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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Cinderella-style

I was cleaning the bathroom, and instead of mopping the floor like I usually do, I decided to try something I've always wanted to try. So I got a bucket, a scrub brush and a couple of rags, and scrubbed the bathroom floor - Cinderella-style. It worked much better than mopping I think, though it did take a little more time. But it was also more fun! The worst part was when I went a little crazy and splashed a whole bucket of water on the floor to rinse it, and then I had to soak it all up with a couple rags.... I had to keep wringing them out.

It was a really interesting experience. I think I'll scrub the floors rather than mopping from now on! It was such fun! I can just imagine y'all laughing at me. You should try it sometime. :P

~Lizzie

Monday, April 28, 2008

33miles

My new favorite band! I just got their self-titled CD, and I LOVE it!! The songs are so encouraging, and really pertain to my life and everything I'm going through right now.

My absolute favorite songs on the CD (click for lyrics) are:

Stand Amazed
There is a God
Thank You
This is Now
The Best Man (can't find links to these 2, so lyrics are below.)

This is Now

You were all alone
You were constantly broken
You felt so unloved
You were left abandoned

What a difference love can make
To the deep heartbreak back then

This is now
This is hope
This is the end of a longing
The beginning of a road
To a change
Where everything around you no longer falling down
This is now
This is now

You're allowed to dream
You can think of tomorrow
And you can say goodbye
To all of your sorrow

That's the difference love can make
To the hurt you've held within

This is now
This is hope
This is the end of a longing
The beginning of a road
To a change
Where every chain around you no longer has you bound
This is now
This is Jesus

What you've been waiting for
So open up
Hear the words
Your life is lost no more

This is now
This is hope
Beginning of a road
Where every chain around you no longer has you bound

This is now
This is hope
This is Jesus
This is now


The Best Man

I have always dreamed
To be that superhero
To fly right in and somehow save the day
And I have always wanted
To be more than I could be
But seem to fall and somehow lose my way
But the day your love stepped in
Was the day my life began

Chorus:
Cause you make me shine
You make me soar
You make me everything I never was and so much more
You give me strength
You let me stand
I don't have to move a mountain
But I know I can
Cause you make me the best man

Even through my weakness
You know who I am
And you give me amazing grace that I don't understand
There are no words
That could ever describe
The glory of, the beauty of you in my life
Because you gave your love to me
I'm the best that I can be

Chorus

I will never be the same
Cause you have changed everything
From the man I was to the man that's standing by your side

Chorus

Anyway, I just wanted to recommend this CD. It's really good. I like to listen with music that has a good beat (because I have a tendency to fall asleep if it's too calm) and it's really cool when you can find songs that are upbeat, but also have serious messages that make you think.

Anyway. Back to schoolwork. (I'm doing school this Monday! Yay.)

~Lizzie

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Do Hard Things

Alex and Brett Harris's new book, entitled "Do Hard Things" arrived in the mail today. I eagerly began devouring it, and it wasn't long before I got one of my intense revelations. Okay, so it wasn't really intense. But it is kinda disturbing.. to me anyway.

Just in case you don't know who Alex and Brett Harris are, and maybe the book title is giving you ideas of hanging by your toes or drinking a gallon of mud, let me give you some background. (You can also check out their blog The Rebelution.) Alex and Brett Harris are twin younger brothers of Joshua Harris, the author of "I Kissed Dating Goodbye," "Boy Meets Girl" and other such helpful books. As explained much more eloquently on their blog, they discovered some very interesting ideas about those of us who are commonly called "teenagers."

Our culture today expects very little good of us. Most teenagers are expected to be irresponsible and childish, interested only in having fun. We are completely capable of behaving like the adults that we physically are, but we don't. Why? That brings me to my point. Ready? No....? Seriously? Whatever.. I don't care if you're ready or not!

We live up to what is expected of us.

Really, we do. Fortunately, most of us who are home-schooled have diligent parents who DO expect us to behave like adults. Or at least better than the average American teenager. But I've sidetracked from my point. .... what was my point? Oh, yes.

My revelation. My expectations for myself have dropped sadly in this past year. And actually, (not to try to place the blame on someone else, but....) I think it's mostly due to the Chemistry class that I've been in this year. The whole class started off with fairly good grades, if I remember correctly. But somehow we've slacked off terribly. All of the tests for the rest of the year are going to be open-book. I'm not trying to brag about my grades or anything, but I've never ever gotten a 76 before that I remember..... and I got a 76 on AN OPEN-BOOK TEST. Don't tell me that isn't pathetic. That is so far beyond pathetic that I can't even find a word to describe it.

I'm not blaming it on the teacher. It's really my fault, I'm certainly capable of getting just as good grades without him expecting it of me. I just haven't been expecting it of myself. I even stopped doing the homework. We have class tomorrow, and even now, with almost all of the homework still left to do, I'm writing a blog post about how low my expectations of myself are. No kidding.

And not only have I slacked off my Chemistry, I've slacked off almost everything else. My piano practicing has completely died. I haven't practiced AT ALL in nearly 3 weeks. I did worse than I've ever done before in my piano competitions this past winter. My math grades have been sloping almost as bad as Chemistry. My room (which I'd actually been keeping clean!) has gone back to the mess that it's been for most of my life. I've been staying up late, and sleeping in to disgraceful hours. I have a script that was supposed to be memorized before Christmas break and I've memorized a grand total of one scene. It's all my fault. I AM capable of doing things that aren't expected of me, but naturally it's so much easier if they are expected of you.

So, "Do Hard Things" has nothing to do with unnecessary pain or stupidity, but everything to do with requiring of yourself things that are hard, but beneficial. Like it's going to be really hard for me to drag my grades back up, practice piano, go to bed early and get up early, memorize my script, keep my room clean, and various other things that I need to do. But I'm going to do them, and proudly be one of the "teenagers" rebelling against the low expectations of our society. And I honestly can't believe how sad my list sounds.... I should already be doing all those things, and not thinking twice about it! Man, I have sooooo much work to do.

And just so all of y'all know, I refuse to be called a teenager. *shudder* What a degrading term....

~Lizzie

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Sarah and I were brave....

And cut Joel's hair. We had to wash it first, which I thought was a royal pain. I was wrong. The real royal pain was cutting it. We were playing K-Love on the radio and he kept bouncing around to the beat. I can't remember how many times Sarah was holding the scissors with a section of hair combed and ready to cut and his head-bobbing jerked it out of her hand and she had to comb it and get it ready all over again. She cut her finger because of him jerking around.

Some Joel quotes: "I'm pretty much resistant to pain, except getting my hair cut is like stepping on broken glass."
"Aren't you ready to kill me yet? Stop torturing me and get it over with!"
"Don't I get a blindfold and a cigar?"

All that trouble was worth it though, I think. Those of you that know Joel are probably rejoicing right now. Here's a few pictures.







(He's posing as Uncle Rico from "Napoleon Dynamite")

We're really pleased with how it turned out. I just hope Joel is... *roll eyes* Naturally, he acts like he hates it, but I think he can tell how cool it looks.

~Lizzie

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Prayer for David.

This past Sunday my little brother David had some kind of stomach bug. We thought he'd recovered yesterday, but today he had a relapse. He's got a pretty high fever and is apparently hallucinating. He just claimed something jumped on his bed (and it wasn't one of our cats). And he said Joel was playing the piano too fast (which is actually true....) and that Daddy was walking around the room too fast.

Anyway, prayer is appreciated.

~Lizzie

I just noticed....

That yesterday was Monday, and it was actually a pretty good day! I couldn't figure out why, because it's not the first time that we've won a game on Monday (at least.... I don't think it is...) but even with the great excitement of winning a game, those other Mondays usually level out to "not-so-great" or "down-right awful." And then I realized.

I did absolutely no schoolwork yesterday. And that's making today infinitely more intolerable, because now I have to catch up. But it certainly was nice to have a 3-day weekend.

Somehow I think it'd even be better if Saturday was a school day, and then Sunday and Monday were the weekend. Something about Monday is just dreadful. It's not that my schoolwork is any different than other days. I guess it's just the break, having done no school on Saturday and Sunday, having to do school again is miserable.

So now today feels like a Monday, except a worse than usual Monday, because I DO have double school now. Lovely......

~Lizzie

Monday, April 21, 2008

Home run!


Reid made a home run in the last inning, with Joel on base, and bumped the score from 3-4 to 5-4!!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

King Kong *spoiler warning*

Greatly against my wishes, my family decided to watch King Kong as our family movie today. I didn't even want to begin watching it because I know Kong dies at the end, but Sarah talked me into it, promising that I could always watch all of it except for the end and then create my own ending like I always do for movies that I don't like. So I consented, and tried to eat my pizza as the movie got worse and worse.

First creepy natives tried to sacrifice the girl (that NEVER happens in Jane Austen!) to Kong and then she escapes, and discovers a huge lizard thing that tries to eat her... but instead the lizard thing is eaten by a T-Rex. And then the T-Rex goes after the girl, and 2 more Rexes magically appear and then are fought by Kong... who just finished killing and injuring the rescuers. The surviving rescuers are in the bottom of a ravine, being attacked by huge spiders. Then ginormous cock-roaches appear. When slimy wormy things started attacking them and the cock-roaches plastered themselves all over guy that the girl is in love with, I decided that I'd seen enough. Read: I ran out of the room.

I did go back long enough to discover that the movie has a whole hour left! *shudders* Ooooh, I can feel the cock-roaches crawling on me. Augh!! There's nothing I hate worse than not finishing a movie. Even now with how creeped out I am, I feel the draw.... I'm being pulled downstairs... Ahhh!!! Help! I. Will. Resist. *deep breaths*

*cringe* I'm scarred...... *shudder*

~Lizzie

Friday, April 18, 2008

Boring stuff.

With all my excitement about Beauty and the Beast, I forgot to brag.... I swam the lap-a-thon again Thursday and made 142. Sadly, that's 2 laps from my goal..... urgh. But whatever.

Today in Chemistry we took the test for Module 13. It took an entire 2 hours...... and I hadn't done the homework, so I really didn't know what I was doing. (*wince* Yeah..... bad me.) Fortunately the test was open book... and (unfortunately) the teacher practically did the problems for us if we asked for help.

One of my classmates and I were whispering about how horrible one of the problems was and she really made me laugh (or rather, choke, as I tried not to burst out laughing in the middle of a test): "At first #13 made me think, and then it smashed me over the head with a baseball bat and then there was no more thinking going on." ~ Alicia
I think that's my favorite quote from Chemistry this year. Oh, and just for laughs, I'll share my blonde-ness.

Teacher: So does that help?
Me: But that doesn't have anything to do with the answer!
Class: *turns and stares*
Me: The question is *insert question here.*
Teacher: We're doing problem #7.
Me: Oh... you're not helping me then. Sorry. Never mind.
Class: *laughs*
Me: *is swallowed by the floor*

So yeah.... that's me. :P

~Lizzie

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Beauty and the Beast!

We went to see NRCA's production of Beauty and the Beast.... IT WAS SOOOOOO GOOD!!! I'm so glad we went to see it! It was awesome! *dreamy sigh* It was great. I think it's my new favorite musical. Now I'm off to find the old Disney animated version!

~Lizzie

I have a new camera!

I absolutely love it. Sarah keeps criticizing it, I guess because it's not as big and professional as hers is, but I'm pleased with it. Here are a few of my first pictures. I got a great one of Sarah "doing school" but she won't let me post it.


Two of my friends who came home with us from swim practice yesterday. No, they're not sisters.... I think they kinda look like it though. In this pic anyway, with both their faces washed out by flash.... eh-heh.


This is everyone NOT cooperating. Except for Hannah... *sniff* If they'd all have just smiled for one, I wouldn't have had to take 5. As it was, this was the best one. Pathetic.....



I actually couldn't tell what I was taking here... it was pretty dark. I thought I might have got Nathan diving behind Matt... but no. You can only see his green shoulder. I wonder if they know that freaking out whenever a person tries to take pictures of them only makes it more fun. Haha.

~Lizzie

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Lap-a-thon

So I swam the lap-a-thon today (lap-a-thon is swimming as many laps as you can in an hour. You get sponsors to donate per lap that you swim and the money goes to team expenses.)... with a sprained ankle. I re-injured it Sunday playing football. I'm really disappointed because I didn't make my goal, but I guess I did all right considering that I did have a hurt ankle. I only did 122 laps. Sarah made 140, Joel did 146 and David did 108. I guess part of me was hoping that I'd be able to do 144 laps even with a hurt ankle.... but that was ridiculous.

Maybe I'm insane enough to try again Thursday. But now I have to do 148 because I have to do more than Joel! :P

~Lizzie

Thursday, April 10, 2008

What a day.

My little brother had a baseball game after swim team today. We were intending to go straight to the game, but we had to stop at home for some various things that we'd forgotten.

We arrived at The Factory fields a couple minutes late for warm-ups. As soon as we got out of our car a lady asked if we were with the Raleigh Hawks. We are, and she informed us that our game had been moved to the Flaherty fields. Coach arrived and went to find out if we were really at Flaherty. It was determined that we were, so a small caravan headed off Flaherty amongst many cell phone calls informing other team members of the change in location.

Upon arriving at Flaherty we discovered that our game wasn't there either.... it was at the Green Road fields, nearly 30 minutes away. By this time, it was 4:00, and the game was supposed to start at 4:30. A somewhat larger caravan hurried off to Green Road. We somehow managed to pass the caravan and arrive at the game 2nd. The other team greeted us with applause as the first few players finally arrived.

Despite all that confusion, we had enough time to win the game, and finished a tied game from earlier in the season, which we also won.

And I got sunburned.

~Lizzie

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Powerful Faith.

One morning the plates and cups and bowls on the table were empty. There was no food in the larder, and no money to buy food. The children were standing waiting for their morning meal, when Mr. Mueller said, "Children, you know we must be in time for school." Lifting his hand he said, "Dear Father, we thank Thee for what Thou art going to give us to eat." There was a knock on the door. The baker stood there, and said, "Mr. Mueller, I couldn't sleep last night. Somehow I felt you didn't have bread for breakfast and the Lord wanted me to send you some. So I got up at 2 a.m. and baked some fresh bread, and have brought it." Mueller thanked the man. No sooner had this transpired when there was a second knock at the door. It was the milkman. He announced that his milk cart had broken down right in front of the Orphanage, and he would like to give the children his cans of fresh milk so he could empty his wagon and repair it. No wonder, years later, when Mueller was to travel the world as an evangelist, he would be heralded as "the man who gets things from God!"


George Muller has always been one my favorite men of faith. Imagine having so certain a belief that God will provide your needs that he could look at all those orphans and bless the food that hadn't arrived yet. It's certainly not very difficult for me to pray and ask God for something, but I'm too scared of looking foolish to say anything to anyone about it. I'm guilty of the kind of faith where I'll just wait til after God does it to proclaim that I believed He would. Envision yourself looking around at a sea of children's faces and blessing invisible food. What would happen if God didn't come through?

I think it's interesting that God didn't provide the food until after Mr. Muller prayed. It wasn't out of God's power to provide the food before the children came to breakfast. I believe one of the reasons he waited was to increase the children's faith as well. Not only that, but if Mr. Muller hadn't thanked God for the food He was sending, how many of those children do you think would have just believed that it came from the baker and the milkman?

I believe God does provide things that people ask for but don't openly believe until they receive. But God is more glorified by an open, praising faith, that believes even if it's set up to look stupid and thanks God for what hasn't been given yet. And if you believe Him strongly enough to say, "Hey, I believe God's going to give me what I've asked for!" I bet He'll come through better than you thought possible.

But what if you aren't sure God wants you to have what you've asked for? This is probably my biggest area of doubt. I don't know how to answer that question. That's what I've been wondering all spring as I've been praying that the Christian Community Summer pool will be able to open this year. It's a Christian pool, encouraging modesty and Christian behavior and is the highlight of every summer (or rather, it's my entire life during the summer). Is it possible God doesn't want it to open?

Perhaps it's worth looking foolish to openly believe God for something and have Him say no. I think I'll try it. I'm believing that God will provide the necessary funds to open the pool this summer. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Amazingly enough.

The snake that was under our piano came out this morning. He must have been really hungry. Anyway, we caught him and dumped him in the woods outside. I can't believe he was in our living room for 9 days! I really thought he was dead.

Except for that slightly disturbing occurrence today was exactly the kind of not-rushed and lazy fun that every Saturday should be. I didn't really enjoy the rain however, even though I'm glad we're getting it. I didn't get up til 9, Sarah and I dropped Joel off at baseball practice and then went shopping. We got back to pick him up, watched a practice game in the rain (I got wet.... and cold..) and went home, had lunch, went to Comedy Cafe, came home, watched The Transporter and now I'm going to read Emma.

I'm sure you were all desperate to know how my day was. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything more interesting to write about, so that'll have to be it for now.

~Lizzie

Friday, April 4, 2008

Titles are so perplexing.

I think I'll do away with them. Forget titles.....

Anyway, it occurred to me as I was drinking my green tea, eating chocolate and listening to Switchfoot (on my CD player that has recently decided to behave! I guess the threatening to dispose of it and replace it with a more docile model made it decide to shape up its performance) that I have A LOT of school to do. I have to finish my math book, finish Biology (yeah, it's from last year... *wince*), finish Chemistry, finish Literature and Grammar, finish Spanish I, memorize my lines for Annie and take the SAT. All preferably in about a month (except for the SAT.... I'm taking it in June). And I'm trying not to think about all the courses that I'll have to start for my Senior year.....

I'm not sure where all my time is going, it really doesn't seem like I do that much extra stuff. I guess I really do have bad time management skills. It'd be nice if I could get up at 6 and do work before we have to start going places for the day, but I'd be ridiculously exhausted if I did that, and I use caffeine so much already that it has almost no effect. And yes, I know that's bad.

Then, when I get behind like this, I'm even less productive and have a tendency to not do any schoolwork and instead write lame blog posts that have absolutely no value to anyone and merely waste my time. *sigh* At least now I have a comprehensive list of schoolwork to finish that I can refer to at a later date.

Hope you're having more luck with school than me!

~Lizzie

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

My mind took a sudden unapproved vacation and my eye is pitching a hissy fit.

My mind left me and went on vacation (I should have liked to go! But was I invited? Certainly not...) and my eye is .... well, something's wrong with it. I don't think it's allergies, because it's only one. But my tear duct has been clogged, and thus, all the fresh tears have no where to go and it's like constantly crying out of one eye. I've been afflicted with this for almost 2 weeks now, and the area around my eye has become very red and sore. It's quite frustrating, and I'm beginning to think that I may have to take some drastic (and also yucky and boring) health measures to get rid of it. *sigh*

April Fool's has been almost completely uneventful for me (a pleasant surprise!) *glances around in nervous anticipation of someone proving her wrong in the last few hours* This year, *I* was NOT the one who got sprayed by the sink. No one put toothpaste on all the light switches (I'll forever have nightmares about that year.) And I was only the victim of one joke. Daddy informed me that they'd gotten the snake out from under the piano because it came out to get a mouse that one of the cats brought in and couldn't fit back under the piano. I was just getting ready to ask him how the tiny little snake managed to eat a mouse when, "April Fool's!" was announced.

I really like this nice warm weather... I wish it would just stay that way already!

~Lizzie