lol.) I can't remember the last time I got 8 consecutive hours of sleep. It's really sad. I'm taking AP and Honors classes this year and I am so involved in chorus and youth group that I am rarely even on the computer at all. I can't even remember the last time I watched TV. It's been at least a week and a half. This really is a pointless blog, but I figure something is better than nothing. And maybe this will satisfy your needy needs for me to post lol. I'll try and write about something worth reading within the next 2 weeks, but until then, I'm sorry, but this is the best I can do. I was just taking a break from all of my American History, Math, Chemistry and Spanish 3 homework I had tonight. Talk to ya'll later. Have an amazing week!

Scalloping

Okay so I don't know if any of ya'll have heard of scalloping before...but it's something my family does every year in the Gulf of Mexico and it's amazing. If you don't know what a scallop is, look at the Shell Gas Station sign and thats what it is. You go out into 4 or 5 foot deep water and you have a snorkel and a mesh bag. You float on top of the water and when you see a scallop, you dive down, pinch it closed and put it inside the mesh bag. It's quite an exciting process lol. I caught 92 this past time which is a record for me because last year I only got like 18!! Anyways...my family and i go to a little town called Steinhatchee, FL up in the panhandle and we share this house with a guy my dad works with. And they have this really nice boat we go out on and we catch our scallops. The cleaning process of these things is disgusting though. No lie. It's nasty lol. You have to pry the shell open, then get all this nasty stuff thats living inside of it out, then scoop the muscle out (cause thats the part you eat) and then you either sautee them or fry them. They are soo delicious. I look forward to them every year. And I hate most seafood, so that's really saying something.

Bible Study

Okay, so for the past 4 summers I have been involved in a girl's bible study with my youth group. It's really awesome because the past 2 summers, it has been just the high school girls. And don't get me wrong, I love the middle school girls, but sometimes it's harder to relate to them and vice versa. They really are an awesome group of girls. But anyways...

This summer we are studying from this book called The Power Of A Praying Teen by Stormie Omartian (yes, that is in fact her real name lol) She has written a series of books known as The Power of a Praying books. (praying teen, parent, student, etc.) It's really an amazing book, and I highly reccommend it if you're looking for something for your quiet time. Sorry, I'm not trying to advertise for it or anything, but the reason I'm writing this is because it has already helped me change my attitude and put a lot of things in perspective for me and we've only met 3 times so far this summer.

The book is very topical. You can pick it up every day and look at the table of contents and find a chapter that is relating to your life within seconds. It's amazing and different than anything I've ever studied before. I find myself not wanting to put the book down because I feel like God is really speaking to me and showing me His will for my life. It really helps too because we have college girls and my youth pastor's wife there and they talk to us and mentor us and give us advice about anything we can think of. They are one of my major support systems and I love them to death.

We meet every Tuesday night, hence why I'm typing this tonight. (because we just met a few hours ago) We had major break throughs tonight and I feel like a huge weight was lifted off my chest and God is beginning to move me in the way He wants me to go. I realized this summer that prayer is like one of THE most important things. It is our direct line to God, and if we only pray when there are hard times, or problems, it's not going to help. You have to give God praise in everything and trust Him when there are problems.

Okay, I'm done with my little tangent there...lol But, I wanted to share that with all of ya'll because I want you to know that God is working in my life. And even though I don't know all of you specifically, like I've never met you, I am praying for you and I think you are all awesome! Sorry it took me so long to make a new post, but there ya go. There's my 2 cents for the day lol.

Remember to:

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."

-1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

The Beach

Okay, just warning you now...this isn't going to be a long or great post, but Robbie keeps telling me to make a new one. So here goes. I went to the beach with our youth group on Monday and only 5 people showed up. It was pretty lame and I was bored the whole day. Plus we had to abide by the whole church bathing suit dress code thing...so I got horrible tan lines. I don't burn, I tan so I have all these uneven tanlines everywhere. Not cool...so I'm going to the beach again tomorrow (Thursday) and I will be fixing that little problem of mine. I'm excited. lol Okay well, that's about it. Happy now Robbie??? lol

Disney

Okay, I know Robbie already posted about Disney, but he left a lot of stuff out lol. I sang at Candlelight at Epcott back in December and got 8 tickets to any Disney theme park. I had 3 left though, so I decided that since it's summer I should go. So of course, I invited Robbie and one of my best friends Ellen. Ellen is very special haha she is very blonde and she is hilarious to be around. When she laughs really hard she snorts which highly amused us. But anyways...we had lots of fun yesterday because we rode almost every ride. (splash mt, thunder mt, pirates of the caribbean, the carousel of progress, peter pan, its a small world, monsters inc, buzz lightyear, the blue line) just to name...all of them haha. It was great. it started raining though around 3:00 but it was fun because when we got out of Space mountain for the second time it was pouring and we decided we wanted to ride Pirates and so we RAN across the whole park to get from S.M. to Pirates...we were absolutely soaked. Oh and Ellen and I came up with a new nickname for Robbie's friend Josh. It's Jaw Shwa haha it's just fun to say...maybe you had to be there idk. But then when we wanted to leave, the parade had already started and so we were basically trapped at Disney haha. Everywhere we turned...there was the stupid parade. Oh well. And then, we got on the little tram thing to get to the car and earlier that day on the way there I had written a note in my cell phone to remember where we parked (Pluto rows 50-60) But when we got back there that night. We found out there was no rows 50-60...I had written it down wrong. It was in fact Pluto rows 15-16. My bad lol. But we eventually found the car and all was good again. Well, sort of. We got lost trying to get back to I-4 to get home...but we figured that out too. All in all, it was a good, fun day though. I'm glad we all got to go. Oh, and Dustin is a pretty cool kid too. Sorry I didn't mean to leave him out. haha