Sharing My Thoughts!

The other night I was sitting at my house watching TV with Mike and my dad walks into the room and says, "What are you doing with your life?" He said it kind of as a joke but the conversation that carried on changed everything for me! My dad started asking me what I like to do, what I'm good at, what I can do for the rest of my life. I didn't really have an answer for him. So Mike asked me, "If there was a genie that could make it so you were able to be the best at one thing and you had sixty seconds to decide, what would it be?" Sixty seconds went by and I couldn't answer him! By this point I was very discouraged and didn't really want to keep talking about the subject. But Mike kept going....

Basically we kept talking for about an hour about the whole thing and finally hit a breakthrough! It took writing out a list, establishing that I have the tools to accomplish what I want to do, and understanding that it can all happen right now!

I've decided to follow my childhood dream of becoming a rock climber. I don't know why I've waited so long to attempt going for this goal, but I'm doing it and I started yesterday!!! Now I have a purpose to run, exercise, lose weight, eat better. I'm so excited and it's going to be so much fun!!! Just wanted to share :)

My Interesting Life!

Busy Busy Busy!!! That has been this last week in a nutshell!! But let's start off where I left off...

Ohh the last couple months have been so relaxing. Hanging out with Mike and my family and friends has been medicine to my soul! It has been so amazing to be able to just hang out and not have anywhere to be or anything to do! But I am totally ready for the busy part of my life now, there is always so much to do and always so much on my mind, I don't have time to think of all the things I want to think about!! Haha.

I've been reluctant to post because I haven't really been taking any pictures, so I'll just put up some fun random ones from the past couple months!

Far Out!

Today me and Mike decided we wanted to tie-dye some shirts!!! It was so much fun, but the finished product won't be ready until tomorrow. :( It's okay though because we took lots of pictures and they look so fun! I used to tie-dye shirts when I was little! And I just realized today that the name comes from "tying" it and "dying" it. HA! Hilarious. :D


This is the supplies we used for our shirts! We just bought a little kit from Michael's for about ten bucks! And I already had a plain white shirt I was going to use, Mike bought one from Michael's.

This is Mike and his giant plain shirt from Michael's! ($3.99)

And this is me and my normal cute V-Neck from Kohl's. Haha :D


Dying shirts is very messy so I made sure to borrow my mom's apron! It's so cute, isn't it?! (The shirt, not the apron!)

I love this picture of Mike and his shirt! Excited to see what it looks like after 24 hours!

1-2-3- SUMMER!!!

So this summer, much like last, has been utterly blissful and magical. Mike is one of the greatest gifts that God has given me and I am so grateful and blessed to have him be a part of my life. I couldn't have made up someone in my head that's as awesome as he has been. *Dreamy*

BUT ANYWAYS, aside from my "smitten-ness," the past couple weeks have been packed full of fun times. Swimming, beach, and working out. Plus watching old home videos, getting to know Mike's dad more (through the videos), and having fun with friends and family. It's really just been so much fun. The beach baptism was really cool, seeing people publicly declare their faith always leaves me speechless. Allie and Trevor's wedding was wonderful, Allie looked beautiful. :) Seeing them get married only makes me more anxious to tie the knot!! Seriously, I'm just so excited. Haha!I do have a couple prayer requests though. I'll make it very general, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who struggles with these kinds of things. Just pray that I (and all of our other brothers and sisters in Christ) hold true to God's Word and understand it's full meaning and follow it beyond what we THINK we're capable of. Also just that we're all around more kind and loving toward our family in Christ as well as those who don't believe and/or are our enemies.


Thank you in advance...if you're even reading this blog. Haha it's not like I get comments or messages so who knows if anyone but me reads this thing!!!

Sweet As

Okay so the last few days, the college group took an awesome trip up to Northern California to go white water rafting! It wasn't really the whole college group...it was more like the girls of the group and Mike and Ruben. Haha! It was totally fun though and everyone had a blast!! The tedious 7 hour drive up there wasn't as bad as everyone thought it would be. And once we got there, we were pleasantly surprised with beautiful scenery and not-as-rugged-as-we-thought camping facilities.


We were told that we were to stay in tents, so we all brought our sleeping bags and pillows. The tents we stayed in were humongous, they had bunk beds inside of them. A luxury we didn't take for granted. :) So we arrived Sunday night and went rafting Monday afternoon after 2 delicious meals provided by the camp. Our guide on the raft was named "Nacho", but he was a tall, lanky New Zealander with blonde dreads! His real name was Nigel but that's a whole 'nother story...:P


There are so many funny stories attached to our rafting experience! Too many to tell in one sitting on Blogger! Just know that we all came back alive and with an understanding of what adventure feels like.


We all want to again really soon, and more people should definitely come to experience what we did! Fellowship, adventure, and so much fun. It was an incredible experience and it all happened over the course of a few days.


God is doing amazing things in all of our lives, and even the life of our guide, Nacho. I can't thank God enough for all that He's done in our lives! It's truly incredible how He speaks to us through other people and His Word.

"The eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good."
Proverbs 15:3

Turnaround

"Come on it's time for a brand new page.
Come on it's time for a turnaround.
Open your eyes to a brighter day.
And see the corner you're turnin' on.
This time, oh, it's time for a change."

I've been loving her music lately. In fact, her blog is what made me want to make my blog! I love her style of music, and I'm so glad she has it because there aren't really any other Christian music artists like her! So within the past week I've gone to Puddingstone Lake a few times. My family and I go there often to go on bike rides, we've been doing that since I was little! But we go now every once in awhile to have some fun on the 6-mile trip around the lake! My mom actually came with us this time!! But...she didn't ride. She only sat in the car and read her book (go figure, haha). But before the ride my dad said, "Whoever comes back first gets to choose where we eat!" And I just laid back the whole ride trailin' behing everyone. But once we got toward the end, Mike took off up this dirt hill and my dad followed him. So it was just me and Sky and I didn't want to let a 14-year-old beat me! So I took off and went really fast! I got back first and I chose Warehouse Pizza. We hadn't been there in a super long time and Mike hadn't tried it before! It was awesome! And Mike said, "That was probably my favorite pizza I've ever had." WOW. :)

But anyway, I just wanted to share my experiences with that. The other two times I went to Puddingstone were also fun, not as adventuresome but fun! I went with Aubrey and Joel cuz I really wanted to take some pictures. On the bike ride that I'd been on a couple days before, the way the sun was hitting the lake and the hills looked SO beautiful! So I asked them if they'd go with me and of course they did! It was beautiful, but we were a little late so the sun was going down fast and we only got a couple good shots. (Including the one posted above!) The third time I went to Puddingstone was a double date picnic with Nick and Britney. It was also beautiful, but it was weird because there was lots of people there! And we had to pay to get in (10 bucks!) which we usually don't have to pay! Overall, three lake trips that were a success. :)

New Recipe

My sister, Alexis, made lemonade one time and it was so delicious. I opened our fridge today to see a huge bag of lemons! I called her right up and got the right information from her to make my tasty lemony treat! I want to share it with you guys :)

Okay so you're gonna need four or five lemons to start this thing off. You're trying to get one cup of lemon juice. Alexis only uses four lemons, but she has strong hands I guess! Haha :) So I got five because I'm weak.

Then slice one of the lemons in half so that you can get the juice out of them.

Squeeze the heck out of each of the halves until you have one cup of lemon juice! It's okay if seeds or pulp gets into the liquid.

This is what your lemons should look like after the incessant squeezing. Be careful when you're squeezing them because the acid in the lemon stings cuts and wounds in the skin!

Get one cup of sugar ready also.

And six cups of cold water.

So these are your ingredients, the only ones you'll ever need to make any kind of normal lemonade: lemon juice, water, and sugar.

If you don't want the seeds and pulp in your lemonade then just get them out with a spoon! Some people think the seeds make it more "authentic" but I don't like swallowing seeds in my lemonade.

Combine all the ingredients in a pitcher and stir them together. Or if you have a closed pitcher with a lid, you can shake it instead.

Pour into cute little cups, or big huge cups if that's how you like to roll!

Yummy lemonade for me! :D Hope you enjoy the recipe! Seriously, you need to make. It tastes so sweet and perfect on a hot summer day!!

Fun fun Summer Birthday!

Yesterday was Aubrey's 19^th birthday and it was so much fun! She wanted to have a really Ataris day and spend it with Joel, me, and Mike. After waking up at 6am on my own (that means NO ALARM CLOCK) I came on to the computer to look at some photography websites and stuff to get in the mood to take cool pictures! Then I really wanted to sleep some more so I took a half hour nap before I had to start getting ready for the day. After I had showered and done my hair, I went to Mike's house to pick up the Contour to go get it washed because it was filthy. I felt like such a mom because there were these other two moms at the car wash sitting next to me and getting their husband's cars washed. Ha! But anyway, then we went to start our adventure. While listening to The Ataris in Mike's clean car, we began by eating at the "Tole House Cafe" on Etiwanda. Their pancakes are huge by the way. So if you try to order them, be sure that you're in a Man vs. Food kind of mood!

Photo by: Me

After that, we stopped at the gas station and made our way to the Griffith Observatory. We wanted to do anything that didn't cost money, or at least not too much money. On the way over there, we saw this huge news crew and lots of traffic on the Eastbound 210 Fwy off of Baseline in Claremont! We didn't know what it was at the time, but this morning I was shocked to find out that there was a body that was burnt to a crisp! It wasn't an accident, someone killed someone and threw them on the freeway! Click here to see the story! It's intense! We made it to the Observatory safe and sound and after Mike's 10 minute bathroom trip we managed to get some pictures in front of it!

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Aubrey

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Me

We walked around the place for awhile, saw some cool stuff and watched a show that surprisingly didn't make me dizzy this time! It was cold there too because it was overcast! It kind of upset me because I had checked the we ather and saw that it said it would be 86 degrees in LA. It probably didn't reach that temperature 'til like...4 o'clock. It was still fun! It was getting close to lunch time but we weren't too hungry yet. We just wanted a little snack. So we headed over to Beverly Hills to visit the ever-famous Sprinkles cupcakes!!! A little adventure was involved with finding a parking spot, but we got one, got the goods, and headed to a little grass park with huge trees!

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Aubrey

Photo by: Me

It was so delicious and tons of fun! There are lots more pictures that we took there, but those will be for keepsake in a personal photo album. (AKA I'm too lazy to upload them here...) Anyway, after that, we took the long way to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles in Pasadena! Me and Mike had recently eaten there for the first time and it is insanely deluctable! Wow! So we were excited to see what they thought of the experience! :) Those pictures we took on my polaroid camera so I'll upload them here in a minute, but first I need to scan them in.

[Okay so my scanner doesn't work, ugh!
I had to take a picture of the polaroids and
then upload them that way...sorry for the
poor quality! But hey, whatever.]

It was a long and wonderful day that went by so quickly! After lunch/dinner we drove Aubrey and Joel back to Joel's house and took a few quick shots that I really wanted to get!!!

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Me

Photo by: Me

It was beautiful! Then me and Mike had to jam to practice to get there by 7pm! We are going to be playing on song this Sunday that absolutely is AMAZING. Seriously, I love it so much. I'm so excited to play it!!! Then we packed up and changed really quick and made our way to Victoria Gardens to see the midnight showing of Twilight: Eclipse. It was my first midnight showing, and it was okay. Haha I'm not very good at staying up late so I had a hard time keeping my eyes open! But the movie was alright, I'm not much of a Twilight fan! :) Overall, today was perfectly fun and I hope the summer keeps going like this filled lots of adventure and fun pictures!!

I always get in this mood...

To make a new blog, or start posting on a blog. But I think this time I want to do it FOR REAL, like on a regular basis. I like to design the blog and make it all cute (which will come in time...for now I still have to figure it out.) And I like to read other people's blogs and look at their pictures, it's interesting! So I want to do something interesting too. But...we'll see what happens with that because I don't really have that many interesting things about my life.

I know that my opinion on anything isn't all that important to people, and it shouldn't be important! Only what God has to say matters. So I want to talk about what happened in church today.

Photo by: Me

First of all, the worship set was nothing special...to anyone who didn't have their heart in it. Personally, I loved it. I'll admit it was mediocre (sp?), but the stripped down version of songs leaves no room for talent, pride, or selfishness. All that's left is Jesus, and He's all that matters. The songs that were played and sung today were for one purpose that I felt the entire congregation knew about: to lift up His name. After the first set, they played a slideshow of VBS the previous week and Becky came up to announce that seven kids were saved during that time. God still does awesome things when no one knows He's working...seriously. Then Jeff got up and spoke a message that everyone needed to hear. Though most people would think that he was bagging on the men of the church, I think everyone got something out of the message that they needed to hear. It was so convicting and powerful, I felt like God was using Jeff to speak loudly to each person in the room!

Lately in my life, I've been acting really dumb and treating people unfairly. I didn't know where my attitude came from until I realized, of course, AS ALWAYS, I was not abiding in the Lord. This verse is what helped me kick start my mini-revelation:

"So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." -Matt. 6:34

Right after that verse is another one that really got me and made me feel horrible for the feelings I've been having and the words I've been speaking:

"Do not judge so that you will not be judged." -Matt. 7:1

I never ever realize how dumb I'm acting until God starts being totally obvious with me by giving me verses like that, or He gives me people who tell me what I need to hear. These verses were totally God-sent and I'm so glad that He came through to me again. He always does. Doubt and "mean-ness" totally got to me and I let it take over me to the point where I was giving awful attitude for no apparent reason. I have so much stuff that I worry about that I don't need to worry about! God tells us to give Him our worries and burdens and He'll take care of everything! Coming to realizations like this is so beautiful and only the Creator could have done this for me. The message in church today was pretty much about getting on the right track, and to stop faking the Christian act all the time. It's impossible to do it on your own, but through the Lord we can accomplish everything.