A Moment of Joy

My last post was a little depressing so I thought I would share a moment of joy with you. Yesterday afternoon as I was rounding up the girls for dinner (22-1 can be a little difficult), I ran into a Chinese couple who were looking for one of my students. I knew that this girl was going home for the weekend (but with her, going home means going to her sister's house), but I didn't recognize either of these people. I went to her room and told her someone was here that I didn't recognize. She was a little confused but when she saw the woman, she got so excited and ran up to her and embraced her. They were chatting in Chinese and I was awkwardly in the way, then she asked if her father could come into the dorm. At that moment I realized that these were her parents and I let them have their little reunion. It might sound like not that big of a deal, but to see the joy and happiness on this students face, it really made my day.

I am on sleepovers this weekend, so I am here the whole weekend which is hard, but ok. I am tired, but I will get by. On another wonderful note, my dad got a new job. I don't think I blogged about it, but he got laid off about three weeks ago and he has been looking and praying for the last few weeks. He is now going to be working the third shift (9pm-6am) for Channel Island Surfboards in Carpinteria. He'll be running the machines that cut out and shape the surf boards. It was definitely a God thing for him to find this job so thank you for those of you who were praying about it. Please continue to pray that this will be a good fit. Pray that his sleeping patterns can be adjusted easily and that our family can adjust to this new and exciting change.

Heartbreaker

While Heartbreaker is a great Pat Benatar song, it doesn't really describe my weekend. Friday was my first day back at work after a very long break. I really missed my kids and was excited to get back (even though I had been battling a cold all week). Most of the afternoon was spent catching up with kids and learning how to do Speed Stacks. The kids had a Social that evening which always makes for an eventful night. It started with cleaning up one kid's leg (one of the girls "accidentally" scratched his leg with her shoe... long story but he ended up with a cut on his leg from a couple inches below his knee to a couple inches below his ankle). He's a tough kid so it wasn't a big deal to him, but it was a gnarly cut nonetheless. Later in the evening one of my middle school boys thought it would be a funny idea to pull a chair out as someone was sitting down... It would have been a funny idea if he didn't pick the one girl who just had surgery that removed a piece of her hip bone (they took the bone from her hip and put it in her mouth...). She was in so much pain and because of the very recent surgery (like a week and a half ago), I called the nurse... She ended up being ok, but really really sore. After the social, I went up to open the dorm and walked by one of my girls crying hysterically on another girl's shoulder. I gave the second girl the look of "Is she ok? What's going on?" and she gave me the "I'll tell you later." look. Apparently she just found out that her ex-boyfriend in Korea just died in a car accident. She was pretty devastated so Tami (the head of the girl's dorm) came in a chatted with her.

The rest of the weekend was full of fairly typical teenage drama, but what really broke my heart was a kid who doesn't even go to this school. Saturday morning I ran into Tami who was going to take an old student out for breakfast. He had been calling her the last few nights, crying hysterically because his parents don't love him. As she is telling me this, the kid pulls up in his Brand New BMW Bimmer that his parents gave him for getting a B average. A brand new car and all this kid wants is for his parents to love him... It broke my heart and continues to break my heart. I really do hope and pray that these kids feel loved; if not by their parents, then by their dorm parents at least.

Maybe it's a Sign

Last night I got to hang out with a bunch of old friends (Katie, Megan, Keri, Becky, Nicki and some of their husbands and babies). It was so fun to hang out with them all again and to see everyone all grown up and living their lives. It was a little awkward being the only single person there, but I have to say I am pretty happy where I am at. Everyone is in town for Kelly's memorial today which kinda makes me sad, but I know she is in a better place.

The picture is from walking shelf road the other day with my mom and Sarah. I took a few more that I really like, but I need to work on them a little in photoshop... For now, you can check them out.

A Few of My Favorite Things

While raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens are some of my aunt Julie's favorite things, (haha... I tell that joke to my kids and they never get it...) I thought I would share a few of my favorite things.

• Spending 8 hours Decoupaging a coat rack for my bedroom (I'll try and get a picture of it for you).
• Spending 4 hours sewing 4 pairs of PJ shorts for my sister.
• A Sunday afternoon phone call: "Hey Michaela! What are you doing tomorrow at 5am?" "Um... Sleeping... Why? What do you need?" "Wanna drive me to the Burbank Airport?"
• Running into people at the gas station... at 4:30am. (So, I met this couple last weekend at church. They pulled up just as I was getting out of my car and asked what time church started. I said 9:30 and walked in with them. Her name was Deborah and his name was Noah. They just moved into town a couple of months ago and their friend recommended the church.) Anyway, he was on his was to work down at Disney Studios. He works construction on film sets and is currently working on the new Sandra Bullock movie, The Proposal (which I don't really understand because the movie is in post-production and I have already seen previews for the film... which I thought means the movie is finished... I dunno).
  
• The 4:30 drive to Burbank Airport...
• Random Conversations at Trader Joes: The first after this guy noticed my FH shirt (getting dressed at 4:15am = grabbing the shirt at the top of the clean pile). He started chatting about Rancho Del Rey and how his dad was good friends with the Hansens (who donated a bunch of money to RDR back in the day... hence Hansen Hall). We chatted about FH for a bit before I had to leave. The second was at the check out at TJoes. The girl at the register commented on how much she liked my haircut (which is always funny when I haven't gotten my haircut in 3 months... has it really been that long? Oh Wowee Wow!). We chatted about straightning hair and stuff before I had to head out.

A pretty random start to the New Year... And I love every bit of it!