Temperary thrill

Skiing on a Bunny Hill (I'm in the center)

    Well, I had a very nice mini-vacation skiing this past weekend. I drove down to Massanutten to meet my parents, Caleb, and Jesse who were staying in a resort there for the weekend. It happened to be Nathanael's birthday while we were there, but unfortunately he decided not to drive down there as well. I really can't blame him, considering that his knee (where he had surgery last year) has not recovered enough to allow for him to go snow-boarding. He would've been somewhat board hanging out with mom all day while everyone else was on the slopes. Mom doesn't know how to ski yet, although she made a promise this time to take lessons when next she gets the chance. I plan to hold her to that :) ; However, generally while we ski mom signs up for some sort of spa treatment to while away the time. This trip Jesse, Dad, and I took a lesson to help us in our endeavor to ski the correct way. I fell down several times this trip, which I rarely ever did, because I was attempting to keep my skis parallel while zig-zagging down the hill. My skiing level would probably be considered Expert-Beginner. I have a long way to go. My family tries to make skiing trips a couple times a year when we can. Ever since we starting playing Settlers of Catan we seem to always bring that to the resort so we can all play when we return from skiing for the evening. Right before I left for the weekend, that very same day in fact, it snowed for hours producing a few inches of beautiful, white snow. I would've made some snow ice-cream, but I found out I no longer had condensed milk. The snow almost delayed my trip, but my dad informed me that the highways would probably still be safe so I left for Massanutten despite the snow and had a wonderful time with my family.
    I believe I must be coming down with an acute case of super-senioritis. I have to work on my time-management skills all over again to overcome this terrifying disease. What I really want is the courage to make friends in my classes so we could work on the classes together. However, I've never been able to do that successfully as of yet, so I guess it's too late to try now. What I simply want to spend my time on now includes all those projects I want to do that I kept putting off until later. 
     As for my Oma, who went to the hospital earlier last week because of unexplained pain, she had to have surgery but everything went smoothly and she's already been released. 

A new start... again...

    I have only 8 courses left to take before I graduate!! I can't wait to leave this incessant education in the past. Yesterday (my first day of classes) was fairly rough. I printed out my schedule and started out going to all my classes on Monday despite the fact that the day was actually Tuesday. Therefore, I walked to campus in the freezing cold, going to the wrong classes. It didn't get much better as the day wore on and I realized my mistake. However, today I feel much more motivated to get on with my classes because I finally fixed my course schedule to be more convenient.
    Aside from the obvious (reading my textbooks and studying) I also want to spend ample time during the week relaxing. I relax by curling up with a good book after a hard day or working on a complex puzzle. Since I know I should not isolate myself too much, I have to have weekly fellowship with other believers and meals with friends. It's rather depressing when I forget the real reason I am here, which I do all too often. We are here to glorify and love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Unfortunately, it's easier to say than to do.
    I plan to take pictures more often of my life here so I can write a blog about things of more interest than simply work. My mom has always loved taking good quality pictures of nature. I only wish to follow in her footsteps and do likewise.
    Family news: I have only two living grandparents, both my grandmothers. My grandmother who fell a month ago and is in the rehab center is my maternal Grandma. I recently found out that my paternal grandmother has gone to the hospital due to unexplained pain. I would appreciate prayer for her. I refer to her as Oma (this means grandma in German) because she is a German Chilean. As for my grandma in the rehab center, she should be able to live with my family again in a little more than a week. 

It'll hit me sooner or later

 

    It's funny that I only ever started really shopping with my mother in the last couple years. I use to detest shopping to the extent that, given the choices of sky diving and shopping, I'd rush off towards the nearest airplane without a second thought. I always considered clothes shopping, above all else, to be worse than torture. Come to think of it, I probably grew up averse to all this girlishness because I was surrounded by brothers... Well, because of my attitude toward shopping and the fact that I never payed much attention to my appearance, my mother very rarely shopped with me or gave me any sort of fashion advice (not that she was any sort of fashion expert, but a toad would have more fashion sense than I had). Thence, my very first successful clothes shopping spree with my mom was only a couple years ago. Well, to be honest, I wasn't even with her when she went shopping, but she had gotten several cute dresses she thought I might like and I eagerly tried them on (which is something I never did before). After that day, my mother finally knew what clothes I liked (we had similar taste in dresses) and I started to enjoy this aspect of being a girl. Haha, and I used to think I was so frugal... However, I have done a lifetime of clothes shopping (among other things) since then, so now I plan to never, EVER shop again. Unfortunately, when I hang out with mom to have wonderful "mother-daughter" time we tend to shop, which is rather dangerous. What's happening to me?? The reason I bring all this shopping up is because I have had a couple crazy shopping days with my mom this break, which I enjoyed immensely of course. My poor roommates will have to deal with a lot more random things around the apartment :)
    One of those trips took place this afternoon, after I spent the morning listening to my mom's second lecture on epidemiology. She's a part-time professor at George Washington. She did a wonderful job and is always so nice to her students. I was glad to finally be able to critique how she taught her class, but apparently I wasn't as encouraging as she would've liked... I do try! I'm great at bragging about my parents to other people, just not to themselves.
    On our way home tonight my mom and I wanted to get a movie to watch, so we looked in vain for The Avengers, but sadly it was sold out. Thus, we decided to buy Captain America instead. Great movies. When we got back home my brother Nathanael was there with his very good friend Sara. After mom and I ate dinner, we all watched Captain America.

    Here comes the sad part (to some people at least), I have to leave my hometown Saturday morning since my semester begins on Tuesday. This trip will entail quite a bit of driving and adventure, because I plan to first travel to North Carolina in order to visit an old friend from my university and then go to Lynchburg to visit a couple of awesome new friends, and finally head towards the land of hard work and study. I can't wait to see all of them, but I will miss my family and friends I leave behind. In any case, these are my last days home, packing up my things, and preparing my departure.
    To give a brief update about my grandmother; she seems to be recovering from her fall slowly. I confess, I am worried about how well she will be able to do things when she returns to our care. She will no doubt be in much worse shape where walking is concerned. However, a physical therapist is coming in everyday to help her regain some strength while she is in the rehab center, and very likely she will still have a physical therapist when she moves out of that place into our house. I will miss her. She needs constant reminders that we love her when she is alone, surrounded by other invalids. It breaks my heart when she has nightmares and says terrible and depressing things about no one caring about her. All I can do at this point is pray for her. God needs to show her His love and peace. What she needs most of all is His peace that passes all understanding.   

It's all about the history...

    Well, on our way to the rehab center where my Grandmother is currently staying, my mother and I ended up driving through something that smelled like manure which spilled across the road right before a stoplight. While we waited for the light to change we had the perfect opportunity to practice breathing through our mouths. Mom called our county sheriff's office to notify them of the spill, though they haven't done anything about it yet. Anyway, I just want to keep everyone informed of the strange and unusual occurrences happening in my isolated hometown. Okay, if this is the strangest thing to happen here, I think we need more excitement. I did recently find out that James Madison may have been born here, which would give our county some small historical significance.
    As far as grandma is concerned, her broken bones are healing in due course. She should hopefully be back with us within a week, I hope. It's really not all that cheap having her live at the rehab center anyway. However, last night when I visited her with my dad, she was in a very messed up, emotional state. I was surprised that she apparently didn't remember much of that visit at all this morning except that it was bad. I was very relieved. I love grandma very much, but we (my family) have learned certain things to look out for when we get to be that age. The most important thing is not to hold grudges, becomes it contributes a lot to bitterness during old age. I'm not saying I'd necessarily be better in my old age, but I'd try my best. It helps a lot to have confidence and assurance as to where you might go after death. That's the scariest part in getting old.

    I am also starting my search for a good job in which I can utilize my mathematical knowledge. It's harder than I expected, because I haven't a clue what non-teaching mathematical jobs I would really enjoy. I'm not much of a writer so that's out of the question, though it is a fun hobby to have. And I still have quite a few books to read this break before I have to go back to work. I am way past having senioritis......I can't say how ready I am to get off this roller-coaster. I'm not as excited about getting a job as I am about having my own living quarters though. I strongly desire to have my own place in which I can decorate, furnish, and arrange as I want, as well as finally having a few cats and dogs.... (mostly cats)

    Jesse and my father went out this morning to race in the Pinewood Derbies. That's where they can build their own cars to race against others. I hope Jesse wins :) I remember when I was younger and got to race. In fact, I still have a couple cars I made with dad.
    And aside from reading, I'm getting into origami. I'm not all that artistic so I never previously tried much origami because I assumed I would be terrible at it. Well, it's not as hard as I thought it would be, though some of the directions are confusing. 

Christmas of 2012 is over :(

Every year during Thanksgiving I would help my mother decorate the house in preparation for Christmas. Our house would be covered with many Christmas candles and other oddities found over the years. And, of course, we would always have our Christmas tree decorated with lights, candy canes, beautiful ornaments, and tinsel. However, my family is stubborn and sentimental about change sometimes. We have never used artificial Christmas trees and I doubt we ever will (even as we may move away to celebrate Christmas with our respective new families). We would always go out to buy and chop down the Christmas tree of our choice. One year we even used a tree from my Grandmother's yard, which happened to be my personal favorite due to my extreme sentimentality. In fact, Grandma's house is where we would almost always spend Christmas. She lives in a beautiful area off the water which you would have to see to believe. This year, because of everything that has happened, we were unable to go there for Christmas. Under normal circumstances, my family would also decorate my Grandmother's house for Christmas as well, but this year we had no need since our Christmas plans were drastically changed when Grandma fell. Also, during this very unusual year, I wasn't able to help with the decorations as I normally did.

The tree's just walkin' right outta there!

[Now we get to the exciting part!] Maybe I missed out on the decorating, but now I get to help take everything down and pack it all up again! My favorite part in all this is cleaning up the confetti, because it makes such a big difference in how our house looks. When I was younger I would look forward to trimming all the branches off the Christmas tree with a pair of shears, but as you can see, I'm not as destructive nowadays (I think).

So that's our current project; fixing up the house. However, we are very lax in our cleaning so I have ample time for other activities. For instance, two days ago I got to go skiing with Jesse and my dad. Even though we mainly remained on the bunny hills (beginner slopes) I had a wonderful time. My dad and I would usually go on the intermediate slopes, but Jesse refused because then he would have to actually zig-zag down the slope. Zig-zagging down the slope helps you regulate your speed so you don't keep getting faster and faster until you can't easily stop or slow down. Well, Jesse didn't practice that very useful skill because he wanted to go as fast as he could without slowing down. Therefore, going on the harder slopes was out of the question. He certainly had a need for speed :)

I also had the opportunity to read the book my mother recommended for me; Poetic Justice by Alicia Rasley. As I knew I would (since my mother and I have a very similar taste in books), I enjoyed it immensely. This book is a regency romance. One of the things I love about regency romances is that they rarely contain anything over-the-top that you might find in modern Harlequin romances. I've also read, earlier during my break, And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers. This book is Christian fiction, as all her books are. So far, however, none of the other Francine Rivers books have even compared with the Mark of the Lion trilogy she wrote. That trilogy is so well-written, containing so many real problems and troubles people struggle through, that I immediately denoted it as my ultimate favorite. It has my highest recommendation (but, of course, other people may not feel the same way as I do about it). Getting back to the book I actually read this break, it was primarily about dealing with hypocrisy and always sticking to God's Word for answers and comfort. 

Greeting the New Year; 2013

Me, random bear, and my mom, all enjoying the festivities

    A new year has dawned....and as always we have begun it by trashing our house with confetti. Even the bear joined in! However, unlike past years, our home was not filled with the joyful sound of young kids having confetti fights all over the house. The only young kid attending our annual New Years Celebration was my seven year old brother, Jesse, who had no choice in the matter. A couple old friends, who have been coming for years, managed to make it here and give us company. Their children being all grown up and on their own, they brought only themselves, along with delicious mint brownies (which was okay by me :) ). If no one came, we had the backup plan to play Settlers of Catan to call in the new year, which we had started while we waited to see if anyone would showed up. My family lives in a small county where almost everyone has no concept of time, in which case we never know at what time someone will arrive (if they decide to come at all). So, all we could do is wait and hope. And we were not disappointed. Once that couple arrived we set up the confetti on the balcony and got ready for the count down. My older brother, Caleb, along with Jesse and myself, commenced throwing confetti down our balcony onto our living room rug and having a mini confetti fight. When there are more kids participating in the fight it can get quite exciting at times. I have fond memories of the years past with many little kids and teenagers all coming over for the New Years.

    Unfortunately, the start of this year has not been entirely without defect. This past month was one of the hardest my family had to deal with. One thing after another kept piling up. To give some background info, my other older brother, Nathanael, tore a ligament in his right leg early last year, so he is still in the process of fully recovering from that injury. Now, to begin our litany of misfortunes, my grandmother, who is 94 years old and has been staying in our house off and on during the whole of last year, had another fall a few weeks ago. Nathanael was nearby at that time and, rather than notifying mom or dad, lifted her up and carried her to her bed despite the fact that his leg was still recovering from surgery. This naturally made my parents very upset. It wasn't until that night that they discovered that Grandma was experiencing extreme pain and wasn't able to move. Immediately, upon discovering how serious her condition was, they called an ambulance to transport Grandma to the emergency room. It was at that time, while everyone was waiting for the doctors to figure out what steps to take (and Grandma was not in as much agony), that Grandma informed mom about the most recent news. It was that same day that the horrific, devastating, and tragic murders happened in an Elementary school in Connecticut. Nothing can even compare to the pain those families are going through. We need to remember to keep them in our prayers and that God is in control. Directly after all of these events, my mother contracted the full-fledged flu, putting her out of commission for several days. This entire time I was not capable of offering any help, being in Blacksburg finishing my final exams. However, I had plenty of time to worry instead.
    Fast-forwarding to today, my Grandma left the hospital almost two weeks ago with a couple broken bones that need time to heal and is now residing in a very nice rehab center only five minutes from our house. Someone has gone there to visit her, comfort her, and remind her of our love pretty much every day. In fact, the nurses are probably well acquainted with her family by now. And as far as I know, Nathanael suffered no ill-effects from carrying Grandma after her fall, but I'm sure he wouldn't tell anyone even if he had. My mom has recovered from the flu, passing a bit of the virus to my dad before it completely vanished. Currently we all have fairly good health except for my Grandma, who suffers ailments mainly due to her age. Her mind is not effected in the least, and for that we thank God.  

    On a more pleasant note, I have gotten many new dresses for 2013! I am excited to show them off to all my wonderful friends who don't abandon me because I left Facebook! I don't get a chance to go shopping with my mother too often, so admittedly we splurged a bit. See how fortunate it was that the world did not end on Dec. 21st?
    On another amazing note, I figured out a way to lay out my final classes so I can graduate after this summer!!! Seriously, I am dead tired of school and ready to live my life......