Christmas Thoughts

First of all, Merry Christmas everyone!!!
It's been a super great break so far that consists mostly of holding my new, baby niece. It's crazy how you can love someone so much and all she does is lay there. Well, she's opened her eyes a few times, but she mostly sleeps. But the other morning when I was holding her I was just looking at her and it started me thinking about things.
Here's this little person, little girl, and she doesn't give a care at all what she looks like, what she's wearing or anything like that. She's part asian and part white, but it doesn't matter to her. She's 7lbs, 18.5 inches long but her size doesn't matter. She's 7 days old, She's a person. All she wants is to be held, to be loved and cared for. What would it look like if we loved and cared for people just because of who they are. We love this new child in our family just because she is, because she exists and she's a precious gift. Because God ordained her to be a part of our family. She hasn't done anything to deserve our love and, in fact, she's pretty much incapable of doing anything, yet we love her. What if we treated all people like that? Loving them for who they are. What if we lived like that, knowing we are loved by God and not so concerned with appearance and what people think and loving other people because God loves us completely.

Having her here has also helped me realize the magnitude of what Jesus came and did for us. We're trying to protect this little baby, washing out hands before holding her, keeping her in a warm room, monitoring the amount of people who come, having nice clean diapers and good cleaning stuff, keeping the dogs and cats away. Jesus didn't have any of that. He was born in a stable, with animals and hay for a bed. This baby can't do anything for herself, she's completely vulnerable and innocent, so was Jesus. It just amazes and overwhelms me the position he put himself in...the extent he went to for us. That Mary was given the responsibility to care for and raise her savior, the Savior of the world! The One who spoke this world into being came to us in obedience to the Father as a tiny, helpless baby. He went through life as we know it and lived perfectly so he could save us because he loves us. He loves us for us, just because we are, because he created us. We are his children and he loves us fully and completely even when we have done nothing to deserve his love, just because we are.

MS Snowfall

I didn't think I'd have the opportunity to get back on here before the couple of weeks were up. And yes, it is 8:30 and I'm about to go to bed because Ms Tracey so kindly blessed us with a day off of ballet after having a performance and such yesterday. So, I have taken full advantage of the rest we were supposed to take since we didn't have ballet tonight.  I thought I'd take this opportunity to tell you of some little excitement in our house the other morning.
A strange thing happened for us this time of the year. All of my roommates and I got ready and were leaving the house at approximately the same time, I think yesterday...Tuesday??? No wait, yesterday was Wednesday. But, I really can't remember, I think it was yesterday. Yeah, cause we had a performance.
It's about 7:30 in the morning, you know, when most people go to work?
Anyways, I'm about about to leave when all of the sudden Rebecca yells, "IT'S SNOWING!!!!!!!!" and if only you were hearing me tell the story rather than read it, I could do her voice for you. Next thing I hear is some screaming and everyone rushing to the door trying to unlock it as fast as possible...we have three locks, so it's not the most simple thing to undo. But sure enough, they get the door open and go running outside and I of course follow. It was fun. Oh so many things happened in that moment, there was some crying, some dancing, some trying to catch the snow. But, I have to say that the best part was the neighbors....
Remember, I said it was like prime time for leaving for work. Yep, they were all lined up in their cars trying to turn off of our street. I look over and they are just staring at us like, "what is wrong with these people" and I just start laughing. Unfortunately, I was one of those people who had to leave for work so I couldn't stay to enjoy the overwhelming delight from the snow fall. My roommates (from Florida and North Carolina) say it was a blizzard, but my roommate (from Indiana) and I say it was a few flurries...we know better :) It was neat though because we don't really get snow here, so it really is quite a special moment even if it didn't stick or never does.

"Andrew Ludwig" I'm Pretty Sure He's My Cousin

Monday, I go to the doctor because I have this weird hip thing going on where my muscle on the inside of my hip pops over my hip bone to the other side when I do certain movements. It feels quite strange, not normal and painful and I have to do this weird twisty thing with my leg to get it off my hip bone and back into place.
So I'm sitting there in this large waiting room of like 100 people...no joke...and I'm just sitting there with a book out and my phone. This lady (nurse I guess) starts walking around this huge waiting room and calls out my name. Before I have a chance to gather all of my things, she starts bookin' it to another room that's behind this glass door and you have to push a special button to get in and all that. So, I try to hurry as fast as I can cause she's like on a mission to get me to this other room except I can't catch up cause she was already on the move before I even stood up. Plus, my hip is injured so it's quite hurting to walk.
Thankfully, I made it into the room before the door shut and this waiting room only had like ten people in it. One by one they start calling people in until it's only me and one other LADY left.
The nurse comes out and calls "Andrew Ludwig"
I look around, yep, it's only the other lady and I, so I stand up.
The nurse says "Is that you?"
I said, "Uh, yeah, I guess so"
She was like "oh, ok, well come on back"
"Alrighty"
Then she was like "Is that really your first name? What is your first name?"
"Well, it's Andrea, but that's ok"
"Oh, I'm sorry, I read your paper wrong"
I just wonder what the other lady in the room thought when I stood up to "Andrew"
See, the problem is that I just really have very bad handwriting and so I'm sure it looked like Andrew. But no worries, it's all straightened out now, they know I'm a girl and have a girl name. And the good news is that my hip will be ok.
On a side note, I made a taco salad for dinner and I'm so stuffed. It always happens when I make taco salads and I don't understand why they always get so huge. It doesn't happen when I make any other salad, only taco salads. I even had to garbage disposal some of it and I still feel like Thanksgiving full.
Well, we're in full blown Snow Queen mode now...sorta, just lots of stuff going on. So, you may not hear from me til Christmas break.

Yep, I was the Turkey

Have I ever mentioned before that it's always interesting here? Pretty much, never a dull moment. Well, I just wanted to send a quick note because I am getting up at 4am to drive home for Thanksgiving!!!! I'm so excited that I get to go home tomorrow, I think everyone knows it. It's just gonna be a great time and this is, in fact, the longest I have ever not been at home, and I made it.
So, at Beagle Bagel, I work with people...go figure. And one person thought she would get me a gift, some massive feather earrings. Of course I had to wear them and so I wore them the day she got them for me and I was trying to make use of them another time. So, I had this brilliant idea for today. Most people have already jumped ahead to Christmas, like the bagel shop is already all decorated and all that, so I thought we should do something for Thanksgiving. I'm really looking forward to it since I get to go home, btw. She had gotten some earrings for other co-workers too, so we decided to dress up for Thanksgiving at work today.
A couple of people came as Indian Princesses, one of the regular customers came as a pilgrim and I was the turkey. Yep, I did my hair all turkey-like and wore my feather earrings and greeted every customer with a gobble...well, ok the last part isn't true. I think the idea kinda kerplunked because we had an unusually low tip day, but that coulda been coincidence. I mean, it was a brilliant idea, maybe just not received quite the way I anticipated. I had asked my boss if I could have a beak, but she said no. That must've been the problem.
Anyways, it was a great day and now I gotta go finish packing at get to bed so I can get up to drive in a couple of hours. We have a full car and it's gonna be a great time! I can't wait to see my family and my cute, little, cuddly kitty named Meow and have some good food and shopping and on and on and on.
Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!! There are so many things to be Thankful for, more than we could ever even know probably :)

One of Those People

I thought it was appropriate to write a brief update before heading home for the holidays (as in Thanksgiving for a very brief period of time then I'll be back here). Anyways, I'm having a super nice, quiet, relaxing day today and enjoying every second of it. So, I'm gonna write here and then be productive...or just off the computer. Pandora's asked me twice now if I'm still listening or if it's playing to an empty room, I'm definitely still here. But, I haven't been sitting on the computer, it's been playing while I've been doing things.
On with the story... or normal happenings of my life. The past couple of months I've been feeling sick to my stomach, most days. So, recently, I started experimenting with food things to see if I could figure out what was going on. Every time I heard of someone having to go gluten free, I always prayed that it wouldn't happen to me. I didn't want to be one of those people because it didn't sound like any fun. Of course, I didn't want to experiment, so I started with lactose. I didn't have milk for like a week and nothing really changed. Then one night I ate a boat load of dairy stuff (probably not the best idea) and I told my roommate I might get really sick at night, but no worries, I knew what I was doing. Thankfully and unthankfully I didn't get really sick. That meant it was time to try the next thing....dun dun dun....GLUTEN.
No!!! I didn't want this to be it, but I dove in. I haven't been having gluten for over two weeks and I've only felt sick one day out of this. I think I might have discovered my problem. Which is good and not good at the same time, but it will be all right. It appears, I just may be one of those people. I've been wanting to try having gluten and see if I feel sick. I'm trying to find a good day to try it out, but so far I haven't found a "good day" to purposefully make myself feel sick (If I'm really allergic to that). Who would ever CHOOSE to be sick?
Anyways, I'm thankful cause I'm learning it's not so bad. Other than the bread tasting like you're eating handfuls of sand, you actually get some nice, special treatment. I was visiting my sister in Texas and we were starving, but they just had normal tortilla chips, but they made me special blue corn chips, it was so nice. Then last night, I went to Biaggis for a birthday party and you know how they give bread for the whole table?? Well, I got to have a plate all to myself. Then I also got my own menu and my meal came with these green noodles. Anyways, I don't really know if that's what I have or not, but the great thing is that I am not feeling sick anymore!!! I'm so thankful.

Are You Sure it's Not Plugged In???

I've been asked recently what has happened to my blog. So far, it's fallen to the bottom of the priority list, but I shall try to revive it. Sarah Kearns, this is for you. I'm most certain many eventful things have happened so far since I've been back here in Mississippi. But, I'll just have to tell you of the most recent happenings. We could call it a series of unfortunate events, but that might be too dramatic. So, I'll just tell you the story.
The first owners of this house thought it would be a great idea to install a security system in this house. I don't blame them in the least for wanting to do that. The next owners decided not to continue with the alarm system and just stick with the good ol' locks and deadbolts and we've followed in that pattern. The system is supposed to be disabled and it had been all of last year. Occasionally, being in the downstairs room last year, the keypad would beep at me, but not very often. For over a year (plus however many years the other people lived here before us) nothing has happened with that alarm system.
Well, one morning last week, the alarm system decided it was going to practice going off. Suddenly, at 5:30 in the morning, we hear the loudest, piercing, screeching noise we've ever heard in our lives. I have no idea what's going on cause as we all know, I don't do well in the early morning. The alarm system is "disabled" and so the only other option is fire alarm. I tell my roommate Emilie to get up, (or she would say I was yelling), and then I fling open Paige's door and tell her to get up and go downstairs. The noise box is right outside our bedroom door. So, then we all run downstairs and into Rebecca's room and she's still laying in bed, so I throw her her blanket and tell her to put it on cause I thought we might need to all go outside if it was a fire. Of course, I'm sure I was much more frantic than I am expressing here...
I look all over for a fire and don't find one, so I head upstairs to see where the noise is coming from because surely it can't be from the disabled alarm system. But, by golly, it is. I get on the phone with the company of the system, but it finally stopped going off. I spend some time with the lady trying to figure out the issue. She tells me to look for these different kind of boxes and I eventually find them. I was supposed to unplug a battery, but the battery was already on the ground and the cords are by the ceiling. So she tells me that the alarm shouldn't be going off, and I was like, I understand that, that's why I'm calling you because it is going off and it shouldn't be and I need your help to figure out why this is happening. Anyways, I did everything she said to that I could figure out and she was like, well, call back if it happens again.
8:30am, we're all getting ready for ballet and here comes the loudest siren ever, AGAIN! So, I get on the phone, explain the whole thing all over again. She tells me to look for this little box, either in the basement...we don't have one, in the laundry room...we don't have one, in a closet...it's not in there. I end up being on the phone with her for 40 min and then I was like, "well, I have to go because we have a performance right now, so I'll have to call you back when we're done."
3:00 No more alarm, but I call back because I do not want the thing to go off again. Unfortunately, this is now the 3rd different person I am talking to, so I go over the whole thing again. She tells me that I should unattatch the cords that go to the box where the siren was going off. "You want me to pull them out of the ceiling???" Well, maybe the other end where it connects. "I can't do that, I'll get electrocuted because they're in like the motherboard and I can't cut the wire" I can't figure it out, so just call again if it goes off again because there's no reason it should be going off.
6am following morning. The siren goes off for a third time. I'm quite exhausted by now. So, I give a call again and go over the whole thing. He asks if I've checked this and that and I say yes yes yes. Same questions every time with the same answers. Well, finally he suggests that it could be plugged in in the attic. Ding ding ding!!! I forgot we even had an attic because I've never been up there. But, it's 6 in the morning and who knows what's up there. I was afraid of finding cockroaches or spiders or something. Thankfully, there was nothing of that sort in there. I found where it was plugged in and was like bingo!...but not that easy. It wasn't just plugged in to the outlet, it was screwed in. I climb down the ladder, downstairs, grab a screwdriver, head back up and unscrew and unplug it. Finally done, or so I thought. I climb down the attic ladder and close it all up, only to look up and see that the I left the attic light on. I pull the attic door thing back down, climb up, switch off the light, climb back down and close everything up.
The best new is, that so far we've gone for a week without it going off again. Why it never went off for several years and all the sudden went off 3 times in 2 days at crazy early hours of the morning, we will never know. But, I think we're all good for now. My ears have returned to normal and our house is at peace once again.
I will be doing my best to try and share more of the happenings here in MS because it's always an adventure.
Andrea

Back again

Well, my blog has ker-plunked. Seriously badly. At the beginning of the year (last fall) I thought it was too good to be true how well I was keeping up with it. So, this is more typical, but I am going to attempt to return to my untypical ways of updating it regularly and see how well that goes.

The second semester of ballet was like a ballet marathon...especially towards the end. It was really good and fun, but it didn't leave much time for computer. Plus my computer is old and so it takes like 20 min to load a page (remember the old AOL dial-up? that's what it feels like) so most of the time I just give up and don't get on. But yeah, lots of great times in the ballet world. We had lots of performances at nursing homes and churches. We had our recital, which was great and tons of fun!!! Then a few of us went to Birmingham to help run a workshop there and then we had our own workshop at Ballet Magnificat! in July. This is the workshop I went to that got me to stay in Mississippi in the first place. I met some great people again this year and had a great experience, especially with the creative worships and Bible studies. So Mid-July I got to come home.

I've been home in Michigan for about 4 weeks now and time seems to be flying by. I've gotten to see a few people and re-connect with them and have spent a lot of my time with my family which has been so good. This past week, I got to teach dance at an arts camp and I loved it. I had a group of 10 girls and then a group with 6 boys and 8 girls. I've spent quite a bit of time in Traverse City jet skiing, wakeboarding, boating, tubing, laying out on the beach, swimming...you know, the normal camping things. Haha, in our air conditioned trailer with a shower and washer and dryer and cable.

I only have three left and they are pretty well packed with some fun stuff and not so fun stuff, but necessary. The fun stuff being, hanging out with my sisters, my brother's birthday, Traverse City with my faves, and that sort of thing. The not so fun part is that I have to get my wisdom teeth out next week. I'll try to post something about that. One of my friends is taking me, so we'll see what she has to say about what I say or do. Could be interesting.

Oh yeah! I am also 25 now. Guess what I got for my birthday...that's right, POINTE SHOES!!!! Not exactly what I want, but absolutely what I need, so I am very thankful. I mean, I do want them........

Anyways, I s'pose that's good for now. Gonna go hang out with Jessy now before she moves to Oklahoma. I should be around again sometime in these next few weeks before I head back to MS. Maybe even with pics, I'm just currently on my mom's computer with none of my pics because it's just so much faster than mine. So when I have time and patience, I will upload some. Ok, for real, bye.